Kind morning /Բարի լույս* to you, dear neighbors, artists, collaborators, community partners, co-conspirators, supporters of arts in Skid Row and of doodles without borders, and blessed Equinox, Easter, 🍉 Land Day, Nowruz, Trans Day of Visibility, César Chavez Day & spring renewal to you,
*the morning greeting in Armenian translates as “kind morning” (բարի լույս [baree looys])
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ACTION ITEMS
1) CALL FOR ARTISTS – Are you a creative person connected to Skid Row or Little Tokyo? Consider registering for Windows of Little Bronze Tokyo community orientation on May 11th, to be eligible to submit an artist proposal for the project! More information on the project here. Open to any and all creative practices.
Register at bit.ly/sltwindows by May 3rd, required in order to attend the orientation. Please share with people you think would be interested!
2) VOTE – Do you live or do work in Skid Row neighborhood? Please participate in LA Repair participatory voting process, and share with those who also qualify. Online voting is open until April 7th. You get three choices, and there are three great projects you can support: Creative Justice LA, LA Poverty Department, and Skid Row Brigade.
3) Lastly, if you are a tenant at an SRO apartment building/hotel in Skid Row or Downtown, consider joining the LATU Tenant association meetings. Reply to this email or direct message Union de Vecinos Eastside Local on instagram for meeting day and time information.
HIGHLIGHTS in and near SKID ROW, April 2024
Some neighborhood events, celebrations, and parties to join
1) Friday, April 5, 7pm, Movie Night Public School LA at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
2) Thur, April 11, 7pm, Panel Discussion in conjunction with “Welcome to Covid Hotel” at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
3) Fri, April 12, 5-7pm: Arts Jam Open Mic @ Studio 526 (526 San Pedro St)
4) Mon, April 15: Global Actions for Free Pales//ne. Check for specifics at a15action.com
5) Tues, April 16, 10:30-12 Creative Writing @ Skid Row Museum
6) Thursday, April 18, 12-3pm – Marketplace at LACAN (838 E 6th St)
7) Friday, April 19, 7pm: Movie Night at LA poverty department‘s Skid Row Museum
8) Friday, April 26, 5-7:30pm, Open Mic with Lorinda @ Skid Row Museum
9) Fri, April 26, Dusk: Movie Night by StopLAPDSpying coalition in front of LAPD headquarters
10) Sun, April 28, Time: TBA – Come On sing with Urban Voices, in Skid Row, DTLA
To view or print the full monthly calendar, go to doodleswithoutborders.com/calendar
SAVE THE DATE
1) Saturday, May 11th – 2-6pm: Annual People’s Kite Festival by Clockshop at LA State Historic Park
2) Thursday, May 16th, 11:45a-1:30p: Largest Drum Circle in LA, in downtown’s Grand Park
3) Saturday, May 25: WALK THE TALK Parade in Skid Row neighborhood by LA poverty department, a biennial honoring of Skid Row neighborhood visionaries
ONGOING
1) “Welcome to Covid Hotel” at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway) until December 2024
2) “Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West” at Wende Museum in Culver City, including a number of Skid Row neighborhood artists is up until September 2024. Entrance is Free. Fri-Sun 10a-5p (10808 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90230)
OPEN MICS as places to come together, and plant seeds of collective struggle.
There are at least FOUR open mics currently in Skid Row neighborhood:
Weekly – (1) every Thurs, 6:30-9pm at Peace and Healing Center (116 E 5th)
Monthly –
2) every second Friday of the month, 5-7pm, at Studio526 (526 San Pedro St)
3) every third Thursday, 12-3pm as part of LACAN‘s Marketplace (838 E 6th St)
4) every last Friday of the month, 5-7:30pm with Lorinda at LA Poverty Dept‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S. Broadway)
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THOUGHTS ALOUD
In the spirit of spring, a fresh reminder, reframing of our collective power, this month LA Tenants Union brilliant organizer Tracy Rosenthal’s thoughts aloud on rights vs power and liberation, during “We Make our Community by Defending It” episode of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism podcast, July 2022.
Tracy: “I think it is important to note, and even – admit – that the first meeting of LATU was a tenants rights training. And I laugh to think of it now, because one of the things that we realized is that –
Beginning with rights really seeds the terrain of our work to legislators and lawyers; it doesnt actually reflect our organizing practices, which are about building capacity for collective bargaining and collective action. The things we are doing now in the Union: eviction defense, mutual aid, rent strikes. These are the practices that self-organization – and NOT rights – make possible.
And especially now, when we are seeing the kind of stripping of rights by reactionary right wing in the courts. Also, tenants have known for a long time that rights are only as good as their enforcement. For instance, we have a right to habitable housing, and yet so many of us live with mold, and roaches, and structural leaks. We have a right to an eviction process, and yet we are kicked out by the sheriff, who sides with the landlord, even when they do not have a legal justification to do so. …
I think about this a lot in the context of the tenant movement, in the context of the unhoused communities I organize with. The thing we are fighting for is not “tenants rights”, it is tenant power, and it is not “housing” it is housing liberation. Understanding liberation as a project beyond rights, that achieves rights in its wake. …
The last thing I have to say, at the risk of sounding righteous or embarrassing is: don’t wait. Don’t wait to join a union. So much of our political life is tied up in our disorganization or stalling. Like waiting for the election cycle, to seed power to people who claim to represent us, and they just end up negotiating our defeat, and calling it a victory. We are trying to build a kind of mass organized power to intervene in power relationships between bosses and workers, between landlords and tenants; the kind of power that can leverage state capacity, not get hemmed in by it, or go around begging to be heard by it. If we have been called by history to build the institutions capable of saving the planet and the world, we gotta answer that call.”
dwb ONLINE:
1) Doodles without Borders (dwb) is now on Instagram / Facebook.
2) There is a monthly dwb Skid Row Community & Arts Calendar. If you do community strengthening work in Skid Row and know of an event/meeting that should be on there, please share.
3) dwb wishlist! You can find it here: bit.ly/dwbwishlist
Able and interested to SUPPORT Doodles?
Support Artwork Storage as a Human Right (and Collective Responsibility)
Community Arts Depot is a sister project addressing the vital need for artwork storage and access focused on Skid Row neighborhood members and residents. Artwork Storage as a Human Right – a glimpse from the Community Arts Depot story. This project’s sustainability is deeply dependent on grassroots support. To donate to the campaign click HERE!
Email us for donating directly via Venmo, Paypal, or other ways.
Quote of the month
“In this time of the hegemony of social media, which is meant to distract and entertain, as opposed to educate and illuminate, We need to be clear, and precise, and careful with our language, especially because political education is so crucial.
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We don’t have to say ‘this is new McCarthyism’, we can say, ‘this is a moment of repression by the one party, two faction state, that is to say democrats and republicans, whereby it is criminalized to be against war, to be against funding of police, to be for Black liberation, and to be against forever wars.’ We can just say that and not make analogies as a shorthand to describe what’s happening, which can actually run the risk of describing very little.”
― Charisse Burden-Stelly, speaking on her book “Black Scare, Red Scare” (link to youtube video interview)
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For previous newsletter(s), go to www.doodleswithoutborders.com homepage
Community Artivism 