Kathy gives a little insight into the panhandling life….
Craig recalls the December 29th crackdown which left him and the other members of their encampment cuffed and jailed, in what appeared to be an arbitrary enforcement of laws pertaining to trespassing on public property. Today, Craig is back where he started, square one, after last week’s Caltrans clean-up took away virtually everything he owned.
Marginalized

I had a very interesting 15-minute conversation with Gracie as she panhandled on the off-ramp this afternoon. As she brought me up to date on the whereabouts and news of the others, I commented on the way most drivers and passengers looked the other way or straight ahead as they passed by or sat waiting for the light to turn green. She responded by coming up with a new slogan for her next sign, “those who can, don’t, and those who can’t, do…” It’s a telling bromide and one that can join “homeless, not hopeless,” and “not homeless, houseless,” among the battle cries written with markers on cardboard.
As much to mollify Gracie as to justify my presence on that freeway offramp, I told her how I wished (and have proposed) that each and every one of the people who are on display as 4x4ft prints in City Hall could have their lives intervened in by the city’s social services departments, with something positive being done for each of them. I swore out loud in frustration that instead, she is still out there… then she swore and I told her not to copy my bad habits and we laughed, and the people looking at us from their car windows might have thought, well they don’t look so miserable after all…

Hitting the skids with General Jeff
Skid Row’s Silver Lining …
Many people associate the term “skid row” with an end-of-the-line, bottom-of-the-barrel location where the poorest of the poor end up, either mentally ill or strung out on one illegal substance or another. Life skids to a halt here, by this reasoning. But the actual origin of the name refers to the skid marks left by the lumber dragged through the streets in times long since past. General Jeff, known in some circles as the unelected “mayor” of Skid Row, insists that those who want to change Skid Row’s name to something less stigmatized, for commercial or other reasons, are wasting their time. Skid Row’s many problems, including its status as the epicenter of homelessness in Los Angeles and perhaps the entire country, does not mean its people and history should be forsaken or erased, especially not for public relations purposes. To the contrary, he and others fighting for the souls that live there believe that redemption will come not from sanctimony or patronage, but from an insistence on better representation and policies toward the community.

If you want to at least scratch the surface of the mind-bending situation in Skid Row today, General Jeff is the right person to start with. The South-Central native has taken on what should be respected as one of the hardest jobs in Los Angeles– to keep things moving in a positive direction in the face of the common sense deficit that plagues the social service, political and law enforcement sectors… General Jeff does in fact fill the void left by a lack of action from City Hall, involved in all aspects of Skid Row life. Mayor or not, he’s been at the forefront of the ongoing move to obtain Neighborhood Council representation for the community. He wants the local businesses in the area to be more understanding and responsive to the residents. To steer the population away from associations with the lowest common denominators of popular culture he fights to have salacious billboards advertising the sex-industry taken down.
Touring the area with General Jeff is a lesson in both history and civics. He is greeted in the streets with respect and love, fist bumps and handshakes. The landmark mural, created in the image of a traffic sign, is his bold proposition that Skid Row deserves to be respected and taken seriously as something more than the dead end it is dismissed as. Asserting sovereignty for residents who cannot afford or survive gentrification, to use one example Jeff looks at the fishing industry’s use of prime real estate within the Skid Row borders for storage and distribution as a symbol of inequality and the disconnect between the business world and the people. His movement would be happy to see the business owners take a more balanced interest in the welfare of those they are keeping off their properties with coils of razor wire, security gates and fencing, or just dull, windowless, undecorated walls.

The door in the background was once the entry to the Salvation Army kitchen, located in one of the many early 20th century buildings in the area. That this particular building stands is in disrepair is a symbolic and ironic testimony to failed philanthropy.

With four major missions and numerous other charity organizations, Skid Row on a Sunday morning features sidewalk sermons, with people lining up in several locations for meals and other services. General Jeff firmly believes that not enough scrutiny is paid to the operations of the charity industry, and also decries the “shell game” that is too-often played by governmental bodies at the expense of the Skid Row community, hindering real development and making it more difficult for the residents to rise up.





General Jeff is frequently approached with questions and concerns. He is known as a fearless and tireless representative of the community, and does not suffer fools gladly…

Along with the tents and tarps that line the sidewalks on most streets in Skid Row, the most glaring sign of municipal neglect is the sheer volume of trash gathering in the gutters and elsewhere. One of many concerns is the pollution caused by this trash (which includes syringes and other toxins) entering the drainage system openings along the curbs … one wonders how often city sanitation trucks visit these streets.

Outside the Hippie Kitchen, where meals and other services have been provided since the late 1960s…

Mural in progress by Dimitri; General Jeff speaks adamantly about bringing positive imagery and lively colors to the community, to counter the oppressive facelessness and the outdated negative artwork that currently marks much of the industrial and commercial property on Skid Row.




This is the cliché that has come to represent Skid Row. It is a common sight and a sobering reminder of the enormity of the task.

A stark reminder of how dangerous life can be; burn marks on the wall where a tent was torched in retribution for an unpaid debt.

FLASHBACK: Street kids of Nairobi… A young boy was recently being interviewed by Undugu social workers. His only possession seemed to be an old burlap sack. When asked why he wouldn’t put the sack down as they talked, the boy replied warily, “This is not a sack. It is my father and my mother, my house, my car, my farm and my daily bread. I can’t steal without it.”
Combined excerpts from two separate articles, originally
published in Kenya in Executive Magazine,
January 1993, and Survival, Spring
1994.



Being at the forefront of street children-related work in Kenya, it is sometimes necessary for the Undugu Society to assume the role of advocate. This is especially true when cases arise where it is obvious that the rights of the children, as espoused in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have been violated. One such case occurred when government authorities decided to close down a rescue center at Kariokor Market, one of the busiest sections of Nairobi. An extremely harsh crackdown left several boys incarcerated among adults- - a direct contradiction of the statutes related to child protection in Kenya. The boys were hounded and even physically assaulted during their ordeal. While it is true that many of these boys were not model citizens in any sense of the word, they are citizens, and human beings, nonetheless. And though we wish in all good conscience to be able to report that this incident was an isolated case of overzealousness by a few officials, we are sorry that our pursuit of the truth in such matters does not allow such a softening statement to be made. To the contrary, such occurrences are so commonplace that to report them regularly would entail the hiring of a full-time investigative reporter, to be assigned solely to the juvenile courthouse, the approved and remand school systems, and the police stations citywide. Reprinted here is the editorial column from the March 1994 edition of Flash, the in-house quarterly newsletter of Undugu.
In the April –June, 1993 issue of Flash, our editorial outlined the work being done by the Child Law Project, whose proposed Children’s Act seeks to refine and consolidate the often conflicting and unclear legislation pertaining to child protection. We noted then that Attorney General Amos Wako has said that this act should become law sometime during this session of Parliament.



To date, this has not yet been done, thus the Children and Young Persons Acts, Chapter 141 (last revised in 1972) remains the definitive legislation on cases specifically dealing with juveniles and others, including street children. In light of the recent developments involving the boys from Kariokor, it is instructive to note the following sections of this act, and we would ask the proper authorities to pause and consider whether the rights of these children are in any way being violated:
CAP 141, Section 23: (1) If any person who has the custody, charge or care of any child or juvenile-
(a) Willfully assaults, ill-treats, neglects, abandons or exposes him, or causes or permits him to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, abandoned or exposed, in any manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to healthy shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding five thousand shillings or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to both such fine and such imprisonment…

CAP 141, Section 5: Arrangements shall be made for preventing persons under sixteen years of age while detained in a police station, or while being conveyed to or from any court from associating with adults charged with or convicted of any offence other than an offence with which a person under sixteen years of age is jointly charged or convicted…
CAP 141, Section 14: Every court in dealing with a person under eighteen years of age who is brought before it shall have regard to his welfare and shall, in a proper case, take steps for removing him from undesirable surroundings and for securing that proper provision be made for his maintenance, education and training.

In the first two instances (Section 23 &6), readers of our special report in this issue (the closing of the Kariokor Rescue Centre) will not have to stretch their imaginations too far to acknowledge the possibility of violations against our children by the very agencies entrusted to protect them. With regard to Section 14, a recent visit to the Juvenile Remand Home in Kabete, (one of 10 such home throughout the republic) revealed a situation so shocking and depressing in its scope, that it is hard to imagine how the courts assigned to deal with these children would be able to abide by that law.

Built to hold 80-100 children, Kabete’s population fluctuates from 200-300 and has in recent months reached as high as 500. With manager Bakala Wambani lamenting a near total lack of funding from the government, the children held at Kabete have no salt or milk in their diets. Many appear to be malnourished, a worse condition than we find them when living on the streets. Scabies is rampant, as there are precious few medicines to treat this or any other illnesses. There are only two qualified social workers, with ten other staff members handing various responsibilities. Even with probation officers sent periodically from the Children’s Department to help follow-up the vagrancy cases (which constitute the majority), processing is slow. It is not uncommon for a child picked up on a street corner to end up spending more than a month waiting for some decision to be made on his future. In the meantime, those categorized as needing protection and care (P &C) are mixed together with those officially determined to require protection and discipline (P&D). The result—hardcore cases end up influencing and often spoiling the more innocent children. In December last year, the government released 17m shillings from the Treasury, to go towards the “repatriation” of children to their home regions. Already dozens of children have been shipped to police station in places such as Kakamega and Mombasa.

This may stem the flow of children to the streets temporarily, but realistically it is like trying to empty a sinking canoe with a spoon. Long-term solutions are needed. Just as Undugu Society needs funding to maintain our programs, so the relevant government ministries need to allocate sufficient funds to improve the quality of services at the remand home and approved schools. It was pointed out to us that there was once a “ State Maintenance Fund,” which was used to finance the education of needy children. There were even cases of children being sponsored clear up to university level. Reviving this would be a major step in the right direction.

Without such efforts of good faith, and until policeman and others in positions of authority learn to treat street children as human beings, not whipping boys, the chances are the system will continue to further harden, rather than help, society’s most unfortunate souls.



None of us…
65-year-old women (or men) shouldn’t have to sit on the ground like this. Days like today, you feel the weight of the struggle our friends go through, and get down over the reality of how slow, or non-existent, change seems. “One of us” feels more like “none of us.” Lynda is still largely laid up with her rib injury, working on some new pieces, excited about the possibility that she will be able to show, and possibly even sell, some work, and is more determined than ever to get the hell out her dead-end existence and into a small apartment somehow…. Like her friends Rebecca and Rachel, she’s now hoping that Friday will bring good news when she goes to apply for an HUD apartment.




Three questions
In preparation for an exhibition on homelessness currently in the planning stages at the Museum of Social Justice in Los Angeles, I was asked three very simple and direct questions, which challenged me to define the motivations and expectations of the One of Us project:
1. Is there one thing, or one experience that tangibly crystalized the dedication that drives you to pursue this project with such ferocity? Or is there a significant experience you can point to that initiated your motivation to provoke change in how homelessness is treated in Los Angeles?
Homelessness in Los Angeles is a humanitarian crisis that can’t be ignored. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas recently characterized it as the defining issue of the time, and better late than never, it is good to find so much activity and mobilization going on now. I’m personally motivated by a sense of outrage over the passive-aggressive way much of society deals with the homeless population, and alarm at the way the problem has been allowed to fester and grow. The relationships, trust and even friendships I’ve established with an odd fraternity of homeless individuals (and activists) in my own community has only reinforced and illuminated these beliefs.

Photographs and words can only interpret and represent, and
in actuality there are already more than enough dramatic photographs of
deprivation and suffering, and enough anecdotal information and demographics to
convince the powers-that-be to do the needful. The media, myself included, have
been complicit in this. With the notable exception of the few instances where
photographs, reportage and even Art have had a direct, measurable effect on its
subjects, the ubiquity of coverage has only added to an overwhelming sense of
intractability and despair, perpetrating harmful stereotypes and further
serving to objectify the homeless as some homogeneous societal woe.
What harm can there be in listening to and learning from those who are actually living this nightmare on a daily basis? The concept of soliciting the personal stories and portraits that became One of Us arose out of a longstanding collaboration with Wade Trimmer, director of the San Fernando Valley Rescue Mission. Wade encouraged me to pursue our common interest in “humanizing” the homeless, a phrase that on its face seems redundant and offensive because it infers that each person encountered in this work is not unquestionably and obviously quite human already. So we want to remind the public of this simple fact of humanity; the motivation for this approach lies in the desire to change the conversation surrounding homelessness, to bring it back to a human level, to perhaps nudge anyone who encounters the material to feel more inclined to enact real, sustainable solutions.
2. If you were to ask the participants of “One of Us” what the most important message we need to convey would be, what do you think they would say?
The conversations we recorded with more than 40 individuals provide a wide variety of answers to that question. Taken collectively, they present a pretty comprehensive catalog of the causes of homelessness and the many obstacles that make it such a difficult situation to rise above. At the risk of overusing another cliché, in the context of “giving voice to the voiceless” as a path toward human autonomy and dignity, the most important messages I heard were connected with the longing for understanding and empathy from the general public and law enforcement.


Each person’s story touches on
this in some way, whether it is boyish, twenty-something Jesse who dreams of
becoming a doctor or nurse while currently living in his car in the parking lot
of the Walmart store he works in, or
Nancy, an elderly Southern debutante whose safe world was turned upside down
after being victimized by real estate fraud. Ultimately it
doesn’t matter how many stories are told, how many “likes” their images collect
on social media, or any of that. They just need affordable housing.
3. What is your favorite image and why?
There’s a big distinction between the studio-lit portraits made in locations where the people were for the most part comfortable and knew they were in a safe place among friends and allies (possibly having just eaten a warm breakfast and used the portable shower unit), and those taken out in the streets and encampments. While I’m gratified that so many of the close-up portraits reveal a sense of common humanity that transcends their economic or living conditions, my favorite picture is often one I have just recently taken, portraying both personal and symbolic meanings.

Right now an image I feel conveys some measure of universal hope, if not redemption, is that of Gracie holding up the tiny portrait of a baby girl recently born to her street-mate Emmy. The baby was the only survivor of twins, and Gracie was noticeably proud to have been anointed her “honorary grandmother.” As tragic as the circumstances surrounding the child’s birth may be, and as uncertain as the future is now for Gracie, Emmy and the rest of the people in this one camp—a microcosm of homelessness in Los Angeles—there is still the desire to sustain a sense of familial belonging.
Ties that bind…

Craig and Lynda are now resigned to avoiding the constant hassle of the overpass life, sharing a dead-end side street butted up against the chain link fences meant to keep people away from the freeway. This new spot is equidistant between where the others still stubbornly squat near the money-generating ramps on busy Nordhoff, and the saving grace of the old Methodist Church and community center run by the North Valley Caring Services a few blocks east. Even though Craig, Lynda, Gracie and rest are loathe to take advantage of the food pantry, breakfasts and other services, it’s not an exaggeration to say that with Manny and others so ready to come to them, their proximity to the mission is almost comforting in itself.
It wasn’t surprising to find Gracie relaxed and pleased to greet company, sitting alone in Craig’s tent, spirits buoyed by her new status as the “honorary grandmother” of a baby girl recently born to Emmy, the raw-boned gal who along with boyfriend Mike were caught up in the ultimately unhelpful New Year’s Eve crackdown that put most of the group (including Mike) in the clink. Now living close to Gracie on the sidewalks off Nordhoff, the couple are part of what Craig somewhat emotionally refers to as their family, which includes everyone mentioned so far plus Terry and Amy. “We’ve had our spirit broken,” he confesses, “but we got it back.”

Gracie Crilley wants to help get Emmy into a drug addiction program, so she can get off the street and care for her child herself.
But there’s more… there’s always more…
The child’s twin did not survive until birth. This happened outside, on the ramp, though in the overall scheme of things was not overly dramatized, and everyone soldiered on. Emmy’s aunt in Santa Clarita has taken the baby in, hence the studio portrait Gracie pulled out of her shirt to proudly share. The printed photograph stabs at the heart, a throwback to a simpler, pre-digital time It will not lose it’s preciousness even as it weathers and fades, as a possession stored in a refugee’s belongings must do, and relatively quickly. Slipping back into the first-person witness of the human condition, I feel an uncomfortable sense of awe at the resilience and capacity to endure hardship my friends often show. What I am moved so much by is not Gracie’s cracked fingernails, or the depth-of-field you can achieve with an iPhone, but her happiness while sharing the news, the photograph, the experience of being a grandmother. Don’t believe this photograph. Or at least believe that for a few minutes, Gracie was smiling.
Can somebody please get this woman (and her family) a place to live?

Terry’s fears were justified. He is back in jail, while Amy worries that an old warrant from 1994 has been discovered and may soon be used to pick her up too…
H.O.P.E. (less)
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:

