Chaos reigns at the 405 and Nordhoff. Officer Diaz of the LAPD’s purportedly “compassionate” HOPE program has got a “hard on” for certain members of the homeless community there. This is exactly how it was characterized to me this morning, in remarkably similar language in separate conversations with Lynda, Amy and Terry. The small refugee camp that had once again grown into something that was appearing semi-permanent along the northbound onramp was forcibly dismantled a couple of days ago, and in what appears to be a coordinated effort between state and city officials, sanitation moved in quickly with the LAPD. Most everyone (except Craig and Gracie it seems) was once again ticketed, this time for illegal use of shopping carts. Terry and Amy moved to a nearby residential sidewalk, Lynda and Gracie to another, and once their carts were taken away, all of their belongings remained strewn on the sidewalks. Thursday (tomorrow), they have been warned by Diaz, is “arrest day.” How they are to move their things without the carts, is a Catch-22 level head scratcher…
Stress and anxiety rule the day. Lynda, while still managing to show me her latest artwork, is now desperate to get out of this area, and Terry has plans to move their stuff to another location (which I will not disclose here for the time being). Being out of the jurisdiction of Officer Diaz they believe will lower the threat level to their freedom. Nobody is in a hurry to go back to jail.
Terry showed the most frustration, sifting through their belongings which were organized to look like a yard sale where there was really nothing worth buying. Meanwhile today is Amy’s birthday; considering she was coming off a night where she spent most of Terry’s earnings ($70 on a bag of heroin), she seemed in a reasonably light mood a few blocks away at the North Valley Caring Services Methodist Church site, picking out a free bicycle with help from Manny, Jose Ruiz, Jr. and the others. Terry desperately wishes she would do what she has done before, go into a rehab environment and kick her habit; it’s a decision she has to make for herself and is apparently just not ready…
This week’s events bring to mind what Gracie said during her interview late last year, which bears repeating here:
It is unacceptable that
such conditions exist, and that so many are allowed to fall so low. To sleep outside, no matter the weather, while churches, temples and mosques shutter their doors to keep them out. So much of the most passionate and inspiring writing remains relegated to the comments sections of social media activists. Why aren’t the
professional media people trumpeting this humanitarian crisis? Inexplicable….maybe not. It could be that the media has done all they are entrusted to do, and have done it well.
There is no shortage of intimate and revealing photographs of want and despair, degradation and madness. Stories, too. What is left is for the municipalities and business interests to marshall the resources and strategies to end the scourge. The scourge– in broad terms, that’s how it feels when considering the ubiquity of urban squalor that has taken root. Those out there in the streets, alleys and cars tonight, who have navigated the social services and judicial systems only to land back on their feet in pretty much the same place, wonder when will real change will come …
#oneofusarts #oneofus
“I trusted people too much because of my Christian religion. People would just take advantage and advantage and advantage of me and say, ‘trust me, trust me, I’m a Christian also and lend me, oh I see that you have great credit, but my credit is bad. Can I borrow your social security number?’ This was an escrow lady that’s living in one of my houses right now. Well, it’s her house now. I had sold to her and because of my good credit, she was able to buy my house, but before she could transfer her name over to my name, when the market crashed and everything, she stopped paying me. So the banks were foreclosing on me, not on her, even though I had already sold her the house. It was a big, big mess, a big paper mess. Everything was done crooked.”
Linda Zazanis has a need and ability to continue producing
her nail polish-brushed canvases, knick-knacks and jewelry in the face of
obstacles that are discouraging and sometimes outrageous. Those in the
community who are aware and supportive of her can recognize the use of color
and abstract creations as more than therapeutic.
Linda keeps a small black bag containing tiny
bottles of many colors, some glittery, and she delights in showing off a new
shade of green brought to her by a friend like Gracie in their camp. Her
studio, as it were, is under the cover of a tarpaulin that shelters her from
the elements. It’s a cluttered place to live and work, and one that has been torn down and rebuilt
more times than I can count in the last year. Few in the camp can put together
a shanty like Linda’s.
Late last year, when the city sent a garbage truck to clean
up what was deemed as an overabundance of personal property cluttering up a
public space, Linda was not on site to salvage or protect her possessions, and
along with a lot of other items not considered by her to be expendable were
several of her artworks—finished canvases, and most of the jewelry, statuettes
and other items she had been collecting. Linda, having survived on the streets
for enough years to learn how to balance toughness with grace, is rarely prone to total despair, but during the conversation printed
below she became understandably emotionally when explaining how the lost artwork
affected her.
So they took some of your artwork? What happened?
“They took it. They took it all. For two years I’ve been
doing my artwork. For two years I’ve been collecting jewelry, so I could open a
store. In January, ok, I had two of the counselors from LA Family Housing that
were my helpers, that were willing to go and say that I was highly recommended
to get this loan. Ok? I was going in January. I was ready for it and sanitation
took it all. I mean, took my future. I tried for two years to get up out of
here and it’s like now I’m right back where I started. It’s been 15 years, come
on, give me a break! A person doesn’t try that hard and work as hard as I have,
18 hours a day, 7 days a week, to try and get out of here if they didn’t want
to get out of here, get out of this situation. They wouldn’t do it. They’d say
“Hey screw it!”
There was a three-day notice, but I wasn’t in town. And then
I had some of my stuff over there and then this police officer comes up to me,
and I had five carts sticking out, and he said,
“How many carts are you going to take” and I said “Well, I’m gonna take
all of my carts.” And he said, “No you’re not. You’re taking two.” You know? I
mean who are you to tell me after everything I’ve done for the last two years,
to get out of here? Who are you to put me back at the bottom? By taking
everything I own that was of value, that meant anything to me”
Canvases donated by friends and well-wishers have allowed Linda to resume her work.
“ … you know, when you don’t have income… and now at 62
I can’t get a job, because I’m too old. You know? So, I tried… well, you know,
somebody said ‘Linda, you know so much about jewelry, and about stones, and
about emeralds, and about metals, when it comes to jewelry. Why don’t you try
and open up your own store?’ And I have a friend, there’s a couple, that are
real good friends of mine, and we all recycle and we have all found, beautiful,
wonderful, expensive valuable things. And a lot of them aren’t valuable, but
they’re beautiful and they’re still able to be sold. So, I was going to open a
store and then that went into the trash. And they put it in a trash truck. A
smelly, stinky, dirty trash truck. That goes around down the street and….and
puts… you know, empties the blue bins and the black bins, and you know all of
the bins that are in front of your house. That’s what they put our stuff in and
then they want… you know, they say you have 30 days to go pick it up, by
appointment. Get ‘em to answer the phone.”
Most of the artworks in this last series of photographs were lost…
“Anyway, she was all white when I got her and I happened to
just start, you know, messing around with nail polish and painting, and trying
to get a little color on her. And people were commenting and saying ‘Wow that’s
beautiful.’ You know? And so I decide to paint her dress all black and I built
her hat up to make it look like it had a feather on it. There was a lot and the
thing that is so hard… I was gonna have my grand opening at night and I was
going to auction her off for a shelter for single women. It was gonna go for
good.”