Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

My family’s go-bags are still packed.

We left LA a couple years ago, but I checked the shed yesterday morning and the go-bags I’d so meticulously put together a decade ago, three thousand miles ago, are still packed — they’d made the move.

They’re still packed because of, you know, life, but yesterday morning I stared at them — all five of them, one for each member of my little family — after talking to so many friends who’d lost houses and beloved schools this week.

I stared at them and remembered how at one point my wife and I were going to have to fit all of the kids stuff into our own bags because they couldn’t walk yet, much less carry their own pack.

I remembered how I set my dumb alerts to take out the bottles and formula, to sub out infant Motrin and sub in kids Motrin, to trade up to bigger diapers every year, until we didn’t need diapers anymore, and I went to Target and bought a few packs of special superhero underroos to stuff into the bags, instead, so at least when we were fleeing from the inevitable fire my kids could put on something that brought them a little life.

My kids were were so small then, and I knew that when the fires came, and they would come, that so much would be out of our control, and happening so fast, that packing these bags was one thing I did have control over. So, underroos.

I did all of this because even before I got into this work it was clear that climate change was real, that California had been burning on and off (and often burned on purpose) for at least tens of thousands of years, and that the combination of the two made for a potentially hellish future. I did it because the traffic in LA is a nightmare on a regular day and I wanted to be one step ahead when shit hit the fan.

We had neighborhood meetings with firefighters about community roles when fires or earthquakes would inevitably hit and the best escape routes and best laid plans and how to avoid power lines, do not get near power lines.

This is our part of the world, here’s how it works, and here’s how it’s different, now, a climate unto itself but inseparable from and a major contributor to the rest, here lies a whiplash of extremes that soak, and fuel, and burn. Be prepared.

Be prepared — because these fires that are still burning are only the beginning. Start somewhere, start right in front of you, do what you can.

We’re in Virginia now, where it’s less about fires and more about seasonal-ish hurricanes.

Virginia, same state commonwealth where tennis legend Arthur Ashe was born and raised and played, where he molded himself on Blacks-only courts into the only Black man to ever win singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open.

The same Arthur Ashe who — probably talking about tennis — encouraged someone to, "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

Maybe you lost your house or your school this week, or a loved one did, or you’re thousands of miles away and you’ve never even been to LA but it’s all over your feed and you want to help.

You are here because you want to know what you can do — the same way our readers and listeners demand specific, measurable actions they can take to help flood victims, public school teachers, Palestinians, coffee farmers, nurses and midwives, small town mayors, wind techs, pediatric cancer scientists, and pregnant women, every day, 24/7.

When you are surrounded — digitally or physically — by the world’s wrongs, consuming not only homes, schools, and forests, but also every single ounce of your attention span and emotion, it’s pretty easy to feel overwhelmed. Helpless. Fucking furious. Righteous. Exhausted. Defeated.

It’s a journey and I get it. I ride the same rollercoaster every single goddamn day.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

As hundreds of thousands of Angelenos flee their homes, understand that over 9 million other residents of LA County are still standing.

A county more populous than forty states, where almost 40% of the population was born outside the US, hosting the largest population outside their respective home countries for Mexicans, Koreans, Filipinos, Armenians, and Salvadorans, and the largest US concentrations of people born everywhere from Iran to Taiwan to South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

Here’s the catch: Not all, or even most, of those millions of other residents can afford to help — LA is, after all, also one of the most inequitable places on planet earth. Which is why we need you, to fill in the gaps.

If you can afford to own a home in LA, or even rent one without giving up more than 40% of your monthly income, you’re usually better off than most everyone else in the entire county.

Definitely better off than the 75,000 people who were already homeless in LA county before this week.

Usually because besides all of the mansions and new money lost in places like the Pacific Palisades, so many generational, historic Black homes, churches, and restaurants in places like Altadena have been lost, too, many of which were recently deemed uninsurable. Are — were — irreplaceable.

They all need help.

Help is so much easier to give than you think. Which is good, because we have to re-learn how to help each other.

We have to re-learn because the fires do not go out themselves, and the disaster does not end when they finally go out. Not in a county where there was so little housing to start with, much less affordable housing, much less with hundreds of thousands of people who need somewhere to sleep tonight, and tomorrow. Not in a county where public schools are already packed, teachers underpaid, and student grades suffering. Not in a county where so many areas were uninsurable before this week.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

The world won’t unfuck itself.

Choose one friend or family and become their advocate. America makes insurance and real estate and schools and health care and relief aid so complicated, no matter how wealthy you are, or were. These people are in shock and have no clothes. They cannot navigate these systems alone.

Step in, step up, run point.

Donate some diapers, breast milk, formula, school supplies, or clothes.

Donate or just loan out an air purifier to an elderly or sick friend, or a school.

Make or buy some meals, offer rides.

Donate to Watch Duty.

Share reputable information for fuck’s sake.

Help people from your home country or from somewhere entirely different — acts of solidarity across lines of race, class, and geography are more than just simple, kind gestures — they’re the foundation of resilient communities, the backbone of mutual aid, of progressive activism, and of what I call Compound Action.

It’s how we make sure everyone has bootstraps, it’s how we tell the bad guys to go fuck themselves.

Compound Action, right now, tonight, is made up of actions that may seem small to you, now, but aggregated across communities and over time those same actions can and do drive systemic change. It is the only reason we have made it this far. It is the entire point of our app, of these essays and our newsletter and podcasts and and my life’s work. To seek out, to amplify, to fight.

Sure, the decisions of a relative few have made these and other fires hotter and much more likely, and truly, again, fuck those people, and don’t worry, we’re still working to hold them accountable, and sure, we’re all stressed because Trump’s back in a week, but listen to me.

LOOK at me.

We need to feed people tonight.

We need to get people out of this toxic, horrendous air, tonight.

“A rising tide lifts all boats” means the exact opposite of what it used to mean, sorry, I don’t make the rules. Our fates are intertwined as much as the systems that contributed to all of this, even if our collective fate is open to revision every time you just fucking do something.

We exist to help you answer the most important question: What can I do?

To do better, better.

Bake some papusas today, some lavash, a lasagna or some falafel, take it to the firefighters, join a union, donate to malaria bed nets, change where you bank, go to bed, wake up, do it again until the fires are out. Rinse and repeat.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

Let’s feed people tonight (and then build literally a million new electrified, high-density, affordable homes over the ashes of LA County over the next decade).

— Quinn