The Last Bookstore (the main entrance is around the corner on 5th)

Conversation with Mollie Lowery, Mike Neely and General Jeff Page. Performance by Los Angeles Poverty Department.

Far from being a societal wasteland, Skid Row, Los Angeles is a long standing endangered low-income residential neighborhood and the only answer in the entire region for problems of homelessness and recovery. Tonight’s panelists have lived and worked in the Skid Row community across three decades and have stood up for the community and launched transformative community building initiatives on Skid Row. They will talk about the vitality of the community and their successes in empowering the community.

Mollie Lowery co-founded and for 20 years directed Los Angeles Men’s Place, the first day center for homeless men with mental illness. She expanded LAMP to include housing and employment opportunities for women as well as men. Mollie introduced the "housing first" approach of helping the homeless mentally ill in Los Angeles and she continues this work today. In 2007 Lowery started to serve the mentally ill homeless outside of Skid Row. Mike Neely is the founder and past director of the Homeless Outreach Program/Integrated Care System. The Homeless Outreach Program was founded in 1988 as a pilot program that hired formerly homeless people to connect homeless people with services that they wanted and needed. HOP grew into a multi-million dollar project with more than sixty employees. Neely is currently a commissioner of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, LAHSA. He served on the State Commission on Homeless Veterans, the State Commission on African American Males and Substance Abuse. General Jeff Page is a new generation of Skid Row leaders. In 2007 he founded Issues and Solutions, to directly address a variety of quality of life and community planning issues. General Jeff brings s to the attention of local government issues that require their attention and he initiates direct solutions to community problems. With Manuel "O.G. Man" Compito, General Jeff created "Operation Facelift/ Skid Row", a "grass roots" community effort that focuses on cleaning up the trash and debris in Skid Row and replacing it with murals. General Jeff is a member of the Downtown Neighborhood Council.

The evening will be punctuated by performance excerpts from Los Angeles Poverty Department’s new production WALK THE TALK.

WALK THE TALK is a performance that will take the form of a parade through Skid Row over Memorial Day weekend, May 26, 27 and 28 (1-5 pm). Each WALK THE TALK performance will be unique: with different performance elements and a different parade route. This 3-day peripatetic performance - with brass band - will travel through Skid Row and tell the stories of 36 neighborhood visionaries in the places where they’ve lived and worked.

A public art component of WALK THE TALK consisting of 36 portraits of the WALK THE TALK visionaries, designed by Mr. Brainwash, will be permanently installed in Skid Row. Mollie Lowery and Mike Neely are among those commemorated in the plaques.

Previous WALK THE TALK talks:

* February 20: LA Catholic Worker Jeff Dietrich reads from his new book, Broken and Shared.

* March 19: Faith on Skid Row / Faith in Skid Row - Pastor Scott Chamberlain and Pastor William Campbell talk of their pioneering efforts in creating community institutions on Skid Row.

* April18: Thirty Years of Organizing on Skid Row - Nancy Mintie, Inner City Law Center; Gary Blasi, UCLA law; and Pete White, LA Community Action Network, talk about the ongoing struggle of Skid Row residents for social justice.

* May 9: Creative Community - the ARTS on Skid Row - Artists Lillian Abel Calamari, SRO art workshop; OG Man, OG's N Service Association; Robert Chambers, Homeless Writers Coalition; SS Jones, Skid Row Musicians Network; Hayk Makhmuryan, Lamp Community’s Fine Arts Program and Bob Bates, Inner City Arts show their work and talk about the history of the rich creative community that exists on Skid Row and where we are today.

* May 16: Creating a Recovery Community on Skid Row. Darlene Berry, Orlando Ward and Walter “Redd” Moore talk about the history and development of the vibrant and burgeoning recovery community on Skid Row.

 LA Poverty Department’s WALK THE TALK is made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts -Theater, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund and The LIA Fund.

http://lapovertydept.org/