Los Angeles is in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. We are supposedly receiving 25% of our necessary annual rainfall in just one weekend.

I’m known for loving L.A. rain. So much so that friends will send me cheery texts when the rain starts. I love the purple-gray hulls of the clouds above the mountains, the water droplets on lemon leaves, the puddles on the sidewalk. I love the way the rain brings the green, turning the hillsides into Ireland. And how it washes the smog from the sky. All the contours of the mountains are sharp and crystalline, underneath Maxfield Parrish clouds.

Cozy season arrives late in Los Angeles so I relish the excuse to wear leggings all day, complete a puzzle, and make a crock-pot of chili.

Los Angeles is home to over 70,000 unhoused people, and dozens of mutual aid groups working to provide them with tents, sleeping bags, clothing, meals, water, and hygiene supplies, all of which are desperately needed during the rainy season. Here are just a few:

LA Street Care (the group I’m part of)
Water Drop LA
KTown For All
Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid

As I relish the rain from my warm living room, I scroll Instagram and see video after video of flooding tents in Gaza. People shivering in the ruins of their bombed homes (92% of which have been destroyed) or trying to stay warm in dilapidated tents, because Israel is completely blocking all materials needed for rebuilding, in violation of the ceasefire agreement. My friend Mona writes about how winter always used to be her favorite season, how she would drink coffee and read on rainy days. Now she and her extended family of 20 can barely keep warm in their threadbare shelter. Because Israel is still blocking food and medical aid, available food at the markets is scarce and extremely expensive. People have to wait in long lines for food that might run out before they reach the front. None of this is natural. None of this was inevitable. These conditions are being deliberately forced upon Palestinians.

As of today, paid subscribers have allowed me to send $560 to The Sameer Project, which has just started a Give Warmth to Gaza campaign. They will be distributing blankets, tents, mattresses, clothing and other supplies to keep Palestinians warm and dry during the 50 degree temperatures of the rainy season.

Upgrade your subscription or just give directly to The Sameer Project.

I don’t want to be writing about genocide as often as I do but the U.S. and Israel are still carrying out an act of extermination in our name and with our tax dollars. I can’t look away.

Alice Wong

Disability justice activist Alice Wong passed away this weekend at the age of 51. She was a luminary with a revolutionary understanding of solidarity. She founded Disability Visibility in 2014, and Crips for eSims for Gaza in 2023. She never stopped advocating for Palestine, for mutual aid, abolition, and inter-movement solidarity.

Whenever a visionary and movement leader dies, I find myself reflecting on the ways that radicals pull the rest of the world closer to the horizon that humanity deserves. How can we continue their legacies?

I’ve spent the weekend reading eulogies for her on the internet, like this one from The Sick Times. And these words from author and disability advocate Beatrice Adler-Bolton:

Alice Wong was not only a brilliant disability justice activist, she was a cultural force, political strategist, and builder of worlds. She showed how access is built through struggle, creative collaboration, and principled refusal. She made the invisible labor of disabled life beautiful. . . . Alice Wong moved through the world with a kind of political generosity that made people bolder. She noticed people. She uplifted new voices. She gave disabled folks permission to be angry, joyful, complicated, imaginative - to exist beyond the flattened roles we’re assigned. . . . May her memory be for a revolution. May it deepen our commitments. May her example sharpen our politics. May her life remind us that disability justice is a practice of transforming the world through collective care, accountability, creativity, defiance and imagination.

On her 50th birthday, Alice wrote this piece for Time Magazine: “Death remains my intimate shadow partner. It has been with me since birth, always hovering close by. I understand one day we will finally waltz together into the ether. I hope when that time comes, I die with the satisfaction of a life well-lived, unapologetic, joyful, and full of love.”