The Trend

When you live in this community, you receive a $15 stipend a week. The houses don’t have heat. Money that would go toward operating a furnace instead goes toward food and shopping carts for the poor.

The Los Angeles Catholic Worker receives no funding from the church and doesn’t cost taxpayers anything either.

Checks arrive in the mail and keep the place going, somehow, for more than 40 years now.

Within the community, there is what’s called the core community members, who have been a part of the place for at least several years. Catherine Morris and Jeff Dietrich, former nun and former hippie, respectively, are the longest-serving community members, arriving in the early 70s.

There are also the formerly homeless folks called house guests, including those who stay a little while to get clean or heal an injury, or to die, and those who have stayed more than a decade.

And there is the transitory community of hippie volunteers who stay for a year or two, or less, or more, before moving on to volunteer or just live simply elsewhere in the world. Some plan a come-and-see visit before moving in. Some show up on the doorstep and take a chance, as much of a chance as the community takes on them.

I have found community life to be a wonderfully evolved way to live, but it’s not without the obvious challenges that sharing bathrooms and a kitchen and common space, as well as chores, brings.

Although the police haven’t showed up for a couple weeks, my friends aren’t optimistic that their breakfast giveaway, which has provided oatmeal and coffee for 24 straight years, will survive the judgment of the city. Eliminating and limiting access to food is part of the playbook for many cities dealing with those without homes, not just Los Angeles.



This is Part 8 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 9.

Story Sides

The city says feeding people on the sidewalk is unsanitary. The homeless don’t have the opportunity to wash their hands before eating.

Homeless and poor people have allergies, just like everyone else, and sometimes the food given away for free on the sidewalks of Skid Row contain ingredients that make some people sick. Fights sometimes even ensue during a free food or winter coat giveaway because of accusations that someone cut in line or took the last meal or coat.

In addition, the trash that results from these free food giveaways in the form of plates and bags and discarded food is too much, and local businesses shouldn't have to put up with it.

City officials say the major missions in Skid Row are the best places for the poor and homeless to eat. Folks do not track trash into the street after eating inside a mission. There are no surprise ingredients in the food at the missions, so allergy reactions aren’t a concern. If there is a scuffle, mission security handles it.

“Feeding people on the street is not hygienic, it’s not sanitary, it’s not good for their health,” said the local city councilwoman in the L.A. Times story last year.

City officials want the homeless and poor to interact primarily if not exclusively with the major missions. The major missions receive city money to operate and have been strong supporters of the city’s crackdown on the homeless and poor that officially began in 2006.

* * *

Charitable organizations like the Catholic Worker say sharing food with one another is a basic human right, and something the gospels have instructed people to do for thousands of years. Outlawing their oatmeal and coffee breakfast giveaway is the truly unsanitary act because the homeless will end up eating out of dumpsters and garbage cans for a morning meal, which creates more trash and unsightly behavior.

The homeless know their own allergy concerns better than anyone else, and a rare reaction at a free food giveaway is hardly a reason to shut them all down. Likewise, once in a while there is an argument about cutting in line at a food giveaway, but that’s also not a good enough reason to shut them all down. The Catholic Workers say their non-violent method of separating disputing parties is more effective than strong-armed security measures anyway.

The Catholic Workers also say they not only sweep up trash generated by their giveaways, they sweep up all other trash on the block in an attempt to make nice with the nearby businesses and residents and avoid scrutiny.

Although the L.A. and Midnight missions still serve three meals a day six and seven days a week, respectively, the Fred Jordan Mission cancelled its breakfast a month ago. The Union Rescue Mission used to offer multiple meals a day to anyone off the street, but recently it has begun charging the homeless $210 a month for a cot. Although lunch is offered to anyone on a first come first serve basis, breakfast and dinner are provided to only those who pay the monthly fee, which increases to $300 by six months.

The Catholic Workers say that shutting down food giveaways while directing the homeless to the missions at a time when the missions have cut back on free meals shows the real motive of the city: Make life as legally difficult as possible for the homeless in the hopes they leave the downtown area.


A note: Since the website shutdown last week, blogger won't let me upload photos. Also, I didn't hear back from Officer Jack Richter. 


This is Part 7 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless. Here's Part 8.

Indoor Inclination

Today I’m participating in Lydia Kang’s and Leigh Moore's little project of having bloggers write something funny about themselves.

Before I do, here's what's coming up Wednesday in my reporting series about the city of Los Angeles shutting down food giveaways in Skid Row: the city's and the Catholic Workers' side of the story, unless the police arrest people for serving food to the homeless in the morning, in which case I will have that story, of course.

And here's (one of many) true exchanges I had with homeless men soon after arriving in Skid Row in 2006.

Me: I like it when it rains. We don’t get enough rain.

Homeless man: That’s because you sleep indoors.



This is Part 6 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 7.

Right Room

I moved into the community house in East L.A. for the month of May. I'm staying in Dave's room, who is away. Dave's room used to be my room. Before me, it was Gustavo's room. Before Gustavo, it was Manuel's room. 


The only significant change to my old room is the addition of a Bob Marley flag next to a painting of Jesus Christ and Dan Berrigan, which, of course, I believe to be an excellent addition to the wall.

My old bedroom is in the back house, which is a five-bedroom house behind the gingerbread Victorian where most people live, including LACW community members as well as formerly homeless guests. There’s also a two-bedroom apartment above the garage that is used to temporarily put up homeless families and overflow guests, which I have been on occasion.

The apartment’s shower is the best of any on the property, but this opinion is not universally shared.

“The house,” as the Victorian is called, was built in 1889 by a political and business bigwig of Boyle Heights, and it sits on one of the highest hilltops in L.A.

From the third floor balcony, majestic sunsets over downtown L.A. close the day. From the side porch are sweeping views of the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains in the winter. From my bedroom window in the back house, I wake up to the sun rising over East L.A.

Not a bad set up for a bunch of poor people. The land and houses were bought and donated by a former community member with a knack for making money. That’s how this place functions: People donate, money or time. When the squeaky old blue hippie van finally died, a couple members of what’s called the extended community bought another van. The spiffy new van does not have nearly the amount of left-of-center bumper stickers that the old van boasted, but it’s on its way.

I hope I’m on my way to interviewing Officer Jack Richter about the Catholic Workers’ breakfast line as well as the larger issue of shutting down giveaways in Skid Row. I spoke with him briefly on the phone earlier this week and he expressed doubt that I could be fair presenting the city’s side. I told him I could. Hopefully we can get together soon.

It’s nourishing to be discussing and writing about a relevant issue like how best to deal with poorest people in a place like Los Angeles’ Skid Row, which has been called America’s Jerusalem.

It’s also fun to be doing my first immersion journalism project on the fly like this, writing for writers I respect.

And it’s nice living in this community again.




This is Part 5 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 6.

Sidewalk Stand

A former nun and priest bought a laundry van with unpaid war taxes, painted "free lunch" on the sides and hauled a pot of spaghetti cooked in their home in Pasadena to grimy Skid Row one spring day. 

Chris and Dan Delany served that pot of spaghetti outside a mission next to St. Vibiana Cathedral where Dan happened to have been ordained. Homeless men who lived on the gray streets as well as tenants in the small hotel rooms lined up for a plate. This was 1969.


The next day they cooked something different. The variety of meals depended on what had been donated and what was on sale at the store.


Since 1969, the volunteers, hippies and radicals that have been a part of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community have served food on the sidewalks of Skid Row. Since 1969, the police have shut down the food line more than once, but it was always eventually allowed to continue at another location in Skid Row.

But the city isn’t interested in allowing the oatmeal and coffee giveaway to continue at another location.

This is the neighborhood with the largest concentration of homeless people in the country.

A community member, Sybilla, drew and wrote messages in colored chalk on the sidewalk for those in line this morning. I made plans to shoot nine-ball with someone in line. And the police didn’t show up. 

It was a good day.




This is Part 4 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 5.

Little Late

Oatmeal and coffee had been served, supplies had been packed into the minivan, and the homeless had said their thank-you’s when the LAPD arrived. They arrived with seven cruisers and a city truck built for hauling away equipment of all sorts.

Here’s the funny part: Everyone would have been long gone but the minivan battery died so everyone was waiting for one of the hippies to pop the hood and figure it out and save the day.

So as late as the LAPD was to our free coffee and oatmeal line, a meeting between the Los Angeles Catholic Workers and the Los Angeles Police Department this morning was meant to be.

No one was arrested, and that’s because the pots were already packed away. A county health inspector said the food line was in violation of a few health codes, such as you can’t serve food on the sidewalk without a four-sided canopy, a sink and a portable bathroom.

Basically, you need a roach truck to do a legal curbside food giveaway, and that’s too costly for most charitable organizations.

The Los Angeles Catholic Workers do not plan to be in court May 18 for Jeff Dietrich’s arrest last week, but if the LAPD arrives before 8 a.m. Friday, there will be more arrests and more court dates.

Everyone knows the city can shut down the food line very quickly if it wants: Just keep making arrests, which appeared to be the plan this morning.   

The lead officer is Jack Richter. He directed me to Central Division Station last week for an interview as to why the city is shutting down free food giveaways in Skid Row since last summer. The front desk at Central Division put me in touch with someone and we’ve traded messages, so I hope to have that interview soon.

This morning had a lighthearted end, with a handful of my friends waving and singing “Happy Trails” as the police drove away.

A note: The waving and singing was the thing to video, which I didn't do, and shows just how green I am with pretty much anything other than a notebook and pen. Duh, singing doesn’t carry in photographs?:)


This is Part 3 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 4.

Free Friday

No one was arrested this morning, and that was nice.

I spent last night at the community house in East L.A., and rode to Skid Row a couple miles away in the crowded hippie van at 7:20 a.m.

I had butterflies riding in the middle of the back bench seat, and the Irishman next to me said he also felt apprehension.

No one wants to get arrested. You are compelled to. That's how I explain it. Thankfully, I have been compelled to risk arrest in order to make a peaceful protest only a few times in my life.

So when the LAPD didn't show up to arrest anyone for feeding the homeless oatmeal and coffee curbside, as it did earlier in the week, I was happy. And I wasn't the only one.

After an energetic release like that, the rest of the day was especially breezy. I decided to return to the community house, which is an old, run-down Victorian mansion. About 20 people live there. One person is serving time for trespassing at the School of the Americas in Georgia while peacefully protesting U.S. foreign policy in Central America, and is expected to be released in a few weeks.

I've been calling them volunteers and hippie-types, and that's true, but officially they are the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, which was founded in 1969. The soup kitchen and hospitality house operate completely on donations.

I grew up Catholic, but have not been a practicing Catholic for many years and  would have never lived amongst the Workers for most of 2006 and 2007 if the place didn't have a strong history of non-Catholic and non-Christian members. Occasionally, the non-Catholics equal or outnumber the Catholics living in the house, which is always nice, if purely from a subversive perspective. 

Friday morning is chore time, and everyone allegedly finds something to do. When I lived there, I was known as someone who happened to disappear on Friday mornings. When you live with others, they get to know you pretty well, I have found.

But this morning was my first Friday morning at the community house in a while and I actually did some scrubbing. Later in the afternoon most people get together in the cramped third-floor community room for what's called Culture Critique, which can be anything from a documentary to a presentation. On Fridays, there's a little happy hour before dinner, and it was good to be together.

Living in-community can be fun, especially on a Friday when no one was arrested.




This is Part 2 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 3.

Coffee Crime

Five years ago the city of Los Angeles began its harshest crackdown of the homeless and poor ever in its downtown, which is saying something since clearing the homeless off the streets and sending them to jail is not historically unusual here.

I happened to have moved to Southern California in early 2006 and began volunteering at a soup kitchen downtown. I’m writing now because five years into this major crackdown, the LAPD arrested a man for giving the homeless coffee yesterday.

It’s easy to dislike the LAPD downtown. It’s just as easy as disliking the homeless. People tend go one way or the other here, and mostly in favor of law enforcement. That’s understandable, especially for a population with a good heart but time only to glance at headlines. We end up trusting our public servants to do the right thing.

The fact is, the LAPD does its best in a small neighborhood flooded with homeless and poor people. By the LAPD’s own count, most of the homeless living on the streets are mentally ill.

Over the past five years, I’ve interviewed about a hundred homeless people, in addition to having anecdotal conversations with hundreds more. One of the consistent things I hear are the names of officers who have in one way or another helped out someone living on the street. Favors include bringing a wheelchair to someone who needed it, or just not arresting someone with an open can of beer. 

It’s an unusual beat, working Skid Row as a police officer: You’re under pressure to make life difficult for the homeless in order to push them to a different part of the city, but you also realize that many of these people living on the streets have severe problems— that’s pretty much why they live outside.

So I’m going to attempt to make some sense of the situation developing in the United States' second largest city, where giving coffee to the homeless has become a crime.

First thing first: I am not unbiased. I don’t believe that eliminates me as an informative, or even fair source of information. I believe everyone has their biases, including journalists, and it’s better to acknowledge our biases than to deny them. When I began volunteering in 2006 at the downtown Hippie Kitchen soup kitchen, I accepted an invitation from the do-gooders who run the soup kitchen to live with them for free in exchange for working full time as a volunteer. So I moved into their hippie house a couple miles away in East L.A. for most of 2006 and 2007 and worked five days a week in Skid Row, serving food out of the soup kitchen as well as on the street.

I can confidently say the poor who live in the old hotels downtown as well as the homeless who live on the streets are generally unhappy with how the city has treated them since 2006. I tend to be sympathetic with the homeless man whose shopping cart containing his blanket was confiscated by the city while he was inside a mission going pee, this after the city in 2006 removed the port-a-potties for the homeless.

So now you know what side of the bed I sleep on.

Skid Row is a 50-square block neighborhood directly east of L.A.’s downtown office buildings. In 1976, the downtown businesses agreed to designate Skid Row as the official homeless neighborhood and located the missions and the multitude of free services there. The businesses did this because they believed concentrating the homeless next door would be the best way to keep them away from the front doors of the department stores and office buildings. 

The business leaders in 1976 did not foresee Skid Row becoming a permanent fixture downtown. But that’s what it has become, largely because no communities in Los Angeles County are willing to accept a relocated downtown homeless mission within their city limits. 

So for years Los Angeles business and civic leaders have had this problem: How do we get rid of the homeless downtown when we’ve built this neighborhood just for them?

Civic and business leaders will also say they care about the well being of the homeless and poor, and I don’t doubt that. Everyone in this struggle believes what they are doing is right.

Civic and business leaders have their reasons why food should not be given away in the streets of Skid Row. And the hippie-types I lived with and am still friends with have their reasons why giving oatmeal and coffee to homeless people shouldn’t be a crime.

Yesterday, one of my friends, the soup kitchen ringleader, former hippie and draft resister, Jeff Dietrich, was arrested for serving coffee to the homeless. Dietrich and the volunteers who run the soup kitchen with him have been giving away food on the streets of Skid Row for more than 40 years. Dietrich and his community of people have been serving breakfast at the Fourth Street Bridge for the past ten years.

The LAPD was out a couple weeks ago warning my friends that they were in violation of the law and faced confiscation of their pots and utensils. Normally, a warning like that is enough to shut down a church group giving away bagged lunches, and the city has shut down at least two consistent food giveaways in Skid Row over the past year with such warnings.

Whether by chance or as part of a plan, the LAPD is now confronting Hippie Kitchen volunteers after shutting down the other free food giveaways in Skid Row.

Certainly, the police could have sent out a paddy wagon and arrested everyone who resisted giving up the pots or utensils. But that’s not what the police did yesterday.

The police sent out a single officer who was frank and to the point and cordial, and who said that Dietrich, or whoever claimed to own the spoons and pots for that matter, was under arrest but would be released right away. Dietrich was never handcuffed and was free to grandstand in the street like he did.

Dietrich could have been cited for any number of violations, including that the city considers mixing sugar with coffee to be “preparing” food, which is illegal on city sidewalks. He was cited for having personal property off the curb, specifically a folding table supporting a coffee dispenser.

So the issue will play out in court, and I’ll certainly write about it that when there’s some movement.

Things got interesting while the sergeant finished writing out the citation. Dietrich told his volunteers to put away the supplies because it was time to leave, but the officer hadn’t photographed the table with the coffee yet. The Hippie Kitchen volunteers didn’t listen to the officer as he ordered them not to remove the coffee and sugar before he photographed it all, and that's a reflection of the animosity between homeless advocates and the police that has festered since the crackdown began in earnest in 2006.

I had no intention of jumping out of my journalist role and putting a few sugar containers in a milk crate as a symbolic show of support for my friends, and that includes the volunteers as well as the homeless folks. I have no regrets. In doing so, most journalists I know and respect would say I am no longer a journalist, but rather an activist. I don't care what label I fit in today's weird world of side-taking. It's just important for me to be upfront and honest about my actions and biases as I report this issue.

For what it's worth, I disagree with the decision not to cooperate and allow this officer to have his photograph. If you are taking a symbolic arrest to protest city policy, then let the man collect his evidence and we'll see you in court, seems to me.

But as much as I disagree with not cooperating with the officer on the scene, I also agree with my friends that serving food to hungry, poor people should not be against the law.

So I’m willing to go to jail over this issue, not because I believe my going to jail with my friends will change city policy toward the homeless downtown. I simply need to register my opposition to what I consider immoral enforcement of a minor infraction.  

The Hippie Kitchen volunteers will also be out serving breakfast again Friday morning, and I’ll give you an update on what happens, provided I don’t spend the weekend in county jail, which I don't feel like doing.

I'm not a videographer. I don't even know how to post this clip so the video screen is displayed and not the link itself. I will learn more as I proceed, I hope:)

http://www.youtube.com/user/edpilolla?feature=mhum

This is Part 1 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 2.

This is my first attempt at immersion journalism.

Val

Thank you to Diminishing Lucy for this pretty guest post. 


My mother is sick again.

Liver. Eyes. Hips. Skin. Digestion. All failing.

Through the corridors of a beautiful and gracious red brick hospice, I run, from yet another visit with her, to race to my children.

They need me. I long for their purity and their energy, their warmth, their smiles, their sweet smell, and their love. I race in haste, to them, to the bell.

I am stopped by a lady named Val, her name badge tells me.

She is a volunteer, I believe. I have not seen her before.

She is elderly: older than my mother, I sadly realise.

But so vibrant and glowing. An aura of assured peace. So alert and wise are her eyes. She draws me to her, gentle, peaceful, but determined.

We talk. For as long as I can, I feel oblivious to time. The bell will not sound yet, I know.

I am enveloped in calm, in her empathy, the atmosphere of her. She is beautiful. For an elderly lady, her makeup immaculate. Her dress sense classic. She smells pretty. Perfect jasmine.

Talking to her, I feel the crackle of tense and toxic energy drain from me. Everything slows to a dreamlike pace. We are oblivious.

She encourages more from me than any other has elicited.

She is so kind, and I feel so refreshed. Her empathy and understanding, her perception, they feel omniscient.

You are the only one who is here to help. Let the anger go.

The solution will come, for you all.

Your mother, she makes these choices for herself.

She will be what she will be regardless of you. But you will still come. Still come here.

The children need you. Not her. Give yourself to them.

You need to write it all down. Write it down. Write it down. The pleasure and the pain, the history and the now: Write it down. It will bring peace.   

And so I start.

I was there again today. I looked out for Val. Her words and her grace and her kindness made me feel so… so rested last time. Safe. Understood.

I asked for her. I wanted to thank her.

I was met with curious looks.

No one named Val has worked or volunteered there since the 1969.