Violet Affleck reveals she and her mom, Jennifer Garner, had very different reactions to the Los Angeles wildfires

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — 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.

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