still room basically. and that still. is good in big question things here that you've been experiencing shit that there is just no way i mean it's no movie it is no book this disses a real life experience to see people get beat up every night people don't rob because. i seen people get hit by a car you don't pay b.o.'s you don't pronounce nurse you don't prick or nose you have no response to release we're not here because where home is 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. with us in my neighborhood you know i am. basically almost left on every street down to it 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 on elements get round. about two thirds struggle with mental illness truck addiction or both but it wasn't always this way. i came to skid row it was more like skid row's we identified old drunks old drunks on the street. it used to look terrible he told prison guards 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 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 and for people who are unable to live in the world and they would be. they

tried 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 just a block or two separating those two things and i'm cruising where there's nothing separating those two things i was. really going over. skid row this is the new improved nice they'll turn back to you were to drop it people didn't come down to see into downtown produce well the heroin addicts leo you know all this is dirt fields and burn barrels and they will cut your throat down to your people to come past main street you do this is called the pits back the and down. the people are told a different sort of a whole new generation. just seem potential real estate

two or ground troops here people are interested in learning much interest on 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 the fall especially turn 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 and field. also i was able to go and qualify for

the olympic games in eighty four where i actually competed i want to so medal so the 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 that 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 horrified. i was amazed at the number of english we're 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 its 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 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. ram 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 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 would share i was thrown out of every school ever went to i been seeing the loose natan 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 have a major nightmare the sort of i also have a gender identity disorder where i'm taking hormones for a transgender issue for sexual reassignment to get my her way down the car they're good spot to some of the first era when it's give old. men crack a band of weed man the next block i came down here following. two years ago this only to be two years for me so i spent a good two years down here. which i don't think i'd ever do again and there commit suicide next time for the ostriches being so nasty horrible and everything's over the place it 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 thrown out of the service for a 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 just smelled. 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 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 or always worked. 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 the man said 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 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 assign one 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 stigmatized. and i said

no i think we're going to be just a. 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 and i. like to say too we had a hundred employees half of them were members we also set up. i came in contact with some of the most beautiful people that one could ever know we're. a family. you know we eat together we play carsley gather we sing together karaoke i. deal with all types of people. first city and never in my life 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 see. i've been talking this is out seven years ago i love this it was a. i do it in a way every task that i have. where there are two little girl in and out around the city nurses. my body. i know my love. my body i had my breast. cancer so i'm trying to be strong and i'm trying to be you know it you know in. my life what i have right now what i'm doing right now is loving myself.

taking care of my business no matter how much pain i'm me and i got to do it. serious last chance is the day for the geneva conference are being arranged for the assad regime may sit across from an empty chair syria's rebel opposition's on the ground are hopelessly divided the syrian political opposition in exile is divorced from the brutality on the battlefield so what can geneva two point zero hope to achieve. the olympic torch is on its epic journey to such. a one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred top two cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand killings. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. a limpet torch relay. on r t r g dot com.

react to situations i have read the reports to. the no i will leave them to stay current to comment on your latter point a month or so. to carry out a call is on the docket no god. no more weasel words. when you need a direct question be prepared for a change when you throw a punch be ready for a battle print out a speech and down to freedom to cost. dramas that can't be ignored. stories others refused to notice. faces changed the world lights never.

told pictures of today's events. on this month from around the globe. up to. fifty. sure. very good home. very good. st. marks. to life from people. who are. bitterness where you. are not.

the 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. so rich and powerful plan a new mexico it and i would put four years all together in arkansas and i put the last twenty years in hale but. i had my first cats when i was three years old even though i've been feeding these for over five years now i had to pay for fifty a month or kept food i couldn't get to cheap get food the cheaper 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 those things that struck me worst when i saw this. was there was no clean fresh water for the birds and kept. caustic solutions and all kinds of poisons go. in the water at the cats in the bird to drink it and no clean food supply for them . by general care this campaign with a lot more contact the a camp for. kids who can't get a sick kid again saying to them there's them this is now this is a problem the uniform no this no this is the one that had the signs kid where i hear. them learn to kill me and it looks like a rattle of the smashed face i got it to a marine here. so we hopefully will have war. fellows kill them we won't have a lot of red in her war yeah that meeting careful anything rev moon can

do a room there for her focus or their group of the cast of cats are going to be born knowing that the mean man with that ransom was muumuu last final new man alone for ok and less than less money. and buys a psycho in little insight than someone of the sun they come out of it like he sits around and do nothing all day long and her rifle room sexually harassing. effects of red. things are right there was no star carolyn was a psycho or level looney thing when one thrown at it that way and our way the round unless we'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 opie. when he was taken advantage of sawyer intervened she if you're good enough this is just kind of

adopted me as her fiance and i've been her fiance or says that's been nine years ago we did i started to like her as a person and i start to understand her who she is right here in her. mid to ease with the collection of trail shoes she has stored just full of cash like three different ones just. completely piled up that she pay every month nothing but. who she is and i take her just who for who she is in me and i love her for that except a friend i guess. because in the beginning was like truly i would defend or with my life you believe that i would die behind the scene where you know you. can. license. life with your command to be.

so sure that everybody down who knows that if they bother her it is very they're going to have to deal with me so they basically told bob a horrible. behavior she carries all the church. and she let her. richard be alone time to people off the street you know why you don't 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. you she wants to live almost should you have to live her litter slots or should i still live on the street even though she has a horse. she needs a trail large ones there were she grew. even though as mothers will set the money he she 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 his psychology course in with three years of medical school ended up at medical school and 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 a sick move. he is she is a lot of ways and he caused me a lot of grief. and ok we know we're family how this will hang on a lie lie. well this is bad. this is not how. i was sleeping i was enjoying the blanket. real close friends. sometimes i still go outside and sleep. sometimes when i'm inside it reminds me of why the hell out of there at the age of sixteen. i tried to have myself 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 then i never have to come back out again but they would accept me. they would be with a bad place to be you know i ran away from home at seventeen years old and i actually got a job paid marriage and school. that mary at the age of twenty one had my daughter my first daughter it was twenty two then my other daughter and then my last dollar baby. their father divorced me at that point i mean. there was nothing healthy about.

everything with the stored it. was. oh my god 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. everyone in my life that i cared about they're gone and then happy i came to skid row. i developed a real bad drug and came and came here. and i really didn't and never thought about it i just knew when you were wrong doing roman doing your body spoke with us. i was going to do. but. that's what i wanted tom nice when i'm saying to myself i said he had a long nap in keep doing what i'm doing is going to happen because i just knew i was glad as to say enjoy it and maybe down syndrome.

man good to me to say oh he's used down here now been through most turbulent times now here. in the situation is true part of it is a drug addiction crack cocaine also addicted to lifestyle of downtown oh we're. no one judge a single. grew up in compton rod or southern run horse i was three years old. people or so they have horses in the back yard but they've never rode i just are going to be forced to take them out no he didn't ride it miss it you wrote it was a. challenge to ride horses like it or stand to the old old why you like kids a look 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 awarded for. best all our horses they sparred me to sign what my dream would be to live on the 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 of the rest of so many people you know if i left i. used to get by the wall of wall people. but down the hall black berry and you could hardly walk up and down the street cars could be a pen pal of everything going our everybody is either in jail or they all watch the santa monica venice and hollywood or somewhere else we don't need more jails we have woman to institutions and we need more doctors to come down here so the more

people pass now sandwiches that's what we really need we need more understanding we need the awareness that we're not told troi got x. 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 sane and release is from our brain cells when we are sexually aroused when we smell something good we'd like to be when and. we smoke crack the brain of a schizophrenia person untreated unmedicated is a wash with dope or made more souls in the brain of a person that doesn't because frankly the scripture frank brain cannot filter out

the noise is the heat. the vibrations the other people talking to you it's only tuning it 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 states don't get to feel pleasure any more. 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 for scribed 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 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 to do i can't even get my mobile telephone what am i supposed to give our medication so drugs suparna. be who i am. trying to make it so. there's a leave us so we need to be. part of the scene motion security play your part of the musical. questions that no one is that skin with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all on politics only on our t.v. . at one time i saved money to hire a hitman to shoot me dead from the next building or through the open window. i searched through the internet typing things like i'm looking for you i'm waiting for you before i wrote i'm waiting for you i'm looking for you i didn't care at all

what this man would be a lie deprived disabled ill. with you know you want. the battery is thrown out. i love everything about him i have come to love every share everyone feels stronger tips can actually be healthy years and other guys 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. deliberate torch is on its epic journey to such. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand and nine hundred top two cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in

a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. olympic torch relay. on r t r g dot com. world should. show thirty four could spend over fifteen billion euros it says thirty to one hundred fifty million degrees with the talk a mock. peace fix of france the trouble in search of the song. knowledge we've got the future covered. born outside to an octave camp on a motorway where patients are forced to months after a mouse click or strike never turn world's attention to the place that something

gulag of ours minds. closed for business europe struggles to shut its doors to the flow of illegal migrants from the middle east and north africa with economically unstable nations like a chile and greece taking the biggest budget. on sea virtuality police. on a national day of action saying copes simply have too much power and a happy to use it also. it was right here at about two pm local time that a blast ripped through boss twenty nine. sigs dad dozens had and a sister in mourning and a few minutes were reconstruct the deadly volgograd bombing from social media terrifying to rising to the moment a religious zealotry claimed it was for in flight.