Cool Media.
Hello Jamie. Here two quick things before we get started. First, before you even start listening to this episode, please go check out the link at the very beginning of this episode of the description to contribute to gofundmes to middle and working class families who have lost their homes in the recent LA fires. Any amount you're able to give is wonderful. I've been giving consistently, and at this time I'm hearing that direct.
Financial aid is what is needed. So go check those out.
And once you've done that, self plug reminding you that I have tickets on sale for our live show with the Bechdel Cast in San Francisco on next Thursday, January twenty third. We still have a couple of tickets in the description. Our Portland show.
Is sold out.
Sorry, And with that a very special sixteenth Minute.
Six six.
Hello, Welcome to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we usually do other things, but every four episodes or so, something of historical consequence happens and so then we talk about that instead. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and usually on this show we take a look at and often speak with the internet's characters of the day and see how their moment affected them and what it says about us
and the Internet. And this week, originally we were going to be talking about Haley Welch, the Hawk to a Girl, and we will not today, But I have sixteen thousand words and a separate Google doc that guarantees that we will be talking about her for more than one week, I promise. But this week in particular, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get an
episode out in time. I've been sicker than I've been in years, but there's something important that I would like to talk to you about this week, and that is the fires in southern California, where I've lived for the last nine years or so. I want to tell you a little bit about what's going on, and hopefully use this space to spotlight the people and the efforts that I feel that some of the present coverage of this
tragedy is leaving behind. But just to be clear of what I'm trying to do here, I am so grateful to the on the ground reporters who are collecting these crucial accounts of families who have lost their home, their histories. But what I'm trying to do here is zoom ount a little bit and take a look at some of the underemphasized elements that will, I think help continue to
liberate displaced communities. I'm talking about mutual aid organizers, local investigative reporters, advocates for the unhoused community, and advocates for crucial public gathering spaces like our public libraries. So if you're not totally familiar with the situation, or you are and you're not sure how best to get involved, I hope this is a place to start. But first Jamie's
little monologue. Last week, the first week of twenty twenty five wildfires tour across southern California, burning through thousands and thousands of acres and counting. As I write this, these fires are nowhere close to being completely contained and have at present claimed twenty four lives, with seventeen people still missing and not accounted for.
And it's not just one fire.
The largest was in the Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica areas south of where I live, while other fires burned north in Altadena and Pasadena and in the San Gabriel Valley. So there was a moment this past Wednesday where there were fires within ten miles in every direction that our city was just not able to combat fast enough to
save people. What hasn't been discussed very much is that while many wealthy neighborhoods have burned, like the Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica, there are also middle class and working class neighborhoods that have burned, mainly Alta, Dina, and Pasadena. And we'll get into that later, but it is important. But first I want to share the names of the people who were lost in these fires. Palisade senior Annette Rosalie, who stayed behind with her four pets in her home.
Anthony and Justin Mitchell, a father and son in Altadena, Anthony being in a wheelchair, and Justin who had cerebral palsy. Anthony's body was found at the foot of his son's bed. There's Arlene Kelly, and Altadena senior who didn't want to abandon her home of more than forty years. There's Victor Shaw, an Altadena resident who died fighting the flames in his home with a garden hose. There's Altadena resident Rodney Nickerson,
who'd lived in the neighborhood for over fifty years. There's Rory Sykes, who also had cerebral palsy and whose mother was not able to evacuate him to safety. He was my age. There's Randy Meod, who died in his Malibu home fighting the fire. Delise Curry, a nine five year old Alta Dina resident. She was a known figure in Old Black Hollywood and an extra in Ladies Sings the Blues. There's longtime Alta Dina resident Evelyn McLendon, who died in
her bedroom. There's Arthur Seminu, who died in the Tapanga home he'd built with his own hands. The majority of the people lost in these fires were seniors, they were disabled, or they were longtime black homeowners in the middle class neighborhood of Altadena, California. The people that we have lost were valuable and many were vulnerable, and many who have
survived these fires are valuable and vulnerable. In short, I am tremendously lucky because as I record this, I'm in my apartment with air purifiers wailing, And even as a tremendously lucky person, last week was really scary because, as I said, I was really sick. As the air quality worsened in and in my area, a large fire started in an area we could see from our neighborhood. I felt that we had to leave if I was going to be any use to anyone in the long term.
So we went to Long Beach, about thirty miles south until the smoke blew far enough south that it made more sense to try to buy the last air purifier on Earth and drive back home. And I'll add in case this is funny, because I was extremely sick and my boyfriend was not sick at all.
We slept in separate twin.
Beds in n ninety five masks in this hotel room, like if Lucy and Ricky has survived.
An atomic bomb.
But as I sit recording this Monday night, the city is in for two more days of wind advisories and quote unquote particularly dangerous conditions. According to the government, there's families losing everything on a scale like this.
Do you know anything about your house?
Known?
Everything, my kids, school, our community, our neighbors, houses, everything's just pronowned, everything's gone.
We were having dinner.
I told my three year old my one year old that I told them that we're having a fancy candleg dinnerhistled power went out, and then we looked outside. We saw a huge fire and we just packed whatever we can and we ran out.
It was chaos, but.
They you know, to me, it's just it's sad to say everything that we work for, everything that.
We built here to just be gone in hours.
We want here for today, So we know what happened. And now's our chimney. We're Santa comes in. It's gone. Now we can't get presents here anymore.
I know a dozen people whose homes and belongings and memories are just gone. And many of these people have young kids, and these kids have lost their schools, their libraries, their parks, everything that they remember. We weren't ready for this, and the most vulnerable communities that are so often treated as afterthoughts, are always the first to suffer. It's not fair that I get to sit here with my dumb, fucking stuff and they have to start over.
It's not fair. But that's not how.
I have seen this talked about online, and this is an internet culture show. So I will say that I noticed that many people were kind of clowning on houses, particularly in the Pacific Palisades, burning, and you know, my Boston instinct is to say to those people, kill yourself. But rationally. It's hard to get too angry at any one person when the way that these tragedies are represented on national news lead with the tremendous privileged each and
every time. To make sure I wasn't losing my mind, I asked my family in Massachusetts, who were checking in with me, what they had seen on the news, And it was only these very privileged neighborhoods that they saw spotlighted.
Zan this being the home of Hollywood, of course, it's everyday Californians. But they are not only every day Californians that are the victims. Along a fire scarred stretch of Malibu, we met up with Milo vent Emilia, a forty seven year old father to.
Be for Miles Teller, who played a firefighter in Only the Brave. This is all the remains of his Palisades home, the top Gun. Maverick Star and his wife bought the Cape cod style villa in twenty twenty three for seven and a half million dollars. Behind me, what is left of Billy Crystal's house. This is the place where he raised his children and grandchildren, and now it's gone. But this is also about more than just celebrity. It is about everyday.
People, and it is cruel to mock anyone who has lost their memories and all of their possessions. But with class disparity the way it is in the US, I get that leading with people who are very likely to be able to rebuild with their own money. It's a hard cell to empathize for people who are really struggling.
But I can't emphasize enough.
Most of my friends who lost their homes were regular people. They didn't live in the Palisades. They lived in the middle class town of Altadena up in the Valley, a place that has a lot of history and is known as one of the only places in the area where middle class families have even a shot at owning a home.
Now to mention that Altadena is a very diverse area due to horrifically racist redlining practices in the mid century, making Altadena a rare oasis where black and brown families could buy their own property and build generational wealth, and so much of that is gone. But if you're seeing gleeful posts that the homes of the rich are burning, you're missing the forest for the trees in a huge way. And that's stupid, because the forest and the trees burned down.
I would ask you to consider how widespread the effects of a climate catastrophe event like this will cause. Even in the Pacific Palisades, We're sure many of the wealthy will be able to afford to rebuild. I have not seen a lot of consideration of who cleans these people's homes and is now out of either a job, lodging, or both.
Who are the.
Nannies who care for their children that are now out of work. Who are the weight staff at their favorite restaurants. Who are the Amazon delivery drivers that recently allege they've been kept on twenty hour shifts in spite of the danger that these fires present. It's a situation where, even if you're lucky enough to still have your home, if your job burned to the ground, what are you supposed to do? I'd ask you to consider who is fighting
these fires. One piece of information I have seen breakthrough to the mainstream this week is that over thirty percent of the firefighters combating this nightmare are incarcerated, people who make no more than ten dollars a day, risking their lives to keep the rest of us safe.
And many of them are young. I hope.
I don't need to tell you what a racket American incarceration is and how brutally it targets men of color. And this in a state where California quite literally voted to keep slave labor policies present in prisons just a couple months ago. And what's worse, because of how felony laws work in California, these same incarcerated firefighters will not be eligible to be hired as firefighters professionally upon their release.
Twitch streamer Hassan Piker was able to interview some of these firefighters the other night.
Here's a clip cal fires kind of just a cover up for it, you know, And we get out there and we do.
The hard work. Yeah, but shout out to those people. Those people do work too, you know, but we get the rough and tough and of the state.
Yeah.
If you heard of the word institutionalized, right, it's the word institutionalized. I've heard that work before, institutionalized. Like so now I've been I've only did it for like twelve years and thirteen years. But the point is, I'm about to get home.
Home next month.
So you go from the cell to this right here, it's like it's culture shocking. So now I guess like the fire camp, bringing back lights to the fire camp, right, it does help you because now you start like like get mingling with the public, with you guys, the civilians, right, which is I feel foreign with you guys because it feels like I'm part of the prison.
That's who I was.
So they allotted me to be, right, Yeah, so they wanted me to be so like now they want you to get out here and then go to a fire camp and then act like if you're a firefighter when we do get like minimum training, right, So how is it that you do that? How can I become a better civilian?
A citizens?
And you're coming from prison to this, Like maybe you guys know something about that.
If you're interested in learning more, or you can also send money directly to commissary for these firefighters at the link in the description. But I can't emphasize enough we have teenage prisoners fighting fires at slave wages. Consider the air something that I can say for a fact people are really confused about because I'm really fucking confused about it. If I look at my phone right now, Apple says the.
Air quality is good.
But Apple doesn't take into consideration the kind of chemicals that are released into the air when over ten thousand buildings, some of which are very old, burn nearby.
My phone is like, go outside, queen.
But when I go outside, the confetti that we released on New Year's Eve is on our neighbor's porch covered in ash. Consider how unregulated our housing market is. There's a number of thankfully eagle eyed people tracking how reeltors and landlords have been increasing rent prices by a lot overnight in order to take advantage of these displays families.
And if these aren't reported and there aren't rent and eviction moratoriums put in place, this will inevitably displace renters who are priced out of their longtime neighborhoods to be replaced by these families. And while we have heard so many devastating accounts of families who are newly unhoused or housing insecure, there has been little to no consideration or conversation about people who have lived on the streets of
Los Angeles for years. Many unhoused people in the area now have access to n ninety five masks, but in a polluted environment that no one quite understands. Yet, unhoused people are as always on the front lines of the climate crisis, living in a city that is always hostile to them. A climate scientist at UCLA named Daniel Swam, who is a very respected local source, said that a tragedy like this was inevitable at this stage of climate crisis.
He says, when you have bone dry, critically dry vegetation, fifty to ninety mile an hour winds with highly flammable structures densely intermixed with vegetation, there isn't a lot to stop the aggressive chemical reaction that is the combustion process of an intense wind driven fire, and so to some degree there's only so much the city and state can do.
But this city is historically hostile to the unhoused. It's a place where the forty one to eighteen code states that the unhoused are prohibited from quote sitting, lying or sleeping, or storing, using, maintaining, or placing personal property in the public right.
Of way unquote.
Basically, it's illegal to be unhoused, and this has continued now at a national level. Last summer, the Supreme Court passed the Grant's past decision one that makes it quite literally an arrestable offense to be unhoused, and what tragedies like these fires demonstrate is a time I'm honored truth.
You can do everything right, but if something unprecedented happens, if something happens to your home, if you get sick and your insurance won't cover something, it is very possible that you would find yourself unhoused and subject a nationally sanctioned brutality. It is all legal, every climate catastrophe, and they will continue lay bare the ways in which systems have failed us and encouraged us to turn against one another. Isn't this episode fun? Are we having fun?
Okay?
One last thing, even in the middle of this scary time, I do think that there is still a lot to be grateful for. Something I've been thinking about a lot is I read a book a few years ago, at the recommendation of one Robert Evans, called A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnet, one that takes a look at some of the most devastating no disasters in the last century plus of North American history, and its central thesis is that when disaster strikes, it's inhuman nature, across class, racial,
gender boundaries, to be there for your community. Even though plenty of media would have us believe that normal people go Lord of the flies and turn against each other, we don't, soul Net illustrates. She uses examples ranging from the San Francisco earthquake of nineteen oh six to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in two thousand and five in great detail to show that mutual aid and wanting to help our neighbors during a disaster appears to be a
natural instinct. This inherent desire to help others is so much of what I've seen in the last four days. My point is not to go full Randy on you, but I love la, I love it. I just wanted to share a passage from a paradise built in house that frames disaster as a devastating and painful opportunity to view the world differently. Disasters provide an extraordinary window into social desire and possibility and what manifests their matters elsewhere.
In ordinary times and in other extraordinary times, in the wake of an earthquake, a bombing, or a major storm, most people are altruistic, urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them, strangers and neighbors, as well as friends and loved ones. The image of the selfish, panicky, or regressively savage human being in times of disaster has
little truth to it. Decades of meticulous sociological research on behavior and disasters have demonstrated this, but belief lacks behind, and often the worst behavior in the wake of a calamity is on the part of those who believe that others will behave savagely and that they themselves are taking defensive measures against barbarism. Disaster doesn't sort us out by preferences.
It drags us into emergencies that require we act or act altruistically, bravely, and with initiative in order to survive or save the neighbors. No matter how we vote or what we do for a living, the positive emotions that arise in those unpromising circumstances demonstrate that social ties and meaningful work are deeply desired, readily improvised, and intensely rewarding.
Horrible in itself, disaster is sometimes a back door into paradise, the paradise at least in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sisters and brothers keeper, and when we come back a few talks with the people who have been shedding light on their forgotten.
People of these disasters. See you after these scary ads.
Welcome back to sixteenth minute, No little jokes today. It's a serious one. One of the many things that I believe I can turn any innocuous conversation into is a belabored point about the desperate need for local journalism, and.
This episode is no exception.
It's the local reporters who know the city like the back of their hand, who know the massive diversity and richness of experience and problems that exist within it, that can really get to the heart of the issues that the average.
Angelina is facing right now.
And I cannot overstate how much I admire our first interviewee today.
Alissa Walker.
It was the podcast that she co hosts, LA podcast about local issues that really woke me up to the inner machinations of our city and had a big part in activating me as a part of my own community. She is an amazing reporter who has long written about public transportation. She's written for Curbed and most recently launched her own own newsletter, Torched. Here's Alyssa Walker.
My name's Alyssa Walker.
I'm a journalist who writes the newsletter Torch, which has a rather appropriate name, which is covering LA's mega event era, including the twenty twenty eight Olympic and Paralympic Games.
There's so many things I want to talk to you about.
I know you've been reporting on the LA area for such a long time now, and particularly I mean you might go to in terms of transportation in particular, and that you lived in the area. You're a parent, There's all of these intersecting issues in your life. When it became clear these fires were going to have a serious impact on our area. What was your first instinct as a parent, and what was your first instinct as a journalist.
I put a story out last week, a few days after the fires began, and the first thing that was wild was after the first really bad night, LAUSD hadn't canceled schools.
They have really big.
Aversion to, you know, telling parents who you know, of course rely on the school to be able to go to work, that they're going to cancel school. So you have you see all this real hesitation about why an't we going to close them? How do we provide services like meals to kids, you know, who rely on them. And then of course, like we have staff members who are impacted, you know, evacuating or maybe you know, having to travel far distances on dangerous roads. So that first morning,
actually school was not canceled. We went to school. And one of the reasons I took my kids in school was because the smell of smoke was so strong inside our house.
And I know that their.
School building got upgraded filtration systems during growing.
Right, Right, that didn't even accorded to me, but like that makes total sense that.
It might be safe for there.
Right, they just messaged that, you know, they would try to keep the kids inside and we should bring them. And you know, for a lot of people, I think that sounded like a better deal than being in their well. Me, I have this like leaky, drafty house. So we took them a and then within a few hours, I think it was very clear how bad the situation was and we had to go scoop them up and they went back. Today today's Monday.
I'm glad they're back.
You know, a lot of schools, some schools burned to the ground, Some schools are really close to evacuation zones. Some have extenuating circumstances, and I'm sure a lot of parents don't feel good about sending kids back, especially when
we have this second windstorm coming through. But for the meantime, you know, that was my biggest concern, was, you know, worrying about a lot of people have to travel through the region to get to places, and I think lausd offers a good signal that people should stay home and get prepared and take care of their families and check in on loved ones. So I was glad that the schools were closed because at least it sends that message that's very powerful.
And I think that this ties into a larger point you made in your most recent piece, where there was just very clunky communication on the city's part on the whole, because I've seen so much black and white debate of like is this a failure of city officials or is it just the inevitable consequence of climate change? And I feel sure the answer is somewhere in the gray area. As such a close observer of city politics, what could have been done better here?
So this is where I'll turn to the scientists first instead of that, instead of the politicians. I've been watching the live streams of Daniel swayin cla climate scientists and like a climate messenger, kind of like studies about how we do communication related to these types of disasters. Always a fascinating person to talk to someone I always call when.
I have a question. And that's basically what he said.
The second part, you know of your thought that this is an unprecedented situation because of the situations we have created, because we worship fossil fuels in the city and this society and this country and this planet, and there's really at a certain point nothing you can do when you're faced with these types of conditions. They kept calling it the perfect storm. That being said, there are a lot
of things that we could do. The Palisades fire started in a neighborhood that is in the city of la but it's like tucked up into the mountains of Malibu. We can talk about why it started later. I'm sure they're figuring that out. There's a lot of things to discuss there. But the fact that we are building in areas that need to burn, continue to burn have burned traditionally, creates a catastrophic and dangerous situation for everyone else that
lives in the city. And until we want to confront that this.
Is going to keep happening.
What if the Olympics were happening right now? You ask yourself this every day, as you say.
Like I said, it terrifies me.
I literally walk around the city every single day and think that I think about it on one hundred and ten degree days when we have like pout major power. You know, I'm at a loss for words right now because it's like, this is kind of the worst thing I ever considered happening while it was happening. But in a way, the thing I'm worried the most about is
more people being here. It doesn't sound very considerate of the residents, but like adding millions of tourists to the evacuations, people who don't understand how those alerts come through on their phones, Like do we are we gonna tell people when they land in lax to lax to like download all the different warning systems and the earthquake early warning system.
Right, and like introducing more language barriers and just oh my gosh, such a good point.
And people staying in hotels that don't have access to cars, and that's the instinct to getting your car and evaccuat.
Even though it might not be the best idea.
You might need to get out a different way. So actually, what you know, what terrifies me the most is having people who aren't familiar with the city here. That was always in my mind. This is still look for the worst case scenario though. Yeah, I wrote a story for Curved after the Woldy fire with those it's the same images we see every time, just the cars backed up on the pch of people trying.
To get out.
And that was during the same time as the campfire, which is you remember in Paradise, which is the deadliest fire in Califerni history. Hopefully we do not get close to those numbers here. Many of those deaths were caused by people who were trying to evacuate in their car, who got stuck in traffic trying to get out as
the flames were kind of coming too fast. Again a situation where you can't drive fast enough in some of these cases to outrun these fire, these new fires that we've created, and to talk to experts, especially after that fire, saying in the wolseyfire in LA just saying, like, you know, have a bike in your garage, like have another way to get out.
Just come up with it.
One one alternate that's not a car, because all sorts of things can prevent you from getting out in a car. And when there was evacuation, the evacuation of Hollywood the other night there was the sunset fire that was in Running Canyon.
You know, the.
Fastest way to get out, we'd have probably been walking down to the Hollywood Highland Metro Station. Trains were running, trains were free, and just put yourself to safety, like just yeah, yet far away as far away as you can. That was not something that our city leaders were promoting.
Without the laboring the point.
I mean, I think about how as you've written about quite a bit that the La Olympics in twenty twenty eight are predicated on, will be a Carliss city by then.
What is the likelihood is that actually every venue is actually every venue? Yeah, I mean, it's it's a funny that, Like I said, that was the first thing I thought of when the fire started, when it was very small and you had Steve Gutenberg, you know, out there telling people not to leave their keys in their car when they were abandoning their vehicles because and then they come through with the they came through the bouldo or to move like all these like Porsches and Teslas and Mercedes
like get out. I mean, it was very comical in the early moments of the fire, because this is this is our this is how the life we've chosen is. You might have to leave your car behind as you're getting out because you get stuck in traffic. But it's the same issue when I go back to the way we've decided to design our communities right, like, you do need two different ways out.
You do need to be able to.
Walk to a place where maybe a shuttle can come pick you up and evacuate you safely if you don't have a car. In Altadena, there was there are multiple instances of people who were disabled or who were elderly who were left behind. This is usually what happens in these types of disasters. I believe in the campfire three fourths of the victims where elderly or disabled. In the median age was something like seventy five or something like that. So we have not done a good job with that
aspect of our evacuation plan. I mean, yes, we say chicken on your neighbors, get yourself ready, we always say pack the car, But like if you look at other cities that have been through these types of disasters, like New Orleans, they do have like a public evacuation system in place where you're making sure that everyone can get out. And that's I mean, that's what shouldn't happen in a
place like Pacific Palisades, right. You just don't imagine that that a wealthy community like that would have deaths because people got left behind.
As a journalist, what stories are not being looked at that should be looked at in the mainstream coverage of this event. Who are releading behind? What stories are releading behind?
I would love to see more about why people were physically left behind. But really the story they said this morning on the news on Monday morning, I think they said seventeen people were still missing. I hope we won't reach these very high numbers where we have this massive loss of life. But for the most part, we do do an okay job, you know, getting people to safety, but there are these big gaps, and not just you know, the physical of you know, being able to transport people,
but the messaging systems. I'm seeing so many different ways that people were told to leave and who told them to leave and who they listened to, and even the risk that people know about when they buy a home, and that many people had moved into places that they didn't fully understand had burned recently. So how can we continue to explain to people how dangerous this is. I think people get earthquake drilled into their head a lot
and they think about that a lot. But these are fires that are coming down into neighborhoods sometimes that aren't burning, haven't burned before. So we really need to have a deeper conversation about messaging and disclosures. I guess is in one sense, if you rent to the place, would you know the same way that a homeowner? Did you know what kind of what kind of risk?
You read?
All these questions I have? Yeah, maybe just like situational awareness about your neighborhood, your particular home. You know, we shouldn't be forced to learn all these things.
But this is kind of a new.
Reality we all need to face together. If a fire starts tonight, you know, during the second windstorm event, it doesn't really matter where you are in the city. It's not going to be put out right away because the resources are a stretch thin and everything could go up in flance. But just being prepared, talking to your neighbors, getting everything packed up, even if you're going on foot, this is what we have to do. Yeah, well, thank you so much, Thank you, Jamie, Thank you.
So much to Alissa, and particularly if you're a local, I highly encourage you to subscribe to her newsletter torched in the description. So my next conversation is with a close colleague and friend of mine named Theo Henderson. And if you don't listen to his show on iHeart Podcasts, you have to get your act together. It's called We the Unhoused, and it began back in twenty nineteen when THEO himself was living on the streets of Los Angeles.
These days, he's brought the show to iHeart and continues to be one of the only major platforms where stories about and that concern the unhoused are told and centered around the unhoused. And I was really eager to hear what Theo had been hearing within the unhoused community and how he felt about the media cycle around this climate disaster.
Theo Henderson, Hello.
Hello, thank you for having me on your show. It's like turn about as by a play.
I know the tables have turned.
I'm so glad that you're doing all right. This, I mean, just observationally, is another huge example of the mainstream media kind of wing it. So I'm curious, as you've been observing how the coverage of this has been versus the lived reality, what's been on your mind.
I've seen some misfires in the communication about the newly displaced and the existing displays of unhoused community members, and
how the narrative has been framed. In the beginning, the narrative was framed as they were looking at rich people's homes, which brought out a response where there was a lot of cynicism and sarcasm and a lot of Gallows type of humor, which people took umbrage with because of the fact that anybody can lose, no matter what kind of economic status that they have, can lose things and can
feel things. And I think the point was made on the moment was missed is because of the fact that media does what media does, mainstream media in particular, they always try to reach out for the elite or the oligard in the ways we have to feel empathy and sympathy for them. But we missed the point where the people the rich people that are being displaced, there were people that work for rich people that are being displaced.
There were rich people, There are people working class people that have to survive, provide the services and all of the accouterments that are necessary for the wealthy to upkeep their lives. But we also miss out on another major incident that when we talk about how marabas Has does a duplicious type of service, is that during the cars, during all of the panic and the chaos and the
pandemonium was going, they were sweet still being held. There were sweeps being on simultaneously and the same day on the same time, where people were being asked to move. Whether it's spot clean or whether it was a deep intensive or whether it was the way of just forcibly removing on house people from areas when a such a volatile situation was occurring. They're still coming at every Thursday.
They come sweep on house people every Thursday. It's just so much that many unhoused people's self ef thatt it is when I was on housed, I briefly stay here, but the antipathy against unhoused people here is so strong, and they hide it with political correctness, and they don't really you don't really see the veil come off unless you are really entrenched in it and you are impacted.
All of the immediate coverage went to these wealthy people, which is the media's tendency, and also just like those discordant any solidarity to the working class that makes LA work. I haven't seen anything about, you know, the domestic workers in the palis Ades. I haven't seen anything about you know, the weaighte staff that works in this area, people who may not have lost their homes but definitely lost their jobs.
And I mean there's just such a wide gradient in a way that I feel like minimizes the issue and makes it seem like, oh good, these rich people lost their homes, Because are all of these people, I mean thousands of people who are either newly housing, insecure or unhoused themselves now overnight. I feel like it really just further demonstrates that this could happen to anyone. Everyone is
far closer to being unhoused than they think. But in the media, I've noticed that there's a clear delineation between well, they were housed last week, so we don't need to treat them like we do unhoused people in the media.
That's the agual conversation point that we have is that for example, the worthy un housed and the unworthy on house. You see, the narrative has been always put out because which is why the unintended consequences always is. I guess it is oxymoronic if you want to be being really clear, is the fact that the narrative has always been pushed about unhoused people are drug addicted, mentally ill, they don't
want help. It's it's effective because it turns the working class that could be an ally to you against you. Now we have to sift through all of the misinformation, but also sift through what the apparatus that's in place that when we talk about houselessness, when we talk about housing insecurity, we must be honest with our communities and what are different walks of life to understand that this
is a declear example of climate exchange. I want to point out one more thing about climate change as well. Climate injustice is what is going on and the first line of defensive people that are affected, the frontline workers
are unhoused people. You know, many people could put on a mask, But the mask is still not necessarily effective enough if you're sitting in a stationery position outside on the street, where there's debris, where there's falling ash, where there's breathing metals and all of the other things that are going on. It only gives you a certain rescipite if you're going into maybe another layer of protection, like you can go into a building, close the door and not be able to ingest that for it maybe a
temporary period of time. But can unhouse people do that on a sustaining level. No, not particularly. There are not enough shelters. There are not enough places where they can be able to find a respite. On the weekend, like Sunday, the libraries are closed, so where they're going to go.
You know?
So I think we there is so much of the environmental issues to be considered. I personally, it affects me, like but I got affected with all of the asking my damn. I But yeah, like the breathing quality, It's like when I was out living when they have brush fires, it is very difficult to try to sleep, and it's very difficulty if you have health issues. I have health issues. It affects my my chart. It affects my breathing. So
I know I'm not the only one. I know I'm not the only unhused person that has other medical issues that have to contend with where there maybe having people that may have medical issues and other issues that they're in a house environment to be able to get the appropriate medical care. Many in house people missed that they still state type of services.
I know you speak to this every week on Webian House, which I'm going to plug the hell out of throughout this show.
How you know this is a.
California example of the of a house people being on the front lines of climate injustice.
But you cover stories like this all the time.
I mean, you've talked about Florida and North Carolina and these are problems that aren't going to go away.
Well also too that climate change affects us maybe a little bit a different lead. They have a different recipe because we're dealing with brush fires. But I also want to point out the climate changes that are going on in the Midwest and the colder places where there are migrant on house families are living out in in elements it's very cold. We're going to get a cold snap coming up very soon. So on house people here are
going to be dealing with that issue. But I also want to point out most hypothermic depths are usually here in California, but particularly because I believe most when I was in the house in Chicago and those Midwest places, they do have places where warming centers and things, and California does, and Los Angeles in particular does a very piss for job and getting the word out creating services to get vans or trolleys or things of that nature to get unhouse people to and fro places and have
it may be a commiss you kind of are kind of warming centers where there's not stringent requirements for them to be in places that I think that's where one of the things that many of the things that Los Angeles misses demark on during the season, there are various stages of climate injustice and incidents that are happening to unhouse people.
The answers to this, I know will be fairly obvious, but for the sake of asking it, what is the City of Los Angeles and the state, by extension, what should they be doing for unhoused and housing insecure folks right now that they are not doing?
We need another eviction and rent more moratorium. The second thing is that we need is another facilities opened up that are extended for unhoused people to have a sustained place to live, may hotels, but also places where we can be able to get unhoused people inside. And in two we need to upgrade our medical facilities because again
unhoused people, you're going to see many more. It's going to be an uptick of medical emergencies, particularly probably from unhoused people, because they're going to be in sustained environmentively disastrous kind of areas. There was an unhoused person that I was in contact with that was impacted. They voluntarily evacuated because the area that they were at was starting to burn and so they had to leave because they
were in hiding. And why were they in hiding. It's because of the aggressiveness of the Grands past that and then the forty one eighteen kind of things.
Just for listener clarity, I know we talk about this every single day. What is Grant's past for those who are not in the.
Know, Yes, well, you know, as you know, Jay, I know it exasperates everybody, but I've been on the book box.
I'm sorry, No get back on the subdox.
This is the time.
So well, I'm going to do a very quick synopsis because I can go in on and on on like I'm on a pool pill. So the launch. In short of it, what Grant's Past is done is given the right for state city workers and leaders to criminalize unhoused people without any solutions, without any kind of appropriate follow
up to get them off the streets. In short, it is basically they have to write it they see an unhoused person to put them in jail or do other criminalized ticket them, or make themselves evict or evict them from the area. Because many of the cities would use that as the rallying cry or the whipping poles to
justify that. They claim that they couldn't do anything because the state is giving the and how so many rights or you hear Heaven forbid that on house people between like human beings instead of the detriatis that they want to treat them as. So Grant's Past is the vehicle
that is used to justify different horristic examples. One of the things that I do think too, we were making a very good point too about with COVID about where one shelter had one hundred percent of the entire staff and residents had COVID because they were bunched in together. But also one of the improving things that I think encouraging is that and this is not from the city, but I noticed from our citizenry the mutual aid response.
I think that was the perfect proving ground or the perfect testing ground and case and a point that I want to point out, and I've been interviewing some of the neutral eight groups myself that stating some of the city leaders are asked for resources from the mutual groups.
We've been asking for the assistance the city is what they always do is throw money at the problem for criminalization or propaganda propaganda campaign to delineate or to blame the victims for their problems, but in the same on the certain turf token that they want service this from us.
That is I think one of the major positive takeaways of the last week is I feel like it's proven time and time again, and I think we saw this during COVID as well, is when times are horrible, it is human instinct to come together and want to provide support. I'm curious how you have seen the mutual aids sort of roll out, but how do we sustain it? You know, I mean I worry about flashing the pan moments and then and then I'll fall off.
Well, yeah, that's one of the legitimate concern One of the things that I noticed when I first started my podcast during the time hy pandemic, everyone was concerned. Everyone wanted to dial in to understand about houselessness and housing and security because they realized on that clear example that they were on their way out on the street, there were some that were on this way on street. But also it also created a sense of bond hominge or
a sense of empathy that is fleeting. And one of the things that I've noticed on what really irritates is why there was such a generation of gallows humor and starcasm about this current situation is because of the flashing the plan or the spotty kind of empathy that it is. It's like, one of the things that we need is frankly, most mutual aids need now is money, because this is
a problem that's going to have unintended consequences. There was a recent article that was talking about people are competing now that had would recently house and trying to find housing. Now, I want you to consider for a moment, looking into the vista on what this is going to look like for the newly unhoused. They are now going to be susceptible to Grant's pass. They're now going to be susceptible to being swept. They're now going to be susceptible to
forty one eighteen. Because the money is going to only sustain terminal one that lived on the house and had to go through the steps before I became completely unhoused. You're going to be on this hamster wheel that you won't be able to get off unless you have some kind of community organized support to be able to get you out of that and to sustain you when you are not financially at the best place, or you're going to end up falling through the cracks like many of
the young house currently are. And you're going to see the effects on how the city has very limited empathy or sympathy towards your condition, even though you've gone through the pandemic or you've gone through the fires. We're going
to see more of that. We're going to see more of the politician is going to come in and look at unhoused trying to hope with the stresses and traumas of losing everything and trying to use the coping mechanisms that they can, and they're going to make a video and make it sound like this is where your money is going. They're coddling on house people they don't want help and things like that, and then now we're going to be faced in the same hostile kinds of response to the houseless crisis.
Is there anything I didn't ask that you wanted to touch on?
Also to really lean into the mutual aids start financially being much more sustainable in helping the unhoused currently as well as the enduring on housed as well as well as looking at TO and both of our podcasts and learning more of the matter because I'm going to be covering the fires as well and the multitude of different responses that I've heard, and I wanted to be able to say that thank you, thank.
You so much to the amazing THEO Henderson, and please subscribe to be the Unhoused as you will continue to cover the fallout of the fires in the unhoused community, which is definitely something to keep your eye on. And we will be right back with mutual aid and organizational tips with three pros. See you after all these ads. Welcome back to sixteenth minute with more interviews with the folks who are shedding light on those who aren't being
centered in these conversations about the Southern California fires. My next conversation is with the executive director, operations manager, and volunteer coordinator with an unhoused nonprofit coalition in my neighborhood called SILA. Sarah Maybe and Rachel are such wonderful people, and as they are very experienced organizers, I wanted to ask them what this week has been like with increased demand for services and how they would advise new organizers who want to get involved. Here's our talk.
Hey, everybody, my name is Maybe, the operations manager for CELA, and my pronouns are she her, and they them.
Hi.
My name is Sarah Mayis. I'm the executive director of sela neighborhood homeless coalition, and my pronouns are she her.
We're recording this interview on the afternoon of Monday the thirteenth, and I know it has been a very heartening and also chaotic weekend over at CELA. How's everybody doing.
Good?
Can you tell by our silence we're good. I'll let I'll let everyone else speak to about to their mental health and energy. But I think we are. We're overwhelmed and in all the best possible ways. But yeah, overall good, Yeah, do it.
All right, both physically and emotionally, recovering from the past few days.
I definitely feel similarly.
Something that I know all of us are feeling that I think speaks to how much I love everybody here is that we all are dealing with our own personal anxieties with fire and our own homes and our friends' homes, and that we're all still able to come together and focus on each other is beautiful and also of course tiring.
But we all have so much support.
For those listening who are uninitiated. What does a normal week look like at CELA in terms of mission and programs, and then we'll talk about what has been adjusted and expanded in the past week.
Absolutely so. Our vision statement at SELA Neighborhood Homeless Coalition is a community where every neighbor thrives. That's sort of what we're working towards, is this ideal community where homelessness is not something that we're confronting, because everyone has a home and the resources they need to thrive in their
world in their lives. We do that by activating a coalition of participants and sister organizations and working in lockstep with social services and city services to host a couple of different program types. So first and foremost, we have our drop in programs at the Silver Lake in Silver Lake in Hollywood and in Echo Park. Those drop in programs are every single week, and they provide things like bike repair and ID support and meals, and some of
them have movie screenings. But really fundamentally, what they are is a place for people to come and be in community and know that just because they are existing without homes at this moment, that does not make them anything other than our neighbors and valued members of our community. And those are our drop in programs. Our outreach programs
run in tandem with many of our drop in programs. Again, those happen multiple times every single week across Northeast LA, and we do things by starting with material aid, like handing out water bottles at encampments. Right now, we're doing masks.
We can talk about some of our emergency response a little bit later, but handing out meals handing out harm reduction supplies and getting to know people and really truly fundamentally listening to what is the experience of our neighbors who are living on the street and what is it that they need, and educating our house neighbors and elevating the voices of our unhoused neighbors to make sure that we're all working in unison to create that community where every neighbor thrives.
You're such a well oiled machine of being able to show up, not to show up for your own house neighbors, but also build sustaining relationships, build connections in the neighborhood that can assist your unhoused neighbors, whether that be medical or veterinary services, whether that be social services, whether that be connecting with transportation or caseworkers, or whatever.
The need may be.
In a situation like this last week, where all of a sudden there is a new population of people who are either housing insecure or houseless, what was it like as sort of the leaders of this organization of figuring out how do we respond to this and how do we expand on the programs and systems we arelready have in place.
You know, I think one of the things that helped us to be prepared for something that was not necessarily immediately foreseeable is the fact that we do this week in week out, year round, year after year. So our
organization exists to respond to people in crisis. And so given that, you know, I feel like we were just a little more prepared than you know, somebody who doesn't work with a volunteer organization or is not immediately familiar with, you know, working with people who are neighbors in crisis. So because we already had our programs in place, we basically had to adapt our existing programs to meet the conditions of the day. And so, you know, we had
our Wednesday program. At first, we thought about canceling the program because you know, we were nervous about having our volunteers have to be outside, nervous about our participants having to be outside during these you know, this these smoky conditions. So basically we ended up adapting the program. We brought it inside, and we open it up to the entire community.
Anybody that needed to come in to charge their devices if their power was out, if they're housed, or if they needed to just get out of the smoky air, basically just opening it up to everybody. So a lot of adaptation, but because we already have systems in place, it was we were able to adapt to the situation.
You know.
One of the other things is, you know, we've been overwhelmed in such a positive way, with so many people wanting to help in so many different kinds of ways, whether that be through material donations or through volunteering, and so I think even just you know, having to figure out how to utilize in a very quick manner, how to effectively take in these donations and you know, empower volunteers to be able to take action, which I think Rachel you can probably speak about that.
I know that there was already sort of a huge influx of volunteers late in the year, and now I would imagine that there's no other wave of volunteers. How as a volunteer coordinator do you make that work with I mean, I think, like the beautiful problem of so many people who want to help.
Yes, the energy is so it feels so monumental, and I think everybody feels how important this moment is. Of course, we've all been working with our neighbors in this capacity, like maybe just said, but you can feel the the it's just everything so compounded. You can feel the urgency that people have. And so one of the things that we had to figure out right away is you spoke to the well oiled machine nature of everything. And part of that has been, like there's a sign up process.
We've figured out.
Roles that are very specifically needed, and we make sure there's shifts for those roles. And we kind of had to change that in the moment where it was just our doors are open, if you can help, come here. We'll figure out what that help looks like when you're here. And so it was sending out a lot of mass communication by our emails, via our Instagram, texting people I know, maybe brought some friends to join that they can speak
more to. And it was literally things as specific as figuring out what is inaccessible on our website because I know so many people are on the website, and it was just making it so that anybody knew that they could just show up. And then part of that in real time, when you're welcoming people to join you, you have to give them everybody space in the communication and the guidance to figure out what being on site looks like in this emergency.
So that was letting.
People know when they got here, Hey, we just had a bunch of people come to move these supplies. We're kind of figuring out our next move. We don't know what it is yet, can you just be here? And people were so willing to just be there and figure out what the next steps were, and our volunteers, our participants,
our community decides how this organization moves forward. And so I think it was a really important opportunity for us all to be in a physical space with our usual volunteer base and all of our neighbors and folks who are coming from all over LA to figure out together what does that look like. So that looks like putting on Instagram, Hey, we need to find somewhere that can take these supplies because we don't have the space or
we can't distribute it efficiently. And giving people space to come into our community and tell us what needs to be done and where things need to go. Between the three of us, I think we've all spoken to like hundreds of people in the last few days, and so there's the really logical part of responding to every message as much as we can, putting out mass communications as much as we can, and just letting people know that even if they're not able to sign up for a
specific sealer shift right away. For example, we opened up shifts into February and March, which we normally wouldn't do yet, just to welcome this influx of people and let them know that this is going to be an ongoing need. We've been here for a long time, We're going to continue to be here, and letting them know that we want them here. This isn't the only way for them
to support their neighbors. Yes, of course we want them out a shift where they're distributing water bottles and masks, like Sarah said, but they could also go outside and do that right now if they have the resources and feel safe to. And so just creating a place where we let people know that this feeling of community support that they are feeling and that they know. I think it's so amazing that they knew to come to Sila,
that we've been able to build that community. They know we're here, but reminding them that this is happening all the time, and so that energy they feel there's always going to be a place for them to plug into their community, and just creating as much of an open door and as much of a space for education as we can.
How do we kind of harness this energy, this inherent goodness to people and you know, extend it to educate them on these issues are ongoing and turn it into sustained work.
You Know, something that I've been thinking about a lot, a lot over the past few days is it's been really empowering to see so many community members, folks who may have never volunteered for anything at all previously, they see this crisis very prominently happening in their community, and it's neighbors saying I need to take action. I want to do something to contribute to relieving the suffering of my fellow neighbors. And that's really what this is about.
And that's what gives me a lot of hope and humanity throughout this crisis. Like it's a horrible, awful situation, but you know, this beautiful silver lining of actually seeing people come together, and I just hope that people recognize and I've been trying to share the message that this isn't just about dropping off bottles of water. This isn't just about dropping off snacks or you know, cleaning out your closet to drop off for folks. This is something
that's going to be an ongoing need. It's going to be an ongoing need in the short term and in the long term, just in terms of the kinds of resources that people are going to need who have been immediately impacted by the fires, and people who were already experiencing homelessness and who are also being impacted by the
fires in an environmental manner. So I just hope that the energy keeps up, and I hope that you know, people who have signed up to volunteer or you know, want to be at a drop in shelter or want to be at a donation center. I just want everyone to know that that is going to be something that there is going to be a need for for the foreseeable future. You know, we were talking to one of our program directors, you might know him Jamie. His name's Grant.
Oh yeah, I'm going to carry that guy.
And one of the things that you know, he brought up this great point that you know, people who have just lost their homes, they don't need a new wardrobe right now. That's something that they're going to be needing months down the road as they're beginning to resecure their housing.
So just keeping in mind the kinds of donations that you're donating, and also just keeping in mind that you can help as a volunteer at a lot of these organizations such as CELA, but certainly not limited to CELA for the foreseeable future, and even once this disaster is totally recovered from, there's still going to be a need to help your neighbors. So there's always a way that you can make your community better just by bringing other people into community with you.
My hope too, is that people see in this the power that they have. Right you talk about Cela's response, and the best part about CELA is that we have almost six hundred volunteers. Like, when you're talking about Cela's response, this is not a coordinated response of a large government entity or service provider, right, Like, what you're talking about is the fact that basically SEALA is just a conduit. SELA is just a place for everyday neighbors to hit
their ceiling. What is it you're willing to do, What is it you want to do? How much would you like to have an impact on your community? We are a tool through which you can do that. But really it's like what makes CELA sealas the fact that Cela is just a bunch of neighbors who are getting together,
housed and unhoused, to make a difference. And my hope would be that when we talk about that long term energy that people look at, people can come to SELA to volunteer and they don't just see, oh I helped out right. What they see is how much power they have to influence someone else's life permanently. And I think that's something they can take out into their every single day that.
Actually reminds me of a story. I'd love to share something that happened this weekend that I feel like is just a prime example of that. A lot of my friends, you know, know that I work for CELA. They've been interested in what I do, but it really wasn't until this immediate crisis that a lot of them specifically reached out to me and said, Hey, I want to volunteer for CELA. I'm available these days. Let me know how
I can help. You know, they want to be mobilized, and so part of what we do at CELA is really empower them to take action in the moments within the structure of CELA, but as you mentioned, like take that into their own hands and into their own neighborhoods, their own communities. Specifically a few of my friends, they came and we were able to on the fly totally organize a new shared warehouse space that Sela's Fortunes to be a part of. We're in partnership with Everyday Action,
which is a wonderful food reallocation organization. They have basically allowed us to be in partnership in this warehouse and it's all nonprofits that are focused on food in security, housing and security, and we were able to organize a lot of these donations that came in and also donate forward donations that we knew were not going to be
right for the kind of work that we do. After we did all of this organizing on Saturday, we ended up going out afterwards and we encountered a young queer person, probably in their early twenties.
They were unhoused.
Talking with them, you know, first of all, as they are, as they are a human being, they're one of our neighbors, and sort of destigmatizing the fact that this is a neighbor experiencing homelessness, but also engaging in the challenges that they've experienced over the past few days with the fires.
And I watched as my friends decided on their own to try to find temporary housing for this complete stranger that they had just met, and it was so beautiful to watch, but it was also very disheartening to watch in real time somebody see how even when they want to help, how it can be very difficult to acquire
temporary housing for people experiencing homelessness. Just sort of watching you know, them being excited to help, to then watching them realize how difficult the system is to work with to then taking action into their own hands and getting this person a hotel room for the night, to be able to relieve them from the you know, the smoky environment. And it was just a really beautiful thing to watch, just people coming together in community to take immediate action
for community members. And I think that oftentimes the role of going governments can really create a bystander effect amongst neighbors where people are kind of always just waiting for somebody else to take action, waiting for somebody else to solve the problem, when we all know that, you know it takes a long time for governments to do things, like governmental agencies bureaucracy intentionally designed to work very slow.
But when you pull together a few neighbors, you can make anything happen immediately.
If you are someone in the LA area or outside of the LA Area that wants to immediately have a pragmatic and helpful affect the unhoused community, those who are recently displaced by the fires. What would you all recommend for those that are a little unsure of what to do right now?
You know, we've been getting an influx of people who are interested in helping, and it's been it's been very interesting to see how people perceive help, right, how people perceive their own help. We had someone who had driven down with a truck full of clothes from Oregon and called us and was really dismayed and very upset to learn that that was not going to be the most
useful thing at this moment for good reason. Right, that's someone who has put a lot of time and energy and thoughtfulness into what they have to offer and what they're able to do, and to be told this is not what we need is a challenge, right, Like it's
all this like untapped energy. And so one of the things that we are really encouraging, and I say we as in the community based organizations right now that we are in partnership with, are really encouraging people to give monetarily if possible at this point, whether that's to SILA, whether that's to another organization. The two things that we have as humans in the society that we live in that are the most valuable resources our time and money.
Those are the things we have. Where you decide to spend your time and where you decide to spend your money is going to have the greatest impact on your neighbors. So we, as Rachel, We'll mentioned have a bunch of volunteer opportunities. If you go to CELA, NHC dot org, forward slash volunteer, you can sign up to volunteer with us. Lots of other organizations are also looking for volunteers. Pick point, close your eyes, and point to an organization in Los Angeles.
Sign up to be a volunteer, learn more about them. If you think that they are an organization that is having a direct impact on the community in a way that you would like to support, give them money because money gives them autonomy. It gives them the ability to be adaptive to what maybe spoke to about us adapting our programs. We are not able to adapt our programming with cartloads of clothing. We are able to adapt our programming as needed with money. Money is power. Money is
also going to be what helps people recover. In the long term. There are going to be all sorts of side effects to this that we haven't begun to see. Right, So, temporary housing is going to be necessary when all of these emergency shelters close. All that temporary housing is going to take money. When all of this is quote unquote over and we're trying to rebuild, rents in LA are going to skyrocket. There are tons of people who were
not housing secure when they lost their home. They don't have the opportunity to just buy or rent a new home. They're going to be facing homelessness for the very first time. Money can help that long term healthcare effect. The side effects of all of this the physical ones, for one, because of everything that people are inhaling, especially people who are housed and out in this smoke. Long term, that's
going to be long term illness. We're going to have all sorts of healthcare needs that's going to take money. There's also going to be psychological needs that people are going to have. Mental health is really suffering. We're seeing this in our volunteer community with people who've now been displaced three or four times because of the different fires. Money is something like that, people have lost their cars,
they don't have transportation. Money can help with that. Like it's I know people don't it's taboo to talk about money, and people tend to feel like it's not meaningful and they're not getting their hands in. But like, truly, money is love in a situation like this, and I just encourage people to take the resources that you've collected, host a yard sale, donate that money to an organization that
you think is doing good. If you know someone who's directly impacted, they've lost their home, they've moved, they've been displaced three or four times, send them money.
Yeah.
I think that's that's really what we're encouraging.
People.
Give your time and give your money, and then if you're not sure what to do, reach out and ask and instead of saying I'm bringing you something, if there's an organization or an individual that you know you would like to have an impact on reach out and say
what do you need and then listen to that. Right, that's I think we all really we jumped to help, and then just like that man who drove down with that cart load, the car load of clothing, he jumped to help without asking what was needed, and then was pretty hurt by the response that he wasn't helping in the way that he thought. So, yeah, ask people what they need.
None of this is unusual.
We see the center volunteers all the time, but it was in just these last couple of days just became so clear how so everybody, everybody lives the way they live as a SEALA volunteer all the time. Like the number of people who have connected us with other organizations, emails I've gotten from volunteers connecting me with the volunteer.
Who might be able to help the specific need.
It's just really beautiful to see how everybody is activated all the time, and I think it's just very This just shows how crucial it is to kind of find your community and figure out how to be a part of it.
Thank you so much again to Rachel Sarah, and maybe you can contribute to cila's ongoing efforts in the description of this episode. I particularly love their laundry program, so I hope this was helpful if you didn't know much about what is happening in this area, or you wanted to do more and didn't know where to start, or maybe you live here and you wanted to be reminded that there's hope and still a paradise of some kind
to be built. There has been such tremendous loss, and I think a lot of organizers have smartly and directly connected it to the fact that the US is funding a genocide, willfully causing losses in Palestine every single day. The way that our systems are failing us are often to prop up violence elsewhere that is oppressing other people.
Free Palestine.
One of the moments that really made me emotional this week was seeing that a library in Pasadena had burned down.
This beautiful historic library.
And maybe I'm a hooked on Phonic's dork, but seeing a burned down library made me cry.
It's such a loss.
And the day after I saw that, I learned that there was a library that had made it, the Altadena
Main Library. I first saw it in a friend's Instagram story from someone who lived in Altadena, and it was such a relief for them and then for me, even though I'd never been there, but everything I've been thinking about, everything that's been on my mind, all of these people who are left behind in these discussions around climate change and disasters like this are welcome in a library, everyone is, and seeing a space like that still standing around so much devastation.
Was really special.
And so as a bonus treat I reached out to one of my favorite presences in all of Internet history, Michael Threats, the librarian TikTok guy. So, I hope you enjoy our brief conversation, and yes, sixteenth Minute will be back next week with I promise a truly punishing three part TALKTUA series. So please enjoy my talk with Michael. And I'm pretty sure my cats were fighting through a lot of this recording.
It's just been a hard week.
Sure, my name is Michael Threets.
More people know me as Michael Librarian, and far more people know me as the librarian Orbry Guys. So many people I meet you do not know that I have an actual name. I've been a librarian for close to eleven years. I'm no longer practicing librarian. But I'm still very much a huge supporter of libraries. I'm still paying suit loans, so I very much see myself as a librarian. I'm a library advocate, I'm a literacy advocate, a mental health advocate, and so much more. But I think I
just really used the big library's biggest fan. I'm there's a person who's trying to cheerlead for human beings and co mids them that they should make it make it to tomorrow for hours at time.
I mean, and are you currently based in California as well?
I am, I'm in the Bay Area.
Your work so clearly demonstrates not just the importance of libraries and keeping them funded, but the importance of libraries as communal spaces and community building tools. But I wanted to get started with you recently posted to Instagram sort of a list of books to explain wildfires and wildfire consequences to children. Could you tell me a little bit more about how you source that?
So I shared recommending books for children and teens and for library able to talk with their kids and teens about this tragedy of the California wildfires. It was built from other various libraries from scenes around posts from people like the book Wrangler.
And saying okay that here are some books.
Let's let's broaden the Let's broaden it just a little bit, because I wanted to make sure that the list was able to it was a book.
Was a booklist that was good.
For kids, teens, and also for grunk so they could help their own their family, but also so that they could help themselves. It's a compilation of picture books, chapter of books for kids, graphic novels by a books, and even some books that adults would also really appreciate as well.
Libraries are sort of this first line of defense on educating about climate change and about climate catastrophe, especially for younger people.
Unfortunately, I've had my own experience with wildfires being a California native, to be prepared to seeking to seek a list like this the infamous wildfires in California. Even though I'm on the other side of California, We're still very much in support of you all in southern California. We're trying to seek ways to provide resources to help. I myself working currently with various people to provide books to increase the presence of literacy and with the loss of houses,
with the loss of one major library in Pasadena. I think that was a big part of where I was coming from. And that's my experience as librarian and various mental health crisises COVID nineteen of that major California wildfire.
But as California also know that we have these wildfires, what it feels like every single year, and also in response to all the areas disasters across the nation, and be at the various shootings that occur, be it the hurricanes, be at the earthquakes, tsunamis, with the Sudan whatever I may, these are things I'm trying to find resources to share with people. This is how we yeah that are as neighbors. I'm a person alway talks about mister Rogers. This is
what mister Rogers would have encouraged us to do. So how do we build resources to get towards the journey towards recovery.
You know, being a local of just seeing a library gone and not and seeing all of these community space has gone, these schools, these places that you don't really consider what life would be like without. One of the most emotional responses I've had all week is learning that the Altadna main branch somehow survived at the fires, and that their staff is already organizing to make sure that you know, even though the air quality isn't safe at the main branch, what are programs we can do for kids?
And the importance of libraries as community spaces where all are welcome.
Absolutely No, I'm still so shocking.
I've been on social media talking about libraries and literacy and so much more for it feels like years now, but there's still so many people who don't know about the joys and the resources that the local libraries offer, especially in tough times, unprecedented times like these that were living in. There's so much money. The libraries are always going to be about books. We're always going to push books. But now there's Libby, There's Hoopa Digital for audiobooks and ebooks.
There's Canopy for TV shows and movies. There's Mango languages to learn a new language. For the various people who are displaced and trying to figure out how do I find these tools amongst amongst these disasters, there's tools, there's tooling libraries, there's big break collections, there's Tredio printers, there's there truly is something for everybody at the library. And that's in a response to saying, yes, the library is
very much a community hub. It's all about there's something for everybody, for every single neighbor, every single person who lived in your community got to his library exists for and that's what I've loved it. I've scoured social media for resources, seeking ways to help. I love the immediate aftermath after the California wild Fighters, the most recent ones first started.
I didn't love it, but it was so like for me, it was so refreshing.
This author friends and various friends in southern California at the library.
The library was still standing.
That's where they get out of the air, of the bad quality air. They were in the library. I believe the La the La County Library is currently offering n ninety five masks. So I saw some friends just charging their devices, charging their their chargers, their their their phones, their childlets, whatever may be at the local library. And that's that's why the library is always going to be a third space. You don't have to have a library car to do that. You can just be You can
just ask for help at the local library. A library card is not required. To seek help, seek services.
As a library.
And I mean in terms of just bringing people together housed on house of all classes, what if you sort of noticed over the years in terms of bringing folks together.
I mean, I think this is so much of what you just said.
There's so much, so much as possible for every person, regardless of their background, regardless of their financial situation, where they can benefit from local library.
That's the beauty of it. I mean, that's like so many of you.
So many of the Southern California libraries are still standing, and goodness, but they are ones there are lost, and there are so many people who are coming together to support these libraries. There's so many schools that have been lost, there are so many classes that have been temporarily put on Paul because of the situation where students are not allowed are not able to imagine and grow as much
as they should be able to. And that's why I love it that are campaigns by people like author have on a combine who's trying to trying to gather various funds to gather books in various forms of literacy to donate and gift to local schools and local libraries and all these people are coming together to collect books, to collect so many, so many resources for these schools and these libraries. And I think that's why I've learned over
the years being a library library loving persons. There's so many people who are willing to support libraries to go to back for the community because of what the library means to them. That libraries are still on offering these programs. We're offering story times, we're offering homework help, We're offering a space for you to go to be to learn something, to take your tests, to apply for jobs. And it's so amazing to see. I think, I I I believe I love the un housed community most most of all,
so very, so very much. I think since leaving the library full.
Time, I love that I go to my local library.
I see my former my former run house friends I used to see all the time.
They're like, oh man, good to see you back, and sell.
You down at the other at these other institutions. Are you helping people with them with housing full time now? And I'm like, no, I just happen to be there.
I love it.
That's what they bring up because that's what the library should be. It should be a place that welcomes the house that tries to find them resources. It says, yes, we may not be able to do everything for you, but we're going to help you to the best of our abilities. I think that's why That's why I discovered most of all in the last stud years, from the community, from the neighbors, from people across the world. Honestly, if they love having a library card, they really appreciate their library.
They recognize how powerful books have been in their lives. But most of them, they recognize the presidence of the library always being there, being there for them even they didn't remember the library there yes on a Tuesday five years from now. People could say, oh, yeah, I didn't realize I need this library at the time, but now I really need it, and I'm so surprised that even though I haven't used it all the time, it's still there.
It's still there for me.
I think that is the lasting legacy of the library, that the library is always going to be there for you.
For the average person, what is the best way to support your local library.
Shouldn't I talk about social media This morning. I was offering anybody who loves libraries or who wants to love libraries, far ways to support, to support them and keep them going. And I think number one is to get just to get a library card. You don't have to you don't have to use that library card. Just get a library card. You do that library card every single.
You probably will end uf using.
Yeah, exactly at number two, which is to visit the library to typtically use that library card to borrow the materials.
It's totally fine.
If you're a digital library user. You are helping the library.
By using Libby and Hoopla, using audio books and ebooks. It helps libraries more than you know with funding, with making libraries better for the community. Borrow those tools from the tooling library, the bakewere supplies from the bakewere collection borrow the manga, got his novels, comic books, anything. Library has something for everybody. At least once a year. Use that library card. See what's all about. And then number three is to not only visit the library, but to
use the library and specifically the programs. Attend library programs, the art programs, the history programs, the author talks whenever you see it. Try to go as often as possible. The last one, number four is just tell everyone about the libry, and I think that's the best way to keep libraries going. Libraries, as much as we're under attack, as much as we're facing a lot of problems, we're
still there. People are showing up more than ever four libraries, and we just want to keep it going so that we can keep on offering everything for the community and show people liberation through literacy.
Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and Iheardware Apps.
It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lickterman and Robert Evans Hemas with Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen.
Voice acting is from Grant, creator and Pet.
Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kats Flee and Casper and my pet Rockberg, who will outlive us all Bye.