los angeles is dying too
Someone was sucker punched today while having a coffee at a sidewalk cafe walking distance from me.
https://patch.com/california/studiocity/jack-osbourne-struck-random-attack-studio-city-coffee-shop
I read that Seattle isn’t as bad as they make it in the video and that people are guilty of romanticizing the past and criminalizing unfortunate folks hitting upon hard times.
I have family living outside of Seattle and they tell me that it’s pretty bad. No one wants to go into the city.
Los Angeles is dying too, or at least the version I know...is changing. There are people sleeping on the sidewalks. Some prop themselves against a wall while others simply lay sprawled on the sidewalk on a bright sunny day. Others walk around like zombies muttering to themselves while some run down the street and parking lots naked. Something happens every day.
It’s surreal for Studio City. It’s a nice neighborhood. William Shatner lives up the hill. The Brady Bunch house is here. People live, work, and play here. They film movies and television shows in the neighborhood.
Yet there are growing encampments along the LA River.
Community events are now getting cancelled. Last year, CBS Studios cancelled their 4th of July fireworks after 17 straight years of celebrations. It was my favorite fireworks show. It brought everyone out and I was lucky I just had to walk out my front door to watch an amazing show.
This video is just a tiny sliver of the neighborhood. It doesn’t show all the folks that gathered earlier in the day to line and picnic along the streets. It was the best relaxing happy neighborhood thing to do and it was free to the public to enjoy.
Those amazing days are fading away.
“There’s better money to be made panhandling here.” a police officer told my friend, a principal of a nearby Catholic elementary school. A man had jumped the school fence and was wandering about campus. There’s an uptick of “wanderers”. One wandered into my apartment complex last year and was violent. She broke windows and bit the gardener before the police took her away.
The canary in the coal mine is sending a message. This is from the Citizen App.
Having helicopters buzzing around used to be rare and usually were the paparazzi. I remember when Britney Spears had a melt down. That was a memorable helicopter day. Nowadays, it’s not the paparazzi. Neighbors immediately hop onto Nextdoor or any social media to figure out who the police are hunting down. There’s a ton of home invasions.
The neighbors are good people. We are all looking after one another because we KNOW the police may not come in time to help. But we are dealing with a wildness that isn’t easy to reason with. They have knives, guns....heck someone was running around with scissors a couple of weeks ago.
The police say they are not empowered to do the work they need to do. The politicians are ineffective and no matter how proactive neighbors are in trying to fortify their property, do clean ups, and report suspicious activity, this big shadow is eating the neighborhood. We debate whether it is a drug addiction, mental health, or affordable housing issue. Many attend council meetings and volunteer at the shelters and soup kitchens. Studio City is not as bad an San Francisco. The neighbors plan to not go that way.
There’s bad things happening to good people. There’s systems and organizations we thought we created to help people from falling through the cracks not catching people. Something is broken.
If the “nice” neighborhoods are calling for help.....
JNET
Posted using Partiko iOS
Based on the generational models we have to examine now of the systems that were implemented under the pretext of helping the downward spiral a growing number of our brothers and sisters find themselves in, a few things become apparent.
The systems are not designed to help uplift people, rather they are a means to entrap people into the ruts they find themselves in.
The current systems we have send out an angry energy, infecting those within its clutches to feel hopeless and a somewhat justified sense of rage that all to often devolves into not so justifiable lashing out. Without fail, most of this lashing out creates innocent victims who were not directly responsible for the circumstances these self convinced hopeless people would blame or choose not to view with compassion. They have none to give as they are consumed in their grief and feelings of inadequacy and abandonment.
In some ways we all shoulder some of the blame indirectly, as people tend to ignore the pain our brothers and sisters endure.
I believe so many ignore the pain for a few reasons, the largest two being fear and feeling impotent to do anything about it on any type of scale that would see a measurable result other than in that second. Many understand they are not far from that precipice that could see them in the same dire living situations as those who have lost hope, and ignoring the plight helps them avoid examining how close they are to being in the same position.
This can only be solved if common men and women who are not seeking to exploit others decide we do have the power to affect this. That the minuscule actions taken here and there over time can build into something large, especially if a majority of us take this upon ourselves to care.
There are many who are probably damaged to a point there will be no helping them out of their rage and patterns of understanding that have been shaped by decades of real experience for them. But the ones who can overcome that are worth the effort to sift through the pain.
Those who would rule us, using their fake programs pretending to care lose their grip over us if we are all self sufficient and happy. They will never provide a solution that would end their rule.
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