At the beginning of this year, the community of Altadena was one of several devastated by wildfires in California. Gina Clayton-Johnson, the founder of Essie Justice Group, lost her home and some irreplaceable family treasures. She shares her Brief But Spectacular take on putting the pieces back together.<\/p>\n
William Brangham:<\/p>\n
At the start of this year, the community of Altadena, California, was among those devastated by wildfire.<\/p>\n
Gina Clayton-Johnson is the founder of Essie Justice Group. And she lost her home and countless family treasures.<\/p>\n
In this Brief But Spectacular from earlier this year, she shares her reflections on loss, resilience, and rebuilding.<\/p>\n
Gina Clayton-Johnson, Founder and Executive Director, Essie Justice Group: I always felt like Altadena was my little secret, because whenever I would tell anyone where I was from, no one knew where I was talking about.<\/p>\n
Altadena was a place where traditionally a lot of Black folks could go and find that they could buy land because of redlining and other realities. My parents actually bought a home there in the early 1980s. It was a wonderful place to be from.<\/p>\n
The Altadena Eaton Fire burned down my home, my parents’ home, my kids’ school, and something like 9,500 structures or more in Altadena. And it’s devastating.<\/p>\n
The day that the fire started was a really windy day. We got a call from the school around 3:00 saying that the power had gone out and to come pick up the kids. At 11:00 p.m. that night, we drove away because we decided we wanted to be somewhere with power in the morning.<\/p>\n
We were not evacuated. We did not receive a warning, a text message, a call. So we went to our friend’s house, and then came the news that our house had burned down. I called my aunt and I said: “Is there any way that we can come stay with you?” She lives in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
During other hard moments of my life, my first phone call was my parents, but they had just lost their home. They’re in their 70s.<\/p>\n
I have always been curious about who I come from and why I’m where I am. Memory happens because it can attach itself to pictures and to things that we use to tell those stories.<\/p>\n
I had my great-grandmother’s plates. Her mother’s name was Cassie White (ph), and that sharecropping farm where my great-grandmother grew up, that was where Cassie White lived and worked her days. She liked to knit. And this was like her art. And I had them hanging with her picture on our wall. And that’s gone.<\/p>\n
To zoom out and to understand that this is a Black community with multiple generations of history, of artifact, the fact that that’s gone is something I’m still processing.<\/p>\n
My 5-year-old daughter said: “You know, Momma, I know how to not be sad. If you just think about something else for a little bit, you won’t be sad anymore.”<\/p>\n
My son, who is masterful at destroying everything, he said: “Momma, I’m going to fix our house.”<\/p>\n
It meant something. Askia (ph), my daughter, she wanted — for Christmas, she wanted this mermaid castle. So she was fully in love with this thing. She said: “Oh, my — the mermaid castle is burned. I know what I will do. Next year, I’m going to ask Santa for another one.”<\/p>\n
It’s stuff like that where I’m just like, OK, like, yes, let’s go. We can do this. We will ask Santa for another one.<\/p>\n
It’s harder in certain ways to do all of this with these little kids. But, in other ways, it’s such a gift, because they’re teaching us something. It’s burned, and also — there’s an end to that sentence that doesn’t have to feel — that can feel full of possibility.<\/p>\n
My name is Gina Clayton-Johnson, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on putting the pieces back together.<\/p>\n
William Brangham:<\/p>\n
You can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org\/NewsHour\/Brief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the beginning of this year, the community of Altadena was one of several devastated by wildfires in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-370465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}