We live in the La de Mike Davis – but not the one you think

Infernal forest fires. Cervical boost. Destructive winds. Debris flows. Torrential rains emphasis punish droughts.

Welcome to Los Angeles, Mike Davis predicted.

The late urban planner made waves in the 1990s For having planned a It would be an ecological and artificial disaster after another. His work quickly made him controversial among civic boosters, who rejected him as a negative Nabob who did not want the city prosperous.

Today, Davis is a face on Mount Rushmore of the prophets of Los Angeles, alongside Joan Didion,, Carey McWilliams And Octavia Butler.

His words, more than those of anyone, were cited by writers and experts around the world in this horrible year where nothing seems to be well and everything seems to be getting worse.

Regarding his titanic colleagues, none of them has ever assaulted the poultry industry to boast of harvesting “the benefit of the restructuring of world chicken production”, focused on flu, “. This is exactly what Davis wrote in a 2006 book warning of the threat of avian flu, with a photo of a white rooster threatening on the cover.

Davis is the man of the moment, the person whose work Angelenos should analyze as a secular Talmud – but his premonitions of Hellfire and Brimstone should not take it most.

The rest of the nation has awaited impatiently Los Angeles collapse in the tribal war and anarchy As a mega-catastrophe occurred. If there was a time for this, it would be now, after the Palisades And Eaton fire.

While local political leaders above all escaped or wasted the momentIt was the ordinary people who went up on occasion. They have collected hundreds of millions of dollars For recovery efforts via everything, from services to donation pots in restaurants. Volunteers Continue cleaning the burning areas And bring together supplies, with the promise to dismiss the victims that they will not be abandoned.

Welcome to Los Angeles Mike Davis wanted.

As a person who read most of Davis's work and knew him personally, I can say that his writings were more cries of heart than the lamentations. He was less Jeremiah and more John the Baptist, preparing the path to which would finally save:

We.

“Although I am famous as a pessimistic, I was really not pessimistic,” said Davis in 2022, the last time we saw ourselves, months before his death of esophagus cancer at 76 years old. “You know, (my writing was) plus a call to action.”

The launching like an apocalyptic wet cover is a bad service for a writer remember friends and family like all my heart – a man who had faith that, even if it would end up embarking on the flames, it would emerge from stronger ashes than ever.

“Mike hated being called” Doom prophet “,” said Jon Wiener, a retired professor of the history of the IRVine UC who welcomes the weekly podcast of the nation and was co-author of Davis' latest book, “Put fire at night: there in the 60s. “” When he wrote on environmental disasters, he did not offer a prophecy – he reported on the last climate sciences and considering the human cost to ignore it. “

Even while he wrote “City of Quartz” and “Ecology of Fear”, Davis chose “Set The Night On Fire”, which he invited Wiener to shake towards the publication.

“He wanted to show that young people of color of Los Angeles had played a heroic role in the struggle for a more equal future for their city” as a means of teaching a new generation of activists not to lose hope, even in the most disastrous moments, said Wiener.

I asked Wiener what his longtime friend would say about the post-fire

“While hundreds of millions (are) raised to rebuild large houses in the Palisades and Altadena,” said Wiener, Davis would remind people not to forget “people who had worked there like gardeners, cleaning women, nannies and fellows … (who) find it difficult to pay rent and feed their children.”

Fortunately, Davis would not have to say that. The organizational network of the national dayThe coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and others have intensified to help people affected, even if some of their volunteers have lost jobs and accommodation. Social media remains filled with fundraising to buy new equipment for gardeners, frequent food sellers and find jobs for the unemployed.

Such efforts have comfort to the widow of Davis, Alessandra Moctezuma, and to their son, James Davis. During a telephone call from their home in San Diego, the two told me how they had afflicted the tragedy in Los Angeles from afar.

Moctezuma attended Palisades High and hiked above Altadena with Davis while he wrote “Ecology of Fear” in the mid-1990s. On social networks, she saw Photos of her Alma Mater in FlamesArticles of friends who have lost everything in palisades and hills videos burned beyond recognition.

“He loved up there,” she said, remembering that they lived in Pasadena, just seven minutes from Eaton Canyon. “I already felt all the emotions of this, and that's when people started to share Mike's articles.”

She and James are grateful that people cite Davis as a way to deal with calamities of last month – but the two urge readers to go beyond her most famous quotes and works.

“The problem is that many people have misinterpreted a large part of my father's work as Schadenfreude, when this is really not the case,” said James. The 21 -year -old believes that his father was trying to warn the dangers of uncontrolled development above all in more recent writings.

In the pages of London books review And the nationDavis followed the way in which California had changed during its life, a state with a season of forest fires, mainly centered on wild areas with that when the threat of the conflagents is all year round – and everywhere.

James recalled a documentary in 2021 in which Davis in the gallor voice in 2021 told an interviewer: “Could Los Angeles burn? The urban fabric itself? Absolutely ”, on plans of burning suburban leaflets that strangely resembled what happened in Altadena and the Palisades.

“He not only talks about the possibility, but also of inevitability of the way a giant fire burns the boulevard Sunset,” said James. “”This is exactly what happened. “”

With its love for southern California and its inhabitants, Davis would be “happy to see all the mutual help occur,” said James. “This is the kind of thing for which he defended.”

An altar with the writer Mike Davis for the day of the 2022 dead, created by his wife, Alessandra Moctezuma.

(Alessandra Moctezuma)

Moctezuma, an artist and conservativeagreed. His students from the Mesa College completed four large U-Hauls with supplies and went to Pasadena.

“The simple fact of seeing everyone share is one of the things that Mike has always talked about,” said Moctezuma. “The kindness of people and the importance of the organization – and the next step is to organize us to help us.”

She told one of the favorite Irish proverbs of her late husband: under the refuge from each other, people live.

“I'm sure he would have a lot to say right now,” said Moctezuma. “He would probably start to examine all kinds of things – the response of firefighters and politicians, ordinary people. Everyone Would interview it.

Then she was silent.

“He would have a broken heart to see everything burned. And if his health was good, he would be up there to help. ”