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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