By CAMILLE VON KAENEL, POLITICO
With help from Alex Nieves and Marisa Guerra Echeverria
WHAT’S AFTER FIRE: Joy Chen was organizing pickleball games in Altadena until the Eaton Fire turned her WhatsApp group into an emergency evacuation network and fire brigade.
In the months that followed, Chen and her neighbors founded the nonprofit Every Fire Survivor’s Network. Then, Chen became one of the most visible advocates for wildfire survivors in Sacramento after Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed overhauling wildfire liability rules for power companies like Southern California Edison last month.
Chen and her allies quickly labeled the governor’s plan a “bailout.” As more details came out, including Newsom’s proposal to limit some of the non-economic damages future wildfire survivors could recoup from power companies, they amped up their criticism, protesting outside the governor’s mansion, rallying at the Capitol and delivering hand-painted flyers to every lawmaker’s office.
Ultimately, the whole deal collapsed. Lawmakers introduced a scaled-back version (opens in new tab)of the plan, SB 492 (opens in new tab), that rejected the most contentious parts of Newsom’s plan. Then, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas decided not to let his chamber vote on the bill at all (opens in new tab), saying he wanted more time to negotiate a better deal.
Chen spoke with POLITICO about how she felt about the outcome, her personal journey into political advocacy, and what’s next.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Only a year and a half ago or so, you were organizing pickleball in Altadena, and now you’re leading this political advocacy organization. So, what’s changed for you in that process?
I see people call us an advocacy group, and I don’t think that’s an accurate description of us. We are a survivor community. As far as my personal journey, I never imagined that three and a half years ago, when I took over as admin of the pickleball WhatsApp at the Altadena Country Club, that it would lead to any of this. For two years, we’re just organizing games, having a little smack talk, and that was about it. When the fire happened, it became our emergency evacuation network. It became our emergency fire brigade. We saved lives, we saved homes that night. That’s crazy.
What started that night was a sense of care for one another, and as you see with this fight, it’s not just for us; it’s also for future fire survivors and a better California. At its core, our community, we work on three pillars. Number one is we connect survivors to one another and to trusted resources. Two is we grow survivor voice and agency, and that is important because we want to keep survivor voices and our recovery in the media, but also because research shows that when people have such extreme trauma and loss of agency, that when they’re given opportunities to advocate for themselves and their community, that that accelerates their emotional recovery.
And then the third pillar is that we focus on improving systems and unlocking the funds that families are owed and need to get back home. Number one is insurance, and number two is utility, when utilities are the cause of a fire.
Were you telling assemblymembers not to vote on the compromise bill, SB 492? How do you feel about the deal’s ultimate collapse this week?
No, we were neutral on it (opens in new tab). The biggest thing is, the bailout was killed, and that was a shocking victory for all Californians and for our elected officials. As far as the actual SB 492, it didn’t have a lot of things that we wanted. We would love to have seen a lot more on safety and accountability. We found some issues with the way the fast pay system was worded, and Jamie [Court, of Consumer Watchdog] and I were already talking about “Oh, we have to come back in January and co-sponsor some cleanup legislation.”
I do feel bad that there was a three-party agreement, that the Assembly had agreed to a deal and then said no to the deal in public. But that’s not really something for us. That’s an inter-house issue.
Consumer Watchdog and your organization signed on to joint letters with the insurance companies. How did you feel about that alliance, given your advocacy against insurance companies in the past?
Yes, and, well, continued advocacy against insurance companies. We just on Monday announced a historic lawsuit against State Farm in Los Angeles, where EFSN data powered the first time a local government has ever sued State Farm. And we fought like the dickens against them on our four insurance bills. It was a strange bedfellows coalition. I think a lot of people noticed that, but we want to go against bad policy, and in this case, that kind of put us in bed with some odd people, but that doesn’t mean we stay in bed. Let’s say it was a marriage of convenience. We’re not in a stable coalition with them forever.
You’re not the singular voice for wildfire survivors, but you have been so visible in Sacramento, and you’ve told me how lawmakers and staff reach out for your perspective. How do you carry that political mantle, and how do you handle the term “survivors” being used by people on all sides?
The governor’s proposal was like “survivors first,” and of course the utilities are co-opting [that] with the “Wildfire Victims First” front group, so everyone says they’re doing things for survivors, and that’s why we have to look under the hood and say, is this really for survivors? This governor’s bailout would have been the biggest attack on survivor rights in the history of our country in utility-cost fires. I don’t know what Rivas’ motivations were in killing it. I did see that he said it was in favor of survivors. But that’s why it’s so important to closely review the policy.
What’s next?
We’ve now collected over 2,700 first-hand accounts of insurance misconduct and insurance challenges from Eaton and Palisades fire survivors. That is a vast trove of data that is really unique. We’re going to probably spend some time this fall trying to understand the patterns and how we can solve it, and also thinking about utility accountability. For now, because Consumer Watchdog has just been such a great partner, I look forward to working with them on these issues. The legislative work that we’re doing most likely will be in partnership with them.
