January 14, 2025 • 21 mins
Pacific Palisades resident Rachel Darvish went viral when she confronted Governor Newsom live on television.
The wildfire victim takes over Let's Be Clear to share her thoughts on the destruction of the place she called home.
This is her opinion and point of view on the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Let's be clear. Who's Shannon Dorny. Hello, let's
be clear listeners. I'm Rachel Darvish. I'm one of the
thousands of people affected by the Pacific Palisades fires that
continue to burn. I'm honored to have been invited to
host this episode of Shannon Doherty's podcast. I've been a
(00:22):
lifelong fan of hers. She was such a strong voice
for women in all communities. She was never afraid to
speak up. I'm not afraid to speak up either, especially
when it comes to the shortfalls of the government. I'm
a lawyer. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a lawyer and
a mom and a resident of this town that has
(00:44):
been ravaged by an apocalyptic fire. If you've been following
the news, you may have seen a viral exchange between
me and the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. If you've
been following the news, you may have seen a viral
exchange that I had with the governor of California, an
unplanned viral exchange with the governor of California, and when
he visited my town of Pacific Palisades. This was not planned.
(01:09):
I was in the middle of a live interview when
I saw the governor and decided to ask him how
he was going to help me. I've lived in Pacific
Palisades since since I can remember. I was born in
the USALE Hospital and my parents had come here from
me Ron fifty years ago. So our first our first
(01:32):
experiences were at the USALA campuses, and then we immediately
moved to Pacific Palisades where we had a home in
the Alphabet streets. That home is gone, so my childhood
home is gone. I was able to see that firsthand.
You never know what that is going to feel like
(01:52):
until it really happens. And I haven't lived in that
home since I was six years old, but wow, what
a feeling that was to see the beginning of my
life in Pacific Palisades. I was erased. Part of the
reason I wanted to raise my daughter in the Palisades
was because of the experiences I had at that home
(02:13):
seven one to nine Island Street. I mean, the memories
were probably the best, going up and down the street
Fourth of July with our with our neighbors, something that
you only find in a small town like Pacific Palisades.
We don't have that in other towns in Los Angeles. Unfortunately,
the status of my home at this at this moment,
(02:34):
so unfortunately, the first home I lived in burned down
in the alphabet streets. Over the years, we moved a
few times. I'm not sure the status of a couple
of the other ones, but the house I'm living in
at the moment is standing, which is a total miracle
considering our neighbor and the person across the way was
(02:56):
also burned down. I've had a couple of chances to
to now experience the community right now and devastation. I
don't think you have seen it. I don't think you
will see it because it can be categorized probably as
the worst fire I think in the history of the country,
(03:17):
but it's not even going to do it justice because
of some of the the aspects of it being on
such a grand scale. We have now experienced a lot
of natural disasters in California, and I think the unease
I'm feeling, not just having been in this experience, is
(03:42):
I don't know what's next, considering I don't trust how
my government is handling my situation. So the fear I
have is I'm sort of living in a no man's
land right now. Like everyone else, if we could go
back to the moment I had to I spotted the gun.
You can only imagine the feeling of standing in front
(04:04):
of your daughter's preschool that you had just dropped her
off at. I had just dropped Chloe off at Methodist Preschool.
I'm wearing the T shirt for the school. Dropped her
off at nine am, went home and tried to sort
of do what I do every morning after I drop
her off. And this was the first day back to
(04:24):
school after three weeks of holiday for the kids, so
they were so excited to be back in school, and
I was kind of happy to get back to a
schedule again. And I mean within just a few moments,
I got a notification of a fire, and as soon
as I put my pen down, put the laptop down,
and walked out to the front of the house, devastation
(04:45):
was at my doorstep. And there are no feelings, no
words that can describe what it feels like to one
hundred percent, one hundred percent be certain that your house
isn't going to be standing. That was what I felt
(05:06):
when I walked out the front door, and I said,
let's roll. We can't we can't risk it going down
that hill after grabbing some artwork that my mom had
done and some basics for my daughter. We had to
sit in about four hours of traffic to get down
(05:29):
the hill down to Sunset Boulevard. In the meantime, all
you can think about is the fire is right behind you,
and there's not a single fire truck going up the hill,
and there's not any space for a fire truck to
go up the hill. Having lived there my whole life,
(05:49):
I knew that this was going to be a major
disaster because there are no other ways really to get in.
We saw that Palisades Drive was another disaster where people
were abandoned their cars. Fortunately on the Ambonita our way down,
that didn't That didn't happen. We had such great people, neighbors,
(06:12):
local employees who were there for the day, day workers,
they were directing traffic. I mean, you better believe our
community came together so beautifully to get us down that
hill again without a single without a single government official appearing.
(06:34):
We didn't see a police officer, we did not see
a fire truck. I all I know is I kept
hearing from people up and down this line of cars
there's no water, they're saying there's no water. They're saying
there's no water. And the last thing I remember was
we turned We tried to turn on our hoses before
(06:55):
we left so that we can leave them for the
fire department when they got there. And I'm not even
sure there was water in our hoses for them to
use at that point. That's why when I was in
front of Methodist Preschool and I spotted the governor, no,
I had no control over my desire to approach him.
(07:17):
I had to know. And this is the guy we've
elected to take care of us sky we elected to
understand us through the good and the bad. We give
him a lot of good. Our state is very wealthy.
Our state is the fifth best economy in the world.
Our state rules, our city rules. It did, But those
(07:40):
are questions we need to dress down the line. Every
time I watched the clip with the governor, I get
more and more uncomfortable. It's a reminder of who to
trust and who not to trust. I think I didn't
necessarily vote for the governor. I didn't not vote for him.
Whether he is my elected official by my vote doesn't matter.
(08:05):
He's there. I got to take them for what he
is and at that moment, and every time I keep
watching this video, I am reminded that my governor lied
to me, and he lied to me to my face
in front of cameras. So you know, down the line,
if he wants to say he didn't lie, I think
we have the evidence to the points to the contrary.
After the viral moment, I did exchange information with the
(08:29):
Governor's office, and I've read some reports that the governor's
office has assisted me in some ways, and I can
guarantee you that I've gotten zero assistance from the governor's office.
I have requested that the governor include me in any
communications or interactions with the President. That's never happened. I
don't believe him. So I was asking for somebody who
(08:51):
has some credibility to be present when he's having these
conversations with the White House. I'm a mom. I want
to know. I've got There's so many of us out
there that are wondering what the heck we're going to
do with our kids. We are they going to go
to school? Are they going to go to school? Every
single school in our in our town burned down, And
when the governor is looking at me, telling me he
has four kids, and that somehow that is that is
(09:14):
the reason I'm supposed to believe him that he feels
for me with while he's wearing aviator sunglasses and I
can't even see his eyes. I wonder if he would
be different if his house had burned down. I wonder
if it really takes, you know, personal personal loss to
be able to commiserate with someone or at least be
(09:39):
able to show your your concern, because I didn't get
any of that from him, And now here we are,
what week a week later, almost, and the clip may
be viral, but there's nothing. There's nothing that's come out
of it for me as far as what kind of
answers I'm able to get. The most recent communicat I
(10:00):
had with the Governor's office included me requesting that I
be present when the President elect visits, because I believe
the governor had extended an invitation to him. And my
response was the response that I got was that they
don't even know if he's coming. So I have a
couple of responses, but all I've gotten really are copy
(10:22):
and paste you know, would you like to go to
this shelter? Sort of offers from them every time I
watch the video clip, it reminds me of, you know,
the difference between being a man and a woman in
this society. I I don't know if the governor would
have lied to a man to his face. Would he
(10:44):
have Is that something he might have done? I don't know.
I felt very vulnerable at that moment. Here I am
standing in front of my children's preschool and this man
is looking at a mother and lying to her. Still
sits with me. I also did request the governor contact
me personally. That's never happened to date. There are a
(11:17):
lot of misconceptions about Pacific Palisades, but I'd like to
share something really dear to me. When I was about
ten years old, there was something in the Pacific Palisades
that we'd do every October Halloween ish, and it's called
Moonlight Madness. And they would shut down the streets that
were around the village in the Palisades, which is currently
the Cruso built Village, and all the stores would be
(11:40):
open and we would be the streets would close, stores
would open late till ten PM, and we'd walk around
and there was this beautiful shirt that one of the
stores sold that I bought as a ten year old
and it said, if you're rich, you live in Beverly Hills.
If you're famous, you live in Malibu. But if you're lucky,
(12:01):
you live in Pacific Palisades. And we had been so
lucky for so long. We will continue to be lucky.
There is a misconception that everybody in Pacific Palisades is rich.
You don't know the struggles that I'm listening to that
I'm personally going through in order to know what our
next move is a lot of people in Pacific Palisades
(12:26):
were dropped by their insurance company just prior to this incident.
We have a letter that is informing us that we
will be dropped as of March. So where does that
put us at the moment? Ensured? But as of March,
(12:48):
obviously we will join the ranks of the others that
have to go towards the California Fair Plan for additional coverage.
What's the goal for me and my neighbors. We need
to come back and we need to come back strong.
We have a future in this city. We built it
(13:11):
and we can build it again. We just need the
government to do the right thing. I think one of
the things I've whittled down at this point is is
that I'm not interested in necessarily name calling as much
as I want to. But what we know is that
there are two people that are sort of irrelevant to
(13:34):
the solution. And when you have a governor who is
making deals with electric companies that cause fires in order
to help them out of bankruptcy so that they don't
pay they're victims. It scares me. It scares me to
(13:54):
think what we're going to be getting, what we're entitled
to to be able to recover from this, because this
is going to break a lot of people. So don't
get it in your head that we're sitting here able
to get through this with any sort of ease. That's
not the case. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican,
(14:16):
and I hope that in any disaster situation, people can
consider themselves human beings before they can consider themselves member
of any party. Democrats are helping Republicans, Republicans are helping Democrats.
That's the reality of this situations. It's the beauty of it,
(14:36):
and I hope that this is a lesson for the future.
Karen Bass promised us that she would not be taking
international trips that was a promise that she made, an
election promise, startening to know that she violated that with
a trip to Africa in the midst of her burning down.
(15:01):
So it was West Africa versus West Los Angeles. And
I don't know what part of how quickly she made
it back was supposed to make me feel better when
this was a storm brewing that she knew about well
before she left. We have questions here about LEDWP. We
(15:21):
have questions here about Karen Bass personally, personally, whether she
has liability or not. Obviously we know about immunity that
she would be that she would be protected from. But
these decisions that were made were the were the reasons
why this fire was not controlled in the way that
it could have been. When you have fire hydrants that
(15:44):
are empty, when you have aqueducts that are empty, and
when these have been empty for long enough where somebody
should have known better, what can you do other than
sit and write it out. I guess and and hope
that and hope that these poor firefighters can fight fire
(16:06):
without water. That's what we did. We watched television all night,
hoping and praying that somehow the miracle of no water
would would solve this fire. We deserve better. Guys, deserve
(16:27):
so much better than to know that you're your mayor
left town knowing that the major aqueduct was empty, knowing
that the water pressure in these hydrants would be affected,
and not and knowing this for a long time, knowing
that her budgetary cuts would have affected the manpower that
(16:49):
we need to fight these kind of fires. We've called
these the Polisades Fire and the Eaten Fire, and we've
labeled them by the communities that they've been that they've
start it in. I submit to you that we need
to give the governor and the mayor the legacies that
they deserve. Why don't we name them after them? These
(17:12):
major catastrophic events deserve the legacy of the Newsome name
and the basqu name, so that Californians and Los Angeleans
don't make the same mistakes again. We need to turn
the state around. And it doesn't mean voting for a
different party. It doesn't mean voting for a different anything.
It means voting for a different person. And we need
(17:34):
better options. I think a lot of people think their
civics duties and when they graduate from high school or
after sixth grade or whenever it is they teach au civis.
I don't even remember, to be honest, but I think
we need to realize that you've got to pay attention,
and if you don't, and if you fall asleep, these
(17:55):
are the kinds of things that seem to happen to us.
So me, you, all of us, let's not make the
same mistakes twice, because we can do better and we
can hopefully get rid of irrelevant people that are not
helping us move forward. One of the things I will
never forget is when I read that Shannon Doherty had
(18:17):
said when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I
remember her saying that she would wake up some days
and say why me? And then some days she would
wake up and say why not me? Wow? Can you
say that? It takes a lot. It takes a lot
(18:41):
for someone to be able to say something like that,
And it's an honor to be able to speak to
you on a platform where somebody would be able to
self sacrifice like that, Why not me? I became a
(19:06):
mother a little bit later in life than maybe I
was supposed to, But when I did, it woke up
something and meet it. I'd never even k you existed,
and now my biggest concern is where does my daughter
go from here? We all know children are the future,
(19:26):
and if we mess up this generation, I don't think
we're going to have an earth anymore with their I
don't know how much planet there's going to be left
to burn by mismanagement and incompetence. So my concern is
that my daughter stay in school. I'm concerned that she
interacts with her friends. I'm concerned that she's not worried
(19:48):
about why a house or why a house may burn down,
or why the aqueducts aren't full, or why the fire
hydrants weren't able to get enough water to help her
friends home not burned down. I have to tell her
why we can't play at Brennan's house. I have to
tell her why we can't go to Amalia's house. I
(20:11):
have to tell her why we can't go to Charlotte's house.
And I don't want to have to tell that to
any three year old, that we can't go to your
friend's house because it burned down, and we can't go
to our house because it almost burned down. We can't
go to our house because it's dangerous and toxic to Gobert.
We'll make it work. Adults will make it work. We'll
find a place to sleep, We'll do all that. But
(20:34):
I got to find a life again for my child
who is now displaced. And my child can now say
that she is a victim of the homeless policies, the
holistic homeless policies of the Mayor of Los Angeles. I
want to thank iHeartRadio for inviting me here. I want
to thank the legacy that Shannon Doherty has left. I
(20:56):
want everyone to sometimes in their lives, ask that question
that she did. Sometimes you ask why me, and then
sometimes you ask why not me? And that will ground you.
If you want to help those who have lost everything,
there are many ways to do that. You can go
to Dreamcenter dot org, the California Fire Foundation, and the
(21:18):
Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, just to name a few.
Please stay safe and thank you.
This is Let's be clear. Who's Shannon Dorny. Hello, let's
be clear listeners. I'm Rachel Darvish. I'm one of the
thousands of people affected by the Pacific Palisades fires that
continue to burn. I'm honored to have been invited to
host this episode of Shannon Doherty's podcast. I've been a
(00:22):
lifelong fan of hers. She was such a strong voice
for women in all communities. She was never afraid to
speak up. I'm not afraid to speak up either, especially
when it comes to the shortfalls of the government. I'm
a lawyer. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a lawyer and
a mom and a resident of this town that has
(00:44):
been ravaged by an apocalyptic fire. If you've been following
the news, you may have seen a viral exchange between
me and the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. If you've
been following the news, you may have seen a viral
exchange that I had with the governor of California, an
unplanned viral exchange with the governor of California, and when
he visited my town of Pacific Palisades. This was not planned.
(01:09):
I was in the middle of a live interview when
I saw the governor and decided to ask him how
he was going to help me. I've lived in Pacific
Palisades since since I can remember. I was born in
the USALE Hospital and my parents had come here from
me Ron fifty years ago. So our first our first
(01:32):
experiences were at the USALA campuses, and then we immediately
moved to Pacific Palisades where we had a home in
the Alphabet streets. That home is gone, so my childhood
home is gone. I was able to see that firsthand.
You never know what that is going to feel like
(01:52):
until it really happens. And I haven't lived in that
home since I was six years old, but wow, what
a feeling that was to see the beginning of my
life in Pacific Palisades. I was erased. Part of the
reason I wanted to raise my daughter in the Palisades
was because of the experiences I had at that home
(02:13):
seven one to nine Island Street. I mean, the memories
were probably the best, going up and down the street
Fourth of July with our with our neighbors, something that
you only find in a small town like Pacific Palisades.
We don't have that in other towns in Los Angeles. Unfortunately,
the status of my home at this at this moment,
(02:34):
so unfortunately, the first home I lived in burned down
in the alphabet streets. Over the years, we moved a
few times. I'm not sure the status of a couple
of the other ones, but the house I'm living in
at the moment is standing, which is a total miracle
considering our neighbor and the person across the way was
(02:56):
also burned down. I've had a couple of chances to
to now experience the community right now and devastation. I
don't think you have seen it. I don't think you
will see it because it can be categorized probably as
the worst fire I think in the history of the country,
(03:17):
but it's not even going to do it justice because
of some of the the aspects of it being on
such a grand scale. We have now experienced a lot
of natural disasters in California, and I think the unease
I'm feeling, not just having been in this experience, is
(03:42):
I don't know what's next, considering I don't trust how
my government is handling my situation. So the fear I
have is I'm sort of living in a no man's
land right now. Like everyone else, if we could go
back to the moment I had to I spotted the gun.
You can only imagine the feeling of standing in front
(04:04):
of your daughter's preschool that you had just dropped her
off at. I had just dropped Chloe off at Methodist Preschool.
I'm wearing the T shirt for the school. Dropped her
off at nine am, went home and tried to sort
of do what I do every morning after I drop
her off. And this was the first day back to
(04:24):
school after three weeks of holiday for the kids, so
they were so excited to be back in school, and
I was kind of happy to get back to a
schedule again. And I mean within just a few moments,
I got a notification of a fire, and as soon
as I put my pen down, put the laptop down,
and walked out to the front of the house, devastation
(04:45):
was at my doorstep. And there are no feelings, no
words that can describe what it feels like to one
hundred percent, one hundred percent be certain that your house
isn't going to be standing. That was what I felt
(05:06):
when I walked out the front door, and I said,
let's roll. We can't we can't risk it going down
that hill after grabbing some artwork that my mom had
done and some basics for my daughter. We had to
sit in about four hours of traffic to get down
(05:29):
the hill down to Sunset Boulevard. In the meantime, all
you can think about is the fire is right behind you,
and there's not a single fire truck going up the hill,
and there's not any space for a fire truck to
go up the hill. Having lived there my whole life,
(05:49):
I knew that this was going to be a major
disaster because there are no other ways really to get in.
We saw that Palisades Drive was another disaster where people
were abandoned their cars. Fortunately on the Ambonita our way down,
that didn't That didn't happen. We had such great people, neighbors,
(06:12):
local employees who were there for the day, day workers,
they were directing traffic. I mean, you better believe our
community came together so beautifully to get us down that
hill again without a single without a single government official appearing.
(06:34):
We didn't see a police officer, we did not see
a fire truck. I all I know is I kept
hearing from people up and down this line of cars
there's no water, they're saying there's no water. They're saying
there's no water. And the last thing I remember was
we turned We tried to turn on our hoses before
(06:55):
we left so that we can leave them for the
fire department when they got there. And I'm not even
sure there was water in our hoses for them to
use at that point. That's why when I was in
front of Methodist Preschool and I spotted the governor, no,
I had no control over my desire to approach him.
(07:17):
I had to know. And this is the guy we've
elected to take care of us sky we elected to
understand us through the good and the bad. We give
him a lot of good. Our state is very wealthy.
Our state is the fifth best economy in the world.
Our state rules, our city rules. It did, But those
(07:40):
are questions we need to dress down the line. Every
time I watched the clip with the governor, I get
more and more uncomfortable. It's a reminder of who to
trust and who not to trust. I think I didn't
necessarily vote for the governor. I didn't not vote for him.
Whether he is my elected official by my vote doesn't matter.
(08:05):
He's there. I got to take them for what he
is and at that moment, and every time I keep
watching this video, I am reminded that my governor lied
to me, and he lied to me to my face
in front of cameras. So you know, down the line,
if he wants to say he didn't lie, I think
we have the evidence to the points to the contrary.
After the viral moment, I did exchange information with the
(08:29):
Governor's office, and I've read some reports that the governor's
office has assisted me in some ways, and I can
guarantee you that I've gotten zero assistance from the governor's office.
I have requested that the governor include me in any
communications or interactions with the President. That's never happened. I
don't believe him. So I was asking for somebody who
(08:51):
has some credibility to be present when he's having these
conversations with the White House. I'm a mom. I want
to know. I've got There's so many of us out
there that are wondering what the heck we're going to
do with our kids. We are they going to go
to school? Are they going to go to school? Every
single school in our in our town burned down, And
when the governor is looking at me, telling me he
has four kids, and that somehow that is that is
(09:14):
the reason I'm supposed to believe him that he feels
for me with while he's wearing aviator sunglasses and I
can't even see his eyes. I wonder if he would
be different if his house had burned down. I wonder
if it really takes, you know, personal personal loss to
be able to commiserate with someone or at least be
(09:39):
able to show your your concern, because I didn't get
any of that from him, And now here we are,
what week a week later, almost, and the clip may
be viral, but there's nothing. There's nothing that's come out
of it for me as far as what kind of
answers I'm able to get. The most recent communicat I
(10:00):
had with the Governor's office included me requesting that I
be present when the President elect visits, because I believe
the governor had extended an invitation to him. And my
response was the response that I got was that they
don't even know if he's coming. So I have a
couple of responses, but all I've gotten really are copy
(10:22):
and paste you know, would you like to go to
this shelter? Sort of offers from them every time I
watch the video clip, it reminds me of, you know,
the difference between being a man and a woman in
this society. I I don't know if the governor would
have lied to a man to his face. Would he
(10:44):
have Is that something he might have done? I don't know.
I felt very vulnerable at that moment. Here I am
standing in front of my children's preschool and this man
is looking at a mother and lying to her. Still
sits with me. I also did request the governor contact
me personally. That's never happened to date. There are a
(11:17):
lot of misconceptions about Pacific Palisades, but I'd like to
share something really dear to me. When I was about
ten years old, there was something in the Pacific Palisades
that we'd do every October Halloween ish, and it's called
Moonlight Madness. And they would shut down the streets that
were around the village in the Palisades, which is currently
the Cruso built Village, and all the stores would be
(11:40):
open and we would be the streets would close, stores
would open late till ten PM, and we'd walk around
and there was this beautiful shirt that one of the
stores sold that I bought as a ten year old
and it said, if you're rich, you live in Beverly Hills.
If you're famous, you live in Malibu. But if you're lucky,
(12:01):
you live in Pacific Palisades. And we had been so
lucky for so long. We will continue to be lucky.
There is a misconception that everybody in Pacific Palisades is rich.
You don't know the struggles that I'm listening to that
I'm personally going through in order to know what our
next move is a lot of people in Pacific Palisades
(12:26):
were dropped by their insurance company just prior to this incident.
We have a letter that is informing us that we
will be dropped as of March. So where does that
put us at the moment? Ensured? But as of March,
(12:48):
obviously we will join the ranks of the others that
have to go towards the California Fair Plan for additional coverage.
What's the goal for me and my neighbors. We need
to come back and we need to come back strong.
We have a future in this city. We built it
(13:11):
and we can build it again. We just need the
government to do the right thing. I think one of
the things I've whittled down at this point is is
that I'm not interested in necessarily name calling as much
as I want to. But what we know is that
there are two people that are sort of irrelevant to
(13:34):
the solution. And when you have a governor who is
making deals with electric companies that cause fires in order
to help them out of bankruptcy so that they don't
pay they're victims. It scares me. It scares me to
(13:54):
think what we're going to be getting, what we're entitled
to to be able to recover from this, because this
is going to break a lot of people. So don't
get it in your head that we're sitting here able
to get through this with any sort of ease. That's
not the case. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican,
(14:16):
and I hope that in any disaster situation, people can
consider themselves human beings before they can consider themselves member
of any party. Democrats are helping Republicans, Republicans are helping Democrats.
That's the reality of this situations. It's the beauty of it,
(14:36):
and I hope that this is a lesson for the future.
Karen Bass promised us that she would not be taking
international trips that was a promise that she made, an
election promise, startening to know that she violated that with
a trip to Africa in the midst of her burning down.
(15:01):
So it was West Africa versus West Los Angeles. And
I don't know what part of how quickly she made
it back was supposed to make me feel better when
this was a storm brewing that she knew about well
before she left. We have questions here about LEDWP. We
(15:21):
have questions here about Karen Bass personally, personally, whether she
has liability or not. Obviously we know about immunity that
she would be that she would be protected from. But
these decisions that were made were the were the reasons
why this fire was not controlled in the way that
it could have been. When you have fire hydrants that
(15:44):
are empty, when you have aqueducts that are empty, and
when these have been empty for long enough where somebody
should have known better, what can you do other than
sit and write it out. I guess and and hope
that and hope that these poor firefighters can fight fire
(16:06):
without water. That's what we did. We watched television all night,
hoping and praying that somehow the miracle of no water
would would solve this fire. We deserve better. Guys, deserve
(16:27):
so much better than to know that you're your mayor
left town knowing that the major aqueduct was empty, knowing
that the water pressure in these hydrants would be affected,
and not and knowing this for a long time, knowing
that her budgetary cuts would have affected the manpower that
(16:49):
we need to fight these kind of fires. We've called
these the Polisades Fire and the Eaten Fire, and we've
labeled them by the communities that they've been that they've
start it in. I submit to you that we need
to give the governor and the mayor the legacies that
they deserve. Why don't we name them after them? These
(17:12):
major catastrophic events deserve the legacy of the Newsome name
and the basqu name, so that Californians and Los Angeleans
don't make the same mistakes again. We need to turn
the state around. And it doesn't mean voting for a
different party. It doesn't mean voting for a different anything.
It means voting for a different person. And we need
(17:34):
better options. I think a lot of people think their
civics duties and when they graduate from high school or
after sixth grade or whenever it is they teach au civis.
I don't even remember, to be honest, but I think
we need to realize that you've got to pay attention,
and if you don't, and if you fall asleep, these
(17:55):
are the kinds of things that seem to happen to us.
So me, you, all of us, let's not make the
same mistakes twice, because we can do better and we
can hopefully get rid of irrelevant people that are not
helping us move forward. One of the things I will
never forget is when I read that Shannon Doherty had
(18:17):
said when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I
remember her saying that she would wake up some days
and say why me? And then some days she would
wake up and say why not me? Wow? Can you
say that? It takes a lot. It takes a lot
(18:41):
for someone to be able to say something like that,
And it's an honor to be able to speak to
you on a platform where somebody would be able to
self sacrifice like that, Why not me? I became a
(19:06):
mother a little bit later in life than maybe I
was supposed to, But when I did, it woke up
something and meet it. I'd never even k you existed,
and now my biggest concern is where does my daughter
go from here? We all know children are the future,
(19:26):
and if we mess up this generation, I don't think
we're going to have an earth anymore with their I
don't know how much planet there's going to be left
to burn by mismanagement and incompetence. So my concern is
that my daughter stay in school. I'm concerned that she
interacts with her friends. I'm concerned that she's not worried
(19:48):
about why a house or why a house may burn down,
or why the aqueducts aren't full, or why the fire
hydrants weren't able to get enough water to help her
friends home not burned down. I have to tell her
why we can't play at Brennan's house. I have to
tell her why we can't go to Amalia's house. I
(20:11):
have to tell her why we can't go to Charlotte's house.
And I don't want to have to tell that to
any three year old, that we can't go to your
friend's house because it burned down, and we can't go
to our house because it almost burned down. We can't
go to our house because it's dangerous and toxic to Gobert.
We'll make it work. Adults will make it work. We'll
find a place to sleep, We'll do all that. But
(20:34):
I got to find a life again for my child
who is now displaced. And my child can now say
that she is a victim of the homeless policies, the
holistic homeless policies of the Mayor of Los Angeles. I
want to thank iHeartRadio for inviting me here. I want
to thank the legacy that Shannon Doherty has left. I
(20:56):
want everyone to sometimes in their lives, ask that question
that she did. Sometimes you ask why me, and then
sometimes you ask why not me? And that will ground you.
If you want to help those who have lost everything,
there are many ways to do that. You can go
to Dreamcenter dot org, the California Fire Foundation, and the
(21:18):
Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, just to name a few.
Please stay safe and thank you.
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