Waiting For Elysium

Photo by Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times

To drive the streets of Echo Park or along the 101 Freeway or shop along the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica is to enter the realm of the ghosts, the real-life zombies of Los Angeles.  They gather here because the weather is right for sleeping rough and anyways, there are no points farther west than the pier at Santa Monica.  It is the end of the line where all the movie magic falls off the continent into the sea.  No one notices the irony of a human being with little in this world to comfort him camped out in a dirty, torn and frayed tent, a slop bucket and some tarps nearby, all within shouting distance of where La La Land was filmed, that mythical, colorful tribute to Hollywood where a rising star simply must hold fast to her dreams and it will all turn out okay.  These tent camps are our Hoovervilles, the historical harbingers of the Great Depression.

According to Mayor Eric Garcetti in his Open Letter to Angelenos About Homelessness, there are 129,972 people living on the streets statewide.  In Los Angeles city proper and L.A. County the number stands at 49,521.  Those numbers seem low to me.  There are encampments under nearly every freeway overpass, in vacant lots, in parks, and most dangerously, in flood control channels and the Sepulveda Basin.  The numbers are a double-digit increase over last year, that much is certain, and the numbers are confirmed by Garcetti himself in his letter.

These poor people, simply by trying to survive, demonstrate the consequences of the homeless problem in Los Angeles.  Last month, a fire broke out in the Sepulveda Basin that forced the people camped there to abandon belongings and flee the flames.  Residences and businesses were threatened.

In December of 2017, a camp cooking fire ignited a blaze that burned uncomfortably close to homes, museums, businesses and schools, including the college where I teach which had to be evacuated even though the flames were burning away from campus.  Lessons from previous fires have taught us not to take wind direction for granted since Santa Ana winds can turn a fire around in an instant.

Vermin infestation, physical illnesses like measles and rabies, and mental illnesses abound; quality health care, another human right like shelter, is spotty at best for these souls tormented with demons left over from war, traumas and abuse.  The problem is clearly growing and all of us are responsible to do something about it.

Mayor Garcetti is trying.  Over the last year, he says, 21,000 homeless were provided housing across the county.  The current city budget allocates $460 million for measures to help people find transitional shelter leading, we hope, to permanent housing.  But rents are sky high here, and no one seems to want a homeless housing unit in their neighborhood.  Just ask the folks in Koreatown and Sherman Oaks.  Both communities have been vigorously debating plans for affordable housing with residents not wanting to encourage the blight and crime that might accompany the homeless as they relocate to their neighborhoods.

Voters across the city approved Proposition HHH in 2016, which provides funding for supportive housing for those who are homeless or at risk for homelessness.  This has led to 109 homeless housing developments promising 7,400 new units that will be available for occupancy.  This is on top of the 16,525 units created in 2018.  But Garcetti says that people are becoming homeless faster than housing can be provided.

Why is this happening?  Here in Los Angeles, there is a housing shortage, rampant income inequality and a sky-rocketing poverty level.  Even those earning wages are struggling with the cost of rent, utilities, medical care and food.  L.A. is becoming a tough, or even near impossible city to live in and raise a family.  Young people are burdened with exploding student loan debt and the economy is rocky at best, and as we heard this week, we may be headed for a recession right around the time of the next presidential election.

Garcetti’s solution, while he pushes for more affordable housing, is to try to help people living on the streets with more portable showers, bathrooms, and storage units.  He also promises sanitation teams that will go in and clean up the mess of so many people living without facilities in our streets and alleys.  However, the tensions rise when LAPD and other city personnel confiscate carts and belongings of people and dispose of them.  If someone is arrested for a crime, even something as non-threatening as simple vagrancy, he or she often loses all possessions.  Tents and blankets and food—all of it is transported to the landfill while the homeless person is taken off to jail or for medical treatment.  Many times, those life supporting possessions took months to accumulate from patient foraging in dumpsters and trash heaps across the city.  Several of the missions and support groups on Skid Row, like the Catholic Worker, offer their clients storage areas for carts and belongings while they wash up, eat a good meal, and line up for assistance.

Garcetti is marshaling funding to address the problem.  Sacramento sent $86 million for an emergency fund last year.  California also contributed $81 million to the city and county effort to assist people with getting off the street and into safe housing.  But a lot of this crisis falls on Los Angeles residents.  It is far too easy to look right through these people as we walk in our neighborhoods and shopping malls.  It is devastating human misery hiding in plain sight.  Once these units are built, we must welcome them in our neighborhoods.  This is a moral and ethical crisis that cannot be hidden away behind some Hollywood façade.  It is here and now and real, and human beings are suffering.  It is on us to do something about it.

Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP/Getty Images

Gehenna (Part II)

Photo courtesy of Chips and Salsa Today blog

These are the things that haunt us.  There is a woman floating among the tables on the Catholic Worker patio.  Shrouded in white, clean, hair freshly washed, eyes vacant.  She is dream-like, hallucinatory.  Then it registers, across her chest, LAC+USC Hospital.  I realize she is wearing two gowns, one tied in the front, one tied in the back.  Barefoot.  On her wrist, the distinctive plastic bracelet.  She sits on the corner of a table, spine straight, dignified.  I know her story.  Homeless patients from the county hospital get dumped back on Skid Row, often without their possessions or any provisions for their self-treatment.

*          *          *          *          *          *

“Water man!  I need water over here!”

The clients have taken their seats at the picnic tables on the patio.  The line still runs out to the street, and they cannot get enough water.  As I move quickly, table to table, the clients in the line also ask me for a cup and some water.  It is the heat, the humidity, and something else:  the food is spicy hot.  In an effort to create flavor in blandness, the cooks have loaded up on hot sauce and peppers.  There is also a cart manned by an attractive volunteer.  Clients stop by on their way to the tables to put more spicy condiments on their food.  They ask for spoonfuls ladled over their plates, or to fill paper cups.  There are tables set up nearby with bins of diced onions, jalapeno peppers, and the bell peppers I chopped.  They want taste, but the sauces and vegetables simply create heat, and then, no one can get enough water.  It is comic irony, but there is no time for a chuckle.

“Water man!  Hurry, I need water.  My mouth is on fire.”

I draw my pitcher from a barrel, and rush from one end of the patio to the other, filling paper cups.  “Sir, agua?” I ask one man.  “Ma’am, more water?”  When I call them sir or ma’am, it is as if I have given them a compliment.  They visibly straighten and smile, the lost look runs away from their faces, and they lock eyes with me.  Dignity becomes a tangible thing, all because of a sir or ma’am.

Several complain that the water from my pitcher is not cold enough.  I go back inside to the kitchen to find another water barrel; this one has been full of ice and water for longer, so it’s colder.  I scoop up a pitcher and make for the patio.  On my way out, I notice that many people in line for food have containers and jars.  Once they have a full plate, they ask the server to fill their plastic containers for later.  One man has only a vegetable bag from the supermarket.  “I’m afraid it will melt,” the server tells him.

“Please, please, fill it.”

She ladles the tuna noodles into the bag.  The man twists and ties a knot.  The bag holds for now.

Back out on the patio, I continue to move quickly to fill the outstretched cups.  At the back and center of the dining area is a fountain.  In this oasis of food and comfort, the fountain offers a Zen-like peace.  A woman crouches at the very edge, rocking gently back and forth on her heels.  She is humming to herself, but I cannot make out the tune.  It sounds like a lullaby.  “Ma’am, would you like some water?” I ask her.  She visibly shrinks from my words and from me, waving her hand frantically in the air.  I move on and leave her alone.

“Hey, hey, man,” a toothless Latino stops me.

“Would you like water?”

“No water.  Listen, man, could you help me.  I’ll work for it, I’ll do whatever you need.  I have to get a bus ticket home.  You know, it’s like ten or fifteen bucks, and I ain’t got it.  But I’ll work for it, I promise.  Do you know someone who can help me?  I need to get back home to Santa Maria.  It’s up north.”

“I’ll get you some help,” I offer, and go to find one of the workers.  When I return, he tells the woman the same story, but she cannot give him fifteen dollars.  They do not just hand out money to people.  The man becomes a little more edgy and insistent.

“Look, I just need to get home.  Can’t you help me?”  Then another thought strikes him.  “Listen, can I use the phone?  I can call someone to wire me the money.”

Another diner nearby, a man wearing several coats in the heat and humidity, perks up.  “Here, man, use mine.”  He holds out a cell phone.  Homeless people with cell phones?  When I pass by them later, the bus ticket guy is talking urgently into the cell phone, pleading for help.

“Ma’am, some water?” I ask a chubby, middle-aged woman with a cherubic face.

“Oh, dearie, you must be new here.”  I nod breathlessly and catch the corner of the table for balance.  “And you don’t look so good.”

I fill her cup while pondering her English accent.  “I’m fine,” I tell her.

“Where am I?”

I notice she is very clean and her nails are painted.  “You’re at the Catholic Worker.”

“Oh, they are so nice.  That’s the place started by Dorothy Day.  When did she die?”

All I have learned and read runs away from my dehydrated brain.  “I think in the 1960s.”

I go to the barrel to swoosh up another pitcher of ice water.  Jeff Dietrich, the leader of Catholic Worker L.A., stands nearby supervising the patio.  I ask him when Dorothy Day died, and he snorts out a reply:  1980.

As I continue to move among the clients, a low-hanging branch rips off my hair net along with a chunk of hair.  Oh well.  My Saran-Wrap gloves are also in tatters.  I strip them off and drop them into a trash can.  I am no longer handling food, so I don’t think I need them.  My hands welcome the chance to breathe, but they still feel slimy from the thin plastic sheeting.  A man calls out to me for water.  I come up behind him to fill his glass, but I involuntarily recoil.  His hair is alive with lice.  I am suddenly reminded that the people behind the empty cups are in dire shape.  Many have needle tracks up and down their bare arms.  There are skin infections and sores.  There are casts and splints.  And there are bugs—flies, worms, lice, and other creepy-crawly things.

A face looms in front of me.  “Hey, I don’t want to bust your balls,” the man says, but you need gloves.”  He is a volunteer, and his words don’t fully register.  “Some of the people are complaining.  I just thought you should know.  Go get gloves.”  I do as I am told.

I come to a table in a corner of the patio where the men glower at each other and eat in silence.  One man, white and middle-aged, has a store-bought water bottle that he wants me to fill.  As I am pouring in the water, he sneezes into his hand.  “Bless you,” I say automatically.

“Hey, don’t blow your nose while I’m eating, you dirty sonofabitch!” one of the other guys says.  I take a step back.

“I’m not a dirty sonofabitch, but you’re an asshole.”

The complainer stands up, and for a second, I see a fight coming and I am between them.  “Fuck you,” says the sneezer.

Thankfully, the complainer moves to another table.  I turn to see Jeff Dietrich standing nearby, watching intently.  Is he watching my reaction, or is he anticipating trouble?  And with his small stature and bad knee, what would he be prepared to do?  The trouble, this time, dissipates.

In one corner of the patio, the homeless get to leave their carts while they eat.  The area is blocked off and secure.  This is also where Catholic Worker people issue carts to those who do not have them.  It is a major problem on the street when the cops bust the homeless for “stealing carts” from local businesses.  The homeless lose their possessions when their carts are impounded, and they have no way to move around Skid Row.  The Catholic Worker started a program where they buy carts and issue them to the homeless, clearly marking them so that the cops know to leave them alone.  This is one problem of which I am completely ignorant.  Who knew that a shopping cart might be considered property worth the risk of injury or death, but on Skid Row everything is in the shopping cart.  Therefore, the homeless are simply fighting to protect their last possessions, the things absolutely necessary for survival.

The line is still long, and the diners have changed over several times.  Each table brings new faces, and the demand for water is unceasing.  There are clients with the thousand yard stare, as if they have been in the war zone too long.  There are the normal conversations that one might hear in a restaurant.  Three men are discussing the Lakers with a worker, the ins and outs of recent trades and the team’s chances of winning another championship.  A woman face down on the table suddenly raises her head and calls out for water.  She is black, but her face is coated in what appears to be white paint.  I study her complexion as I fill her glass.  I cannot tell why her face is painted this way.  There are no marks or sores, so the white is definitely not a cream or ointment.  I pass another table where two women are reading the Bible.  As I fill glasses, I realize one of the Bible students is a man in drag.  He is wearing a miniskirt and a low-cut top.  A construction worker carrying a heaping plate of food exits from the line and leaves the patio.  Should a man with a job be allowed to get free food?  He returns several times for more, but no one from the Catholic Worker seems to notice.  There are Hispanic gang bangers lining up as well, with pressed white tee shirts and clean shorts and socks.  Do they qualify as poor and indigent?  Two black guys in suits come through, rings on nearly every finger and big gold medallions around their necks.  Not exactly my view of a person in poverty, but several workers know them.  “I love you all,” one of the black men calls out to the kitchen staff as he exits.

As the diners dwindle, my final job for the day is to dry dishes.  At this point, my legs are rubber and the bustle of activity has taken on a hallucinatory haze.  Spots and shadows cloud my vision, and my tongue feels swollen in my mouth.  I am in no shape for this work, and I hope my condition has gone unnoticed.  But in the middle of drying the dishes, Mike calls me over and dismisses me for the day.  I am the first one to be let go from the volunteers, and I cannot help but think that it is because of my lack of physical stamina.

Before I leave, I take a last look around.  The dining patio is still full.  Some of the homeless have taken the opportunity to sleep on the tables and benches.  Patients still wait at the health clinic.  I wonder what will ultimately happen to these people.  It is good work to feed them three times a week, to try to give them medical attention, to provide them with carts and clothing, but those are immediate needs.  Will they ever escape the street?  Jeff Dietrich and his workers have been doing this for forty years now, and I am sure the line at the gate is just as long today as it was in the 1970s.  The faces change, but the problems remain.

Out on the street, I walk to my car, careful not to step on the bodies already staking out their places on the sidewalk.  The noon sun burns hot.  Across the street, a dog savagely attacks the fence as a homeless man passes.  Near my car, a dead tree offers two men scant shade to lounge on their sleeping bags.  One rolls around laughing, holding a blunt in his hand.  “Hey, dude,” he calls to me.  “Do you know how to sing Hakuna Matata?”  He laughs at his own question.  Aside from the obvious Lion King reference, I find it ironic that the title is Swahili for “There are no worries.”

I wave to the men, get in my car and head for home, full of questions and deeply disturbed.

Gehenna (Part I)

Photo courtesy of LMU: Magazine of Loyola Marymount University

Gehenna:  a valley below Jerusalem where children were sacrificed in fire to the Ammonite god, Moloch; a place or state of pain and torment.

At dawn, the temp is already in the high 70s with equal humidity as the Skid Row ghosts begin to stir.  This is grit-blasted Los Angeles.  The lost and forsaken crawl from dirty sleeping bags, cardboard boxes, portable toilets, cracks in the sidewalk, every alley and doorway.  Take 6^th Street down from the 110 and watch the landscape shift from old masonry buildings to dead brown blight, and there the ghosts come out.  They shuffle into the street, they ignore traffic lights, they mumble their prayers, they search for food or smack or a bottle.  Seven a.m. is never too early to get fucked up on Skid Row.

There is a circuit, a grand master plan for most of the people on the street in that fifty square block hell in the middle of the city of angels:  find relief, even if it’s temporary.  The human inhabitants know which soup kitchen is serving today.  They know where to find alcohol and drugs.  They have their haunts and their fixes, and as the heat and humidity climb, the misery can only be relieved in small increments.

The Catholic Worker Hospitality Kitchen, or Hippy Kitchen, as it is sometimes called, sits on the corner of Gladys and 6^th.  I had to circle the block twice because I kept missing it.  There are trees and fresh paint on the walls; therefore, the place looks more like an oasis in a desert, but I was too distracted by the people roaming around with their carts and detritus.  I had to avoid inadvertently running someone over, because they did not care that a car was coming.  On my second go-round, I pulled to the curb outside a nursery school.  A nursery school!—who would leave their children here?  People were lined up like logs on the sidewalk, most of them unconscious, although a few were rubbing their eyes and staring at me.  I walked a half block back and crossed Gladys.  A woman was washing down the courtyard outside the kitchen.  “Hey,” I called out to her.  “Where’s the entrance to the Catholic Worker?”

“Down there by the open gate,” she said, gesturing down Gladys.  Two black guys with their carts blocked the sidewalk between me and the open chain-link gate.

“Hey, dude,” one of them called out to me.  “You gotta go in there.”  He pointed toward the same opening.  I thanked him and tried to squeeze between the two carts loaded with bedding and junk.

Once inside, I met up with Mike who was handing out assignments for the day.  When he noticed me, I stuck out my hand and told him my name.  “Yeah, I need you to start buttering some bread,” he said.  I noticed he had hearing aids.  The other volunteers had already started chopping onions, and large pots were lined up on the stove.  Mike took me to the prep area of the kitchen and showed me boxes and bags of bread.  It looked like the bread restaurants serve on their tables.  Now I knew what happened to whatever the customers did not eat.  Other bags contained whole loaves.  Mike handed me off to a woman named Anne who explained the process.  She set up my workstation with a brick of room-temperature margarine, a dull knife, and a laundry basket.  Bread gets buttered and then stacked in the basket.  When the basket is jammed to the top, put a plastic bag over it and tie it up.  Wear a hair net and a set of gloves made of Saran wrap.  I donned my gear and began slathering.

Almost immediately, my back started raising hell.  I saw a wooden stool nearby and pulled it over to sit.  I’ve never had any problem buttering bread, but the heat was rising and the margarine smelled like rancid fat.  My shirt was already greasy with margarine, coated with crumbs, and soaked with sweat.  My Saran Wrap fingers poked holes through the thin sheeting, so I had to keep re-gloving.  The margarine and the plastic also made my hands slippery, so I could not get a grip on the knife.  The other volunteers around me seemed to move about their business effortlessly, with the finely honed skills of people who did this three times a week.  I felt like a lightweight with my aching back and my useless, clumsy fingers.  However, in quick time my workmates and I had three laundry baskets full of bread, and we had utilized five bricks of margarine.  I also noticed the other volunteers ate constantly, grabbing a piece of buttered bread here, or a meatball from a tray over against the wall.  I had no appetite whatsoever, but the regulars seemed to relish eating.  They encouraged one another to try one dish or spoon from a pot.  They sampled like family members gathered in a kitchen at Thanksgiving, while I tried to fight the flip-flops in my stomach.

The bread was stored on a wire shelf to await distribution.  Next came the bell peppers, great trays of them, which I had to dice up with one of the most profoundly dull knives I have ever used.  And the peppers were rotted, for the most part.  Mike told me to cut off the bad bits and salvage what I could, then dice what I had left and transfer the pieces to another large tray.  I kept cutting my gloves, requiring frequent re-gloving.  My fingers were safe; I could not have cut skin if I wanted to.  The rot on the outside of the peppers often extended into the flesh of the interior, and some of it looked like pus.  I’d cut into the bad and a white-green oily fluid would seep out.  I tried to seed them as well, but the tiny grains kept sticking to my plastic-wrapped fingers.  The woman next to me hacked her way through several trays of zucchinis, which were rubbery and covered in dark spots.  These vegetables were the throwaways from supermarket produce sections.  There was enough good vegetable material to feed an army, but with the rotted parts, no paying customer would buy produce in this condition.

Mike called all of us to put down our knives and utensils and gather around the table in the main kitchen area.  We formed a circle and held hands, praying aloud for the homeless we would soon be serving, for justice in the world and on the streets, for changes in government policy to remedy the suffering and misery of so many people.  Mike asked the volunteers for petitions, and a big, bearded man shouted out, “How about for Gary Kasparov.”  His request threw me for a minute.  “He got hauled in for questioning by the Russian police.”  I realized he meant the chess player.  I found out later that the petitioner was a big chess fan and often played matches with some of the homeless diners out on the patio once serving was done for the day.

“And let’s not forget the Pussy Riot girls,” Jeff, the leader of the organization shouted.  Again, it took me a minute to realize he was referring to the arrests of a protesting punk rock group in Russia for criticizing the Putin government.  We closed with the Lord’s Prayer and returned to our kitchen jobs.

Back chopping my vegetables, I heard volunteers around me talk about “actions,” as in, “We have an action scheduled for next week at the nuclear power plant.”  The goal of these actions was to get arrested.  That, for the volunteers, was the Holy Grail, and a source of pride.  Jeff Dietrich, both in print and in public, speaks of getting arrested and going to prison as a badge of honor.  He rails against LAPD violence and brutality on the streets of Skid Row.  Jeff does not like authority.  Listening to the other volunteers talk about getting arrested or dragged away to a holding cell, it was evident that rebellion and even anarchy are goals considered admirable in the Catholic Worker world.  Over the years, Jeff and his band have chained themselves to bulldozers to protest the new cathedral built by the L.A. Archdiocese; they have encroached on the grounds of nuclear testing sites; and they have poured blood and oil on the steps of the federal building in Westwood while praying the rosary.  Feeding the poor and offering them medical and other assistance are a necessary part of Catholic Worker action, but protesting against all forms of human abuse and degradation, including war, violence, and weaponry, is also high on the volunteers’ priority list.

With the cooking nearly complete, we gathered once more around the main kitchen table for prayer and serving assignments.  Today’s main course was tuna noodles.  The smell of onions was still so overpowering in the kitchen that my eyes were burning, even with fans running to blow out the fumes.  I was assigned to “water the tables,” which meant drawing pitchers of water from large trash barrels.  Big bowling ball-sized chunks of ice floated in the water.  The heat and humidity required that we keep up the hydration of the clients, since they could become sick from their day on the streets.  After everyone had an assignment, the doors were opened to the line that stretched down the block.  I had only a second to glance at the shambling ghosts waiting patiently for their bread and noodles.  They were people of color, mainly, and they had the faraway stares of soldiers who had been in the theater of war too long with death and destruction.  The words from Allen Ginsberg fire-flashed in my mind:  “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.”  Many looked down and away, but in the eyes of the ones who stared back at me, I saw bleak emptiness, “with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies…”

I grabbed my pitcher and a stack of paper cups and began to “water the tables.”

Gehenna (Part II) will be posted here soon and will deal with the rest of the day at the Catholic Worker Hospitality Kitchen on Skid Row, Los Angeles.