People in Skid Row Help eachother.

This is the Midnight Mission

All Volunteer Band. they played

on thanksgiving day outside of the mission.

You know, it is difficult at times to maintain one's equilibrium around skid row. There are very few things that make one smile. Smiling and laughing are vital in having a healthy outlook on life. You hear laughing in the streets but mostly, it is evil. It is wicked. Some times the people know that it is wicked and , I have grown to understand that some people do not see the wicked and maliciousness that is within them. I have to say that I sometimes believe my sister truly does not want to see what she is doing. I have evidence of that from our lives.

However, that is not the point now. I received an email from someone and she said they are glad they helped me in some way after I thanked them. She was referring to her husband and her. I received a comment from a lady that I discovered at three this morning. It is 4 now and I have been hoping this computer will stay on long enough for me to finish this. The lady wrote me in the past and said my blog was interesting. Another comment from someone today in an email was somewhat the same type of comment. I see a comment responding to my request from people about their likes or opinions.

Those little comments and words of encouragement are the vitamins that nourish my soul.

Those are the miracles that keep me going.

I get confused about Skid Row. I hear so much. I see so much. There are big organizations and most people feel they move so slow in responding to their needs to the point of discouragement. Some people feel they are designed for discouragement.

I have no vast amount of experience with the missions. My experience with the missions, for one reason or another, have been such that I would prefer not to deal with them. And Yet, I know that if a few things were changed, they could make life so much easier for me and I just one one or two services, at most.

I think, at best, the missions are too cumbersome and, even if they want to respond to the needs of the people, as they are TODAY, not years ago, they would have to examine how they operate.

People are more nimble. "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack jumps over the candle stick."

People respond to people. People adjust to people. People feel the needs of another and respond to those needs in a timely and effective manner.

People help people on Skid Row. People are what help people in life. Skid Row changes by the hour. People come. People go. People return. I was at the Transition House yesterday. I use it to upload photos. IT is the only place where I can upload photos. I SAW THREE PEOPLE THERE WHO WERE THERE THE DAY I ARRIVED THERE IN FEBRUARY. THEY LEFT. THEY RETURNED. They returned from other programs.

THEY RETURNED TO THE T HOUSE FROM OTHER PROGRAMS. One of them is a man who was in an article about by Skid Row about three years ago in the Los Angeles Times. His picture was in this three page article.

Something is wrong when people go from one program to another and back to another. Something is wrong. They subconscious of these programs is such that they WANT you to come back, not for the person's sake but for the organizations sake.

People are the source of strength for each other on Skid Row. People comfort people. People guide people. I have not received one bit of guidance that has led to any productive result from anyone that has worked at these organizations. I have received guidance from people on the street. The only time I received guidance that resulted in something postive was when it was time for me to leave and funding ran out. Then I was damn near pushed out of where I was.

Now, I can go back if I had no place to go. They can start the clock again. I have seen it many times. People leave. People return. "Keep coming back, it works" is the slogan.

IT WORKS FOR WHOM is my question.

I think if a person from somewhere else or a family from somewhere else adopted a person on Skid Row alot more progress can be made. I mean the person must adopt a person who is serious about getting their life together. That is very important because the sad fact is that alot of people on the streets of Skid Row do not want to get their life straight. I am not talking about the mentally ill. I am talking about the ones who think it is a big party out here. They think everything is fine. They sell drugs or smoke drugs during the day in the streets and they go in the missions at night and sleep and eat.

For the most part, the people who are serious about their lives are the people that no one sees if they were to linger around Skid Row during the day. They are the most frustrated because they can not get answers.

I have wanted one answer for months. Where can I find an anger management class? I must take the class. I was sent down here by the courts to a program to take the class> However, the program to which I was sent did not have the class. Of course, I was not made aware until a week before I had to return to court that I had to take anger management. I did what I was told to do. That is unacceptable.

DO YOU REALIZE THAT IN ALL OF SKID ROW, NO ONE COULD TELL ME WHERE THERE IS AN ANGER MANAGEMENT CLASS. DRUG MEETINGS, SURE. YOU SIGN YOUR NAME AND EVERYONE GETS PAID. BUT NOT ANGER MANAGEMENT.

You would think that on Skid Row, many people would need to take the class either because they need it or because the court says to take it. Either way it should be known where to enroll in a program. I found out from a MISSION employee where one was only after he ducked and dodged me for 4 weeks and told me that I could not get my teeth fixed. Also he told me 4 weeks prior to that that the mission offered those classes. However, he was wrong. So he told me he would get my teeth fixed and he told me I could start anger management classes. He did not return calls or emails and then after four weeks of doing that he lied to his boss and told his boss I did not want to make a commitment. A bold face lie.

It takes discipline to write everyday. It takes discipline to write every day when you do not know where there are computers available. Certain sites are blocked. Most places you can not use flash drives so you can't send resumes. If I can commit myself to writing everyday, I can commit to improving my life like I did when I trained for the triathlon and studied everyday and was preparing to return to the work world until my mom's "dementia moment" kicked in and all of a sudden life changed. The same type of dementia moment that happens everywhere and no one seems to recognize it because it is in their interests not to recognize it until after they accomplish their agenda, if at all.

Do you know what? I was sitting at Chrysalis last week and on the wall was a flyer regarding

an Anger management program. Chrysalis is the employment specialist on Main ST., on the boundary of Skid Row. Many people from Skid Row use their services.

I have not seen that flyer anywhere else. I would think that every case manager on Skid Row should have that flyer. You know what case managers give felons if they need a job. They give you the same COPY OF A LIST OF EMPLOYMENT PLACES THAT ARE THIRTY MILES AWAY. THIRTY MILES AWAY. Only one person, that I know on Skid Row, has a couple of Human Recource recruiter names that they can call. Some of these case managers have been doing this type of work for at least a decade and they do not have one person they can call to send a person for an interview. That is unacceptable.

In fact, these places do not even tell you about Chrysalis. You have to find that out on the street.

Here is another bombshell. An employment specialist saw an ad in my hand that a fellow colleague of hers gave to me. The advertisement was a help wanted advertisement. They needed a real estate manager. She grabbed it from me and tore it up and threw it in the trash.

"I do not know what he is trying to do, but he is not the employment specialist. " That is what she said. She was able to get a job for some people at a company but the company FIRED 99

percent of the people they hired. It was designed that way. She looks good. She was able to get people jobs. They moved out and were housed in housing owned by the same company that she, the employment specialist worked for. So they were given a job and the company had a tenant.

The person was fired and had to leave the housing and then had to wait another two weeks before he could return to the place where he left, before he had the job in order to get back in the shelter. The lady knew damn well that every one who was going to work for that company was getting fired. It was rediculous. Some of the people fired were fired a week before their company benefits would start. IT was a racquet.

People in Skid Row help eachother. I asked 20 people yesterday this question-

"If 100 families adopted one person each and gave them the love and guidance the person needed to succeed and if each mission or organization down here had 100 equally committed people assigned to them, who would have the higher success rate, the organizations or the families with their respective charges? It was unanimous. All 20 said the families or individuals who helped a person one on one would win. They said it would be no contest.

These are not my words. These are the words and thoughts of the people with whom I discuss these issues.

Keep this in mind as well. This is just not the organizations in Skid Row. IT is indicative of the Drug Rehab/Homeless industrial complex.

"Walter. This homeless and drug rehab industry down here and in the whole city of Los Angeles is the biggest racket going. They do not care. They want the money. There is so much money available but NONE OF IT GETS TO THE PEOPLE THAT NEED IT." CATHERINE SAID TO ME.