Although we are all very aware of the homeless conditions in Los Angeles, it is usually limited to seeing a person sleeping on the street here and there, or seeing the random person asking for change...
We were ushered to a booth outside, past the area where lunch was being served, where volunteers were dispensing black down jackets with an Aeropostale label inside.... Whether that company donated them or someone else did, I don't know... Daniel was charged with stamping each person's hand as they approached the booth - presumably to prevent people from returning to the line and claiming a second coat - and I was told to count the people in line...
This sounded simple at first... But as I took a minute to get my bearings, a fast and steady stream of people, many of whom were still eating their dinner of ham and roast turkey on paper plates, came striding out of the Mission building and into the queue... Since the people dispensing the jackets were not moving that quickly, the homeless people had to stop and stand in a line...
I stood on the other side of a fence, standing in front of an area where volunteers from JAAKS Pacific sorting large piles of toys that their company had donated, which were being given from another booth...
I looked at every face before me, or tried to, to ensure that my count was accurate... The common stereotype of the homeless is a white or African American male, over 40, and possibly a war veteran... There I saw women of all ages - some pushing baby strollers.. There were many children and teenagers, many more than I would have ever guessed and more than is comfortable to consider... And every ethnicity I could think of was represented, although there were many more darker faces...
The sun was in my face, but after a while, I took my sunglasses off... I didn't want to seem shielded from the people... It was bad enough that I had to stand behind a fence... I felt shy and awkward at first, being confronted first-hand with real poverty, not some version of it in a book or a movie...
Two things were most humbling... Looking at the faces that filed past me, I was struck with the fact that with basic health care, simple diet, and general grooming, they looked like the faces I live with, work with, and socialize with... I tried to keep that in mind and chatted with them, complimenting the women on some bauble they wore and shyly smiling and saying "Merry Christmas" to the men and children...
They were from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, ages, perhaps even educational levels... But there for all the world to see, they were reduced to a statistic, a blighted population that provided people like me - and others who are considered "more important" - with an opportunity to help out for one day so that we could feel good about ourselves and be able to tell how we put the "true spirit of Christmas" into practice...
The other thing was that the people kept saying, "Thank you" to me... They had probably done the same for the volunteers who fed them and gave their children toys...
Friends who have worked with the homeless tell me how good it feels to be thanked... I felt like I didn't deserve thanks, I who in a few hours, would be able to get out of the afternoon chill and make Christmas Eve dinner for my family... I preferred simply exchanging the more egalitarian "Merry Christmas," each of us just another human being swept up into the holiday vortex...
Rodney Luck, a volunteer who drove all the way down from the Sacramento area to help out on Christmas Eve, wrote me later that, "It is very gratifying that volunteers such as you and I can give and see another side of life that not everyone can share and understand."...
"Most of the people do not live in the streets but are poor struggling families and people looking for help," he said in an email after the event... I agreed with him in the sentiment that "Without help from the Mission and other agencies, these are people that would not have anything for the holidays."... But I also don't think it's all that simple...
Several people who were told that they could not take toys or a jacket to a child who was not present were angry... An African American woman was yelling at the JAKKS crew, saying that the Mexican kids had gotten all the best toys...
A lot of the kids wanted to exchange the toys they had received for something else that they saw on the piles behind me... The volunteers were not allowed to switch anything for them... Sadly, a couple of the JAKKS guys were downright surly after a while, grumbling under their breath after having had heated words with one of the people in line...
I wondered as a dozen kids filed past me loaded down with garishly packaged toys, where they would be able to fly the cheap kites they were given that day... I wondered who chose the gift assortment of "spa" toiletries for preteen girls who didn't even have their own bathtub...
Is misguided charity really charity?... And is charity that is regulated the way the Mission does at these events really truly giving?...
A woman in a wheelchair rolled up to me as the line for jackets had disappeared... She told me that "Pastor Smith" said there would be blankets and other items set aside for her... I referred her to another volunteer, who after scowling in puzzlement at me, pretty much ignored her... Ten minutes later, I heard her shouting her request out again to someone else in our enclosed area, referencing a pastor with a different name... This was met with equal indifference...
I understand that these are the mean streets... The Mission and other agencies have to dole out their resources carefully so that as many individuals can be served as possible... But what was one blanket and some food for one woman, who may have been mentally unstable but who was in front of us right at that moment, basically in need and begging?...
We stood like sentries among piles of cheap, gaudy toys and donated down jackets... I pictured these jackets being sported by recipients along the streets of Skid Row and after the holiday break, in the poorest schools of the LAUSD... Perhaps they would be exchanged on the streets for other more desirable quarry: food, liquor, drugs...
While I had been trying very hard not to miss anybody in my count, it became futile at times... I would eyeball a group with two or three adults and what looked like about four children... I'd blink and suddenly, two or three more would appear as if out of nowhere... At the end, I counted 1,530 adults and 1,065 children... The unexpectedly high ratio of children to adults was heartwrenching...
I realized that many of the families with children did not exactly live on the streets... Many were probably residing in shelters or transitional housing... Their clothes were clean, and they looked as if they had bathed recently...
I could not help but think of the contrast between this picture of childhood with that of my nephews' safe and comfortable world... After one of their typically busy schooldays or weekend rounds of tae kwon do, birthday parties, and other extracurricular activities, they literally beg to be taken home and won't allow their parents to stop on the way home for even a gallon of milk... Their house is the one that all their friends want to go to right after school... Even if there is a playdate at a friend's house or a park to allow my sister and brother-in-law some free time, the playmates want to come over to Seiji and Kenzo's house anyway...
The kids who were at the Mission that day at the Mission don't have a warm, safe house down the street from a school whose biggest financial crisis centers on which celebrity parent will grace the next fundraising event... They don't have spare rooms in which to keep every discarded toy they've ever owned in their entire seven or eight years of life... They can't complain that they only like blueberry yogurt and won't eat the strawberry variety that is the only kind their brother likes, forcing my sister to buy two different cases of Go-Gurt a week...
What my nephews have in common with the kids on the street are dreams... At Christmas, they all dream of what Santa will bring them... While most of Seiji and Kenzo's wish lists - whether they be material, educational, or developmental - may be answered more closely for the forseeable future, I hope that in the years to come, something will change for the children at the Mission...
I hope that those who are caring for them will not have to take them to the Mission for the charity of a Christmas dinner on the street and "gifts" of cheaply made toys and unattractive clothing that will brand them as beggars at school... I hope that someone will show these children how to take care of themselves - through education, through mentoring, and through letting them know that they too can someday earn the means to help those who live in the same need they came from...
I also hope that my nephews will learn someday that it is partly their responsibility to make life better for people whose circumstances and privilege do not equal theirs... I hope that one day they will learn to look at people in the street and see in their faces the same potential of the family they live with, the kids they go to school with, the friends they build their world with.
