The Essential Workers of the Climate Crisis

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After storms and other climate disasters, legions of workers appear overnight to cover blown-out buildings with construction tarps, rip out ruined walls and floors, and start putting cities back together. They are largely migrants, predominantly undocumented, and lack basic protections for construction work. Their efforts are critical in an era of increasing climate-related disasters, but the workers are subject to hazards including accidents, wage theft, and deportation. “Right now, there is a base camp for the National Guard; FEMA officials in Louisiana are staying in hotels,” Saket Soni, the founder of the nonprofit group Resilience Force, tells Sarah Stillman. “But the workers who are doing the rebuilding with their hands are sleeping under their cars to protect themselves from rain.” Stillman travelled to Louisiana, to the parking lot of a Home Depot, to report on Soni’s effort to organize and win recognition for these laborers as a distinct workforce performing essential work. “These years ahead,” she notes, “are going to bring more brutal hurricanes, more awful floods, more terrifying wildfires, and heatwaves—more than any of us is really prepared to handle. … And what’s at stake is not just these workers’ fates but also our collective shared survival.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	from one world trade center in manhattan this is the new yorker radio hour a co-production of w nyc studios and the new yorker
0:09.3	this is the new yorker radio hour i'm david remnick hurricane season on the atlantic coast has been one of the
0:17.3	most ruinous and expensive on record and it's not even over not officially until the end of the most ruinous and expensive on record. And it's not even over, not officially,
0:22.8	until the end of the month. For some time, staff writer Sarah Stillman has been looking at the
0:27.8	rebuilding that comes after these storms and disasters, specifically the people who do the work.
0:34.0	The legions of workers who show up overnight to cover blown-out buildings with construction tarp,
0:39.7	who rip out ruined walls and floors, and who start putting cities back together.
0:47.4	Sarah has been spending a lot of time in Louisiana with an organization known as Resilience Force.
0:54.6	We're in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Laplace, Louisiana,
0:58.4	which is a suburb about 40 minutes outside of New Orleans.
1:01.7	It's been about two weeks since Hurricane Ida tore through the area,
1:05.7	and there's maybe about 100 or so workers in the parking lot,
1:09.0	and they're all here hoping to find work
1:10.9	rebuilding after the storm.
1:16.0	There's also a man here named Sokatsoni.
1:19.5	Okay, I'm going to speak in short sentences. I'll stop and then you, yeah.
1:23.9	His colleague, Danielle Castellanos, is interpreting.
1:26.4	Okay, how is everybody?
1:28.1	How is everybody?
1:31.0	Okay.
1:32.8	So just very quickly, very quickly say your names.
1:37.5	Just very quickly.
	...

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