A Year After the Fires, I’ve Never Felt More Connected to LA

Rekindling Community Bonds Through Crisis and Recovery

One year ago today, I was blithely going about my business in New York—where I stuck around longer than usual after the holidays to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday—when I started seeing the Instagram posts about the Los Angeles wildfires. Like many of us, I’ve become bizarrely accustomed to learning about apocalyptic world news through my feed—but this time, I watched from afar as my friends and neighbors panicked and mourned and organized in my very own city, the one I was due to fly back to in just a few days.

From New York to Los Angeles: A Journey of Reconnection

As social media became crowded with mutual‑aid asks and volunteer opportunities, I fielded updates from my partner about the state of our friends’ homes in the Palisades and Altadena and air‑quality reports from our own neighborhood in East Hollywood. I did the stupid, trivial‑seeming things you do when you’re perfectly safe while your loved ones are across the country, only narrowly avoiding danger; I donated to GoFundMes, I shipped go‑bag items to my partner’s parents’ house in Orange County (where he drove our dog to escape the worst of the smoke), I googled “dog masks” and cried and felt ridiculous and caught my flight home into a city on fire.

The Fire and Its Aftermath: How I Stayed Involved

When I picked up my car near my friends’ house in Mar Vista, it was covered in a fine layer of ash. Down the street, a masked neighbor was grimly cleaning the exterior of his own car. We exchanged timid waves, transported for a moment to the early days of the COVID‑19 pandemic, when we were all both brought together and increasingly isolated by calamity. Like COVID, the LA fires weren’t an equalizer so much as a reminder of our city’s stark inequality; the Eaton fire had a disproportionate effect on Altadena’s Black and Latino residents, and a year later, many Angelenos still can’t afford to rebuild their homes. But during those first days and weeks when the fires still raged, I noticed that all of us strangers were a little more primed for reflexive and generic kindness. It’s something I’m noticing still: Warmth, it turns out, isn’t an emergency‑situation anomaly.

Community Care: Daily Acts of Kindness and Support

As I’ve nestled deeper into the fabric of my adopted city, I’ve found endless examples of people building community care into their daily lives—from the dozens of volunteers who cook and distribute food to unhoused Angelenos in MacArthur Park every week to the Altadena Seed Library educators sending seed care packages to families affected by the wildfires. Mutual aid is vital in times of acute, headline‑grabbing crisis, yes, but not only then.

Volunteer Efforts and Food Distribution

• Weekly food drives at MacArthur Park: 12 volunteers, 4–5 days a week.
• Local farmers’ market support: fresh produce stalls, community gardens.
• Community kitchens: rotating menus, seasonal menus, local chefs.
• Neighborhood clean‑up: trash pickup, recycling drives, community beautification.

Seed Libraries and Environmental Projects

Mutual aid also includes the Altadena Seed Library, which sends seed care packages to families affected by the wildfires. The library has grown into a community hub for sustainable gardening, local agriculture, and environmental stewardship. I’ve taken part in several seed‑drop events, helped to plan the library’s next harvest, and even started a small garden plot in my own backyard.

The Economic and Cultural Pulse of Los Angeles

Los Angeles has been tested beyond belief since last year. Not only are we still recovering from the wildfires, but ICE raids have rocked the foundation of LA’s immigrant population. Many undocumented workers are now forced to stay home to avoid illegal persecution and arrest, leaving once‑populated street corners—where beloved local fruteros sold cups of jicama, mango, and chamoy—empty, and exacerbating our city’s already‑acute housing crisis as some immigrants struggle to pay rent. I’ve seen a lot of people leave LA over the past year, burned out by trauma, an increasingly dried‑up job market, or just the soaring cost of just about everything. Many of them are lifelong Angelenos with a lot more claim on the city than I’ll ever have—so when my long‑term relationship ended in the fall, a lot of the people I love assumed I’d be one of them. But I still believe in LA. I want to stay and fight and organize in this city, doing jail support and court‑watching with the LA Tenants Union and visiting my community dye bath. I feel strongly that where you live shouldn’t be just an accident of birth or a perk of privilege. It should be a choice—one you make anew every day and one that’s strengthened by the ties you knit to the community that built it.

What’s Keeping You in LA?

“What’s keeping you in LA?” a well‑meaning friend asked in the wake of my breakup. When I thought about the answer, what I saw was a rush of images: of walking my dog through Hollywood in a sea of hot pink bougainvillea petals, perusing old editions of Gourmet at my favorite used‑cookbook store in Long Beach, drunkenly feasting on bacon‑wrapped “danger dogs” from the cart outside Akbar, walking the Silver Lake Reservoir while pointing out squirrels to my friend’s eight‑month‑old, gossiping with my friend Sarah as we bought up bags of pasta at FoodTown for weekend distro at MacArthur Park. As a transplant, I’m still learning how to be the best resident I can be, but of the seven cities that I’ve lived in over the course of my life—and after the last year in LA—I can truly say that I’ve never been prouder to call somewhere home.

Looking Ahead: My Vision for LA and My Role

Community Projects I Plan to Join

Below are the key projects I’m excited to be a part of in the coming months:

Tenants Union and Court Support

• Attend weekly meetings, provide legal and housing support.
• Organize tenant workshops, lease‑negotiation training, and community forums.
• Coordinate with local businesses for joint initiatives.

Dye Baths, Food Distribution, and More

• Launch a monthly “Dye Bath” event at the community center.
• Start a community garden in Mar Vista to improve green spaces.
• Partner with FoodTown for a new distribution channel for local food.

Conclusion: My Commitment to LA

In the past year, I’ve learned that living in a city is not just about the places you visit or the people you meet. It’s about the relationships you build, the support you offer, and the sense of belonging you cultivate. My journey from New York to Los Angeles has been a story of resilience, community, and love. I’m excited to keep pushing forward, to keep giving back, and to keep growing my connection to this city that I now call home.