Salvation, Someone?

Downtown Los Angeles is becoming more luxurious. With the advent of the Opheum Lofts, Gas Co. , Orsini, and Medici apt. buildings, things are changing. Yet there is still the seedy underbelly of this City of Angels, the not so subtle reminders that the luxury is only for the priviledged, not for the general populace. You see it when you walk east on 9th St. and then walk up Broadway or up Los Angeles St. You see it when you are driving down 8th and there are homeless people huddled under the 110, wearing the signs that say, "Please help" or "Hungry, will work for food." It's the stuff that we see but don't really want to see. We choose not to look, force ourselves to jabber a bit more loudly into our cell phone so that we are purposely distracted as we drive past. The luxury class moving in is probably due to filming flight to Vancouver and Toronto. LA isn't making as much money substituting the run-down vagrant hotels on Broadway and Temple for the urban jungle of Hell's Kitchen. It probably wasn't paying off anymore to allow the homeless to own this section of the city so the "developers" are allowed to work their magic. This morning, when I exited the 110 at 9th, driving east on 9th, I saw a line that snaked all the way over to the corner of 9th and Figueroa. It was a line of people waiting to get into the Salvation Army building. I almost rear-ended someone looking at this line. BUT, what do I do with what I saw? What action do I take? What do I do differently as a result of this? Now, that is a good question...

Hurricane Ivan finally crashed to shore last night...have you noticed how on all the network and cable news coverage, you hardly see any Black folks? Hmm...did all those descendants of slaves suddenly vacate Lousiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida? Golly, this smacks of selective media coverage!