Guild Members Step up for Wildfire Relief

In the early days of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles, WGAW member Aadrita Mukerji found herself riveted by a local news account of a union carpenter who had suffered devastating losses, but turned the attention away from himself.

The man had come to a donation site, but when he realized that the facility needed volunteers, he called his own union, the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, who dispatched a group of union members to help. The incident sparked an idea with Mukerji whose personal mantra “Don’t panic, organize!” has always served her well.

“I realized it doesn’t have to just be me going out there and volunteering,” said Mukerji, whose recent credits as a writer and co-EP include The Irrational and Quantum Leap. “There are writers that we can also mobilize as a group to go out there and help the community.”

Mukerji set to work researching organizations that needed volunteers. She then reached out to a group of writer friends who she knew through the Think Tank for Inclusion and Equity (TTIE), and sent out a Doodle poll inviting everyone to assemble to volunteer as a group. About seven people from the group joined Mukerji and started visiting donation centers around the city including the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA, the Dream Center and the Koreatown YMCA. The size of the group ranged from 70 to 10 depending on who was available with people bringing friends or partners. 

[L-R] WGAW Board member Danny Tolli, TTIE Program Director Maha Chehlaoui, WGAW members Marilyn Thomas, Leah Folta, Aadrita Mukerji, Tim Herrold, and Geetika Lizardi gather to help those affected by the wildfires.

At the various centers, they performed such functions as sorting donations, assembling baby care packages and driving supplies to other centers as needed. “We have no qualifications,” Mukerji said laughing. “A lot of these places just needed hands. They’re looking for people who are willing to put in a few hours to help them sort donations or load things into a car.”

Boots on the Ground

Among the regulars who joined the rotation of volunteers was WGAW Board member Danny Tolli who also knew many people who had been impacted by the fires and felt a desire to help in any way he could.

“This circle of friends…we were like, we feel so powerless,” Tolli said. “The industry is at a standstill right now. We can’t be sitting at our computers right now working and writing. It felt like we needed to be doing something, helping people who have been affected by the fires.”

Tolli noted the Guild’s response included WGAW Board members and leadership donating to the wildfire relief fund and conducting outreach, resulting in more than $1.5 million in pledged donations specifically targeted for affected writers.

Tolli also wanted to take an active role and learned—through Mukerji’s research—that donation centers needed hands. The outpouring of support and donations in the immediate days following the fires was so overwhelming that many of the centers lacked manpower to sort through donations and get them to people who need them. During one of the group volunteer efforts, Tolli stuffed his 2-door Toyota Scion with toiletries, diapers, and baby supplies which he drove to a donation center at Pasadena City College.

“There’s a whole big important process that goes into making sure those donations get into the hands of people who have a need,” Tolli said. “There are some organizations that have the infrastructure and the system in place to be able to do that seamlessly, but places like the Y or other community food banks did not have the resources or the people power to do that. So that’s why the work that we’ve been doing—even though it’s just a couple hours a week—feels good to us.”

The Food Captain

WGAW member Gregory Locklear. Photo by Matt Lipps.

Gregory Locklear is another WGAW member who is continuously in search of opportunities to give back to the community. Drawing on his experience in restaurant work and food preparation which he did between writing gigs, Locklear has volunteered with Project Angel Food and the Brown Bag Lady Jacqueline Norvell whose nonprofit provides meals and showers to the homeless on Skid Row.

Although not personally displaced, Locklear (whose credits include Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy and Dr. Death), could see the fires from his living room window and knew he needed to do something. “Many of our friends lost their entire communities—their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods—and we were all feeling so sad about that and just motivated to dive in and help,” Locklear said.

“Because we had this experience with Brown Bag Lady, we already sort of had our crew together.”

Locklear activated his network and organized a series of lunch-packing sessions out of his home. About 10 people packed 100 lunch kits per day that they distributed to firefighters, volunteers, and workers at relief organizations like the LA Care Center and the Pasadena Humane Society.

“I was kind of a captain and then I called on my community to help me pack, and assemble all the stuff,” said Locklear. “So we had like little cells of people packing lunches. We went to all the big organizations, the firefighters who were responders and the volunteers who were just helping other people out.”

Locklear understands the feeling of wanting to help during a time of crisis, but not knowing how to take meaningful action. In his case, the course of action was clear.

[L-R] Emily Marchand, Beatriz Rodriguez, Sam Widaman, Natalie Hon, Andrew Sexton, Astrelle Johnquest, Tom Kolsrud make lunches for firefighters and wildfire volunteers. Photo by Sarah Mackenzie-Smith.

“We found our lane. We used what worked,” he said. “I have friends who are volunteering who had lost everything, but they were like, ‘This is what I need to do right now. I need to focus on something other than the fact that I just lost everything. I need to help.’”

As a regular volunteer both with Mukerji’s donation center sorters and Locklear’s lunch preparation team, Tolli referenced the community of writers that was established on the picket lines during the 2023 WGA strike. A lot coordinator at Netflix, Tolli came to know Locklear when the two shared the Netflix line.

“We sort of work in the same drama writing space and we’ve been friendly,” he said of Locklear. “To see someone who is an activist and is passionate about helping people, he gravitates toward people and people gravitate to him. I was one of those lucky few.”

Writers Helping Writers

The Guild has created a Wildfire Resources page, which is updated regularly. In addition, through an initiative run by the Member Organizing Department, volunteer captains and members have collected and matched donations—clothing, toys, grocery/retail gift cards, car seats, and toiletries—for members who have lost their homes or had to evacuate. In one instance, a captain sourced a laptop for a fellow member who had lost theirs in the fires.

In explaining her interest in joining that initiative, WGAW captain Rachel Hastings said the decision to join that initiative was easy.

“I wanted to help out because that's what we do when times are tough, as members of the writing community and as neighbors in Los Angeles,” Hastings said. “We are each other’s support system in so many different ways, and even if our individual actions can feel small, together they make a big difference."

For anyone who would like to donate gift cards for members who need support, please contact Wildfires.