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Black Altadenans seek hope and resilience in the wake of the LA wildfires
Margaret Larkin holds a piece of her Christmas decor outside of what remains of her home. Larkin lived on her block in Altadena, Calif. for 36 years.
Jireh Deng for NPR
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Jireh Deng for NPR
Two weeks after the Eaton Fire, hundreds were gathered at Robinson Park Recreation Center for Dena Love Day. There were food trucks giving away food, and a live DJ played as people danced and grieved. It was a bittersweet celebration for a community reeling in the wake of devastating wildfires.
They were marking a milestone: Pasadena had gone a year without a single gang-related death, according to the Pasadena Police Department.
“I never lost hope of my community. But today was just a new spark for me that God was just there,” LaToya Carr said. “I feel like I’m on a team and I won a championship.”
Carr, 49, is a community outreach coordinator with Pasadena’s Gang Outreach Violence and Interruption Services, established last year. The city’s northwest neighborhood was once a hotspot for gun violence and racial profiling.
Latoya Carr, right, hands out awards to Cedrick Jolley, left, and Andre Brown at Robinson Park Recreation Center at Dena Love Day on Jan. 19, 2025. Jolley and Brown were volunteers helping victims of the Eaton Fire.
Jireh Deng for NPR
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Jireh Deng for NPR
In the wake of the deadly fire, Carr witnessed her community rallying together after Black Altadenans were hit hard by the flames.
“I’ve seen you guys last week,” Carr said as she handed out trophies to people who volunteered at mutual aid sites passing out water and clothes to fire victims who lost their homes. “ Y’all was loving on each other, working together to make things happen for other people. And that’s a big deal.”
Dena Love Day brought together resources for residents: hairdressers offered braiding services next to FEMA employees helping people apply for disaster relief. It was a moment to breathe and reflect in a neighborhood that had faced so much adversity.
A history of redlining and discrimination
For years, redlining drove inequities in Altadena and Pasadena. Lake Avenue, which bifurcates the two into east and west, had historically been a de facto segregation line preventing families of color from purchasing properties east of Lake Avenue.
“ Steering was something that real estate agents did,” said Barbara Richardson King, 77, who earned her real estate license in 1985 when there were few other women of color in the profession.
Redlining had been outlawed for two decades, but home sellers still found creative excuses to redirect her interest. “ I’ve been kind of blocked out of showing property for one reason or another. ‘Oh the seller’s out of town and he doesn’t want any showings for the next week,’ ” said the third-generation Pasadenan.
Barbara Richardson King stands in her realtor’s office. She’s sold homes for three decades in Pasadena and Altadena.
Jireh Deng for NPR
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Jireh Deng for NPR
Still, Black Angelenos found a rare kind of prosperity in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley as Altadena became one of California’s first integrated middle-class neighborhoods. King’s uncle, M. Earl Grant, founded Family Savings & Loan in 1949, one of the first Black-owned financial institutions west of the Mississippi that offered mortgage loans to families of color, King said. There was a doctor’s row, a block of Black medical professionals, and lawyers and school principals. Jackie Robinson’s mother, Sidney Pointier and Octavia Butler all called Altadena home.
The Black population in Altadena was more than 40% in the 1980s, according to the Altadena Historical Society, but today it’s fallen to 18% as the neighborhood has become increasingly expensive. The average home is valued at more than $1 million.
About 75% of Black Altadena residents own their homes, higher than the national average of 44%. Residents had accumulated generational wealth through their homes, but thousands of those homes have turned to rubble. According to a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles, almost half of Black-owned homes were destroyed or heavily damaged in the Eaton Fire, the deadliest and most destructive of the Los Angeles wildfires.
How the fires exacerbated inequities
Several families on the west side of Altadena reported receiving delayed evacuation alerts, hours after their neighbors to the east. The west side is where all 17 deaths occurred in the Eaton Fire. Local and federal officials are investigating potential flaws in Los Angeles County’s emergency alert system.
Margaret Larkin, 66, had seen her fair share of fires and heavy Santa Ana winds in her decades of renting her cul-de-sac home on the west side of Altadena. That night on Jan. 7, she could see the fiery glow of Eaton Canyon in the distance.
“ I kept saying, ‘The fire will never come down. It has to hit so many houses first before it gets to us,’” Larkin said. But the winds were picking up and throwing flaming embers at speeds up to 100 miles per hour.
“ My phone didn’t have service. We didn’t have electricity,” said Larkin, who said she didn’t receive an evacuation notice to leave. When she and her daughter finally left at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, it was chaos.
“ Every street you turn on, there was fire or there was a tree fell over. It was pitch dark,” Larkin said. She said there was so much smoke, their car headlights did little to illuminate the road ahead and all she could hear was the sound of the wind like a train horn and the cracking of falling debris as her entire block was burning.
They escaped unscathed, but when she returned to inspect the damage two weeks later with her family, there was nothing left where the flames had leveled her home.
Veronica Jones, the first Black president of the Altadena Historical Society, said these issues are symptomatic of the underinvestment west of Lake Avenue.
“ You just wonder why there aren’t a lot of trees on the west side,” Jones said. The 71-year-old is a former member of the Altadena Town Council who has pushed to increase funding for their local parks and libraries.
Veronica Jones, the Altadena Historical Society’s first Black president, stands in front of a lot full of burned cars on Jan. 21, 2025. The Eaton Fire came just a block away from her home in west Altadena.
Jireh Deng
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Jireh Deng
Throughout her daily three-mile strolls of west Altadena, the prevalence of liquor stores has been a continual eyesore for her.
The daunting prospect of rebuilding
A big question looming on the minds of Black residents is whether they have a future in Altadena.
“We didn’t just lose our house, we lost our community,” said Aldra Allison, a housing specialist who works with the City of Pasadena. Allison, 68, and her husband Herman had rushed so fast out of the house they hadn’t been able to rescue their children’s photos from the mantle of their fireplace. “I’ve cried so much that I can’t cry anymore … that chapter in my life was gone.”
Allison, an affordable housing specialist with the City of Pasadena, taught genealogy classes on Black families at the Alkebu-lan Cultural Center, helping compile a book about Black pioneers in Pasadena. Allison worries about the future of Black homeownership. More than half of Black homeowners in Altadena are over the age of 65. She expects many might face challenges to rebuilding.
Aldra Allison holds letters that her children wrote to her, some of the only keepsakes she was able to salvage in the Eaton Fire that ravaged her Altadena home. The Eaton Fire was the deadliest and most destructive of the Los Angeles wildfires. She and her husband are staying in an apartment in Monrovia, Calif.
Jireh Deng for NPR
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Jireh Deng for NPR
Many of the seniors in Allison’s caseload were on fixed incomes and being pushed out of Pasadena because of the skyrocketing rents. The Eaton Fire displaced thousands of families, making affordable housing even more scarce in the area.
“There are so many developers out there sending letters, misinformation to people saying ‘You can’t go back,’ or ‘You can’t afford to go back.’ [Residents don’t] realize that it’s really early in the game,” Allison said. Even if people’s homes burned down, they are still responsible for the mortgages. People need to not panic.”
Allison said she would hate to see older residents losing their generational wealth by selling to developers circling the carnage of the fires.
“You just have to be patient and seek help, because there’s help out there. There’s no doubt that I will one day rebuild my house,” Allison said.
L.A. County Board Supervisor Kathryn Barger has vowed to protect the mom-and-pop charm of this unincorporated town where people of color make up a majority of the population.
“Altadena is not for sale,” Barger said in a recent county board meeting. She also commended Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to lift permitting requirements to fast-track rebuilding in the wake of the L.A. fires.
“ I am convinced that if we can move the red tape, get rid of it, and allow people to return and begin the rebuilding effort … that is going to bring the community back,” Barger said.
This week she launched the Altadena Recovery Commission, a group that includes community members to aid and shape rebuilding efforts.
“The cost of housing is so expensive that it is pricing many young African American families out of the market, and they’re having to move away,” Barger said. She said she doesn’t want the Eaton fire to be the last chapter of Altadena’s historic Black community. “I want to make sure we don’t let that history go away and that we provide the opportunity to the next generation.”
A legacy of resilience and hope
This isn’t the first time Dena’s Black community has had to rebuild. In the 1950s and 60s, the expansion of the 210 and 710 freeways upended the lives of thousands of Black residents in Pasadena.
“This hurts because this was truly an act of nature,” said 73-year-old Marcus Williams, a recently ordained elder at Friendship Baptist Church in Pasadena. The church, with its Spanish-style white stucco steeple, stands at the heart of Old Town Pasadena — once a thriving Black commercial district that has since been supplanted by an upscale shopping district with stores like Apple and Anthropologie.
“ I am saddened. I’m frustrated. There’s no one to blame, no finger to point. This is a natural disaster. The freeway was not,” Williams said.
At Friendship Baptist Church, the congregation celebrated four elders who were ordained during a Sunday service on Feb. 2, 2025. The church was once a center of Black life in Old Town Pasadena. Church elders are hopeful the wave of displaced residents will be able to return.
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Jireh Deng for NPR
But many of those displaced persisted, becoming part of the wave of Black families who moved to the west side of Altadena in the 70s and 80s, shaping the town into a legacy for Black wealth.
“ We have suffered innumerous, immeasurable things that would have crushed a lesser people. But still, we are here and we are surviving. And we will come back,” promised Williams.
Local bookseller Nikki High, 50, has been drawing inspiration from the prescient work of Octavia Butler.
“ [Octavia Butler] had been studying global warming as early as the 80s,” High said, who opened Octavia’s Bookshelf two years ago in honor of the Afrofuturist writer. In Parable of the Sower published in 1993, Butler depicted an apocalyptic future through the perspective of a preacher’s daughter, Lauren Olamina. Olamina’s journal entry for Feb. 1, 2025 begins with, “We had a fire today.”
Nikki High transformed her bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf, into a mutual aid hub for Altadena residents affected by the Eaton Fire. High, on Jan. 21, 2025, poses in front of a Scrabble board with a message for developers.
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Jireh Deng for NPR
“It’s jarring to see how accurate, within weeks, she was of [predicting] these events,” High said. But she doesn’t see Butler as a prophet of doom. Parable of the Sower is a blueprint of hope. Lauren Olamina is rebuilding and she’s basing [her new] community [on] feeding each other and being accountable for one another.”
High’s home was narrowly spared by the flames that engulfed her entire block in Altadena. She focused on her community, transforming her bookstore into a mutual aid hub where people could pick up masks, burritos, toiletries and other basic necessities. On the ground, dozens of similar mutual aid sites popped up at stoplights, empty parking lots, and gas stations.
“Nobody’s coming to save us,” High said. “We have to embrace each other.”
Producer Janet Woojeong Lee contributed reporting.
new video loaded: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
transcript
transcript
Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense.
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This morning, we learned that an ICE officer shot and killed someone in Minneapolis. We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday, I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV. And today, that recklessness cost someone their life.
By Jiawei Wang
January 8, 2026
The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building on Feb. 28, 2022, at United Nations Headquarters.
John Minchillo/AP
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John Minchillo/AP
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will withdraw from dozens of international organizations, including the U.N.’s population agency and the U.N. treaty that establishes international climate negotiations, as the U.S. further retreats from global cooperation.
President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order suspending U.S. support for 66 organizations, agencies, and commissions, following his administration’s review of participation in and funding for all international organizations, including those affiliated with the United Nations, according to a White House release.
Most of the targets are U.N.-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labor, migration and other issues the Trump administration has categorized as catering to diversity and “woke” initiatives. Other non-U.N. organizations on the list include the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and Global Counterterrorism Forum.
“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Trump’s decision to withdraw from organizations that foster cooperation among nations to address global challenges comes as his administration has launched military efforts or issued threats that have rattled allies and adversaries alike, including capturing autocratic Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and indicating an intention to take over Greenland.
U.S. builds on pattern of exiting global agencies
The administration previously suspended support from agencies like the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO. It has taken a larger, a-la-carte approach to paying its dues to the world body, picking which operations and agencies it believes align with Trump’s agenda and those that no longer serve U.S. interests.
“I think what we’re seeing is the crystallization of the U.S. approach to multilateralism, which is ‘my way or the highway,’” said Daniel Forti, head of U.N. affairs at the International Crisis Group. “It’s a very clear vision of wanting international cooperation on Washington’s own terms.”
It has marked a major shift from how previous administrations — both Republican and Democratic — have dealt with the U.N., and it has forced the world body, already undergoing its own internal reckoning, to respond with a series of staffing and program cuts.
Many independent nongovernmental agencies — some that work with the United Nations — have cited many project closures because of the U.S. administration’s decision last year to slash foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
Despite the massive shift, the U.S. officials, including Trump himself, say they have seen the potential of the U.N. and want to instead focus taxpayer money on expanding American influence in many of the standard-setting U.N. initiatives where there is competition with China, like the International Telecommunications Union, the International Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization.
The latest global organizations the U.S. is departing
The withdrawal from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, is the latest effort by Trump and his allies to distance the U.S. from international organizations focused on climate and addressing climate change.
UNFCC, the 1992 agreement between 198 countries to financially support climate change activities in developing countries, is the underlying treaty for the landmark Paris climate agreement. Trump — who calls climate change a hoax — withdrew from that agreement soon after reclaiming the White House.
Gina McCarthy, former White House National Climate Adviser, said being the only country in the world not part of the treaty is “shortsighted, embarrassing, and a foolish decision.”
“This Administration is forfeiting our country’s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies, and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country,” McCarthy, who co-chairs America Is All In, a coalition of climate-concerned U.S. states and cities, said in a statement.
Mainstream scientists say climate change is behind increasing instances of deadly and costly extreme weather, including flooding, droughts, wildfires, intense rainfall events and dangerous heat.
The U.S. withdrawal could hinder global efforts to curb greenhouse gases because it “gives other nations the excuse to delay their own actions and commitments,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tracks countries’ carbon dioxide emissions.
It will also be difficult to achieve meaningful progress on climate change without cooperation from the U.S., one of the world’s largest emitters and economies, experts said.
The U.N. Population Fund, the agency providing sexual and reproductive health worldwide, has long been a lightning rod for Republican opposition, and Trump cut funding for it during his first term. He and other GOP officials have accused the agency of participating in “coercive abortion practices” in countries like China.
When President Biden took office in January 2021, he restored funding for the agency. A State Department review conducted the following year found no evidence to support GOP claims.
Other organizations and agencies that the U.S. will quit include the Carbon Free Energy Compact, the United Nations University, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.
Today’s top stories
President Trump continues to suggest that the U.S. will have a lengthy and active role in Venezuela after capturing the ousted president Nicolás Maduro. Trump has proposed several plans for Venezuela’s future government and economy. In those proposals, U.S. companies are expected to play a key role.
President Trump dances as he departs after speaking during a House Republican retreat at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Jan. 6, 2026, in Washington, DC. House Republicans will discuss their 2026 legislative agenda at the meeting.
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- 🎧 Trump and his aides are unclear about the future of Venezuela, NPR’s Franco Ordoñez tells Up First. When the president says the U.S. will run the country, many eyes are on Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy. Miller, known for his stringent immigration policies, is one of the U.S. officials overseeing Venezuela. Ordoñez also says Miller has more recently described ruling over the hemisphere by force.
- ➡️ Last night, Trump posted on social media that Venezuela will turn over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the U.S. While seizing current oil production is one thing, overhauling Venezuela’s oil industry requires a far greater effort. Here’s why.
While meeting with House Republicans yesterday, Trump attempted to offer his party a roadmap to victory in this year’s midterm elections. The president acknowledged the possibility of his party losing the majority in the House this year. Trump said in his speech that the president’s party often loses the midterms.
- 🎧 NPR’s Domenico Montanaro says that while it’s true the midterms are hard on the president’s party, it is even worse when a president’s approval rating is below 50%. Trump is facing his lowest second-term approval ratings, largely due to the rising cost of living. During yesterday’s speech, the president didn’t offer much on the topic. When he did discuss the economy, it was about how the stock market is at historic highs. He also touted his tariffs, which have actively raised prices on many things. People have informed pollsters for months that they believe the president’s policies have harmed the economy. Montanaro says one area where Trump and Republicans could take action is legislation on health care.
The Pentagon is preparing a six-month review to evaluate what it calls the military “effectiveness” of women serving in ground combat roles. Undersecretary Anthony Tata requested that the Army and Marine Corps submit data on the readiness, training, performance, casualties and command climate of ground combat units and personnel by Jan. 15. The effort aims to determine how gender integration has influenced operational success over the last decade.
Special series
Trump has tried to bury the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. NPR built a visual archive of the attack on the Capitol, showing exactly what happened through the lenses of the people who were there. “Chapter 3: Assault on the Capitol,” lays out the timeline of key moments throughout the day as the riot unfolded.
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Trump held a “Save America” rally at the Ellipse, a site near the White House and U.S. Capitol. Multiple speakers promoted voter fraud myths and urged Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election. Meanwhile, a group of 200 Proud Boys marched toward the Capitol. Before Trump’s speech ended, violence erupted on Capitol grounds. The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol “was the most videotaped crime in American history, if not world history,” according to Greg Rosen, a former federal prosecutor who led the Justice Department unit that investigated the riot. But conspiracy theories still falsely label the assault a “normal tourist visit.” NPR’s review of thousands of court videos shows rioters assaulting officers with weapons, calling for executions and looting the building. These videos show the exact timing of events as they occurred. Corresponding maps show the locations where the conflict took place.
To learn more, explore NPR’s database of federal criminal cases from Jan. 6. You can also see more of NPR’s reporting on the topic.
Picture show
The tin soldier, a marionette puppet made by Nicolas Coppola and the main character in “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” show at Puppetworks.
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Anh Nguyen for NPR
For more than 30 years, Puppetworks has staged classics like The Tortoise and the Hare, Pinocchio, Aladdin and more in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. Every weekend, children gather on foam mats and colored blocks to watch wooden renditions of the shows. The company’s founder and artistic director, 90-year-old Nicolas Coppola, has been a professional puppeteer since 1954. The theater has puppets of all types, including marionettes, swing, hand, and rod. They transport attendees back to the 1980s, when most of these puppets were made. Over the years, Coppola has updated the show’s repertoire to better meet the cultural moment. Step inside his world with these images.
3 things to know before you go
This tiny forest in Los Angeles, CA is one of many micro-forests around the world offering green space and contributing to local biodiversity.
Demian Willette/Loyola Marymount University
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Demian Willette/Loyola Marymount University
- Scientists are establishing micro-forests in big cities to boost biodiversity and rejuvenate compromised land. Short Wave producer Rachel Carlson visited California’s largest micro-forest. Tune in to hear her account of the experience.
- The Hungarian arthouse director Béla Tarr has died at 70. He’s best known for his bleak, existential, and challenging films, including Sátántangó.
- While we often associate serendipity with luck or happy accidents, its origin suggests it’s more than just happenstance. This week, NPR’s Word of the Week explores the historical impact of serendipity and offers tips on how to cultivate it.
This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.
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