Many of you have reached out to us, asking how the Ms. office and our staff are faring through the hellish Los Angeles fires. Thank you. I’m relieved to report that so far, none of us have lost our homes, though some have been evacuated and await the all-clear that they can return safely.
As we’ve watched the ash drift past our office windows like strange snow, we have been thinking about how many of our Ms. community members have had to gather quickly together what matters most as they prepared to leave their homes—photo albums, children’s drawings, medical records. Those precious fragments that make up a life. Each with their own story, their own particular moment of leaving. Taking one last look, wondering what would remain when they returned.
Some ended up on their cousin’s pull-out couch, or in a motel room that smells of other people’s lives, or a shelter where volunteers serve coffee in Styrofoam cups. Some have lost everything, including things that insurance forms can’t begin to capture: the garden they planted with their neighbor, the window where their cat used to wait, the chalk marks showing how tall their kids had grown.
Here at Ms., we’ve always understood that women’s lives are made up of these crucial moments—the things we save, the things we lose, the way we hold each other up afterward.
We have reached out to our readers in the Los Angeles area, wanting them to know we’re thinking of them, but more than that, to offer help in whatever way we can—not with grand gestures, but with the kind of practical support that women have always offered each other: help locating emergency resources, a spare room, a shoulder to cry on, hands to sort through what remains and begin again.
And we have watched with a dark sense of foreboding, how Trump callously has politicized this tragedy. He has blamed California Democratic officials and fabricated lies about the causes behind the fires, even as he promises the oil interests at the very root of the climate crisis that under his administration they can “drill, baby, drill.” Elon Musk has blamed the Los Angeles Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley—the first woman and LGBTQ fire chief in Los Angeles history—and her efforts to increase the diversity of the department, for the spread of the wildfires.
Although this moment feels dangerous and daunting, Ms. is prepared: We’ll not only report on the cruel and sometimes deadly actions of the Trump administration, but we will lift up strategies for fighting back and moving forward in this time of backlash. We are grateful for our Ms. community in times such as these, and are proud to stand with all of you. We’ll be here, doing what women have always done in times of crisis: supporting each other, and holding on.
