Surviving the Apocalypse: Black World-Remaking in a New Era
At English Hudson, we believe storytelling is not only a tool for impact but also a means of reflection, resistance, and connection.
Holding firm in our belief that creating space for authentic voices and lived experiences is essential—especially in moments that demand collective reckoning, healing, and action—we’re honored to share the personal reflections of an EH staff member on recent sociopolitical events shaping our world and the communities we care deeply about.
Surviving the Apocalypse:
Black World-Remaking in a New Era
Executive Order 14159. Protecting the American People Against Invasion.
“Entire neighborhoods in the [Altadena] town…have become deserts of ash.”
– apocalypse, a destructive event on a catastrophic scale
What does it mean to be Black and alive in a world that refuses your living? Do we cower in fear at the possibility of a premature death? Do we let the rage of injustice consume us until we’re socially dead, rummaging the world with stolen dreams, broken hearts, and lost visions for the future? How do we resist the relentless, challenge the corrupt, and dispute dictatorial authority while centering Black humanity? As we grapple with the questions of survival, resistance, and the struggle for justice, we are confronted with another truth. The world we live in, particularly for Black people, is ostensibly undergoing a form of apocalypse.
An apocalypse is defined as “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale,” and our contemporary moment captures both the scenographic and tangible destruction of the world as many Black people know it. On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion, granting “The Secretary of Homeland Security, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to… [ensure] the successful enforcement of final orders of removal” in the purported interest of public safety and national security. At a cursory glance, this order reads as a patriotic codification of “protection” for the American people; however, further examination of this ordinance highlights its xenophobic and damaging effect on our community.
Shortly after the president signed this order, ICE agents infiltrated communities to question and detain suspected undocumented people and children, creating a harrowing atmosphere like an impending apocalypse. Public schools in the local area and across the country braced themselves for the possibility of student detainment and deportation. NBC reported low attendance across public schools, with many families fearing for their children’s safety, creating yet another apocalyptic environment plagued by fear and absent children (who represent the future). Moreover, Black immigrants, who are more likely to be detained and face harsher punishment by ICE, were typically omitted from leading immigration narratives and discourses, underscoring the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness even during catastrophic times. Ultimately, this order amplifies this country’s xenophobia while simultaneously reinforcing harmful narratives about who “does not belong,” where Black people are paradoxically at the center of this xenophobia but their experiences are hidden from this purview.
A home destroyed by the Eaton fire in Pasadena, California.
The catastrophic events unfolding for Black people at this moment surpass executive orders and manifest in more literal ways. The LA wildfires have brought much devastation to southern California, affecting areas including Los Angeles, the Palisades, Eaton, Santa Ana, and Altadena. Altadena was home to approximately 42,000 residents, with 18% of Black people representing the local population. The large number of Black residents in the area was the result of historical practices of redlining, housing discrimination, and white flight that occurred during the 1930s- 1960s. Since then, Black people have transformed their community into a wealthy, safe haven for future generations–that is, until the LA fires swept through and decimated much of the community to literal ashes. Black survivors who have been living in the area for decades returned to their community to find their homes reduced to rubble, ashes, and stolen dreams. Images of Black families in anguish quickly circulated social media: displaced elders crying, parents mourning the passing of their children in the fires, bodies buried under broken wood, survivors standing in front of piles of rubbish, once their homes. The literal destruction of the fires and the imagery of its aftermath haunt the survivors, the larger California community, and the nation, emphasizing the emotional and spiritual traversal of the apocalyptic atmosphere. These fires quite literally left many Black residents rummaging through the debris with stolen dreams, broken hearts, and lost visions for the future.
And yet, we still manage to live. But how?
Popular culture has long been an interstice for Black people to creatively resist an oppressive system and organize the community for collective power-building. Black popular culture, in particular, is a site where cultural innovators contend with the current apocalyptic world while envisioning and creating a future where Black people are free from such attacks. Two major Black pop culture–driven power-building moments that directly challenge the threats posed by Executive Order 14159 and the burning of Altadena include Beyoncé’s 2025 Grammy win—followed by her philanthropic support for LA fire relief—and the wave of community organizing led by Black cultural figures and organizations in the wake of the fires.
Beyoncé speaks after winning the Album of the Year award at the Grammys, for “Cowboy Carter.”
On February 2, 2025, for the first time, Beyoncé won Grammys for Best Country Album and Album of the Year for her 2024 country album, Cowboy Carter. While the superstar’s historic wins appear to be merely a celebration of her genre-defying album and artistry, this moment represented a celebration and centering of Blackness within a genre that has been co-opted to exclude Black country artists and the Black country lived experience from the mainstream. The pushback against and exclusion of Beyoncé and other Black country artists from the genre’s mainstream represent a violent usurpation of southern Black American lived experiences from the soundscapes that have helped define this country. Her Grammy wins are a reclamation of our music and sounds, and it is a direct refusal of narratives that tell us “we do not belong” and “you are not American”---sentiments reverberated by Executive Order 14159.
Moreover, Beyonce's subsequent philanthropic efforts affirm the Black country experience in the face of exclusion and erasure. Following her album’s release, and in addition to her $2.5 million LA Fired Relief Fund, Beyoncé’s BeyGood Black Equestrian program donated $500,000 to the Bill Picket Invitational Rodeo, an organization that celebrates and honors Black cowboys, cowgirls, and their contributions to building the American West. Her donation not only signified a tangible investment in the community but also amplified Black country and equestrian history—symbolizing the continued survival of Black narratives and cultural memory in the face of weaponized anti-Blackness in an apocalyptic world that seeks to exist without us. Beyoncé’s philanthropic investment is also part of a larger legacy of giving, arriving during Black Philanthropy Month—a month that celebrates Black philanthropic giving and its transformative impact on our communities.
As author Christal Cherry notes in Greater Public, “the survival of Black people continues to depend on collective efforts of individuals, families, and communities to cover and support one another.” This spirit of collective care and mutual support was demonstrated by the philanthropic efforts of prominent Black organizations and pop cultural figures in the wake of the LA Fires. The Black Music Coalition launched the Restore and Rebuild LA fund to help residents and small Black businesses rebuild after the fires. Similarly, It’s Bigger Than US LA organized community efforts to collect donations of money, clothing, and hygiene products for families in need. Pop cultural phenoms like Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry also contributed by donating clothing to the local area, encouraging other Southern California residents to follow suit. Additionally, Duchess Meghan Markle, a Los Angeles native, visited Pasenda to distribute food and water to survivors and first responders, further demonstrating a collective commitment to supporting this community.
Team members from L.A. nonprofit It’s Bigger Than Us, at their Back 2 School Festival 2023 fundraising event.
These collective community-level power-building efforts for people impacted by the LA fires not only reflect a deep love for community and the transformative power of philanthropy; they also reveal a look toward a future where life can “begin again in the morning” after the world ends, as Nayyirah Waheed once said. After all, what is an apocalypse but the destruction of a world—and the creation of new ways of living?