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Wisconsin’s catastrophic flooding is a glimpse of the Midwest’s drenched future

by BlytheDefoor Posted on September 5, 2018

An entire summer’s worth of rain has fallen across a broad swath of the Midwest in recent days. The resulting record floods have wrecked homes and altered the paths of rivers, in one case destroying a waterfall in Minnesota. The worst-affected region, southwest Wisconsin, has received more than 20 inches of rain in 15 days– more than it usually gets in six months.

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin declared a statewide emergency last week, mobilizing the Wisconsin National Guard to assist flood victims if necessary. The Kickapoo River in southwest Wisconsin rose to record levels — as high as six feet above the previous high water mark — producing damage that local emergency management officials described as “breathtaking.”

In the tiny Wisconsin town of Gays Mills, this is the third catastrophic flood in 10 years. After floods a decade ago, about a quarter of the residents left, and the town was partially rebuilt on higher ground. But this time around is even worse — with almost every home in the town damaged.

Is there a connection to climate change? Well, a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, and the region’s main moisture source — the Gulf of Mexico — has reached record-warm levels in recent years, helping to spur an increase in precipitation intensity. Since the 1950s, the amount of rain falling in the heaviest storms has increased by 37 percent in the Midwest.

But there’s more to it than that. Decades of development have also paved over land that used to soak up rainwater. Earlier this year, Wisconsin took controversial steps to loosen restrictions on lakeside development.

Madison, home to the state’s flagship university, has seen the brunt of the flooding so far. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s center that specializes in studying lakes is itself flooded. “This is what climate change looks like,” Adam Hinterthuer, the center’s spokesperson, wrote in a blog post. On Twitter, the center posted maps of recent floods alongside projections for the worst expected floods later this century. They matched remarkably well.

For Eric Booth, a climate scientist at the university, the whole thing is almost too much to comprehend. His research project on small stream water temperatures was washed away by the flooding. “The scale of what is happening is absolutely unbelievable to witness,” Booth wrote in an email. Booth’s own calculations showed that rainfall over the past 30 days is an approximately 1-in-1,000 year occurrence, assuming a stable climate. (That, obviously, isn’t a good assumption anymore.)

Flooding in the Madison area has boosted lake levels to all-time highs, reigniting a more than 150-year dispute between boaters (who like lake levels high to avoid damage to their boats), conservationists (who want to avoid damage to sensitive shoreline ecosystems and wetlands), and property owners downstream (whose land gets flooded when water is released too quickly). That conflict has creeped into Madison’s mayoral election, where candidates have called for a new lake management plan in the face of more frequent extreme storms.

By late this century, on a business-as-usual path, those storms could nearly double in frequency, according to University of Wisconsin research. As an editorial earlier this summer in the Des Moines Register said, “Climate change never feels more real than when you’re dragging wet carpet from a flooded basement.”

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Wisconsin’s catastrophic flooding is a glimpse of the Midwest’s drenched future

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America’s Most Notorious Coal Baron Is Going to Prison. But He Still Haunts West Virginia Politics

by AdalbertoCocker Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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As CEO of Massey Energy, central Appalachia’s largest coal producer, Don Blankenship towered over West Virginia politics for more than a decade by spending millions to bolster Republican candidates and causes. That chapter came to an end in April, when Blankenship was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiring to commit mine safety violations in the period leading up to the deadly 2010 explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine. But even in absentia, he casts a long shadow over state politics. For evidence, look no further than the contentious Democratic primary for governor.

The campaign pits Jim Justice, a billionaire coal operator and high school basketball coach, against two opponents—state senator minority leader Jeff Kessler, and Booth Goodwin, the former US attorney who prosecuted Blankenship. Justice holds a double-digit lead in the polls and (not unlike another billionaire running for office this year) is spending much of his time arguing that his 10-figure net worth will insulate him from special interests. But when he was asked about the Blankenship conviction at a campaign stop earlier this month, he ripped into Goodwin for what he considered to be a sloppy, opportunistic prosecution.

“I think we spent an ungodly amount of money within our state to probably keep Booth Goodwin in the limelight and end up with a misdemeanor charge,” Justice told WOAY TV. “If that’s all we are going to end up with, why did we spend that much money to do that?”

Blankenship originally faced up to 30 years for making false statements to federal regulators, but he was only convicted on only the least serious of three counts—the misdemeanor conspiracy charge. In Goodwin’s view (and in the minds of plenty of Blankenship’s critics), his light sentence is the product of weak mine safety laws, not lax prosecution. As he told the Charleston Gazette-Mail, “It is not our fault that violating laws designed to protect workers is punished less harshly than violations of laws designed to protect Wall Street.” (Nor was the Blankenship case a one-time gimmick—prior to that trial, Goodwin also secured the convictions of a handful of Blankenship’s subordinates at Massey.)

Goodwin fired back at Justice in a fundraising email to supporters. He referred to Blankenship as Justice’s “good friend,” alleging that Justice “took him as his personal guest to the 2012 Kentucky Derby two years after the horrific UBB mine explosion,” and attended a gala that night with Blankenship hosted by then-Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, “while the families of the UBB miners who were killed were still suffering their loss.” (A Beshear spokesman told the Louisville Courier-Journal at the time that Blankenship attended Derby Day events as Justice’s guest, which Justice’s campaign denies.) For good measure he noted that Justice, like Blankenship, had racked up a huge tab of mine safety violation fines, some $2 million of which had gone unpaid and were considered “delinquent” prior to the start of the campaign. (Justice began paying off the fines after an NPR investigation made the total bill public.)

On Monday, Goodwin’s campaign went after Justice again, releasing an ad based on the front-runner’s remarks about the Blankenship prosecution. In the spot, Judy Jones Petersen, the sister of a miner who died at UBB, speaks straight to the camera and suggests that the two coal operators have more in common than Justice would like to admit.

“I don’t really understand why Mr. Justice would step out against the integrity of this incredible prosecution team,” Petersen says. “He of all people as a coal mining operator should understand the plight of coal miners, but I think that unfortunately the plight that he understands best is the plight of Don Blankenship.”

She goes on to call Goodwin a “hero” for prosecuting Blankenship.

Justice, for his part, is running his own ad—touting an endorsement from the United Mine Workers praising him for his record on safety and job creation. The union’s president, Cecil Roberts, previously called the Upper Big Branch disaster “industrial homicide,” and fought Blankenship over mine-safety and worker rights for three decades. His message is a not-too-subtle contrast with Blankenship and Massey: “Jim is one of the good coal operators.”

Don’t expect Blankenship’s shadow to shrink as the race heats up. The Democratic primary is set for May 10—two days before the notorious coal boss reports to federal prison.

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America’s Most Notorious Coal Baron Is Going to Prison. But He Still Haunts West Virginia Politics

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What I’ve Learned Photographing "a Place Where You Could Get Away With Murder"

by VivienI6863996 Posted on June 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’ve spent the past seven years documenting the lives of people in Chester, Pennsylvania, a predominantly African American city of some 34,000 people located just southwest of Philadelphia. Three years into my time there, I realized that being an image-maker wasn’t having the impact I desired. Whenever I spoke with my best friend in Chester, Dee Dee, she always had the same stories: how someone shot up her street just the week before, or how she struggled to find a safe place for her children to sleep. People kept saying the same thing: Chester was a place where you could get away with murder.

So I began to investigate the high frequency of unsolved murder in Chester and how that reflects a national epidemic. As Edwin Rios and Kai Wright report in “Black Deaths Matter,” 144 killings in the city have gone unsolved since 2005. “Night now in Chester is night now in many places—night now in Philadelphia, in Camden, and every other place you can think of,” says Donald Newton, an activist and lifetime resident.

Why is it so hard for families of color to get justice when a loved one is murdered? Read our story from MoJo‘s May/June issue.

I have been collecting stories of families struggling to get justice following the murder of a loved one. This project is a deep investigation into the emotional, physical, and spiritual landscape that transpires from unresolved trauma. It consists of a series of portraits of each family affected by unresolved trauma, paired with an image from the murder scene captured around the time of day the crime was committed. I’ve also collected ephemeral material (letters, oral histories, love songs, drawings, diary entries, etc.) to involve the families in their depiction. By opening drawers and revisiting albums, this work aims to restore fragile memories and forge pathways to justice, healing, and restitution for the families of Chester.

This work is personal. When I was a teenager, my best friend, a young black man, was slain with a kitchen knife. The wealthy white man who killed him was never convicted. I witnessed my friend’s single mother unravel, my mother’s love the only thing holding her up. The questions that formed and went unanswered only lanced us deeper with time. The saving grace was our solidarity. With this project, I want to provide a safe space for families in Chester who are dealing with this same formation of loss, to connect and create understanding together.

The New York Times recently reported that 1.5 million black men are missing from American communities, mostly through imprisonment and early death. How does this missing generation affect the social landscape of the places they left behind? How do familial roles transform as a result? What does justice look like for families who are missing their beloved young men? I know the answer cannot simply be to put more black men in jail. With this work, I want people to understand the complexities of living in a community like Chester, and how everything is interlocked: a patchwork of trauma and courage, deeply rooted in the foundation of American society.

Right now, the immediate goal is to create an interactive, web-based platform that will serve both as a database of memories speaking to the collective experience of unresolved trauma and as an online space for conversations between community members. I hope to invite a larger audience to look beyond the stereotypes of a community in crisis and contemplate our commonalities—beliefs and biases—rather than our differences.

One issue does not define Chester. It is a multidimensional, changing landscape, and I’ve witnessed powerful moments of strength and beauty. Ultimately, in sharing this experience, I am optimistic at the prospect of disproving popular perception: Chester is not a place where you can get away with murder.

Jabril Bradley, 20; killed at Ninth Street and Avenue of the States
Bradley was riding his bike home from a friend’s house on the east side of Chester on September 1, 2011, when an unknown gunman opened fire. He was struck once in the back but continued to ride his bike home. Blocks later, he collapsed from blood loss. He bled to death on the street.

Terrance Webster, 2; killed at Chester Apartments, Ninth and Lamokin Street
Terrance Webster, son of Tisheta Green, was killed on June 14, 2010 at 2:30 a.m. The incident occurred as the family returned from another relative’s house. As they entered their apartment, several shots were fired at the father, who was carrying Terrance. The child was struck in the head and died shortly after in the hospital.
In photo: Tisheta Green (mother) with two of her sons

Karim “Cutty” Muhammad Alexander, 29; killed on Patterson Street, close to Penn Street
Alexander walked around the corner from his house on August 5, 2008, talking to a friend on the street when he was shot multiple times by an unknown gunman.
In photo: Sherrice Alexander Hill (mother), Robert Hill (father), Karim Alexander (son), Tara Watts (sister), Ayla Muhammad (sister), Sharifah Muhammad (sister)

Karim Alexander’s photos and letters

Gary Brightwell, 30; killed at Sunoco gas station, Ninth Street and Kerlin Street, pump No. 5.
Brightwell got a phone call and went to get gas in his car. He was shot once, killed at pump No. 5 in front of a number of people.
In photo: Shanell Brightwell (daughter), Jabrae Davis (grandson), Brezhae Davis (granddaughter)

Arthur “Art” McElwee, 23; killed in alley off Ninth Street, between Booth and Clover Streets
McElwee was shot multiple times in an alleyway and was pronounced dead at the scene of the crime.
In photo: Elena McElwee (mother), Elena Jo McElwee (twin sister), Dawn McElwee and Aisha McElwee (sisters).

Art McElwee photos and childhood mementos

Emill Smith, age 22; killed at the Green Bar on East Seventh Street, between Caldwell and McIlvain Streets
In the early evening of March 11, 2008, Emill Smith was leaving the Green Bar. According to accounts by witnesses at the scene, he kissed a friend on the forehead and was getting into a car when he was shot multiple times. He wore a chain that was worth upwards of $10,000. It was stolen from him the night he was killed.
In photo: Valerie Maxwell (mother), Janiyah Van (daughter), Khaneef Taylor (brother), Ka’Marion Tayler (brother), Ka’Tavion Tayler (brother)

Valerie Maxwell’s Facebook page, where she regularly posts to her son, Emill Smith

MacMatherson Miller, age 25; killed on West Seventh St., between Booth and Harwick Streets
Miller received a call from a friend on October 7, 2009, and was told to meet on the corner of Seventh and Booth. As he waited in his car, someone opened fire, killing him instantly. Miller had great promise in high school, where he was the star quarterback for Chester High School. (He was inducted posthumously into the Chester High School Hall of Fame.)
In photo: Tareeah Garrett (girlfriend), Asir Hudson (girlfriend’s son)

James Hamler III, 30; killed near American Legion Bar, West Seventh and Lloyd Streets
Late on the night of June 17, 2007, Hamler was outside the American Legion bar when a car drove up and opened fire on the crowd. Hamler was hit and died on the scene.

James Hamler photos and memorial

Eddie “Fast Eddie” Swain-Lane, 29; killed at Third and Palmer Streets
Swain-Laine died after trying to save his girlfriend, Shanae Bailey, and her three-year-old daughter, Anaija Bailey, as a fire ripped through their home. He was down the street when he realized his home was on fire; he ran to the house and made the decision to go inside the burning house. The death was ruled suspicious but no investigation was completed.

Linda Rose Brown, 44; killed at Edwards Street, corner of Highway 291
In late March 1998, Brown went missing. Her body was found two weeks later in an abandoned building. The day Brown’s body was found, her son Tyrone King was called by a police officer at the scene and was told to come and identify the body. Based on physical evidence, the police told King she was strangled to death by a wire hanger, then shot in the head and later dumped.
In photo: Tyrone “TK” King (son), Hammenah Rollie (daughter), Amin Rollie (son)

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What I’ve Learned Photographing "a Place Where You Could Get Away With Murder"

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Rand Paul to Appear at Event Featuring Neo-Confederate Aide He Had to Fire

by BillieMcmichael Posted on September 16, 2014

Mother Jones

This week, the Ron Paul-led Campaign for Liberty hosts its fourth annual Liberty Political Action Conference, and the speaking list features a roster of well-known Republican politicians and libertarian activists. The biggest draw of this year’s LPAC will undoubtedly be Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who each day inches closer to a 2016 presidential run. Slated to speak at the same event, though, is Paul’s ex-aide Jack Hunter, who the senator fired after his past as a neo-Confederate advocate was revealed.

Hunter used to be the social media director in Paul’s Senate office, and he co-wrote Paul’s 2010 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington. But in 2013, the Washington Free Beacon revealed that Hunter, under a different identity, had long been involved with the neo-Confederate and southern secessionist movements. For 13 years, Hunter was a South Carolina talk radio host who called himself the “Southern Avenger.” In public, he wore a luchador mask bearing a Confederate flag. As the Avenger, Hunter made many a provocative remark, including arguably racist comments. He said that John Wilkes Booth’s heart was “in the right place” and that he celebrated Booth’s birthday every year. He claimed that Abraham Lincoln would have been romantically drawn to Adolf Hitler. He called the NAACP a “malicious hate group” on par with the KKK. He contended that a “non-white majority America would simply cease to be America.”

Hunter also chaired an organization called the League of the South, which advocated “the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.” The Free Beacon reported,

“The League of the South is an implicitly racist group in that the idealized version of the South that they promote is one which, to use their ideology, is dominated by ‘Anglo-Celtic’ culture, which is their code word for ‘white,'” said Mark Pitcavage, the director of investigative research at the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL said it does not necessarily classify it as a hate group.

The League of the South maintains that it is not racist and does not discriminate in terms of membership.

“When I was part of it, they were very explicit that’s not what they were about,” Hunter told the Free Beacon. “I was a young person, it was a fairly radical group—the same way a person on the left might be attracted in college to some left-wing radical groups.”

After Hunter was unmasked, Paul said that his Southern Avenger commentaries were “stupid” and canned him. A few months later, Hunter wrote a story titled “Confessions of a Right-Wing Shock Jock” and distanced himself from his old comments. “I said many terrible things,” he wrote. “I disavow them.”

Now, Hunter is back in the fold and back on the speaker’s list in the liberty movement presided over by Ron and Rand Paul. The Campaign for Liberty bills him as “the one and only Jack Hunter.” Hard to argue with that.

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Rand Paul to Appear at Event Featuring Neo-Confederate Aide He Had to Fire

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