skid row is a neighborhood of fifty plaques which does not appear on any map of los angeles. you.

know. this new room basically. and they say oh. this is good in big question things here that you've been experiencing shit that there is just no way i mean there's no movie there's no book there's dishes or real life experience i see people get beat up every night people don't rob people to step us and i've seen people get hit by a car you don't pay b.o.'s you don't know if you don't pay the car knows you're no responsibilities we're not here because where homeless just less of a home baby my reality was that i was there you know skid row is the last house on the block at g.o.p. we're just in my neighborhood you know i. basically almost slept on every street down here at one time or another i think i would never ever live in

a way else you know skid row is my home. as many as eleven thousand men and women make their home in l.a. scattered around. about two thirds struggled with mental illness track addiction or both but it wasn't always this way. i came to skid row it was more like skid row's we identified only drunks old drunks on the street. it used to look terrible these old krystle incarnation of drunks. and when it was really safe because they were not very aggressive now we have young strong crack addicts who are many times are willing to take a chance at rolling stone to get their money to get some more crack it's a different addition. there's always been efforts to get rid of skid row in their war and for people who are unable to live in the world and they would give me the

try to move through again and again but i just moved into a different area when big money developers began to revitalize downtown the flop houses got new neighbors and penned houses and high end lofts. there are not many places where the gap between rich and poor is a striking as it is here. literally there is just a block or two separating those two things and i'm cruising where there's nothing so cruel as to thank so much for to enjoy going over to. skid row this is the new or through my stilts. back here were to drop the people to come down to see into downtown for just swell the air allegedly if you know all this is dirt fields and burn barrels and they will cut your throat down to your people become past main street you doing dishes call the pit spec down. the people are told a different us a whole new generation. just seem potential real estate

it's really the ground for it's fear that people are interested in a lot much interest on the people who are on the ground everyone who lands on skid row has a story to. about how they got there for many it's the last stop after losing everything for sun to fall is the specially term matic my life you know prior to coming to skate row was. in some ways like most people in other ways it was a little bit different you know i am i was born in compton grew up there with five brothers and sisters lost my dad when i was three my mom when i was fourteen at that point i moved out to california and i was an athlete in high school and d.c. student started smoking weed you know at high school at the age of fourteen after my mom passed away yet and still you know i was good enough athletically to earn a full scholarship to university of iowa state university where i was

a national champion in track and field and also was able to go and qualify for the olympic games in eighty four where i actually competed and i want to so medal so eighteen years old you know obviously going into the olympics a year out of high school was very exciting i had a lot of emotion going on. you know one nine hundred eighty eight i started to experiment with other drugs i ended up you know getting involved with cocaine i freebasing cocaine and that was the beginning of a twenty year journey for me as an addict i had lost everything i had lost my shoe contract i had lost my house i had lost all the financial means that i head was really on the street. sleeping on the street for the first time and actually laying down on the sidewalk you know and trying to close your eyes and next we go to sleep when you're outdoors those are the things as an addict that most people don't really talk about so the first time i came down to skid row i was pretty much our

five. i was amazed at the number being lower down here i was amazed at where some of the people had come from. the midnight mission first opened its doors and nine hundred fourteen cents and thousands have passed through its drug and alcohol treatment program. the pie this space here at the mission then we're going to go and see where i got my humble beginnings in recovery this is the residence when you first come into the midnight mission everyone that comes in has to come through this dormitory first. so this was my big c three up and you can see this in the this is just the way it was when i when i got here i did a lot of soul searching in this period right here i had to make up my mind whether

or not i was going to try to stay sober what the program was for me what i was really doing here you know at forty one years old what are you going to do i mean at that point for me it was either you go forward you know what the other lifestyle or you try to pull back and do something different. any time you fall from grace or you fall from some lofty heights if you want to use that word. it's humbling. the area has always attracted outsiders. some stay for a. while others never. come albert olsen but everybody calls me bam bam i'm a punk new yorker my story starts way back when i was a kid unfortunately. nursery school would be my teacher would share i was thrown out of every school ever went to i been seeing elucidating and hearing voices i was

since i was a kid i got i'm one of those cases where i'm bipolar schizoaffective i have anti-social personality disorder p t h d i have intimate rage just sort of i have a major nightmare disorder i also have a gender identity disorder where i'm taking hormones for a transgender issue for sexual reassignment to get my her went down to calling their good spot to some of the first era when it's girls. first crack affair that we demand the next. hollowing. two years ago this only to be two years for me so i spent a good two years down. they got ever do it at their commit suicide next time. so nasty horrible and everything's over the place makes you makes you want to do something with your life size doing this because this is really rough to do this and i went to the service i got from out of the service for bad conduct one thing is really stinks the fact it doesn't rain here doesn't wash the urine in the pool

the way it's a smell just gets worse and worse i beat up my mother and my sisters and i took my kid and losing my kid and everything else i really really really were smart and i was where i first became homeless because i couldn't rationally. deal with where my life had gone i've been electrician for all these years are always. back in the mid seventy's through the mid eighty's we didn't call them homeless back then we were emptying our mental hospitals by basically saying now we have them instead of help you and you can also get on disability so go forth and take care of yourself the predominant population on the row at that time and continues to date are the homeless mentally ill obviously many of them are also involved with addiction and sometimes you can't figure out which came first and that doesn't even

matter the fact is they've got melanoma serious mental illness because the institutions don't exist anymore breaking close down all of those places and they took all the mental people and they gave it to society and then where do we go you either get committed and get locked in and smoke a cigarette three times a day and when they tell you or you sit on the street you become homeless and you can at least have your own life to some point. in many ways it's an open assignment . for the mentally ill we don't have closed asylums anymore except for our jails in our prisons l.a. county twin towers jail is the largest mental institution in the united states. because we no longer hospital wards are mentally ill so we criminalize them because of their behavior on the streets people were really questioning me like how can you open a place just for people who are crazy isn't that really stigmatized. and i said

no i think we're going to be just the most righteous best drop in center we're going to have the best food we're going to feel like a family we're going to just make it a place people want to come to. so that people had a place to stay. by like two thousand and two we had one hundred employees half of them were members we also set up our own. i came in contact with some of the most beautiful people that one could ever know we're going to go to. a family. you know we could eat together we play cards together we see the karaoke you. deal with all types of people. first city and never any place i mean all types of people

all types when i decided to come down and. i saw people just like me depression was one of my biggest city. i've been cooking is out seven years ago i love that our was. i do it in a way every task i do every test i have. no real fibro mitosis. where there are too loose a girl in and out around the city nurses. my body. i know my health is not good. that are going on my body i had my breasts removed dealing with cancer so i'm trying to be strong and i'm trying to be you know a bit you know and just enjoy my life what i have right now what i'm doing right now is loving myself gordon

a doctor taking care of my business no matter how much pain i'm me and i got to do it. or not so i go to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced back to the month after a massive hunger strike never turned the world's attention to the place that sometime jobs gulag of our times. the fact that. they were going to do. the job the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open process is critical to our democracy but. in

fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and i was crushed several weeks when a hydrogen client handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers. mark it on this show we were revealed the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem. rational debate real discussion critical issues facing america if i ever feel ready to join the movement then welcome to the. nation and free accreditation free transport charges free. range missed free risk free studio type free.

download free broadcast quality video for your media projects free media and don to our teeth dot com. those homes for fourteen years but sure it. was because i couldn't get into school i didn't want to go read. the new funny. stuart who came to me sued you really become of history no so you should be moving up. from a home very good home you know. very good home but i want to live on the street be wow. i learned i learned i wanted a horse cool ox because that's where to see this issue very wise to life and people . can read right away. i mean with this bitterness where you just want everybody where the media not i just said you are saying. a one sided. just

paints. right here. by those killed up. i was born in a trailer house over here in san pedro my father was in the service in world war two then i was raised in new mexico where my grandmother was born and from the end of client. a rich and powerful clan and in the xico it isn't do i put four years old again there in arkansas and i put the last twenty years in jail but arizona. my first cats when i was three years old leaving i been feeding these for over five years now i had to pay for fifty a month or kept food i couldn't go get to cheap get food cheap or get it i had to pay two and three and four dollars a night for star phone containers anabolic scarse like eight dollars for just

a few those thing that struck me worst when i saw the skid row was there was no clean fresh water for the birds and kids they let caustic solutions and all kinds of poisons go and psych drugs in the waters to camps on the verge of drinking and no clean food supply for them you know by now with a bunch of men here to scare food with a lot more contact the ok. kid you can't get a sick kid again say it when there's them this now this is a problem the uniform know this no this is the one that had the signs can right here. the month including it looks like a rat well the smashed face i got it to a reader. only hopefully will have wore. yellow skin them we've always had a lot of red in her war yeah that means i don't care for anything rev moon.

room they'll throw purple. because the jets group before noah had to relearn with lulu last time moves a new man along for their years then last night. and guys a psycho will incite them some loner will sit on they come out of it like he sits around and do nothing all day long and harass the room sexually harassing. the press. and our i felt like no stucco was out cycle or level or anything. that way and our way the round and they're not here. to rule but i mean ever does a guy was bollinger one day and i just didn't like. people to take advantage of oh people. when he was taking a bend over so i intervened and she for good enough that she just kind of adopted

me as her fiance and i've been her fiance or since that's been nine years ago but didn't i started to like her as a person and i start to understand her who she is right here in her. mental illness with the collection of trailer shit she has stored just full of cash like three different ones just completely piled up that she pay every month nothing but. but that's who she is and i take her just who for who she is and that's why she loves me and i love her for that i accepted that i guess that's how i get my blessings from god. you know because in the beginning was like that but i truly i would defend her with my life you believe that i'll die behind this will lead you right here. life is. life is a conundrum could be. so story and everybody down who knows that if they bother her today they're going to have to deal with me so they

basically don't bother her at all. they hate that she cares all the chairs. for us to see life where. it should be a long time to people why you'll get her off the street or why you know she won't she doesn't want that see people understand she you have to let them be who they are when she's ready to go inside she'll go outside if she wants to live on the street you have to let her live her slots or should i say live i'm sure. even though she has the board. she is a truly large words. even though as mothers will say the money he gave them he spent on drugs and these people giving one drug no one else to buy more they keep psyching him. and he almost finished a psychology course in which three years in medical school it dropped out medical school it crackle i can end up so bad commemorating and now i see that one back to medical school even though he has pancreatic cancer which is really sick move. here

she is a lot of ways really cause real lot of grief. and ok well we're fairly well paying lower la-la. well you just get. this. i was sleeping else and doing a blanket. real close friends. sometimes . sleep. sometimes inside it reminds me of why the hell out there at the age of sixteen. i try to have my so committed to a hospital because i wasn't connecting with other people healthy way i didn't feel

connected to anything i remember feeling very depressed and. i thought wanted to say the world to myself headache if i go in at sixteen then i never have to come back out again but they would accept me. they would be with bare faced with you know i ran away from home at seventeen years old and i actually kind of job. paid rit and went to school. that married at the age of twenty one had my daughter my first are at age twenty two. and my other daughter and. my last dollar baby. and their father divorced me at that point i mean. there was nothing healthy about. everything with the stored it. was restless. oh how to do that i don't know how i raised

those three girls like that. but he said that my father passed away that hurt me really bad i lost every one in my life that i cared about their goal but when that happened i came to skid row. i developed a real bad drug and quickly came and came here. and i really didn't and never thought about it i just know when you are wrong doing rome and doing your body is folk and that's what that's what i'm going to do. but. that's what i wanted at that time and i said remember saying to myself sitting here long enough and keep doing what i'm doing it's going to happen because i just knew i was going to from glad as to say enjoy it and maybe dials and.

drugs man good to me scare me sorry always use down bring through most turbulent times know. your situation is too short a mud dish it is a drug addiction. also addicted to lifestyle of downturn we're. in no one's religious no. i. grew up in compton rug or southern one horse i was three years old. and people force they have horses in the back yard but they'd never roll i just are going to be forced to take them out no it didn't mean riding this if you broke it was a. challenge for ride horses i knew they had like a fork and i had a stand in to the old old white i can't sell that's what you did before. they they spark me yeah that's what i want to know too that i like the smell of eleven when

they spark me like a baseball or detail or. national or like horses they sport we discern what my dream would be to live and ranch. be were horses. just be around smell them walk ride a baby. teach people about. the horses i believe that. i know if they get it because of the cost arrested so many people you know pile of dollars to help. you to get by the wall of wall people up and down the whole black berry and you can hardly walk up and down the street cars could be a pep rally after everything gone are everybody's either in jail they all went to santa monica or venice or hollywood or somewhere else we don't need more channels we need more mental institutions and we need more doctors to come down here so the more people pass now sandwiches that's what we really. need more understanding we

need the awareness that we're not told drug addicts three. things impact our central nervous system the environment that we grow up in and that we live in our d.n.a. basically what we're born with our genes and drugs. don't i mean is the reward neurotransmitter i mean it's what you see. he leases from our brain cells when we are sexually aroused when we smell something he's good we'd like to be when and. we smoke crack the brain of a schizo friend in person untreated unmedicated is a wash with dope or maybe more sold on the brain of a person who doesn't because frankly. the scripts are frank brain cannot filter out the noise is the heat. the vibrations the other

people talking to you it's all coming in at once so the medications that we give people for schizophrenia reduce the don't for me unfortunately they reduce it too much and they feel good in some they don't get to feel pleasure anymore. when. these folks wake up every morning and have to face another day being a stigmatized marginal person in the world and have to make decisions about using street drugs or using prescribed drugs street drugs or easier to get them prescribe drugs street drugs feel better prescribe drugs don't particularly feel better in their hands everywhere is mentally ill people is always a major marginal because we need them there it's on medication for self medicate so be it how else would one do it what else would you like me to do i can't even get my mom would answer the telephone what am i supposed to get my medication so get

drugs suparna street before i am trying to make it. will. science technology innovation all these developments from around russia we've got the future covered. mission free critique should be free comes for charges free. range means three risk free studio types free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects a free media donned our teeth on tom in. wealthy british style sign. on the.

markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question for.

the fact that. everybody go to do its job and you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck office. told. them you know i'm sorry and on this show we would be a little picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the problem trying to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america by the book ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. go on tell harvard in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. republicans say that obamacare.