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Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Violet Affleck reveals she and her mom, Jennifer Garner, had very different reactions to the Los Angeles wildfires
Violet Affleck has revealed something about her relationship with one of her famous parents as part of her college experience. The 19-year-old daughter of actors Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck is currently a freshman at Yale University. The younger Affleck recently published an academic research paper in the school's Global Health Review, titled 'A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles.' She began the paper by reflecting on an environmental disaster that she and Garner endured with many other Southern California residents, writing 'I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room.' 'She was shell-shocked, astonished at the scale of destruction in the neighborhood where she raised myself and my siblings,' Affleck wrote. 'I was surprised at her surprise: as a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of generation Z, my question had not been whether the Palisades would burn but when.' The Los Angeles wildfires at the beginning of the year resulted in the loss of thousands of homes and buildings, especially in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena areas. 'As I chatted with adults in the hotel where we'd gone to escape the smoke, though, I found my position to be an uncommon one: people spoke of how long rebuilding would take, how much it would cost, and how tragically odd the whole situation had been,' Affleck wrote. 'The crisis was acute, a burst of bad luck. It had come from a combination of high winds and low rains – what, my little brother asked, did global warming have to do with the speed of the wind?' she continued. 'Outside, people wandered, faces covered by N95s. 'This feels like COVID,' said one wild-eyed woman clutching two leashed Yorkies. 'We're all in masks.'' Affleck addressed air quality and health issues before. Last summer, the then 18-year-old spoke during the public comments portion of a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting and was seen making an impassioned plea in a video shared on X. 'I contracted a post-viral condition in 2019,' Affleck said at the meeting. 'I'm OK now, but I saw first-hand that medicine does not always have answers to the consequences of even minor viruses.' She went on to request 'mask availability, air filtration and far-UVC lights in government facilities, including jails and detention centers, and mask mandates in county medical facilities.' Affleck advocated for free testing and treatment opportunities, while adding 'most importantly the county must oppose mask bans for any reason.' 'They do not keep us safer, they make vulnerable members of our community less safe and make everyone less able to participate in Los Angeles together,' she concluded in her speech. Affleck is the eldest of three children of Garner and Ben Affleck, who married in 2005 and divorced in 2018. Their other children are Seraphina (who goes by Finn), 16 and Samuel, 13.
Buzz Feed
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Violet Affleck Recalls Arguing With Jennifer Garner
In the decade they were together, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner welcomed three children: Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel. With the exception of a few anecdotes every now and then, Ben and Jen are pretty private when it comes to their kids' lives. But now, with the trio all in their teens, we're beginning to learn more about their interests and aspirations. 'I'm okay now, but I saw first-hand that medicine does not always have answers to the consequences of even minor viruses,' the teen said at the time, calling for increased mask availability and more access to testing and medication. 'The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown that into sharper relief.' So, as part of her studies at Yale's Davenport College, Violet published an academic research paper in the university's Global Health Review on May 18. In the essay, titled 'A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles,' Violet recounts her personal experience living through the LA wildfires that caused devastation across the Pacific Palisades in January. She compares the similarities between the response to the wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing that she and her mom, Jennifer, found themselves at odds over their conflicting reactions to the blaze. 'I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room. She was shell-shocked, astonished at the scale of destruction in the neighborhood where she raised myself and my siblings,' Violet begins, recalling that she was 'surprised' by her mom's surprise. 'As a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of generation Z, my question had not been whether the Palisades would burn but when.' Violet also mentions her 13-year-old brother, Sam, who she says was equally confused by the fires. 'The crisis was acute, a burst of bad luck. It had come from a combination of high winds and low rains,' she writes. 'What, my little brother asked, did global warming have to do with the speed of the wind?... Hopefully, most of us understand the climate crisis better than my little brother – we know, for instance, that it's existential and accelerating, meaning the danger to places like LA will only increase as the planet heats.' The essay is lengthy, but it's definitely worth reading. She concludes by examining how we can avoid future public health crises. 'In the same way that COVID-conscious and disabled people celebrate each chain of transmission broken, climate scientists recognize that each degree of warming we avoid will be a victory,' Violet writes. 'It's time for everyone who cares about the latter to engage with the people, the methods, and the political commitments that make the former possible.'
