Imagine being trapped inside for more than 24 hours without air conditioning — without being able to open the windows because the air quality is so bad.
That was the case this week for Chester Wilson III, a Black poetry editor living in Bed-Stuy, an area in Brooklyn with a 40% Black population. He saw a dense sheath of smog over the city, which was a direct result of the unprecedented 440 wildfires currently burning in Canada.