A wildfire like hell. Whiplash weather. Destructive wind. The fragments flow. Torrential rain emphasizes drought.
Welcome to Los Angeles, Mike Davis predicted.
The late urbanists created waves in the 1990s to predict LA, one after another, becoming an ecological and artificial disaster. His work quickly caused him controversy among civic boosters, and he dismissed him as a negative Nabob who didn’t want the city to flourish.
Today, Davis is one of the faces of Mount Rushmore, the Prophet of La, along with Joanne Didion, Carrie McWilliams and Octavia Butler.
His words have been cited more by writers and critics around the world than anyone else.
As for his fellow Titans, he never attacked the poultry industry by boasting about reaping “the benefits from the flu-driven restructuring of world chicken production.” That’s exactly what Davis wrote in his 2006 book warning about the threat of avian flu, featuring a terrifying white cock photo on the cover.
Davis is the man of the moment, and the man all Angelenus should analyse like the secular Talmud. However, his foreshadowing of Hellfire and Brimstone is something we should be most noted.
The rest of the country was eagerly waiting for Los Angeles to collapse into tribal war and disorderly moment the Mega Catastrophe took place. If there was time for that, it would now be after Pallisard and Eaton fired.
While most local political leaders are shaking or wasting the moment, it is the normal people who have risen at the opportunity. They raised hundreds of millions of dollars for recovery efforts, from profit concerts to jars of donations at restaurants. Volunteers continue to clean burn areas and collect supplies, and are committed to fire victims who are not abandoned.
Welcome to what Mike Davis of Los Angeles wanted.
As someone who reads most of Davis’s works and knows him personally, I can say that his writings were Chris de Cours than lament. He was not Jeremiah, but John the Baptist, and prepared who would ultimately save LA.
We.
Community members volunteered at the donation center, which was founded on January 11, 2025, initially at Ame Zion Church in Pasadena, supporting communities affected by Eton Fire.
(Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m a famous pessimist, but I wasn’t really pessimistic,” Davis told me in 2022. [my writing has] It was about encouraging more action. ”
To throw him as an apocalyptic wet blanket is to harm the writers that friends and family remember as all their hearts.
“Mike hated being called the ‘Prophet of Destiny’,” he said, hosting the country’s weekly podcast and retiring Davis’s final book, “Set the Night on Fire: LA” “When he wrote about environmental disasters, he didn’t provide prophecies. He reported on the latest in climate science. And we were considering the human cost of ignoring it.”
Even while he wrote “City of Quartz” and “Ecology of Terror,” Davis was picking up “Set the Night on Fire.”
“He wanted to show that young people of color in Los Angeles played a heroic role in fighting for a more equal future for their cities,” said the most miserable new generation of activists. Even in times like a way to teach people not to lose hope, Winner said.
I asked Winner what his longtime friend would say about LA after the fire
“Multiple millions” [are] He grew up to rebuild the big houses in Palisade and Altadena,” replied Wiener, Davis “reminds people not to forget those who worked there as gardeners, housekeepers, nannies and day workers. Let’s… [who] I’m struggling to pay my rent and feed my kids. ”
Thankfully, Davis would have had to say that. Even if some of the volunteers lose their jobs or housing, the National Day Workers Organization Network, a coalition of humanitarian immigration rights, such as Los Angeles, has stepped up to help those affected. Social media is packing fundraisers to buy new equipment for gardeners, patronize food vendors and find jobs for the unemployed.
Such an effort brings comfort to Davis’ widow Alessandra Moktezma and his son James Davis. On a call from their home in San Diego, the two of them showed us from afar how they were saddened by the tragedy of Los Angeles.
Moktezuma hiked up Altadena with Davis while writing “The Ecology of Fear” in the mid-1990s and joined High. On social media, she burned unrecognisably, photos of her alma mater in the flames, posts from friends who lost everything in the palace, videos of the hills.
“He loved it,” she said. They recall living in Pasadena, just seven minutes from Eton Canyon. “I was already feeling all of that emotion, when people started sharing articles with Mike.”
She and James are grateful that people are quoting Davis as a way to deal with the disasters of the past month, but the two readers hope to go beyond his most famous quotes and works. It encourages you to.
“The problem is that a lot of people misunderstand a lot of my dad’s work as Shaden Fluid when it’s not,” James said. The 21-year-old feels that his father is more than anything else, particularly in his recent writings, is trying to warn him of the dangers of unidentified development.
On the London Book and National Review page, Davis says how the threat of a fire has changed year-round and everywhere during his life, from states primarily in the wilderness regions. I tracked it.
James reminiscent of the 2021 documentary. There, a gravel voice spoke to Davis told the interviewer: The urban fabric itself? Absolutely, “on a shot of the burning borders of the suburbs that looked creepy like what happened in Altadena and Palisades.
“He talks about the possibility, not just about the possibility, but about the inevitability of how there is a huge fire that burns Sunset Boulevard,” James said. “That’s exactly what happened.”
With love for Southern California and its people, Davis is “pleasant to see all the mutual aid happening,” James said. “It’s like he proposed.”
Mike Davis, author of Dia de los Muertos 2022, created by his wife, Alessandra Moctezma.
(Alessandra Moktezuma)
Artist and curator Moctezuma agreed. Her students at Mesa College filled four large U-Hauls with supplies and headed for Pasadena.
“I see everyone sharing and that’s one of the things Mike always talked about,” Moktezuma said. “The importance of kindness and organizing people – and the next step is to organize yourself to help yourself.”
She recounted one of her late husband’s favorite Irish proverbs. Under each other’s shelter, people live.
“I’m sure he’ll have a lot to say to him now,” Moktezuma continued. “He’s probably going to start looking into all sorts of things, like firefighters, politicians, or just reactions from ordinary people. Everyone will interview him.”
Then she became quiet.
“He would have been heartbroken to see everything burn out, and if he was in good health, he would be there.”
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