The LA Wildfires Resource Guide

Words cannot describe the devastation our communities are experiencing as a result of the fires in Los Angeles County this week. Families are left homeless, schools, houses of worship and businesses are leveled and neighborhoods are burned to the ground. It is hard to fathom the depth of destruction and hardship that thousands of our fellow Angelenos are facing.

Many of us not directly impacted have felt helpless, unsure of what to do and how to help. We at AAPI Equity Alliance had some of the same feelings after the Monterey Park shooting, which impacted our Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities in big and small ways. Then and now, we offered a resource guide in multiple languages to aid our community members, many of whom are limited English proficient.

Sadly, local, state and federal governments continue to ignore the language needs of our communities and simply offer alerts and other pieces of critical information in English and Spanish only. We’re working diligently with a number of our member organizations to make translations available to our community. Our hope is that the resource guide will be circulated widely and will benefit those who need it. We also expect to add to it regularly as new information becomes available.

While we at AAPI Equity Alliance are not ourselves first responders, we are your colleagues, your neighbors and your friends. We care deeply and want to extend help and support wherever needed. We hope you will lean on us in this difficult time.

We want to live up to our name which is more critical now than ever before. We are working on behalf of our AAPI communities in Los Angeles, we strive for Equity for immigrant, low-income and vulnerable communities in all of our advocacy and we are, most importantly, an Alliance, standing together with all of you in good and bad times to make Southern California the best it can be. Together, we will rebuild and we will recover, stronger and more united than before.

Yours,
Manjusha P. Kulkarni
Executive Director