November 20th, 2012
Moving to California caused me to really face the reality of the “social” aspect of life. After losing my job, home, furniture, and car, I came to the LA area knowing I could get unemployment until I found a job. Well unemployment made me fight to get in, and jobs were
hard to find.
With no money and no place to go, I was forced to deal with a system that I knew nothing about. But the people assigned to help me had attitudes like everyone “stinks.” I refused to give in and let my spirit be wiped away by mere humans. This caused me to reevaluate my
thoughts by asking and being honest with myself. Was I like that? Did I think like that? Do I react like that?
With determination, I found housing in “America’s most homeless capital” area. This helped me to deal with and understand what people go through in life by being stereotyped in the “Skid Row” group.
I was introduced to LA CAN and became impressed by an organization in Skid Row that was friendly, honest and willing to help people without funding. So now my life is full of new meaning and much deeper respect for every human.
This story was written by Karl, a poverty skolar from the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), for the Voices of Poverty Resist series. This series was launched out of a fellowship that Lisa received from the Marguerite Casey Foundation for journalism focused on poverty. Because Lisa leads with her indigenous values of inter-dependence she has created this collective journalism process where all of our voices in poverty are speaking for ourselves.