Reply #58: L.A. Times columnist reports from Skid Row after Occupy L.A. eviction raid

[pinboy3niner]

Sandy Banks



On skid row, helping the most needy of the 99%


A businesswoman answers a higher call to bring food to the neediest of the 99%.

...


But the hard-luck Occupy L.A. contingent is back to life as it was before — sleeping on cardboard pallets on filthy streets and crowding skid row shelters for meals.

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What might have seemed like roughing it — bedding down for months on hard ground — was a step up for those at the very bottom of the "We Are The 99%."

One of those is Samantha, who moved to the encampment outside City Hall — "joined the movement," she called it — because she was on the street with a 3-month-old. She'd lost her job as a pharmacy tech at a Walgreens and left an abusive boyfriend behind.

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When police moved in, the skid row activists scattered — arrest was not on the agenda.

"Most of the other people who left, they went home," she said. "Most of them had some place to call their own.

"We ended up coming back here, because we had no place to go."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1206-banks-20111206,0,6837499,full.column