As I was perusing the blogosphere, I cam across this new blogger in downtown Los Angeles. His name is Tom Grode and he tries to explain the ideas of containment as far as it being an unspoken policy , which was the policy of the entities that fought over who was going to take care of skid row back in 1976 when the Community Redevelopment Agency came along with their City Busines District Redevelopment Project Area -the CBD. As a blogger which has access to those on the streets and the missions and shelters I know that I have been blogging and advocating from skid row since 1999. Since 20011 I have been living in a mini loft , just across the street from skid row in the historic core. Yet, Tom insists that this phenomena of the people speaking for themselves has just developed in the past couple of years. I know this to be false. There have been major players, including the huge non-profits themselves, who made and worked to make the ability of those whom they serve be heard apart from themselves. Listen to Tom, God bless his heart, as he tries to explain the policy of containment. Tom just arrived a couple of years ago and he did not see how skid row used to be. It was a result of the people themselves calling for law and order and to be treated fairly as a community that has made the changes. I have turned off many of the blog posts from my years in skid row and will begin to turn them back on. There is more to skid row than people asking for trashcans and cleaning the streets. There is a sinister aspect to this policy of containment that , no offense to Tom Grode, but he does not understand nor can he grasp , since he did not live in the midst of what skid row used to be and what it could become again if we do not get a hold of the changes. Listen to him and. later , when I produce my own video , really understand the battle and why even the shelters and missions do have a role to play in making skid row better and helping to end the policy of containment. Pay close attention to when he refers to a 1985 article in the LA Times about the policy of containment. This policy was began when the city of Los Angeles and the County of Los Angeles fought over who's responsibility it was to take care of the homeless. The Eighties saw the introduction of crack and then the demographics of skid row changed during that period. There are lot's of holes in this take on The Policy of Containment. At least he is trying.
