We Can Do Better
In
early January, as we began to work in earnest on
our Spring 2025 print issue, wildfires were
raging across Los Angeles, a city I once called
home. The devastation left in their wake is
staggering. At least 29 people died. An
estimated 16,000 structures burned, including
thousands of homes. Tens of thousands of people
were displaced, and financial losses piled up to
over $250 billion.
All
of this breaks my heart. But what haunts me most
are the stories of the people with disabilities
who lost their lives in the blazes. One of them
was Anthony Mitchell Sr., 67, an amputee who
used a wheelchair to get around. Another was his
son, Justin Mitchell, 35, who had cerebral palsy
and also used a wheelchair. Both died in
Altadena in the Eaton Fire while awaiting
evacuation support. The third was Rory Sykes,
32, who also had cerebral palsy and was blind as
well. He died in Malibu in the Palisades fire
while his mom was seeking help.
Their
deaths are tragic, and they are not the
exception: People who have disabilities are up
to four times more likely to die in natural
disasters than those who do not. Yet, as
Kang-Chun Cheng writes in a feature in the issue
(“Overlooked”),
more often than not, they are excluded from
disaster preparedness plans and decision-making
processes. This holds true globally, including
in South Sudan, where Cheng reports on the
fierce advocates who are struggling against the
toughest odds to mend a broken disaster
preparedness system.
Sadly,
this type of work isn’t getting easier, in South
Sudan or elsewhere. In part, that’s because here
in the United States — the second biggest carbon
polluter in the world — President Donald Trump
is dismantling environmental safeguards and
federal aid agencies one executive order at a
time, even as Americans are struggling through
devastating natural disasters. Among far too
many other things, he is also gutting USAID,
which supports climate adaptation work, public
health initiatives, and disaster recovery around
the globe.
As
Trump pulls the rug out from beneath the most
vulnerable both at home and abroad — and plunges
the US into a constitutional crisis in the
process — it can be hard to keep track of all
the harm. That’s part of the point. But as
Lauren Markham suggests in her essay “Remembrance
in the Anthropocene,” while we should
grieve, and honor, what is being lost, we should
try to transform our despair into action.
Kumi
Naidoo, the head of the Fossil Fuel
Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, echoes this
sentiment (Conversation).
“Everybody understands loss,” he says, and that
makes it a powerful emotion, one that might
offer an entry point to advocacy.
Grief,
rage, love, even fear — we need to harness every
emotion, every tool, we have to lift up those
most vulnerable to the crises unfolding around
us. Like Naidoo, we too, must “refuse to accept
that the world we live in right now is the best
that humanity can create for itself.”
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