On September 9, 1921, a tropical depression stalled just north of
San Antonio and within hours overwhelmed its winding network of
creeks and rivers. Floodwaters ripped through the city's Latino
West Side neighborhoods, killing more than eighty people. Meanwhile
a wall of water crashed into the central business district on the
city's North Side, wreaking considerable damage. The city's
response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the
next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about
which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were
made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored
the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed
from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation. Instead
the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos
Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public
benefits in one of America's poorest big cities. The discriminatory
consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually
resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for
Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a
successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often
inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS's emergence
as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political
landscape to more accurately reflect the city's diverse population.
West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San
Antonio's enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe
consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining
environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller
demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism,
injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to
dismantle these inequities. He draws clear lines between the
environmental injustices embedded in San Antonio's long history and
the emergence of grassroots organizations that combated the
devastating impact floods could have on the West Side.
General
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