Toilets, Because s#!+ Happens

Los Angeles has self cleaning toilets for the public to use. What this really means is that there are self-cleaning toilets out there that homeless people can use because the general public can use a toilet inside a restaurant or a store that their patronizing has homeless people are often turned away by signs that […]

MEND Gala Wrap Up

Every well run fundraiser is well planned. Sometime in September the lights stay on for late Wednesday evening meetings at the MEND center on San Fernando. I have never been a “lady who lunches”, instead I am a “lady who grabs my kid from daycare, zooms through McDonald’s and rushes up a flight of stairs […]

MEND Gala Wrap Up

From the Locked Psych Ward

I spent the day in a locked Psych Ward, or the “BHU” as we call it. It was loud and filled with free range clients walking, talking and visiting with each other, or rocking in corners. Judging people and ignoring them as nuisances is too easy. Seeing them as people who are ill and in […]

Homeless Showers

View this post on Instagram A post shared by MEND Poverty (@mendpoverty) The San Fernando Valley Rescue Mission and MEND combining together to bring hygiene and dignity to our neighbors who don’t have access to soap, water and privacy. #peoplehelpingpeople #mendpoverty

You will never understand what it’s like to be Black in a White World

Hal Espy was my boss at Cal State Long Beach when I worked in the Kitchen for 49er Shops. He was (may still be) a tall man who repeated the name of the person he just met seven times in their first introduction and then he never forgot the name. He was an Olympic Hopeful […]

FAILURE . . .

Hey guys, So we’ve been hanging out here for over a decade (if you have been here since the beginning). When I started this in an Excalibur hotel room in Las Vegas, I was a little buzzed and talking to my friends Bonnie and Isabel. They did not understand why I spend my days on […]

National single parent day

Easily about 92% of the family’s I saw when I worked in the welfare system were single parent families. Most of those families were led by women and almost none of them received child support. It’s like I could have been my own client. It is only through assistance from families and friends and my own […]

Off to school I go

It is the first day after spring break…I can do it! #usc @msw