Watching LA & DC ignite, with a spritzer from a Bishop
- Karen Ocamb
- Jan 23
- 3 min read
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - One thing after another. Fires have erupted again in LA County. Folks are now rushing to evacuate schools, homes, ranches and animal rescue areas in and around Castaic Lake area. I watched it live on KTLA as a thin fire line raced up a mountaintop ridge then caught wind, swirled upward and started spinning out wider and wider and darker and darker until even I could feel the new sense of urgency from the frontline women reporters on the ground.
The winds are fickle around us here in WeHo. But luckily, everyone is being very vigilant – structural fires in Hollywood and mid-Wilshire have been quickly knocked down and individuals are stepping up, including eyewitnesses reporting a suspicious man near a small brush fire at Griffith Park during a red flag warning. Unfortunately, those evacuated and devastated by the fires are continuing to be traumatized by gawkers, greedy landlords demanding jacked up rent on uninhabitable units amid a dire lack of apartments and housing, as well as insurance scams and price-gauging on everything.
Meanwhile, Trump is coming to town on Friday to probably tell us that the fires are our own fault, not the fire tornados and ember-casts spread by extreme 60-100 MPH winds. The focus will be on Trump and Gov. Newsom but the real comparison is between Trump and the weeks of proactive leadership by WOMEN – especially Supervisors Horvath and Barger and union-backed, out lesbian LA County Fire Chief Kristin Crowley.
I wish I was among them. But I’ve been very sick with a cold, at times burning up with fever. I’ve been sleeping in my clothes in case my cell phone fire alerts turn into instant evacuation notices – though, like our evacuation during the Sunset/Runyon Canyon fire, I will have to depend on the kindness of my neighbors.
Which leads me to the original purpose of this post. I thought a lot on Election Day about my late friend Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Freedom Rider, civil rights activist and author of “Are You running with me, Jesus?” He would have been so proud of Episcopal bishop Rev. Mariann Budde, who gently and courageously beseeched Donald Trump during the national prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday to “have mercy” on scared LGBTQ+ people and immigrants.
Per AP: “Referencing Trump’s belief that he was saved by God from assassination, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde said, ‘You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.’…
“In her sermon, Budde said they gathered ‘to pray for unity as a people and a nation — not for agreement, political or otherwise — but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division.’ She added, ‘Unity is not partisan.’….
“Her sermon directed at Trump on Tuesday provoked a lively reaction on social media,” AP continued. “Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of Pope Francis, wrote on X that the bishop ‘named the truth’ when she spoke to Trump and Vance. ‘Their expressions of fury and discomfort suggest she nailed it,’ Ivereigh said.”
Whiny convict Donald Trump is demanding an apology. But maybe this illustrates his need for national intelligence. Budde has blamed Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 violence at the US Capitol in 2021 and said she was “outraged” in 2020 after Trump’s use of police to clear peaceful protesters so he could stage a photo-op holding an upside-down Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.
“In no way do we support the President’s incendiary response to a wounded, grieving nation,” Budde said at the time. “In faithfulness to our Savior who lived a life of non-violence and sacrificial love, we align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd.”
Today, I’m keenly aware of how quickly an ember can spark a wildfire in nature and in politics. As I watch Angelinos use thin hoses to protect their homes and others flee under mandatory evacuation, I’m also imagining freedom fighters Malcolm Boyd and Mariann Budde as first responders running with Jesus toward Trump’s harsh winds threatening our humanity. I hope to join them soon.
Karen Ocamb is the former news editor of the Los Angeles Blade. She is an award-winning journalist who, upon graduating from Skidmore College, started her professional career at CBS News in New York.
Ocamb started in LGBTQ media in the late 1980s after more than 100 friends died from AIDS. She covered the spectrum of the LGBTQ movement for equality until June 2020, including pressing for LGBTQ data collection during the COVID pandemic.
She lives in West Hollywood, California with her rescue dog..
