people just. seem people get it but you don't pay b.o.'s you don't know if you don't take or noticed your new responsibilities are 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. but this man neighborhood you know i am. basically almost left 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 struggle with mental illness track addiction or both but it wasn't always this way. i came to spirit it was more like skid row's we identified only drunks old drunks on the street. it used to look terrible he told christian garza drunks. and believe 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 of rolling stone to get their money to get some work crack it's a dish for addiction. there's always been efforts to get rid of skid row in their war room for people who are unable to live in the world and they didn't even try to move through again and again but it 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 separate in those two things and i'm cruising where there's muscles are pretty close to a science truck for to really get over to it i'm scared rural this is

a new or through my still to. people didn't come down to see him to tell producers well the heroin addicts three of you know all this is dirt fields and burn barrels and they were cut your throat down to your people become past main street you doing this is called the pittsburgh the down. the people are told a different also a whole new generation. just the same potential real estate two or ground troops here people are interested. in much interest from the people who are on the ground everyone who lands on skid row has a story to tell about how they got there for many it's the last stop after losing everything for some to follow suspects later magic my life you know prior to coming to escape. 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 decent student and started smoking weed you know in 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 in one is 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 the drugs i ended up you know getting involved with cocaine 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. was really on the street. sleeping on the street for the first time and actually laying down on the sidewalk you know in trying to close your eyes and next to 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 are five. i was amazed at the number of the military down here i was amazed and 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 it's drug and alcohol treatment program. two hundred forty four men occupy this space here at the mission and we're going to go and see

where i got my humble beginnings in recovery this is the residents 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 empty this is just the way it was when i when i got here i did a lot of soul searching this bit 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 do you. to me it was either you go forward you know with the other life style or you try to pull back and do something different. any time you can fall from grace or you fall from from 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 punky ex new yorker my story starts way back when i was a kid unfortunately. in nursery school would be my teacher with a chair i was thrown out of every school with a want to have been seen to loose natan and hearing voices ever since i was a kid i guess i'm one of those cases where i'm bipolar schizoaffective i have anti-social personality disorder p.t.s.d. i have intimate rage just sort of 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 the car they're good spot to summon a festering want to give old. crack a band of weed man the next block i came down here following most two years ago

this howling to be two years for me so i spent a good two years down. the general they got ever do again at their commit suicide next time. being so nasty horrible and everything's over the place makes you you know 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 by losing my kid. and everything else i really really really was 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 him homeless back

then we were emptying our mental hospitals by basically saying now we have the man said will 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 and sometimes you can't figure out which came first and that doesn't even matter the fact is they've got melanoma a 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 and

our prisons l.a. county twin towers jail is the largest mental institution in the united states. because we no longer hospital our kids 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 stigmatize. 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 at night. by like two thousand and two we had a 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 cook together the eating girl and we play cards to gether we sing together karaoke i learn number class and then i deal with all types of people. versity and never in my life in any place i mean all types of people all types. come down and o'toole i saw people just like me depression was one of my biggest city. agriculture this is out seven years ago a lot of the hour was on the third. i do it in a way every task i do i have no real fibro mitosis. where they are told with

a girl in and out around the city nurses. my body. i know my health. there 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 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. because i won't turn i save money to hire a hitman to shoot me dead from the next building or through the open window. i search through the internet typing things like i'm looking for you i'm waiting for you i wrote and waiting for you i'm looking for you i didn't care at all what this

man would be like deprived disabled ill. do you know you won't. the battery is. i love everything about him i have come to love every share everyone interesting to him actually be healthy years and other guys who drink beer in a bench i've always promised that if she ever realizes it's too much for her and she decides to leave me i will accept her decision without criticism because it's her choice. to limit torch is on it's a big journey to such. a one hundred twenty three days. through to see my mother tongue to cities of russia. related by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand killings. in

a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. a limp big torch relay. on r t r g dot com. little.

i. sure. very good home. very good. street. life and people.

bitterness where. i just. 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. rich and powerful plan to mexico it put four years all together in arkansas and i put the last twenty years. but. i had 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 cat food i couldn't get to keep get food to keep or get it i had to pay

two and three and four dollars a night for stuff from containers and a body like eight dollars for just a few thing that struck me worst. was there was no clean fresh water for the birds and caps that cost. solutions and all kinds of poisons go and psych drugs in the waters at the camps on the verge of drinking and no clean food supply for them to know by now if there isn't much of an unfair to scare food with a lot more contact in the olympics for. kids who can't get a sick kid again say it when there's been this now this is a problem the uniform know this no this is the one that had the signs kids where i hear. them learn to kitty and it looks like a rattle of the smashed face i got it to him readers. so we hopefully will have a war. gallows kill them we won't have

a lot of red in the womb or yeah that means i don't care for anything red and blue if you lay it on womb they're also purple to support their group of the cast of cats are going to be born knowing that the mean man with rights that was muumuu last line louann longing for k. and this then last night. and guy's a psycho even on site when someone i don't want to see on they come out of it like he sits around and do nothing all day long and harass the rude sexually harassing. six. don't like don't start from within the cycle level will anything when one phone a tick that way and are way their own unless they're not here so no need. to really what i meant of address the guy was bollinger one i just don't like. people who take advantage of low people. when he was taking advantage of. being the shia for

good enough there she just kind of adopted me as her fiance and i've been her fiance or says desperate nine years ago reduced or two to like her as a person and i start to understand her who she is row. here in her. mental illness with the collection of tray she has storage is full of cash like three different ones just completely piled up there she pay every month nothing 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 the. hardships or for that i guess that's hard to my blessings from god. you know because in the beginning was like truly i would defend her with my life you believe that i'll die behind this will lead you right here. to . life and. life is a conundrum to believe. so story and everybody down

here 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 that church. richard b. a long time to people why you are off the street or why you don't she won't she doesn't want that see people understand you have to let them be who they are when she's ready to go inside sure bortsov you she wants to live on the street you have to let her live her slot or should i say live i'm straight even though she has little or. she needs a trail large lines everywhere she goes. even though his mothers will set the money he she gave him he's been on drugs and these people giving one drug no one else to buy more they keep psyching him. and he almost finished his psychology course and with three years of medical school ended up at medical school it crackle i can end

up so bad can memory sing and now i sing that one back to medical school even though he has pancreatic cancer which is really sick most of the a c. is a lot of ways and he caused me a lot of grief. and ok well we have family home. hangover la la. well this is rather. this. i was sleeping else and threw in a blanket. real close friends. sometimes dubois's and sleep. sometimes inside it reminds me of why the hell out of there at the age of sixteen.

i tried to have my so committed to a hospital because i wasn't going to acting with other people and healthy way i didn't feel connected to anything i remember feeling very depressed and. i thought wanted to save the world in myself you know a headache if i go in at sixteen and i never have to come back out again but they would accept me. they would be a bad place to be you know i ran away from home at seventeen years old and i actually kind of job paid rent and school. that mary and twenty one had my daughter my first daughter at age twenty two and my other daughter and then my last honor to be with. their father divorced me at that point i mean. there was nothing healthy about.

everything with distorted. our lot and i don't know how i raised those three girls like that. when he said that my father passed away that hurt me really bad. i lost everyone in my life that i cared about they're gone and then happy i came askin well. i developed a real bad. case we came here. and i really didn't and never thought about it i just know when you are wrong doing roman doing your misspoken nets with that's what i was going to do. but can't. that's what i wanted to tama nice remember saying to myself in my city how long now in keep doing what i'm doing is going to happen because i just knew i was going to from glen is

to say enjoy it and maybe a down syndrome. road is very good to me scare me say oh he's used down here bring through most turbulent times down. geos in these situations to sort of mud dish it is a drug addiction crack cocaine also addicted to lifestyle of downtown will where. you know one judge a small. group in compton rod or something one four stars three years old. people or so they have horses in the back yard but they never wrote i just are going to be forced to take them out know it all but ya get me writing this if you. will i do what i tell the right words i do like it for stan to the old old why you like it so much what you did before

women say 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 award for. best all our horses they sport we decide what my dream would be too little. branch. b. were horses. just below room smelled welcome rod a bait will. teach people about. when to come of course i believe that. there's no you know if you're going to be causing unrest so many people you know if i left i. used to be a ball of wall before up and down the whole block you could hardly walk up and down the street cars could be a hero after everything. everybody's either in jail or they all went to santa barbara venice hollywood or somewhere else we don't need more jails we need more

mental institutions and we need more doctors to come down here so the more people pascale sandwiches that's what we really need we need more understanding we need the awareness that we're not all drug addicts three days. 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 mean is the reward neurotransmitter i mean it's what you see use and release is from our brain cells when we are sexually aroused when we smell something good that we'd like to be when and. we smoke crack called the brain of a schizo phrenic person untreated unmedicated is awash with dope for me more cells in the brain of a person that doesn't because frankly the skin frank brain cannot filter out the

noises 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 guilty and some they don't get to feel pleasure anymore. 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 it is mentally ill people is always a major because we need them there it's on medication for self medicate so be it

how else would i do it. i can't even get my mobile telephone what am i supposed to give our medication so drugs suparna street. try to make it. more news today. again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations or the day. and it's not enough just to say well we'll have a free election and let the people decide because the history of syrian elections

over the last five decades has been the. election killer you can't can you speak that because we had to say we had the secretary of state and the secretary of state does say hours ago that assad has no future in syria. welcome to the future. show thirty five can just spend over fifteen billion euros on cultures he says thirty to one hundred sixty million degrees we come. to sell from st petersburg to france we travel in search of the song. we've got the future

covered. well if. these. were not psych camp at guantanamo where patients are. the world's attention to the place.

closed for business europe struggles to shut its doors to the flow of illegal migrants from the middle east and north africa with an economically unstable nation and greece taking the. police brutality sweep the u.s. on a national day of action saying simply have too much power and too happy to. also. it was right here at about two pm local time that a blast ripped through twenty nine six dead. and a city in mourning in just a few minutes we reconstruct the deadly volgograd bombing from social media. to the very moment the religious zealotry claimed.