Benzoylmethylecgonine

Crack cocaine.

At the beginning of the week, as soon as we get a new youth group into the city, we take them on a tour of Los Angeles, asking them to pray for various social issues: homelessness, racism, changing demographics of neighborhoods, etc. Skid Row always hits hard with the groups, causing some to remark that the people seem to live in community, watching out for each other (as they do) and others how there is no visible alchohol (although it's there). You can tell their stereotype of "homeless" is being messed with.

At the turn of the 20th century, Skid Row homeless shelters served primarily white men who were dealing with alcohol addiction. Partially because of the introduction of crack cocaine in the 1980s, this demographic began to change to primarily black.

Because I know so little, I dare not explore this topic too deeply, but I would like to bring in a quote from a book that my grandfather encouraged to read, a book my mother worked on with a predominant San Francisco pastor in the 1990s.


As Reverend Cecil Williams began to "smell death on the streets" (drugs) in the 1980s, he and others began to realize that "traditional drug treatment programs didn't work for most African Americans...the Twelve Steps didn't help many blacks...[because] it focused on individual recovery...but African Americans are a communal people..."

The conclusion he came to was that context mattered very much when it came to recovery: "Twelve Step Programs...teach people to get clean and sober and to go back out into main stream society. Well, the only society many of our folks needing recovery know is the drug mix--they've never been in the mainstream. Many of our folks need to get clean and sober and to learn how to empower their lives and make their way in a world that is less than welcoming to many..." (page 8)

All this means what, then? That drugs are worse than alcohol? Nope, too simple. That race is the most important factor in helping someone? Again, no. Maybe it just means that there isn't one set of values that make someone successful in this life, just like there isn't one chain of events that lead to homelessness or a drugged-out life or poverty.

It seems that sorting out the conditions from the problems and the individual responsibility from collective culpability is our main job as humans, Christians, academics, and caring citizens. Goodness gracious, good luck to us in this never-ending battle.

Who do we thank? Who do we praise?

As I was talking with my grandpa on the phone about how he waited 4 hours in the emergency room with his friend, I had this thought...

As I watched a small boy help his father collect cans for money as I left my house this morning, I had this same thought...

And, one more time, as I saw a little girl take her brother by the hand to go home after we played soccer in the park, I thought:

Why does society value people like me, who give up a week or a summer to do a little good for an abstract neighbor but refuse to see the daily sacrifices that people make for their friends, their parents, their neighborhood? Shouldn't we value so much more the "help" that is based in relationships and consistency than that which is a response to wealth gaps?

Entre Nos is a film that reminds me of this theme. See the trailer here.

Vulnerability

Today I had the morning off.
Today I took the metro downtown.
Today I had to verify with strangers that I was getting on the right train.
Today I smiled at people even though it goes against city etiquette.
Today I shared a private joke with a man on the subway as a little kid bounced around between us on every train-lurch.
Today I remembered good things happen when you acknowledge with your ignorance/need/smile that we all do need each other once in a while, or all the time.

Domestic Violence

Today, at a domestic violence shelter, the volunteer coordinator asked us what we would guess were the top 4 professions of abusers. She gave us the clue that it's people who are used to having a lot of power and influence.

Professional athletes
Clergy
Policemen
Military personnel

Her point was that when judges mandate anger management classes for abusers, they're putting a fine solution to the wrong problem. The problem is one of control, not directly of mismanaged anger. When someone grows accustomed to controlling their surroundings: either other people or their success, this can often translate into home and personal life, thus, abuse sometimes ensues.

This was a critical thought for me yesterday because I spent a whole unit of my public policy class in Brasil in the Fall talking about the roots of domestic violence. Many conclusions were that unemployed men, who were under great financial stress would try to control the one thing they thought they could control, the house, while everything else around them seemed out of their control. While, this is likely truthful, and high domestic violence rates in refugee camps might also be an example of how frustration and poverty can lead to partner abuse, I never found it to be a full answer. Why, then, is there so much violence among middle class and wealthy people?

There are of course many other factors that may lead someone to abuse their partner, but perhaps the human desire to control others, when corrupted into an addiction, is the first step to understanding this type of violence.

Skid Row

Everyone who comes to LA seems to be struck by Skid Row, a 5 block by 5 block area of 5,000 or so homeless people, living in Single Room Occupancy hotels, one of the numerous shelters, or on the street. In the 1970s, the city government pursued a policy based on the "containment theory" that if homeless people were consistently dropped off in this area by the police, and social services, mental health services and charities were centralized here, then the homeless population could be out of the way and controlled. Today, Skid Row is a residential community, a transitional place, and home to a whole bundle of complex issues: race, dependency, gentrification, addiction, apathy, injustice.

Since there is so much good literature out there, I'll let others do my work for me.

Skid Row Video

Tonight I was walking through Skid Row with some other young adults in my group. Later, inside a church that has Wednesday night karaoke ministry, I started talking to a man who had seen me earlier on the street. We were joking about how white people usually mean free sandwiches in those parts. At first, I was saddened by the stereotypes put on me because of my light skin. Then, I realized, outside of a church group, a white girl maybe wouldn't come into Skid Row with a smile on her face, and meet everyone's eye and say hello. In fact, if I were walking by myself at dusk to catch a bus, I wouldn't make any eye contact. So maybe they had me pinned pretty good.

Yet, the reconciliation that happens through the conversations and a handed-over sandwich can be very real, even if the circumstances that get both sides of the exchange where they are, to either give or receive, seem so wrong. It was a good reminder that sometimes stereotypes come from the same place as truth and that almost always, cynicism is the wrong response to something that is confusing. Laughing and swallowing one's pride in a large adam's-apple-popping gulp is usually the right response.

This was the demographic of skid row when the midnight mission (one of the sites where I'll be volunteering this summer) started sobering up and feeding up people almost 100 years ago.



I won't get into the theories about the demographic shifts or the policies that brought an end to one era and the beginning of another tonight, but let's just say it gets my head a-churning.

Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World

For 3 months, I'll be living in South LA, working with the organization CSM.

Before arriving, I read one of the books recommended to me:

One aftertaste I'd like to share, although not even directly related to the book's thesis, is the following quotation:

"Cowboys don't ride busses".

That is, as Rieff explains, "the promise of the automobile was not transportation so much as solitude and independence, two ideas that dance in lockstep across the stage of the American imagination."

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about driving. Particularly my driving habits. And how they're out of control. And how some of this out-of-controlness might inhibit me from having the relationships I'm meant to have.

Founded by Spanish governor, Felipe de Neve, in 1781, Los Angles was part of México from 1821 to 1848, when it was purchased an later annexed by the United States.

As I spend three months in this paradoxical city, I aim to wade through issues that are way too big for me. Maybe I'll theorize as to why there exists so much anti-immigrant sentiment, and maybe I'll ignore the issue entirely. Maybe I'll enter into discussion of the complex issues facing inner city kids, and make observations that only someone who knows nothing can make. I tend to think that sometimes an outsider, a neophyte like me can be a useful tool because she has not yet (consciously) subscribed to a theory, and can therefore still risk stating the obvious.

And if my musings yield not a single clear thought, then that means I've been a good traveller, because traveling, and maybe even living, rarely elucidates, but mostly clouds.