Trash City: The Hidden Battle for Sanitation in New Orleans
Power, Money, and the Struggle to Clean the Crescent City

About this book:

Beneath the brass bands and beignets, New Orleans is fighting a dirty war. *Trash City* pulls back the curtain on the multi-million-dollar battle for control of the city's waste—where corporate cartels, political machines, and racial inequity determine whose streets get cleaned and whose rot in the Gulf Coast heat. From the privatization gold rush after Katrina to the 2020 sanitation workers' strike that paralyzed the city, this is the story of how garbage became the most revealing lens on power in the American South.

Investigative and immersive, the book rides the hopper trucks in August humidity, sits in on closed-door contract negotiations at City Hall, and stands with residents in New Orleans East as illegal dumping poisons their neighborhoods. It exposes the "fee" that ignited a taxpayer revolt, the subcontracting shell games that enrich contractors while workers fight for living wages, and the curated illusion of a spotless French Quarter maintained on the backs of neglected wards. Every overflowing bin, every missed pickup, every landfill expansion tells a story of who matters—and who doesn't.

What happens in New Orleans doesn't stay in New Orleans. As cities everywhere grapple with austerity, climate vulnerability, and the false promises of privatization, *Trash City* delivers an urgent case study in municipal capture—and the grassroots resistance rising to reclaim the streets. This is urban journalism at its sharpest: a gripping, infuriating, and ultimately hopeful account of the fight for dignity, equity, and the right to a clean city.