SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
los angeles fires
Biden’s Legacy Is Written In Blood
When I think of Joe Biden, I will think of every child I’ve seen dismembered and every home I’ve seen destroyed while I scrolled through social media for the last 15 months.
Jan 22, 2025
Last week, aerial photos from Los Angeles with blocks of homes reduced to ash hit social media timelines, leading people to understandably draw comparisons to Gaza. Destruction of entire neighborhoods is always heartbreaking. Home, where most of us spend a great deal of our time, shapes who we are. The memories and love a home can hold are much larger than whatever the square footage may be. Behind all the devastation are all the people in power that make all of this tragedy and grief possible in the first place.
Joe Biden’s term as president ended on Monday, and the world doesn’t have to guess what his legacy will be. The crimes he is responsible for are written into history with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, each one coming from a neighborhood his administration helped turn to ash. The drone images from Gaza and Los Angeles share the same hues of grey and heartache, and originate from the same flavors of greed and contempt for human dignity. And now, all of a sudden, we have a cease-fire, with no thanks to Biden. When I think of Joe Biden, I will think of every child I’ve seen dismembered and every home I’ve seen destroyed while I scrolled through social media for the last 15 months. And I will remember that none of it needed to happen; he greenlighted and funded the genocide of the Palestinian people. He, and powerful people like him, let insurance companies back out of insuring homes and fueled the climate crisis for decades to come.
Another clear demonstration of his inaction occurred last week, when he suddenly removed Cuba from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list, a demand we’ve been making to his administration for four years. The designation, along with the U.S. embargo, has caused levels of deprivation the country hasn’t seen since the Soviet collapse. People in Cuba were starving because of Joe Biden’s decision to keep them on the SSOT list, and he only removed them on his way out the door.
I hope our impact eventually defines the legacies of the warmongers like Biden and Trump, so that the world cannot forget who they are or what they did.
A small part of accountability for Biden and his partners in genocide like former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, former State Department spokesperson Matt Miller, and others will be remembering the people that were killed in Gaza with their weapons shipments or because of their lies. Like George W. Bush, the man responsible for the death of a million Iraqis and the country’s destruction, who took up painting in his old age to make people forget what he had done in their name—Biden has time to change what people may think of him. We owe it to the Palestinian people to not develop amnesia while bombs could still rain over their heads. Biden could have ended the genocide at any moment, and he chose not to. And because of that, tens of thousands of children are dead, the only reason being that they were born in the largest open air prison in the world.
It’s hard to speak of legacies when the dust from the bombs dropped on Iraq hasn’t even settled. Babies are still being born in Fallujah with life-threatening deformities and diseases. For over a year, Israel continued to drop U.S.-made bombs and, on multiple occasions, chemical weapons on the people of Gaza. From the environmental impact of the nonstop bombardment to the public health outcomes of living without proper shelter for so long, the extent of Biden’s crimes in Gaza won’t be understood entirely for decades.
It’s also hard to speak of legacies as a new president who has promised to stay the course of genocide takes office. In reality, the genocide of Palestinians will be several U.S. presidents’ legacies—even before Biden.
Evaluating Biden’s legacy on the domestic and international stages shouldn’t be done separately. In fact, the struggles faced by regular people all over the world and across the country make a whole lot more sense when you realize our issues are inseparable. As homelessness reached an all-time high in the United States, Biden and Congress sent billions of dollars in “aid” to Israel and Ukraine. As homeless encampments were swept in Los Angeles as the city burned, Biden notified Congress of another $8 billion in weapons to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military. People are anxious every day about whether or not they will be able to pay rent, afford groceries, or their children’s medicine. While the people suffer, there only seems to be one thing that the people in power (no matter who it is) care about—maintaining global hegemony no matter the human cost. Every year of his presidency, just like every other president, Biden signed a Pentagon budget that allocated more money to war than ever before and failed to improve the lives of the masses. Biden’s legacy as a whole is a disdain for Palestinian life, and to some lesser degree, American life.
I spend a lot of my time thinking about what people like myself, in the belly of the beast, ought to do to take responsibility for all the suffering our government, regardless of the president, has caused. I think of Che Guevara, who once said, “I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all—you live in the belly of the beast.” As President Donald Trump returns to office to build his own legacy, and as Biden leaves behind four years and decades of consequences, I try very hard to remember that to be in this struggle is a privilege of mine. If I abhor the suffering forced on the Palestinians in Gaza, then I realize I live in the perfect place to do something about it. Trump and his new agenda are obstacles, but we’ve confronted plenty of obstacles under this system, which mobilizes all of its resources against the movement for peace.
When we finally win, I hope people remember our movement as one that took responsibility for our situation and found power when we thought we couldn’t. I hope our impact eventually defines the legacies of the warmongers like Biden and Trump, so that the world cannot forget who they are or what they did. Remember: It’s the people who can really define a president’s legacy. Let that propel you to take action and organize. Let that give you a glimmer of hope.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Trump Takes Office, It’s Time for a Mass Climate Movement
Not only do we know that there is opportunity in how we meet this moment, but there are sparks suggesting that we may actually be on our way.
Jan 20, 2025
This is a jarring time for our country: A far-right autocrat is taking office on a holiday many misrepresent and trivialize as vacation day, obscuring the revolutionary actions of one of the historical greats of the civil rights movement, while whole communities of Black and Brown people in Los Angeles are burning to the ground. Instead of talking about the lives lost and how to support those who will have the most trouble rebuilding, and instead of connecting the dots of these fires to climate change, the incoming administration is intent on spreading disinformation. They are threatening to undo decades of hard-fought progress with lies and deregulation.
Yet, it is often when things seem most bleak, amid grief and heartache, that we reevaluate on the scale the moment demands. That is where the climate movement is right now: The status quo is not working. We are rapidly surpassing many of the planetary thresholds, including the threshold of 1.5°C. As our climate changes, we continue to see an increasing number of catastrophic weather events, as witnessed over the last week in Los Angeles. And despite these climate disasters and massive advances in renewable energy, fossil fuel use also continues to increase; this was true even under former President Joe Biden’s more progressive presidency. Data centers for artificial intelligence and logistics have only added to this increased demand.
We urgently need to change our orientation to how we affect change and what is required. Survivors on the Titanic talked about why they didn’t move: Electricity was still functioning; it didn’t feel like the ship was going down. Being in power can feel like that. But losing power feels different—and we have to be clear-eyed that we will not succeed by lobbying President Donald Trump or his administration, or finding the right words to plead with them. So we must evaluate the levels of power that are available to us, and how we can collectively accept and redistribute the heightened risk that comes in resisting the far-right and their fossil-fueled agenda on the scale we need to.
Rather than a patchwork of different issue-based fights where each issue area elbows the other out of the way to be heard by the administration, we will see the power that is possible through a coordinated movement protecting each other.
There’s hopeful news: Not only do we know that there is opportunity in how we meet this moment, but there are sparks suggesting that we may actually be on our way.
First, we will see, and are already seeing, an increase in exciting local organizing efforts. Groups in the 350 network have been doubling down on organizing against the power of utility companies. Many of our utilities are hurting the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels, while simultaneously gouging customers in the realm of profits. Many groups are holding utilities accountable by banning them from using ratepayers money for lobbying, intervening in hearings, and running bold corporate campaigns to get them to change their practices.
We are also seeing organizers in more and more states pass Make Polluters Pay legislation, which forces the corporations responsible for the climate crisis to pay for its cleanup.
Second, once we’ve accepted that we cannot change the initial moves Trump will make to gut climate progress, we can move into action to create the kind of reaction that might prevent further moves and bolster the local governments and courts’ ability to have an impact. We have seen this work: When Trump issued his infamous “Muslim Ban” order, tens of thousands of people disrupted business as usual at the airports, creating the popular dissent to allow the courts to throw the order out. I suspect we will see similar moves around potentially leaving the Paris accords, mass drilling on public lands, or the overturning of regulations.
The sad reality is that, no matter what Trump does, we know we will see more climate impacts that bring the climate crisis to more and more of our front doors. Amid the grief at all we have lost in the process, we have also seen people rise to the occasion in ways they’d previously been unwilling. In response to the Los Angeles fires, we have seen rapid, creative, and far-reaching mutual aid organizing spreading rapidly: a little ad hoc window into the social protections we are calling for. Data shows that most people now know that fossil fuel companies are responsible for climate change, so alongside strengthening our mutual aid infrastructure, we suspect that we will see an uptick in calls for accountability for those responsible.
Finally, the key to a broad-based movement is, quite simply, a broad base of people. As people think about the climate conditions in LA that caused fires and displacement, we can help them connect the dots to similar conditions that people faced in their home countries, causing them to migrate. We will see support for the immigrant struggle from the climate movement, support for labor rights and government workers for all sectors. In short, rather than a patchwork of different issue-based fights where each issue area elbows the other out of the way to be heard by the administration, we will see the power that is possible through a coordinated movement protecting each other.
None of this will be easy. As befits the true Martin Luther King Jr. who, along with many of his co-organizers, spent countless weeks in jail and braved white supremacist violence which killed so many during the civil rights movement. But we collectively know that this level of organizing and intensification of our struggle is necessary. Conditions change, and we change, and so, we are optimistic that out of what is hard right now, we will finally build something beautiful.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The LA Fires Show the Price of Climate Inaction
Measures like controlled burns, increased funding for fire departments, and more thoughtful residential planning can help California going forward, but it will take more to slash emissions and address the climate emergency.
Jan 18, 2025
If you grew up in Southern California, you don’t need a weather person to know which way the Santa Ana winds blow.
These dry winds originate in the Great Basin and sweep down the mountains toward the Southern California coast. They lower the humidity and raise the temperature, creating critical fire weather conditions. “The wind shows us how close to the edge we are,” Joan Didion once observed in her essay “Los Angeles Notebook.”
The Santa Anas typically occur during the fall. But more and more often, they’re happening this time of year. In tandem, the changing climate is making Southern California drier.
Disturbingly, President-elect Donald Trump, a climate change denier, intends to gut even the inadequate measures that the U.S. has already taken.
This January, ferocious gusts up to 100 miles per hour overlapped with a months-long drought to create the conditions for the apocalyptic infernos now devastating Greater Los Angeles. The Eaton and Palisades fires—among the most destructive in California history—have together consumed over 37,000 acres. Losses could top $100 billion, according to AccuWeather.
Seeing the Eaton fire’s menacing flames from my family’s San Gabriel Valley home, driving past thick smoke and fallen palm fronds on the freeway, and receiving a mistaken evacuation alert showed me what “close to the edge” can look like. While we’ve been spared for now, many others have lost their homes, livelihoods, and a part of their families’ history.
The fires have forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes, destroyed over 12,300 structures, and killed at least 25 people. Some victims died while trying to protect their homes, like Victor Shaw, 66, found outside his Altadena house clutching a garden hose.
The fires have ravaged lower-income communities, historic Black neighborhoods in Altadena, and cultural landmarks like actor Will Rogers’ historic ranch house in the Pacific Palisades. Mass displacement is exacerbating the housing crisis in Los Angeles County, where roughly 75,000 unhoused people are now directly exposed to toxic smoke. Wildlife and pets haven’t been spared either.
The climate emergency has worsened this destruction. As the fires burned, scientists confirmed that 2024 was the world’s warmest year on record. Dramatic swings between intensely wet and dry weather—described by climate scientist Daniel Swain as “hydroclimate whiplash”—are increasing worldwide, resulting in more dangerous floods along with droughts that amplify wildfire risks.
Average global temperatures have now exceeded the Paris agreement threshold of 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels. To avoid further catastrophe, fossil fuel emissions must be slashed by 43% by 2030 and reach “net zero” by 2050, according to the United Nations.
Disturbingly, President-elect Donald Trump, a climate change denier, intends to gut even the inadequate measures that the U.S. has already taken. He’s widely expected to withdraw our nation—the biggest historical emitter of carbon dioxide—from the Paris agreement, as he did during his first administration, and he’s said he intends to cancel President Joe Biden’s historic investments in green jobs.
The result of these actions will be more heat and extreme weather.
Communities across the Southeast are still reeling from Hurricanes Helene and Milton in September and October, which killed over 250 people and caused over $100 billion in damages. Warmer ocean temperatures are supercharging these and other storms.
Measures like controlled burns, increased funding for fire departments, and more thoughtful residential planning in wildfire-prone areas can help California going forward, but it will take more to slash emissions and address the climate emergency.
Fossil fuel companies should be held accountable as well. The state of California is currently suing them for deceiving the public for decades about their products’ central role in the climate crisis and demanding that they pay for billions of dollars in damages. These latest fires should be added to the list.
Amid Angelenos banding together and vowing to rebuild what they’ve lost, the fires are yet another tragic reminder of how people and our planet pay the ultimate price for climate inaction.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular