Gratification

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“David - we went today and it was destined. The train ride was great, and Lynda hadn’t been in Union Station since she was 16 and was like a kid in a candy store taking pics all around it. Then we had coffee in the garden there among the beautiful Birds of Paradise and Daffodils. We finally got to the museum and there were 2 older women from the church - Mary and Betty (sisters) - who were putting away stuff that was out for the church bazaar this weekend. When they heard thatthe pics on walls and on the columns were of Lynda - they went crazy taking photos of her with her pics, and hearing her story. Then they asked her to speak to anyone who came into the exhibit and tell her stories. 

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She was SO IN HER ELEMENT! It was so gratifying to see her so confident and full of life. She broke down in tears several times when we first got there upon seeing her work. And then reading the blog book you had on the table. Feeling as if she had traveled a million miles to where she is now - but of course not forgetting a single moment of her journey. 

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The women would like her to come back and be available to speak with people. Apparently, they had 280 visitors yesterday - wow! Also - a real perk - they had tables of clothing and purses that were out for the bazaar but they told me Lynda could take whatever she wanted for $0! You know Lynda! We left with 2 huge canvas bags of stuff! The exhibit is brilliant and so engaging. I spoke with a family, mom, dad and jr. in h.s. daughter who now want to come join us on Wednesday nights to deliver food and blankets! They live in Reseda. So we exchanged #’s. Thank you for your work which words cannot describe. It is your heart on display, revealing humanity in all it’s splendor and anguish. love, Karen” (Wescott)

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another day, another struggle

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Maria maintains her appearance the best she can in the harsh street conditions.

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Terry and Amy in the midst of a protracted argument with a young couple who claim that the dog she has been keeping was actually stolen from them….

Marginalized

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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…

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Read the whole blog post at Patheos.com

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.

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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. 

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 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.

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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. 

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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…

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.  

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Represent

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Mike Wish, Los Angeles, 2006

“… Marx asserted, ‘They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.’ His doubled sense of representation is a political practice; someone must speak for, stand in for, perform as, the inchoate and unformed group—not yet a class because it cannot represent itself, yet surely a class because it can be represented—to and for itself and others. If representation is crucial to class formation and expression, then class, like gender, is performative …”

                                            * Paula Rabinowitz, They Must Be Represented

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. 

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Set to the rousing Gospel at Colonus, all the faces of One of Us…

Art for art’s sake

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.  

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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.

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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”

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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.”

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Most of the artworks in this last series of photographs were lost…

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“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.”

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art & kindness

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Breaking down the current and enduring situation for our friends at the 405, life seems to have a taken on semblance of normalcy for the inhabitants of the camp along the northbound on-ramp. Of course “normalizing” the lifestyle is an absurd temporal trick the campers might seek solace in, and a dangerous fallacy the rest of society do better to discard. Linda’s stock response to any question of whether there’s been any new problems with city or state officials is a fatalistic and annoyed “not yet.” She has gotten her mojo back after receiving some small canvases from a friend, starting to produce new nail polish paintings. There is talk of having a little show at the nearby #North Valley Caring Services site soon, and I hope I am not making promises I can’t keep when telling Linda we would like to feature her artwork and profile on social media, ideally to her benefit.

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Meanwhile three very kind high school students stopped by with supplies for the camp; water, snacks, that sort of thing. There seems to be enough of that goodwill in the air to keep the stomachs and sometimes the hearts full. The girls expressed their desire to work with any local community agencies in the area…

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