In the wake of Hurricane Florence, UE Local 150 has joined allies in the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Black Workers for Justice, the NC Environmental Justice Network and others to urge support for a just recovery.
Donate here to support community-directed post-hurricane recovery in Eastern NC Communities.
UE-allied organizations in the Southern Vision Alliance have been mobilizing resources to support working-class communities in the eastern part of the state, where many of the state's Black and Latino residents live, along with the vast majority of its Indigenous population (the Lumbee Tribe). In the week after the hurricane, activists in the Raleigh-Durham “Triangle” area partnered with small-plane pilots, many of them retired military, to deliver over 40 tons of food, water, medicine and other supplies to places that had been wholly cut off from the outside world by the floods. From there, grassroots groups picked up and distributed these resources throughout their communities, some of which were literally starving. Shipments of supplies are still being trucked on a regular basis from the Triangle to Eastern NC.
North Carolinians are also at risk from environmental devastation caused by the storm. In a Facebook post, Local 150 noted that “North Carolina is home to 31 coal ash pits where Duke Energy stores an estimated 111 million tons of toxic waste produced by coal-fired power plants. The state is also home to thousands of manure pits, known euphemistically as ‘lagoons,’ which hold approximately 10 billion pounds of wet waste generated each year by swine, poultry, and cattle operations.” An unknown number of these toxic sites were flooded by Florence, spreading contamination throughout the eastern part of the state.
UE allies are maintaining a website at https://anothergulf.com/a-just-florence-recovery/ to publicize and coordinate relief efforts. To support these efforts financially, donate here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/eastnc.