Natural disasters and public health epidemics like COVID have a tendency to expose the flaws within our systems by revealing who has protection and who is left to fend for themselves — the fires raging across Los Angeles are no different.

Those with wealth and power in L.A can afford to hire private fire fighters to defend their real estate while everyday people continue to risk their lives by extinguishing flames crawling up and down their homes with only their garden hoses.

Those with wealth can afford to rebuild their homes and relocate, while many of the working-class, Black, Latino, and elderly/retired folks had their fire insurance policies removed by their insurance companies, so they have nowhere to go.

Many victims of these fires have already received offers from gutless real estate developers eager to buy up their land and gentrify their neighborhood.

There’s also L.A’s deployment of almost 1,000 incarcerated youth firefighters who get paid only 5 to 10 dollars per day with no breaks or food, exposing yet another layer of inequality and modern day slavery in America.

It’s been a week since the Los Angeles fires started, but only a fraction of the fires have been contained, and over 38-thousand acres have already been scorched.

Forest fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes may not discriminate against their victims, but the people who exploit victims of natural disasters and weaponize tragedies for profit certainly do.

Stories On My Radar

1. Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s (Expected) Right Wing Shift

Back in 2022 when Mark Zuckerberg started appearing at live UFC events, I knew he was A.) flirting with rebranding his image and B.) cozying up to UFC President Dana White.

As a brand strategist and founder of my own creative communications agency, I can smell when a CEO rebrand is coming a mile away.

Most people caught on when Zuck started showing up to interviews and media events wearing chain necklaces and hanging outs with UFC fighters. Although many started to grow warm towards Mark, a healthy dose of people grew skeptical of his long-game.

Now that Trump won re-election, it’s clear as day what’s going on:

Mark Zuckerberg needed to bulletproof his brand image by associating with “masculine” brands like the UFC in order to shrug off the illicit business practices of Meta/Facebook similar to the way Elon Musk weaponizes memes and bro culture to side-step sexual misconduct allegations and a hard shift to the far right on Twitter/X.

Now we are starting to see the extension of this personal branding shift to the right after Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to Meta’s content moderation policies, ending their fact-checking program in favor of “community notes” similar to X, including a desire to restore “masculinity” in the workplace — whatever the fuck that means (most likely another shield to protect himself from allegations, or as some predicted: divorce incoming.)

These changes will have a massive impact on Meta platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, so keep an eye on this newsletter as keep you updated!

2. Elon Musk Is Redpilling Global Politics

Elon Musk is the richest man on the planet who owns companies designed to dominate and profit from our streets (Tesla), our smartphones (Twitter/X), the land underneath our cities (Boring Company), in space (Space X, Starlink), and in our brains (Neuralink).

After spending $200 million to help re-elect Donald Trump in 2024, Elon has taken his political “win” and cemented himself as not only the richest man, but the most powerful — and he consistently weaponizes that power to tweet and retweet content that he knows will amplify xenophobia, racism, and support for colonization.

His constant sharing of migrant rapists and killers is just the first layer of Elon’s 8-layer fascist bean dip of content. We’re not even talking about his racist crusade against Diversity, Equity, an Inclusion programs (DEI), the blatantly white supremacist ads that he approves on Twitter, or the overwhelming presence of pro-Trump and “America, fuck-yeah” sponsored posts that litter the feed.

Musk is also spreading his fascist anti-regulation agenda up north by supporting the Conservative Party Leader of Canada, Pierre Poilievre. Across the pond, Elon is also focused on European politics, endorsing anti-immigrant far-right parties like Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD)

The petty side of me senses an inevitable collision course between the egos of Trump and Musk. But I also get the sense that we’re just witnessing a shift as global billionaires and political monsters set aside their wealthy differences as they collectively rally behind Trump’s win as an overall win for deregulation and unchecked capitalism.

No matter what happens, I got a bad feeling that it’ll only gets worse from here.

3. A Tale of Two Fires: Connecting the Dots Between Palestine and L.A

When footage of the ashes in Los Angeles first hit my newsfeed, the first thing I thought of when I saw those incinerated neighborhoods was, “this looks like Gaza.”

Obviously, it’s not even a fair comparison because 1.) the fires in Gaza are man-made, government-sanctioned, and American funded while the fires in L.A (though some were started by arsonists) were natural and 2.) there are no torn bodies, babies buried under rubble, nor military tanks in the background.

Comparisons aside, I find it fascinating how much our compassion towards hardships that “exist too far away to understand” shifts when we share a similar struggle.

No, a family that lost their home in the L.A fires can’t truly comprehend the evil of living in occupied Gaza as it gets bombed by the Israeli military on a daily basis, but they can empathize with losing everything. Losing your home. Losing your history. Losing family members.

Contrary to what Capitalists tell you, you cannot escape the reality that we are all connected in deeply simple and complex ways.

Even if you can’t see the children in the Congo mining for precious materials that power our smartphones, we are connected.

Even if you can’t speak to the incarcerated people working slave-wage jobs to produce our everyday goods and services, we are connected.

The Biden administration spent $8 billion in resources to Israel while California residents have to suffer from the L.A fires because their city wanted to slash $18 million away from the L.A Fire Department so they could reinvest in the Police Department.

Whether it’s colonial bloodlust, greed, fascism, or hatred for Muslims, all of that right-wing trash deserves to be in the dumpster and we must always stand united against this wave of right wing fear.

Monday Meme Dumps

Wednesday Reel Roundup

BIPOC Creators You Should Follow

Meet Dr. Nïchelle M. Wall, a counselor, sex therapist, speaker, author, and Breast Cancer Survivor and the first creator I wanted to personally recommend for LLAG Bites Issue #1!

I met Dr. Wall in 2021 when she, Dr. Reshaunda Strickland, and Dr. LaFonya Jones-Hines joined my agency at LLAG Media to rebrand The RePsychled Podcast and develop their personal brands.

Over the years, Dr. Wall built a multi-platform brand with over 100k followers that you can access everywhere from Facebook and Tik Tok to Blue Sky and Red Note.

Dr. Wall does a fantastic job at analyzing and explaining relationships, intimacy and mental health in a way that’s both healthy and relevant to Black women and people of color. She uses pop culture to unpack these issues in a way that’s understandable and compassionate.

I couldn’t recommend following someone more than Dr. Wall, so please show some love and follow her anywhere and everywhere!

Stay Connected to LLAG

The larger LLAG community is massive, and there are multiple ways to engage with me, my agency, or the larger LLAG Fam. Here are a few options:

Follow my random posts and stories on Instagram.

Schedule a meeting with LLAG Media so we can help your brand develop its confidence.

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