The Los Angeles Poets, Students, And Others Who Helped Out After The Fires

January 10–23, 2025

ON TUESDAY EVENING, January 7, I stood on our hilltop street in gusts recorded at 80 miles an hour, holding up my phone to video the line of fire snaking up a ridge in the San Gabriel Mountains. Behind me, the wind tore at the composite tiles on our roof, peeling them off and flinging them into the dark. Twigs, dirt, and debris peppered me before I hurried inside. The Eaton Fire burned out neighborhoods of Altadena and parts of Pasadena as we watched till smoke obscured the flames, destroying over 9,000 homes and businesses.

A couple days after these fires started, I was sent a Google Doc with mutual aid projects organizing to meet the immediate needs of people in fire affected areas. I picked the Pasadena Community Job Center because it was nearest our house, because it was nearest the fire zone (closed off indefinitely by police and the National Guard), and because I had passed the center for decades driving back and forth on Lake.

Since 2000, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), founded by Pasadena resident Pablo Alvarado, has organized day laborers—that segment of the workforce most vulnerable to exploitation, wage theft, harassment, and abuse. As a worker-organized community center, the NDLON Pasadena Job Center has been a hub of community during these fires, serving not just immigrant day laborers but all the communities affected. With a staff made up largely of immigrants, the center can outreach and connect to underserved, marginalized, or invisible populations.

I manned the volunteer registration desk for the first week. Young people, students and workers, came from all over Los Angeles to help.

Maya, a Pasadena resident and UC Berkeley premed sophomore, helped at the sign-in desk for several days; she was housing fire evacuees at her place. Natalie, recently laid off by UCLA, drove over from Sawtelle on the Westside—she said one building on her street had caught fire. She helped orient volunteers at the sign-in desk and the following week served as a “runner,” coordinating people in distribution of supplies. Deanna, a slight Asian woman, manned the table for a time. A student at University of Puget Sound, Deanna said her parents’ house in Altadena was one of the only houses still standing on their street. She said no one had notified them of when they might be able to return to their house, although she admitted she hadn’t been reading her email. She said they were staying with an aunt in nearby Eagle Rock. “I probably should read my emails,” she sighed. She admitted she was reluctant to even try to start dealing with it. “I really want a break from this, but I’m going back to Washington for a week. But you know, the whole time, I’m just going to be, like—” She held her hands out in front of herself, shaking.

Juan Pablo, a part-time worker at the job center, his wild hair unchecked by a bandana, had been designated volunteer coordinator. He circulated through the center, coordinating with Selene and Lynnley in the “warehouse,” where donations were organized into categories (such as clothes, baby formula, personal hygiene, first aid, etc.) in manageable quantities, with Nathaniel and Lowell at the stations where the items were distributed, and donations off-loaded from company trucks and people’s cars on Lake Avenue. Juan Pablo collared Stephen, who was laid off by NBC’s “streaming division,” to assist him with coordinating volunteers who flocked in to sign up individually and in groups all day. “I specialize in YouTube marketing strategy,” Stephen said, “I was head of strategy till NBC decided to close the entire department.”

Many volunteers, perhaps most, wanted to grab hand tools, shovels, and rakes, and hit the streets with the “fire brigade” and clean and clear the streets of debris from storm and the fires. Many brought their own tools; some brought their own trucks. One afternoon, I received a text from a socialist organization to the effect that they were organizing volunteers to support the job center. I replied that I had just finished another day volunteering there. I never heard back from that “coordinator,” nor did I see any contingent or cohort that he had organized. Instead, daily volunteers included a group of Christian missionaries in white uniforms, along with groups of friends who arrived together, as well as employees from local businesses, including parking attendants and healthcare workers, whose employers sent them over to help out.

Cal, a lawyer who had arrived from Florida nine years ago looking for a job with NDLON, was at the corner of Lake Avenue and E. Villa Street every morning, using his bullhorn when necessary, forming crews and sending them out to clean and clear specified blocks. They were assigned specific locations, which Cal had mapped out on his phone. “When I came out here [from Florida], I didn’t really even know if I had a job,” he said, “Pablo Alvarado interviewed me in the taco shop here, and asked me when I could start. That afternoon, I was standing in court saying, ‘I represent the National Day Laborer Organizing Network at the Pasadena Job Center.’” He said most of the cases concerned wage theft and recovery of unpaid wages for vulnerable day laborers. Cal said he was especially happy that the crews of day laborers were able to be paid out of donations. Totaling perhaps 100 workers, they loaded debris in the four-ton trucks that lined up at eight o’clock every morning. The trucks hauled multiple loads to the dump till it closed at three p.m., shutting down street cleaning operations for the day.

“Eva Longoria [the actress] was here earlier,” Stephen said one afternoon. He and Maya mentioned other celebrities who had dropped by to give a thumbs up, whose names I didn’t recognize. “Oh, I wish I’d seen them!” Maya said. Our state senator, Sasha Renée Pérez, stopped by late in the afternoon to drop off a couple boxes of flashlights. Donation collection had stopped for the day, so I introduced the senator’s young assistant to a person on staff. “Oh, of course we make an exception for a major donor,” the staffer said. “I’ll take care of it.” The next day I was running an errand and spotted the state senator in the parking lot where donations were piled on tables, prepped for distribution. I hadn’t told her that I had voted for her when she ran for Alhambra City Council. She was out among the mangoes, bananas, and tomatoes; the cases of water, bedding, clothes, Pampers and baby formula. She spoke earnestly and nonstop into the cell phone held out in front of her by her assistant, who backed slowly away as her boss walked forward. A line of cars waiting to collect items went around the block into the side streets.

World Central Kitchen contracted the adjacent taqueria and several food trucks each day to provide hot meals for everyone, volunteers and community members alike. A bagel truck came one morning, a Colombian truck offering empanadas, a Venezuelan arepa truck for a week. One morning, two massive semitrailers parked in front and in the back parking lot at the same time, delaying distribution for two hours while the center scrambled to find ways to move entire pallets of heavy donations. Later that afternoon when donations flowed through the warehouse again and out to the stations for distribution, Loyda, the staff member in charge of receiving, laughed, “We did it! I don’t know how we did it, but we got it done.” The huge semis were all unloaded by hand, with the help of a few pallet jacks, a kind of battery-charged dolly that enabled one person to move a full pallet of heavy items. The jacks stayed in use till the charge died and had to be swapped out for recharging. Stacks of donated items mounted beside the distribution stations.

I escorted Kofen, a young woman in sunglasses, to “intake,” where I’d been told they needed translation for non-English speakers, assisting them in filling out a checklist of needed items. The next day, Kofen said her Mandarin had proved useful. The Cantonese translator said she didn’t get a chance to use that language, but plenty of people struggled with English in the lines of pedestrians and among the cars waiting patiently to be loaded by the volunteers. Spanish was prevalent. Sofia, who spoke Egyptian Arabic, said her dialect hadn’t been needed, nor did the Armenians have a chance to translate, but all showed up to help. Several volunteers spoke Russian, including Peter, who usually worked at a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Seattle and who requested a letter to his employer stating that he’d been volunteering during this time. A chemistry professor and her son (“he’s autistic, but I think this is going to be good for him”) visiting from Chicago manned a distribution table. People drove out from Anaheim, Long Beach, and even as far as San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, to volunteer. A volunteer who said he came from Texas shook my hand as he departed, another long day spent clearing debris in the streets; I thanked him for coming and he thanked us for giving him the chance to help. Mike, who said (with his Brooklyn Rs) that he’d soon fly home to “Jersey,” helped out for two weeks.

Sean, a former student of mine, manned the registration desk one day, and in the days afterward worked in perishable food distribution. He told me that he’d gotten inside his Altadena apartment (it was still standing), and though he’d closed every door and window, he found ash inside everywhere. Sean’s a PhD candidate in mathematics at UC Riverside. Periodically, he returned to the sign-in desk to collect more volunteers to assign positions in food distribution. When I mentioned to Maya that Sean had been a former student of mine, Maya gushed, “He is so nice!” I agreed.

L.A. poets showed up to volunteer as well. In front of Sam’s tool crib, where workers got outfitted with gloves, goggles, hand tools, and helmets, I bumped into Rocio Carlos, wearing the bright yellow safety vest of volunteers who worked street-side. She said that due to the fires, her classes at ArtCenter College of Design had all been moved online to Zoom. Dan Murphy, a poet and retired teacher like myself, stopped by to chat after he was off for the day. Dan said he’d recently read poems at the Pop-Hop Bookstore in Highland Park with Kim Young and Mylo Lam. “Mylo Lam!” he said. “I tell you, he’s got some white-hot poems!”

I remarked, “Mylo Lam is here today! He’s out back, maybe around back at the warehouse!” Mylo had stopped in to say hello earlier as well. Maya overheard the exchange and accused me of being a “celebrity.” I laughed, “That’s what happens when you get old and you’ve been around a long time.” We signed in about 500 volunteers each day that week.

During the three-day weekend, January 20 the MLK holiday, over 1,000 volunteers signed in daily. More volunteers milled around than could be readily assigned. Meanwhile, the City of Pasadena loaned us the large parking lot across E. Villa Street where the distribution stations set up under a row of white tent canopies, and the cars driving through in a long line not only had a more efficient route but also a safer one for everyone—pedestrians, “walk-ins” lugging bags of supplies, volunteers loading supplies on vehicles, as well as drivers. The Pasadena Job Center’s mutual aid project had outgrown the job center.

People asked how much longer the job center would offer supplies. Nobody was sure. The center staff would assess week by week. Donations would continue to be distributed daily this week, and perhaps intermittently thereafter. The Tuesday after MLK Day, volunteers had dropped from 1,000 to 150. Wednesday was also slow, though volunteers trickled in when a call was put out on social media. A woman who’d been burned out arrived at the table on the verge of tears, saying she had taken her kids to their father’s place, but she herself had slept in the park and it didn’t feel safe. “At least my kids are safe,” she said. “The thing is, I have my pets. My dogs and my cat. I even lost my car.” She was told that we didn’t have access to accommodations but would try to find her referrals. Local chapters of the Humane Society were boarding pets. The job center was only able to give out donated supplies of food, water, clothing, and so on. Among volunteers, we had the temporary community of solidarity. But how much longer? It was no permanent solution for people who had lost homes, or jobs, or businesses.

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Photos courtesy of Sesshu Foster.