Happy MLK Day, amid fallout from the churning sickness of white nationalist grievance that finally spewed forth in the attempted auto-coup of January 6, 2021. In that context, we redouble our efforts to topple America’s centuries-old, color-based caste system rooted in colonial occupation, insisting that Black Lives Matter: locally, globally, […]
San Antonio Bioregion
‘Luz At Midnight’: San Antonio’s First Rare-Earth Cli-Fi Love Story
Love, politics, and rare earth mineral mining converge in this South Texas novel. Ten years in the making, San Anto’s first rare-earth cli-fi love story (we’d wager) has just been published by the superchingón FlowerSong Press and is ready for heavy reading. Rooted in the landscapes and issues Deceleration aspires […]
San Antonio’s Problem with CPS Energy
Full Broadcast 22-Min Version For our families, planet, and future, San Antonio must shut down its last coal plant by 2030. But City-owned CPS Energy won’t discuss shutting the JK Spruce plant down, other than to warn of the costs. After years of trying to negotiate a just transition to […]
TAKE ACTION: Attend First SA Climate Ready Committees Meeting
After a two-year odyssey creating San Antonio’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan—political delays in adoption, followed by a year of silence—the SA Climate Ready’s new committees are finally assembling and seeking community input. On Tuesday night, two committees charged with guiding City climate policies in the years ahead will meet […]
CPS Energy Must Stop Shutting Off People’s Power—For Good
Disconnects for nonpayment by CPS Energy have more than doubled during CEO Paula Gold-Williams tenure. And there are still no promises of reform.
TAKE ACTION: A Community-Led Climate/COVID-19 Recovery
On Saturday, Join an Online Conversation to Help Develop a Community-Led Climate/COVID-19 Recovery for San Antonio. {EDITOR’S NOTE, 10.30.2020: Thanks to all who attended. View full event video here.} A recovery plan that is capable of meeting the challenges of today’s many colliding crises must center the needs of those […]
CPS, SAWS, SAPD: Petitions to Hold Power Accountable By
In San Antonio election lines, clipboards mark the struggle to force change at City-owned utilities CPS, SAWS, and our ‘union-clad’ police force. Marisol Cortez & Greg Harman This election season, up-ballot races—including and especially the race to unseat a pandemic-spreading, children-caging autocrat—overshadow more ground-level, small-d democratic movement. However, three critical […]
Utility Violence: CPS Energy’s History of Forced Shutoffs
To Truly Tackle Root Inequities, Council Must Address CPS Energy’s Legacy of Disconnections Greg Harman San Antonio summers are a time of retreat. During 2012, Texas’s hottest year on record, San Antonians fled to movie theaters, water parks, libraries, and VIA’s designated cooling centers (our bus fleet). For those in […]
PODCAST: Rights of Nature Arrives in San Antonio
Marisol Cortez In Spring of 2012, at the tail end of my time teaching in Lawrence, Kansas, I had the privilege of attending the Rights of Mother Earth Conference at Haskell Indian Nations University. I’d found my way to Haskell via the Wetlands Preservation Organization, where I fought alongside Haskell […]
EP11: San Antonio City Council Breaks on Critical Renter Protections
In just over 10 minutes, Deceleration.Live Episode 11 breaks down San Antonio City Council’s failure last week to protect local renters staring down a June 1, 2020, eviction deadline by passing a proposed 60-day grace period on evictions. The landlords turned up in force; renters and housing advocates kept their […]
PODCAST: Fabiola Ochoa Torralba on Decolonizing Dance
Embodied research notes toward a bird movement vocabulary. Marisol Cortez I met Fabiola Ochoa Torralba years ago, helping plan the International Women’s Day march. Around San Antonio she’s known for community-embedded dance projects that use movement to draw people into a variety of issues—from migration to the preservation of public […]
‘Words for Birds 2020: Poetics for Pandemics’
We are excited to present Deceleration’s first foray into DIY publishing—an avian-themed poetry zine called Words for Birds 2020: Poetics for Pandemics. Read it here … with two bonus features for our online readers. Marisol Cortez When the pandemic nixed Words for Birds, an annual workshop and reading held at […]