Life in Skid Row

An introduction to what it is like living on Skid Row in Los Angeles.

Alongside Skid Row's hustlers, transients, and cops are a lesser known population of children, social servants and religious workers whose daily lives play out on LA's most dangerous city blocks. This is a five part series on YouTube telling their stories.

Here is the rest of the series:

• Part 2: The Kids
• Part 3: Drugs
• Part 4: God
• Part 5: Afterward

Here is a background article if you want to know more and here is Skid Row in Wikipedia. The New York Times has a long article on Skid Row worth reading here.

Some articles on Skid Row by Sam Slovick in LA Weekly

• Miracle on Skid Row
• Tales of the Inner City
• Dying to Escape Skid Row
• Inside the Super Dope Cops
• A description of the facilities that make up Skid Row
• Down on Main Street
  

Technorati Tags: Skid Row,Los Angeles,California,homelessness,violence,YouTube

Cleveland is dying (as are some other areas)

Seventh most dangerous city in the United States and it's poorest.  A photo gallery of the death of Cleveland.  Here is some urban decay in Toronto and Detroit.

Technorati tags: Cleveland, Ohio, Toronto, Detroit, urban decay

The Death of Suburbia

This video is from TED and is one of a long series of videos I am downloading off of YouTube and converting to my PSP for viewing again later.  I am a big fan of Kunstler's view of the future (although I think he underestimates the power of capitalism and innovation a bit) but the video is one that you will want to watch.

In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about. Reengineering our cities will involve more radical change than we are prepared for, Kunstler believes, but our hand will be forced by earth crises stemming from our national lifestyle. "Life in the mid-21st century," Kunstler says, "is going to be about living locally."

Technorati tags: James Howard Kunstler, TED, urban, suburbia, energy

Safety

Rudy posted this article a while ago and I just got around to reading it this weekend. It is a story on why gang intervention doesn't work. The last three paragraphs of the article struck a chord with me as a parent and as someone who works with high risk kids

I realized that my role as a mentor was to provide a space for self-discovery, there is no setting better than a youth retreat outside of their hoods. Two weeks ago, along with some colleagues, I took 14 youth camping, three of them were females and the rest were males. They were all 8th graders. They came from all gang backgrounds, Norteno, Sureno, Cambodian and Laotian Crips. Half of the kids had criminal records, and most of them had been involved in a gang related fight at their school. Some of them had tattoos and all of them claimed to have a gang affiliation.

During the first day of the three day camp I asked them to introduce themselves by answering, "What is it that you fear?" With the exception of two kids, they all said that they feared their fathers. For the first time, they all shared an intimate moment with their "enemies." Through out the camp we did activities that talked about our own strengths, families, and other discussion that dealt with us taking control of our destinies. For those three days they bonded; they played hide and seek together, ate together, laughed together, and shed tears together. The last night young Crips, Surenos, and Nortenos hugged one another.

Although they returned to their hoods represented by different gang sets, they will embrace the moment when with the help of there rival gang members, they were able to share some of the most symbolic moments of their lives, reflect on them, and heal their wounds.

After hearing the testimonies of so many kids, I know for a fact, that the only way to help anyone transform their life is by creating a space where people can have intimate moments by sharing their lives, reflecting on them, and finding the solution for their problems by themselves and for themselves.

On a fairly related note I am taking some early steps towards setting up a safe house for teen aged boys in the city. It is a long shot right now but if it happens it would provide that kind of space for 10-12 boys who are at high risk.