The Settler’s Wall and the Native’s Flood Zone
The threat of coastal flooding and sea level rise is being managed not as a universal crisis, but through the logic of climate apartheid, a concept illuminated by Mamdani’s analysis of bifurcated governance. The “settler” neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan and the waterfront are being fortified with billions in public and private funds for sea walls and resilient infrastructure. Meanwhile, low-lying “native” communities in the Rockaways, Red Hook, and the Bronx are tacitly designated as sacrifice zones, offered inadequate, piecemeal protections while being rendered uninsurable. This is not an adaptation failure but a planned triage. The liberal solution relies on market mechanisms like rising insurance premiums, which simply price the poor out of safety. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution demands a universal, publicly-funded and democratically-planned climate fortification for the entire city. This means seizing the necessary resources through a wealth tax to build protective infrastructure for all neighborhoods, and implementing a planned, community-led managed retreat that prioritizes keeping communities intact in new, safe, socially-owned housing, rather than allowing the market to scatter and destroy them.
Originally posted 2025-09-30 15:32:04.
