The notice told tenants that they must vacate the building within 10 days—by Monday, August 3.
St. George tenants have lived there a long time, some as long as twenty years. This is home. The St. George is “permanent supportive housing” (PSH), meaning it is home to people with very low income, many formerly unhoused, who need supportive services. The services are part of the tenancy. Without these services and subsidized rents, most St. George tenants would likely end up living on the streets.
The St. George had been owned and managed by the Skid Row Housing Trust (SHRT) until 2023 when that nonprofit organization filed for bankruptcy and subsequently collapsed, leading a judge to order all 29 of its downtown residential hotels into a receivership. The buildings had fallen into disrepair and SRHT was unable to manage them. The receiver maintained the buildings and conducted some repairs for one year at a cost of $40 million, before selling them. On August 7, 2024, Leo Pustilinikov, a private, profit-minded developer, through his organization “Hope for an Affordable Los Angeles” (HALA), bought seventeen of the buildings, including the St. George, for an incredibly discounted price of $10 million. Later he bought four more. HALA has been responsible for maintaining the St. George ever since.
The Notice to Vacate that the tenants received was, in fact, an order from LAHD to HALA, the owner, requiring them to take certain actions required by law: maintain a “fire watch” to protect the tenants, conduct basic maintenance to ensure tenant safety, provide tenants with regular updates, and create and implement a plan to temporarily relocate all of the tenants in comparable homes until repairs are completed. The order required them to submit that plan to LAHD for their inspection and approval of the relocation units before moving tenants into them.
By Tuesday, July 28, HALA had not submitted its plan. They had done nothing to update the tenants on the process. In fact, managers contracted by HALA to run the building, Hart District Management, and, even more disturbingly, employees of the service provider Libertana were banging on tenants’ doors telling them that they had to leave immediately and telling some tenants, falsely, that they were not entitled to any relocation benefits. That day, tenants and LA CAN organizers met with LAHD inspectors to demand support, full enforcement of the order’s relocation requirements, and postponement of the deadline to leave.
At the meeting, LAHD inspectors told tenants that they should start packing and that the following Monday they would have to move. The inspectors confirmed that LAHD had not received a relocation plan, but said that they thought St. George tenants would have to move to units in several other buildings among those owned by HALA. LA CAN organizers, who are supporting tenants in all of the HALA buildings, know that these other buildings have many of the same habitability and safety issues as the St. George. The tenants explained to the inspectors that it was not acceptable for them to be forced to move without any meaningful assistance on such short notice.
The tenants’ objections to being forced to move on so little notice do not in any way minimize the dangerous and unlivable conditions in the building. HALA must make those repairs. However, these conditions are not new. Tenants have been complaining about the deterioration of the building, including bad plumbing and lack of fire safety, for years. The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) sent HALA a letter on the tenants’ behalf in November 2025 alerting them to severe habitability and fire safety problems in the St. George and other HALA owned buildings. St. George tenants have been enduring these conditions only to have this punitive ten day “vacate” order dropped on them suddenly.
LAHD also has known about these conditions all along. Beyond the LAFLA letter, the inspectors admitted that they have been inside the St. George on a weekly basis since HALA took over ownership. HALA purchase documents include an agreement to create a repair plan and submit monthly progress reports to LAHD. Despite LAHD officials knowing about these violations, they have taken little to no effective action to enforce HALA’s legal requirement to make repairs and ensure the tenants’ safety. LAHD has the legal authority to impose civil penalties, to initiate criminal prosecution, and even to make the repairs themselves and bill the owner. They failed to do any of these things, and only now have taken this action, which punishes the tenants for the owner’s failures to fulfill his legal obligations.
But HALA may have another agenda. The St. George has 87 residential units, but, as of November 2023, only 43 were occupied. By the time of LAHD’s vacate order, only about 20 people were living in the building. LA CAN organizers recognize this pattern of emptying the buildings, as it is happening across the HALA portfolio—just as the neglect of maintenance and failure to repair conditions critical to tenant health and safety is happening across the portfolio.
Perhaps most tellingly, about a week before the tenants received LAHD’s “notice to vacate,” LA CAN organizers learned that HALA itself had served St. George tenants with a 60-day notice to vacate their homes. HALA had not filed with the city any of the legally required plans to relocate tenants, and management was applying increasing pressure on the tenants to move “voluntarily” ahead of the required relocation. This was the third time in the past year that LA CAN and LAFLA have had to intervene to force HALA to rescind improperly issued notices to vacate. However, in this case, LAHD issued their own 10-day notice immediately afterward, prompting panic and confusion among tenants, many of them asking: why now?
The LAHD Notice to Vacate, coming after so many months of inaction by that city agency, suspiciously aids Pustilnikov and HALA in their efforts to empty the St. George. It may point to a larger game he is playing, with complicity from government officials.
On Friday, July 31, LAHD agreed to the tenants’ and LACAN’s demand to postpone the move-out date, giving them until August 11. What remains to be seen is whether HALA will provide moving services and relocate St. George tenants into comparable, but habitable new apartments; whether LAHD will hold HALA to its legal obligations; whether these moves will be repeated in HALA’s other buildings. And whether Pustilnikov and HALA will succeed with their other agenda at the expense of the city’s most vulnerable tenants.
]]>Friday, June 19, 2026
7:00 PM
This year’s Freedom Now is where culture, community, and change collide.
Live music. Powerful voices. Unapologetic truth. All in one room for one unforgettable night.
As the country marks “250 years”, we’re telling the real story:
We Were Always Here.
Pull up. Bring your people. Be part of it.
This Year We Honor
- Nana Gyamfi
- Fran Jemmott
- Angie Junck
- The Mahdesian Family
Special Guest: Dead Prez
More artists to be announced.
View Freedom Now Donation Flyer
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan took a tour of Skid Row on February 13, accompanied by
Estela Lopez, Central City East Association Executive Director and longtime proponent
of gentrification and criminalization of unhoused people. Mahan used this tour as a
photo op for his campaign for governor of California and his own advocacy for
criminalization.
When questioned by Gato, an LA CAN Human and Civil Rights Committee member,
about how he would address police mistreatment of unhoused people, Mahan exposed
his criminalization agenda, saying: “we also have to create accountability for coming
indoors.”
This statement is consistent with the main platforms he outlines on his campaign
website. He wants to build shelters and require people to go in them. He wants for force
people with mental health conditions to undergo treatment. He wants to punish those
who remain on the streets. That’s what he means when he says “accountability.”
There are not enough shelter beds available for unhoused people on Skid Row (or in
Mahan’s own city of San Jose). More importantly, shelter is unacceptable for many, if
not most, people due to concerns about safety, disease, separation from partners, pets
and property, jail-like rules, and many other negative conditions. At best, shelter still
does not resolve a person’s houselessness.
Forced treatment, like Mahan is proposing, is mostly ineffective, violates people’s
human right to autonomy over their own bodies and minds, and causes profound
trauma. Officials in California and throughout the US have a long history of forced
institutionalization of Black people and other people of color. It is another form of
criminalization, disguised as treatment. Without permanent housing, people simply
return to houselessness after treatment.
As mayor of San Jose, Mahan implemented the “Responsibility to Shelter” program to
arrest unhoused people who repeatedly refused to enter shelters. He established a new
police unit to enforce this policy.
Mahan brags about his results in San Jose. He swept over 500 encampments in 2024,
and, based on the “point in time” count reduced “unsheltered homelessness” by about
20 percent. However, actual numbers of unhoused people grew that year by a small
amount. These counts are unreliable, especially when sweeps drive people out of sight.
So, Mahan’s claims to success are highly suspect.
Critics in San Jose explain that his sheltering programs are about “optics.” They say that
he cleared encampments through sweeps, warehousing people in dingy hotel rooms.
After this summer’s World Cup games end, those hotel contracts will expire and people
may be turned back onto the streets.
Mahan’s raided San Jose’s Measure E funding for permanent housing, and diverted 90
percent of it to be used for shelter. Shelter does not reduce houselessness; it
temporarily moves people out of sight. Permanent housing, with supports if needed, is
the only solution to houselessness.
Mahan’s agenda aligns with Governor Newsom and President Trump. All three support
criminalization, shelters, and forced mental health treatment. It is also very popular with
the corporate oligarchs who would turn our cities into profit-making enterprises.
Financial backers for Mahan’s campaign include a roll call of tech and real estate
billionaires, like Google founder Sergey Brin and developer Rick Caruso. Joe Lonsdale,
Palantir co-founder and director of the Cicero Institute which drives much of the
criminalization of homelessness advocacy nationwide, is a strong Mahan supporter.
Mahan is buying media exposure, including a $1.5 million 30 second ad in the Super
Bowl.
Mahan’s visit to Skid Row and his criminalization agenda threaten our community. He
has proven himself an opponent of real solutions like developing affordable housing. He
has proven himself an eager architect of the police state. He has proven himself a
servant of the billionaire class. As the federal government unleashes law enforcement to
hunt down and arrest people they suspect of being immigrants, this leading Democrat
Party candidate for governor campaigns around plans to hunt down and arrest
unhoused people.
So, we say to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan: Get the fuck out of Skid Row! And take
your criminalization agenda with you.
On January 6, 2026, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco came to Skid Row for a
photo opportunity in his campaign for Governor of California. Bianco is a MAGA-aligned
Republican. He has been the elected Sheriff of Riverside County since 2019. Bianco is
a vocal advocate for using criminal penalties to address societal problems like mass
scale houselessness.
Announcing his candidacy for governor, Bianco said he wanted the streets “cleaned up”
and the “tent encampments gone.” His campaign website explains that he will use the
Grants Pass decision to “clear encampments.” In Grants Pass, the US Supreme Court
said cities, counties, and states could punish people for simply existing in public space,
even if they have nowhere else to go. Following that decision, other states have passed
blanket bans on people living in public spaces. If elected, he likely would seek to do the
same.
Bianco believes that houselessness in California is not caused by the shortage of
affordable housing for poor people and the stagnation of workers’ wages compared to
housing costs. In fact, he says that unhoused people don’t want homes or housing. He
says that houselessness is caused by the “homeless industrial complex,” and lenient
approaches to drug use. To him, unhoused people are “drug induced psychotics,” who
need to be to be forced into rehab to change their “lifestyles.” His plan is to use the
criminal law to do so.
Bianco boasts of leading efforts to pass Proposition 36, which increased criminal
penalties for petty thefts and drug use, while setting up a system of forced drug
treatment. He has criticized recent reforms in California that have reduced prison
populations. He promises, if elected, to empower the police and to impose more
punishment—as opposed to supporting communities with resources needed to create
real safety.
The California Department of Justice is conducting a civil rights investigation into
Bianco’s Sheriff’s Department, alleging a “pattern and practice” of unconstitutional
policing, including systemic use of excessive force, and citing to the extremely high
numbers of people dying in the county jails he runs. His jail are considered among the
most lethal in the US. Last year, Riverside County paid a $7.5 million settlement to the
family of a man they killed during a jail cell extraction. The man was in custody for being
intoxicated. Bianco denies wrongdoing by his deputies and says the DOJ investigation
is politically motivated.
Bianco has been a member of the Oathkeepers, a far right, militia-type organization that
includes many members of law enforcement and the military. The Oathkeepers espouse
white supremacist ideology and many were involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Bianco claims to no longer belong to the group, but defended them
as supporters of the US Constitution.
On Skid Row last month, Bianco handed out money and cigarettes to get people to talk
to him for the cameras. Had he actually listened to people living here, instead of touting
his ignorant agenda, he would have learned that criminalization has been the City of
Los Angeles’ policy for decades. He would have learned that it has not helped anyone
and has caused great suffering. He would have learned that people most definitely do
want homes—not shelter beds or temporary hotel rooms. He would have learned how
much the shortage of affordable housing, lack of good paying jobs, unavailability of
community-based healthcare, and racial discrimination have caused the crisis on our
streets.
Sadly, Bianco wasn’t here to listen. He was here to make a show for conservative voters
in the state who might believe his lies. Sadly, his proven cruel and ineffective “solutions,”
criminalization of unhoused people, harsher punishment, and forced mental health
treatment, are not unique to his Republican brand. Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor
Karen Bass have promoted or implemented sweeps and forced treatment. Democrat
candidate, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, has a platform that uses softer rhetoric, but is
difficult to distinguish from Bianco’s.
As the race for California’s governor continues, it is unfortunate that candidates like
Chad Bianco are using the people of Skid Row as props for their cruel and ignorant
campaign statements while refusing to acknowledge their human rights to housing, real
healthcare, a decent standard of living, and dignified treatment.
On Friday, February 20, LA CAN’s Community Watch team saw a police van full of people drive down Crocker Street and stop near 4th Street. LAPD Central Division Captain Kelly Muniz, Sgt. Helper, and other officers got out of the van. Central City East Association director and proponent of criminalization of unhoused people, Estela Lopez, got out, along with real estate agent and Historic Core Business Improvement District boss, Blair Besten. And, the featured guest, Ronnie Kurtz, Assistant Secretary of Community Planning and Development for the Trump Administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Led by the locals, Kurtz and his HUD team walked around the block, tried to get into the Care Campus, then stood in front of tent sites where unhoused people are attempting to survive on the streets, pointing with disdain while their camera crew filmed them. This “tour” was a photo opportunity, exploiting poverty on Skid Row to promote a deadly agenda.
Kurtz’ job is to oversee HUD’s work on affordable housing, community development (including Block Grants), disaster relief, and homelessness. He is responsible for administering billions of dollars of government funds, for programs on which millions of people throughout the US depend for services and housing.
Before being appointed to this powerful and responsible job, Kurtz, age 32, worked for three years as director of planning and community development for the City of Grovetown, a 4.8 square mile suburb of Augusta, Georgia with a population just over 17,000 and no homeless shelters within ten miles. Before this job, he worked for a few years as an entry level planner for an architectural firm.
Kurtz’ main qualification appears to be his Republican Party activism and his support for Donald Trump. He helped found the Columbia County Young Republicans and served as an RNC delegate to the Party’s 2024 National Convention. He joined Trump for President, Inc. for the 2020 campaign, and quit his job in Grovetown to join the campaign in 2024. He worked briefly for the America First Policy Institute and then for the Trump-Vance transition team after the 2024 election.
During his Senate confirmation process, Kurtz repeatedly stated that he would “follow… President Trump’s leadership in pursuing Administration priorities.” Trump spelled out his priorities related to houselessness in his August Executive Order “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” in which he promoted criminal punishments for unhoused people and forcing people into involuntary, often inhumane, mental institutions, while defunding housing programs. Kurtz said he was committed to “advanc[ing] the goals” of Trump’s executive order.
Kurtz said specifically that he opposed “Housing First,” a proven effective approach to houselessness that prioritizes getting people into permanent housing regardless of their drug use or mental health conditions.
The Trump administration has moved to drastically cut funding for permanent housing, along with other government supports for people in need. They proposed to cut HUD funding by 45 percent, including massive reductions in the Section 8 voucher program that houses hundreds of thousands of people. While Federal courts stopped proposed cuts that would have caused 170,000 people to lose their housing, including over 9,200 in Los Angeles County, the Trump administration continues to shift away from permanent housing and towards shelter, forced treatment, and criminalizing people living on the streets.
Kurtz’ photo op tour of Skid Row, with police and known criminalization advocates, has nothing to do with helping residents in need, and everything to do with promoting an agenda of forced treatment, shelters instead of permanent housing, and punishing people for their poverty. Had he actually spent time talking to people living on Skid Row, instead of just the gentrifier lobby, he would have learned that people want the government to support their human right to housing and to treat them with the dignity that they deserve.
This bill is not a celebration of freedom. It is a weapon disguised as patriotism.
It trades our basic rights for political ransom:
- Healthcare held hostage for tax breaks.
- Food for poor families exchanged for corporate subsidies.
- Housing sacrificed to the gods of austerity.
- Debt relief transformed into shackles that will burden generations.
- Militarization to seed division and take hostages.
It is not lost on us that the architects of this bill have long sought to destroy the fragile progress won by generations of organizers, movement elders, freedom fighters, and everyday people. From the Reconstruction Amendments to the New Deal, from Civil Rights to COVID-era aid, every step forward has been met by violent backlash. This is that backlash. Again.
This bill—like the Black Codes, like Reaganomics, like the “Contract with America”—is designed not just to roll back rights but to erase the people who fought for them. It is the state-sanctioned return of social death: eviction, hunger, untreated illness, and despair—all legislated into law under the guise of fiscal responsibility and national pride.
But we are not naïve. We know their playbook. We’ve seen it before.
As Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
As Assata Shakur reminded us, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom… It is our duty to win.”
We will fight this bill not with polite appeals to civility, but with the same unrelenting spirit that built every liberation movement this country has ever seen. We will organize, disrupt, educate, and resist. We will build mutual aid networks and protect each other from the fallout. We will name this bill for what it is: a declaration of war on the working class, the poor, the immigrant, the disabled, the houseless, and Black and brown communities.
This July 4th, don’t let the fireworks distract you from the fires being set in our communities. The Big Beautiful Bill is not about independence. It is a burning cross on the front lawn of democracy.
We mourn. We fight. We rise.
]]>
June 11, 2024
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass
Los Angeles City Hall
200 N Spring St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Dear Mayor Bass,
It is a punishing time for poor, unhoused women attempting to survive in Los Angeles.
As we know, women continue to suffer the injustice of unequal compensation. We have greater gender-related costs. When we lose our homes, support and safety nets — as many of us are experiencing now — we receive fewer services than men. Black and Brown women, in particular, continue to suffer overlapping forms of discrimination.
In Skid Row, we face even greater challenges. We are routinely the last to learn about and access housing. Ever more women with children are unprotected, yet we are simultaneously targeted and neglected. A growing number of women in Skid Row have endured violence and sexual harassment in initiatives like Project Room Key and Project Home Key, yet we’re the first to be dismissed and exited. Shelters in Skid Row are not an ethical option. They are unsanitary, unsafe and poorly staffed. The dehumanizing treatment and conditions within these sites are constantly echoed. As the most densely populated unhoused community in the nation and predominantly Black, little has changed to prioritize our community’s needs. We are still waiting for a cohesive plan to house us, to house our vulnerable daughters, mothers, aunties, sisters and friends.
When you took office, you pledged to address homelessness across Los Angeles. The city — right now — has funding to humanely house people in permanent housing. Why have only two people been permanently housed? Why are shelters and enforcement the only options available? Shelters are not housing. Dignified housing does not have entry conditions. It should not have checkpoints, frisks, invasive body searches or curfews. It should not come with filthy shared bathrooms and kitchens.
Being unhoused does not make us criminals, yet being poor often renders our existence illegal. There is no humanity in the targeted removal of our communities, yet encampment sweeps are rampant. We are being violently forced out, banished from our communities and left without medication and valuable belongings. Many women in our community suffer from PTSD, anxiety and depression, as is the case with Stephanie Williams, a long term Skid Row resident, educator, provider and protector, who was targeted and uprooted by city departments.
We are re-traumatized when we see plans to allocate more money to policing. We are reminded that Black lives still don’t matter. More money for police translates to less money for services and housing. Less investment in our communities results in more arrests and barriers to housing. The same failed policies that destroyed our communities are being rehashed.
Any plan for housing vulnerable populations should be implemented without enforcement, and should offer independent, dignified living. This is why we demand the repeal of Municipal Code 41.18. The enforcement of 41.18 only targets and criminalizes us, poor, unhoused women and our communities. The city must invest in housing for vulnerable women in marginalized communities, not limitless resources for policing. It is the government’s responsibility to address and rectify the root causes of this issue. You cannot police a way out of this problem.
The continuation of such policies demonstrates that our politicians are not interested in fixing decades of harm and failed policy. The DTLA 2040 plan, Skid Row Action Plan, LA 2028 are not for us. We are being excavated from our communities to make room for the Olympics and lucrative developments. A vision for Los Angeles that does not include us, greenlights our persecution and causes us to die prematurely. We are tired of recycled strategies and baseless declarations. We were hopeful that we’d be prioritized, given your background as an organizer who fought for civil rights. However as Black and Brown women, we feel betrayed by elected officials who look like us, but whose homeless plans make clear they are not us. Based on your policies we see that, even to a Black Mayor, this predominantly Black community is once again targeted for erasure.
Is any time our time? Will we ever be seen? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’”. Stop this cycle of abandonment, neglect, oppression and injustice. We need a bold, humanitarian approach. We need you to center our needs.
To protect women in our communities the following actions must be taken urgently:
- Prioritize housing solutions for unhoused women immediately, in particular Black women who are overrepresented among the unhoused.
- Discontinue the separation of families by providing accommodations for women and their children.
- Convert all vacant property owned by the city/county into housing that can be used for women and families.
- Direct resources to healthcare services for women, using city, state, and federal funds.
- Stop criminalization of unhoused communities and repeal 41.18.
- End LAPD engagement strategies and homeless outreach.
Finally, given our longstanding history of living and working with women in Skid Row and Downtown Los Angeles, D.W.A.C. provides essential insight into the needs of houseless women. We urge you to use the recommendations from our Skid Row Women’s Needs Assessment as a guideline to best serve women in our community. Those with lived experience know what they need and have proven solutions that foster self-determination. Solutions that do not involve the police at any step of the process. Community involvement is essential for gaining a perspective on what needs to be done to achieve significant results. There is no way to credibly implement housing and public health solutions without the voices, expertise and Herstories of women in our communities.
Nothing about us without us.
Sincerely,
The women of D.W.A.C.:
Jacqueline Wun-meen
Keke
Kelly Ibrahim
Kimberly Johnson
LaVeeta Marbury
Lorraine Lopez
Lorraine Morland
Monique Noel
Natosha Smith
Rosa Miller
Shameka Foster
Shelly
Simone
Stephanie Williams
Suzie Q
Tiffany Nickens
Tremaine Wade
Being houseless is an ongoing crisis in America, but one group of formerly unhoused singers hoped their time on America’s Got Talent would make a difference.
Not only did The Freedom Singers give an angelic performance of a song that directly showcases a Los Angeles devoid of glamour, but it garnered four enthusiastic yeses from the Judges and brought AGT Host Terry Crews to tears.
The Freedom Singers are comprised of eight singers from Skid Row, a neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. The group’s core members came together in the Arts and Culture department at the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), an organization aimed at helping the impoverished.
“Skid Row is in the heart of downtown Los Angeles where five people per day die on the streets, houseless people,” said one of the male singers. “So, for us, Freedom Singing brings us close together; it is that medium that we’ve always used to come together as America.”
One of the female singers described her and her mother’s “traumatizing” experience of being unhoused on Skid Row, explaining how city officials came and took all their personal belongings and left them with nothing.
Continue reading (via NBC.com)
Ye hits new low with personally delivered hateful message to Black residents in Skid Row: Skid Row Responds
Kanyè came to the most economically deprived and abandoned corner of LA to dump his trash and tell a community of unhoused and marginally housed, as well as heavily-policed, Black people that White Lives Matter. Skid Row residents may not have the burgeoning bank book Ye holds but they have love for Black people, dignity and enough sense to run his WLM propagandist, littering crew, out.
Kanyè, Yè, or whatever you’re calling yourself today, please keep your uninformed, misguided, attention-seeking rhetoric and actions out of our community. We are incensed that you continue to make a mockery and political prop of Black Angelenos—you should know better. In other words, keep Skid Row out of your mouth!
Nowhere in this country does Black Lives Matter less than in Skid Row. In 1976 Skid Row was created as a containment zone to ensure housing and services for poor, predominantly Black Angelenos were sealed off from the rest of Los Angeles. In other words, a place to hide the violent outcomes of racialized segregation, redlining, racial covenants, de-industrialization, welfare reform, the introduction and devastation caused by crack cocaine, and the building of the world’s largest prison industrial complex to cage Black bodies. A place where no expectation of human rights, dignity, and respect was fully warranted.
The community, by state design, was meant to be a refugee camp or open-air carceral destination used to insinuate “personal choice” while evading structural and systemic responsibility. Amidst long-standing organized abandonment and, more recently, gentrification by largely well-heeled white people, leading to our banishment by death (1 in 5 houseless deaths per day), criminalization, or legislation like 41.18 an ordinance used to make illegal the act of existing while Black and houseless in Los Angeles. There is no more prominent example of white lives mattering at all costs at the expense of their Black neighbors.
Skid Row is a contemporary version of the “Tale of Two Cities,” playing out in real time, with borders erected by brute force and militarization and a more subtle surveillance infrastructure used to create what we’ve coined the “Dirty Divide.” Where the response to Black lives is lip-service, death and banishment, while white lives receive services, housing, and opportunity.
Amidst the sustained attempt to erase Black Skid Row, we’re still here. As our ancestors had to do, we’ve made the best out of absolutely nothing and have built a community like none other in Los Angeles. A place where arts and culture seed the resistance; where community creatively resource and prioritize health and wellness checks for the apparent gaps that come with organized abandonment; where power building and community organizing have exacted victories, led by Black people, that have made the entire city better; where Black women hold healing circles for Black women; and where our love for Black people can be lifted for all to see. Yes, Black Lives Matter here!
Hear Ye, Hear me: STAY OUT OF SKID ROW.