Outings, Meetings & Skid Row

Hello friends!

The last week since I wrote has been a great one. My roommate, Elizabeth, is finally in town and we have been able to reconnect and get the house put together. We had friends staying with us this week which made for a busy and fun time!

Thursday and Friday have been the most profound this week of my experiences. Thursday afternoon I met with a couple guys to discuss ACA. I was excited about the time to share the vision and to hear their feedback. Though, after about 2 minutes, there was no more talk about ACA as the focus switched to the method I'm choosing verses the method they think is best. It was a bit frustrating at times, but also a good learning experience in patience and listening.

Thursday evening, Elizabeth and I met up with our friend Amy who works for CARE (international humanitarian organization - http://www.care.org/) and two of her collegues. What was supposed to be a quick get together, turned into 3 hours of discussing the issues and politics of Africa (Amy is from Uganda and one of her collegues, Frederick, from Nigeria). The 3 of them from CARE reitterated their excitment about ACA and the need they see for Awareness, Connection, Action to exist. That was very encouraging, especially after the afternoon get together!!

Friday night I went into Skid Row with 11 other people. I was not prepared for the reaction I would have. I have seen poverty in Russia and Africa, so seeing it in Los Angeles was not much of a shock. Instead, I stood on the corner and wept at the love that instantly welled up inside for each person I saw and even for those who could not be seen. ACA has a great opportunity to unite the two worlds of Los Angeles - the glitz and glam and the dire poverty, gangs and drug dealing - through educational conferences and real-life experiences with the people of Skid Row.

ACA is excited to focus on the needs in developing countries, but can not in turn ignore the very real needs in it's own backyard. Because of this, ACA will transition into connecting with many local agencies as well as international organizations focused on global poverty. Conferences will focus on one issue and the paralells locally and globally.

Below is brief background information on Skid Row so you can become aware of it's history and current status.

The first skid row was Skid Road (Yesler Way) in Seattle, where logs were skidded into the water on a corduroy road for delivery to Henry Yesler's lumber mills. During the Great Depression, the area went into decline, and "skid row" became synonymous with "bad neighborhood."

Los Angeles's Skid Row, in an area of downtown Los Angeles also known as Central City East, is home to one of the largest stable populations of transient persons (homeless) in the United States. Informal population estimates range from 7,000 to 8,000. First-time visitors to this area are often shocked by the sight of the cardboard box and camping tents lining the sidewalks; the juxtaposition with the gleaming glass-sheathed skyscrapers on nearby Bunker Hill is quite striking. A common joke about the high prices of houses and taxes in Los Angeles city and county is that "you can't even buy a cardboard box for that price" (with "that price" being a budget that would pay for housing in many other parts of the country). L.A.'s Skid Row is sometimes called "the Nickel," because it is centered on Fifth Street. Most of the city's homeless and social service providers (such as Frontline Foundation, Midnight Mission, Union Rescue Mission and Downtown Women's Center) are based on Skid Row. While downtown Los Angeles has gone through a revitalization in recent years, development has mostly skipped over the Skid Row neighborhood. In 2005 and 2006, several local hospitals and suburban law enforcement agencies were accused by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and other officials of transporting those homeless people in their care to Skid Row. [1] [2] According to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the official boundaries of skid row are Third and Seventh Streets to the north and south and Alameda and Main Streets to the east and west, respectively. [3]