Living forever

Word on the street is that we are not happy. Those of us with mental illness are just not happy. I was raised a southern baptist and I hear it all over the place in skid row from these street preachers, just like they used to preach in those pulpits back then.. They tell people in skid row that they are not happy because they are sinners and it is because of sin and a character flaw that they are the way they are. They tell them they don't need their medication , only god. I remember when I was at the Goldenwest Hotel and a friend of mine named Richard committed suicide , they blamed it on his overdrinking. The case workers and the people at the Hotel went into the room before the cop got there and began to take things out of the room. They wanted to hide the liquor bottles because he had gone on a binge and he had said he was going to drink himself to death, and it was a program for the dually diagnosed. How could someone drink themselves to death in a program? Prior to all of this, his case manager was telling him that if he were to stop having evil thoughts about homosexuality and accepted god then he could be happy. Richard had spoken to me and told me that he couldn't face the fact that he did anything to get his drugs, even selling his body to men. Once he cleaned up from drugs, he was facing a sexual identity crisis. Instead of helping him deal with that , skid row let him have it This is the dichotomy in skid row. We know that we need to take our medications , we know that there are those with mental illness , but everywhere you turn there is a preacher telling you that your medicine is no good and god is all you need. We are now hearing it from the he lead up to the documentary created about the artists in skid row. There is beauty amongst the misery here in skid row. The sad commentary is that there has to be a documentary made about the human spirit in the heart of skid row as if we were in concentration camps during world war II. In the wealthiest country in the world we have to highlight the indomitable human spirit to create art in skid row. What needs to be talked about is the way the human spirit also makes the people out selling drugs on these streets keep doing it even after all of the arrests, going to jail etc. I think the documentary will be great!! But what will change? Will there be change after the film?

It is just a sad commentary about this country and about this world when we have to praise the human spirit in a situation that shouldn't exist.

One of the most preposterous things I just heard was that the County has said that they are in the process of creating this as a place for second chances. SO now the code word is : a place for second chances. I thought that we were fighting this effort to contain everyone in skid row. To me this is ridiculous . Why should downtown be the only place that people being released from jail , registered sex offenders , etc be allowed to live? Why can't they redeem themselves in other neighborhoods. For those who take what I write on here as a joke or paranoia you better check with what your politicians are actually doing. They are continuing the policy of containment at an even faster pace. When are we going to say enough is enough?
As long as there is money to be made from the suffering of those in skid row, then that monetary incentive will continue to make the politicians make this a place for adults. The new word for just throwing people somewhere to rot is now: a place for second chances. These are the same people who implemented the policy of containing the unwanted in skid row in the first place and actually created skid row into what it is today.