Naomi Klein in a brilliant piece for The Intercept on the wildfire that burned down the town of Paradise one year ago:

“The intersecting hardships experienced by so many in the region also explain why, days before the one-year anniversary of the deadly Camp Fire that burned down Paradise and killed 86 people, local politicians in neighboring Chico unveiled a plan calling for the small city to adopt its own Green New Deal”.

The Chico—population 100,000—connection:

“As the community that housed the vast majority of people displaced by the Camp Fire, Chico shows that there is no way to cope with climate breakdown without a simultaneous shift to a very different kind of economy, one that is willing to make major nonmarket investments in housing, transit, health (including mental health), water, electricity, and more”.

The Walmart connection:

“Some of the most beautiful nights were in the Walmart parking lot,” Stemen told me as we drove the Skyway out of Paradise and approached the big-box retailer on the outskirts of Chico. The black asphalt surrounding the store, he explained, acted as a fire break, repelling the flames that destroyed between 17,000 and 19,000 structures up the road. So, as cars and trucks fled that rain of fire, hundreds of them pulled into the Walmart parking lot, safe at last”.

The anarchist connection:

“There they were met by North Valley Mutual Aid, the now legendary anarchist disaster response group that self-organized in the immediate aftermath of the fire. Thanks in large part to these grassroots activists, the evacuees who ended up at the Chico Walmart were greeted with clothing, pollution masks, hot meals, dog food, and much more. A whiteboard shared information about people who were still missing. Portable toilets appeared and showers a few days later. Walmart donated some supplies —and also made a killing selling tents, sleeping bags, and whatever else anyone needed.”

Then, she manages to sum up the American experience in one epic paragraph:

“It’s true that California’s fires have provided the world with some extraordinary examples of disaster capitalism and climate apartheid: ultrarich mansion owners protecting their homes with private firefighters and failing to inform their immigrant housekeepers and gardeners that their workplaces were under evacuation; Cal Fire’s reliance on hyper-exploited prison inmates to do some of the most dangerous firefighting in the state; migrant farmworkers in wine country forced to work in a haze of wildfire smoke”.

And we’re not even halfway through the article at this point. It just keeps getting better.

I encourage you to read it in full—it left me gasping.

[Photo credit: Noah Berger/AP]