fifty plucks which does not appear on any map of los angeles. you.

do. with. this new rule basically. and there's still. this is good and bad clashing 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 disses a real life experience i see people get beat up every night people get robbed us of people to step us and i've seen people get hit by a car you don't pay b.o.'s you don't nurse you don't pay the car noticed you have 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. but 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. struggle 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 he told chris 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 of 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 it was

a war and for people who are unable to live in the world and they were given the tried to move through again and again but 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 personally or there's muscles are pretty close to the science i was shocked for to really get over to. skid row this is a newer proven i still to. back you were to drop it people didn't come down to see into downtown just swell the air when it's leo and of all this is dirt fields and burn barrels it and there were cut your throat down to your people to come past main street you didn't this was called the pit spec down. to people and told

a different sort of a whole generation. it's good rosenau just seem potential real estate story of a ground for it's clear that people are interested they are not 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 sun follows the specially term magic 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 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 of soap medal so at 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 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 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 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 our five. i was amazed at the number being lower 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 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 bed 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 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 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 from lofty heights if you want to use that word. it's humbling. the area has always attracted outsiders. three. some stay for a. while others never. come albert olson 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 go i'm one of those cases where i'm bipolar schizoaffective i have anti-social personality disorder p.t.s.d. i have insulin rage just sort of a major nightmare to sort of i also have a gender identity. to sort out where i'm taking hormones for a transgender issue for sexual reassignment is to get marilyn down the color of their good spot to some of the best era when it's. cracked up bad and we've man's out an x. box. hollowing most two years ago it's only to be two years for me so i spent a good two years down. but i don't think i'd ever do again at their commits suicide next time for. 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 from out of the service for bad conduct one thing is really stinks the fact doesn't rain here it 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 worst. 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 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 made and they gave it to society and then where do we go you. get locked in and smoke a cigarette three times a day and when they tell you or you sit out 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 asylum 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 wards are mentally ill so we criminalized because of their behavior on the streets people were really questioning me like how can you

open a place just for people who are. in that really stigmatized. 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 at night. 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. a family. you know we cook together we eat together we play cards to gather we sing together karaoke i learn number close and deal with all types of people. first city

and never in my life anyplace i mean all types of people all types when i decided to come down here and. i saw people just like me depression was one of my biggest things. i've been talking to this is i was seven years old i love this it always say i'm out on the good. i do it in a way every task i do it would say i have. this. girl in and out around the city nurses. my body. i know my health. that are going on my body i had my breast. 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. or taking care of my business no matter how much pain i'm me and i got to do it. they're doing whatever they want in syria these days and even the obama administration can do nothing to rein the saudis in i think the. united states doesn't have the power that it wants. it doesn't have the leverage that tries to work through. organizations and occasionally on a child and deal with the court of public opinion. the best care. there is a law in the. right now they're not many tools lists. lead . but the.

lead it was terrible take the lead very hard to take out the legs to get along a lot better sacks would that make their lives let's play. lists lists lists lists lists of. a.

mug. leg length. lens. those holes for fourteen years blood shores. it was because i couldn't get in a school that i didn't want to go where. stuart came to the really become of history now so yes and he would have. come from a home a very good home you know. very good home but i want to live on the street be wow. i learned i learned i would start school in knox because that's what this is an issue very wise to life and people. can read right away. our way. there in this way that's what everybody with the media not i just said miss usa in

. delaware is on one side of the halo and the outside. it just paints. all those. i was born in a true house over here in san pedro my father was in the service in world war two when i was released in new mexico where my grandmother was born i'm from the men of client rich and powerful clan and in mexico it isn't i would put four years old again there in arkansas and i put the last twenty years in jail but arizona. 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 but you forget that i had to pay two and three and four dollars a night for star phone containers anabolic scores like eight dollars for just

a few those things 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 to know by now is the much of an unfair to scare food with a lot more contact the ok. kid you can't take it again say it when there's been this now this is the problem the you know no this no this is the one that had the signs can right here. the month including and it looks like a rat well the smashed face i got it to a reader. only hopefully will have wore. yellow skin over we've always had a lot of red in her war yeah that means i don't care for anything red blue or.

they'll throw purple. yes the jets are going to be for knowing that the real man with his wound will last. long in. various this. and that is a psycho a little insight when someone out of the sun thank you have a license around and won't let the law and your rifle rule sexually harassing. the sex of the press. with no one knows that carolyn is out psycho level or anything. like. that and our way the round unless they're not here. to really help but i mean ever does a guy was bothering her one day and i just didn't like. people to take advantage of zero people. when he was taken advantage over so i intervened and she for good

enough there she just kind of adopted me as her fiance and i've been her fiance or says that's been nine years ago but did 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 tray a shit she has stored just full of cash like three different ones just completely piled up to she pay every month nothing but. but that's who she is and i take her just who for who she is it 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 i but i truly i would defend her with my life if you believe that i'll die behind this will lead you right here. life is love life is a conundrum it 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 and she likes. it. time to people after st you want you don't you won't she doesn't want to see people or understand. or when she's ready to go. she wants to should you have to live her litter slots or should i just live i'm sure even though she has little or. she needs a truly large words there were secret. even those mothers will set the money he she gave him 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 with three years of medical school and a drop in medical school and crackle i can end up so bad commemorating and now i

sing about 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 cause real lot of grief. and ok we know we have family who will hang on our lives. well this is real. this is not how. i was sleeping else enjoying a blanket. real close friends. sometimes i still go outside to sleep. sometimes when i'm 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 going to act with other people healthy way i didn't

feel connected to anything i remember feeling very depressed and. i thought why does save the world in myself you know a headache. i go in at sixteen and i never have to come back out again but they would accept me. they would be really bad place to be you know i ran away from home at seventeen years old and i actually got a job paid really in school. that mary at the age of twenty one had my daughter my first daughter is twenty two. and 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. our own 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 everyone in my life that i cared about they're gone when that happened i came askin well. i developed a real bad drug crack cocaine and came here. and i really didn't and never thought about it i just know when you are wrong doing roman doing your body spoken that's what that's what i'm going to do. but. that's what i wanted at that time and i just remember saying to myself sitting here long enough and keep doing are doing it it's gonna happen because i just knew a little from gladys to say enjoy it and maybe down syndrome.

god has been good to me you say he's used down here now been through most turbulent times now the. geos in this interesting history part of it is a drug addiction crack cocaine also addicted to the lifestyle of downtown will where. no one judges know. grew up in compton drug or sudden one horse was three years old. people or so they have horses in the back yard but they'd never roll i just are going to be forced to take them out no go but ya get him and ride him miss it you wrote it was a. challenge to ride horses i knew they had like a ford and i had a stand in to the old why you like it so 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 awarded for. that's how i like horses they spark me to sign what my dream would be to live on the ranch. and be were horses you know . just to be around smell them walk ride a baby. teach people about. when to come the horses i believe that. i know if i get sick because of the house arrest so many people you know if i left i. used to get by the wall of wall people up and down a whole block and you could hardly walk up and down the street cause could be a pen pal or have to think on our everybody's either in jail was always the santa monica venice or hollywood or somewhere else we don't need more channels people mental institutions we need more doctors to come down here so the more people pass

now sandwiches that's why. really you need more understanding we need the awareness that we're not all 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 mean is the reward neurotransmitter i mean it's what c.e.o.'s 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 sold on the brain of a person that doesn't because frankly the scripts are frank brain cannot filter out the noise it 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 dead in the sun baked 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 prescribe drugs or 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 we're going to do i can't even get my. telephone what am i supposed to get

my medication so get drugs soup on the street. try to make it. she turned his lover into an amazon. that had been my dream for so long. but he couldn't hold on to there is such a thing as a teacher now she runs her own amazon factory where they screw down a challenge to men there's no alcohol or smoking and even coffee is forbidden they worship the sun and water. and learn martial arts. will he be able to wind up back man versus woman on r.t. . right on the scene. of the

first strike. and i think picture. on a reporter's twitter. instagram. could be a month. on. the olympic torch is on its epic journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred two cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. a limp torch relay. on r t r g dot com.

to the truth please come show thirty four countries spend over fifteen billion euros to ted says to each one hundred fifty million degrees with one token mark still to sell from st petersburg to france we travel in search of the song. knowledge we've got the future covered. two years after the force ouster of gadhafi by nato forces would be a stance as the abyss the lack of a strong central government weak rule of law and the endless violence in a country awash with weapons has resulted in libya facing failed state status add to this the presence of islamic militants can things get any worse in libya. or outside to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced to come after a massive hunger strike never turned the world's attention to the places that some

. of our time. a female suicide bomber kills six people on a boss and russia city of all the grab we report from the scene of monday's bombing . more revelations from n.s.a. leaker add a word snowden with reports claiming germany's chancellor has been spied on for over a decade and that as thousands of protesters gather in washington d.c. united in anger at the country's global surveillance program and. whatever happens i will not leave my house again could not be worse than this r t hands to the front lines of a syrian civil war where a palestinian community is firing to protect its homes and families also.