Mike Davis commented on his blog during the 2003 San Diego Cedar Fire that we can, at least in some limited ways, understand what it feels like to be an Iraqi under US bombardment in this moment. And it’s true to how i remember that fire - the sky went black, blobs of greasy ash drifted down like grotesque snowflakes, the air glazed one’s eyes and throat, whole neighborhoods of the city burned. I remember wondering if I’d have to evacuate to Corona Island or if we’d be trapped by the wall of flames.

It was the first of what felt like a new era of climate change charged fires - I grew up in CA around seasonal fires and had never seen anything like it: before I left CA several years later there were at least three more mega fires that burned whole swathes of SCal, and there have been several since. Ofc for Davis imperialism and ecology were always linked in ways that are often quite literal: this is imperial blowback from two centuries of fossil fuel driven and facilitated global capitalism. There isn’t any other way to say it - the poisoned air in Chicago feels like a military occupation, a fascist coup, bc in many ways, it is