^{Image: General Jeff Memorial People’s Park banner, which is up during the Doodles arts tables, Weds 4:30-6pm}

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,
*the morning greeting in Armenian translates as “kind morning” (բարի լույս [baree looys])
…

Post highlights: (1) Events/Activities in and near Skid Row, (2) Thoughts Aloud – Local to Global, (3) Quote of the Month.

Upcoming on August 8th!
WINDOWS OF BRONZE LITTLE TOKYO – Opening Celebration Thursday, August 8th, 4:30-7:30pm at LACAN (838 E 6th St). It is an honor to be one of the coordinators for this project. Please join and bring friends!  
Five incredible artists are bringing together a multifaceted, interactive program!
4:30-6pm: Comics and Style Lettering workshops (try to come on time, but ok to drop in!)
5:30-6pm: Red Carpet Interviews
6pm: Drumming Performance
6:15-7pm: Panel Discussion about connections and parallels between Skid Row and Little Tokyo, Japanese/Asian and Black communities.
Artwork on display throughout the event!

HIGHLIGHTS in and near SKID ROW, August 2024
Some neighborhood events, celebrations, and parties to join
Friday, Aug 2, 6pm: – Anti-geno//de Pa/es//ne solidarity protest, LA City Hall

Friday, Aug 2, 7pm, Movie Night at LA poverty department‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)

Thur, Aug 8, 1pm Food distro – then 2pm-  Ase Ase Drummers with Ray @ San Julian Park

Thur, Aug 8, 4:30-7:30p: OPENING Celebration of Windows Project: Skid Row – Little Tokyo collaboration at LACAN (838 E 6th St) – Join us!

Fri, Aug 9, 5-7pm: Arts Jam Open Mic @ Studio 526 (526 San Pedro)

Wed, Aug 14, 6p – MOVIE in the PARK @ General Jeff (Gladys) Park (movie starts at dusk)

Fri, Aug 16, 3-5pm: Black August community event @ LACAN

Fri, Aug 16, 6-8pm:HRW report on Criminalization-  Release Event @ LACAN

Friday, Aug 16, 7pm, Movie Night “Marley” at Skid Row Museum

Tues, Aug 20, 10:30a-12pm: Creative Writing @ Skid Row Museum

Fri, Aug 23, 4-7pm: 9th Annual JAMAICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY Celebration in Skid Row @ Skid Row Museum

Sat, Aug 24, 2-5pm: Annual Coffeehouse by Urban Voices at Inner City Arts. Go to urbanvoicesproject.org  or details

Friday, Aug 30, 5-7:30pm, Open Mic with Lorinda@ Skid Row Museum

Fri, Aug 30, Dusk: Movie Night by StopLAPDSpying coalition in front of LAPD headquarters (check their instagram to confirm and for more info)

To view or print the full monthly calendar, go to doodleswithoutborders.com/calendar

SAVE THE DATE
>>>NEXT WEEK: August 8, Thurs, 4:30-7:30pm at LA CAN: Opening Reception of the Windows of Bronze Little Tokyo project, Skid Row and Little Tokyo shared past, present, and future.
>>>Aug 23rd, 4-7pm- 9th annual Sir Oliver’s Jamaican Independence Day 

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 THREE 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 last Friday, 5-7:30pm with Lorinda at LA Poverty Dept‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S. Broadway)
…

THOUGHTS ALOUD
Why am I talking: SKID ROW IS PERSONAL
I don’t and haven’t lived in Skid Row neighborhood. So I do not have the knowledge and experience of someone who lives or has lived in Skid Row, either on the streets, in a shelter, or in an apartment. 
I believe it is paramount for anyone who wants to align with Skid Row neighborhood related work but does not live there, to find ways to support and contribute time and resources to housed and unhoused resident-led collective power building, mutual support oriented groups, or supporting individual residents working to cultivate such groups. It can happen in different ways, but that is for another post.

Although I do not live in Skid Row, it does not mean that my work in Skid Row is not personal. It is very personal. I grew up in a poor working class family in Armenia, came to occupied Turtle Island in 1999 with my parents. They were never able to do that thing of buying a house, so there isn’t a place I can “fall back on” or “inherit”. Today I am a tenant in so-called Los Angeles region, and the connection between housed and unhoused tenants (tenant: person who does not control their own housing, thank you LATU!) is very clear to me. I also support my mother, who is herself a tenant in Armenia.
And as an Armenian, I come from a people, part of whose population (Artsakh) went through geno//dal banishment from ancestral lands just last year (the latest in cycle of erasure going back 100+ years), with majority of weapons being subsidized by u.s. funding (by way of Is/ae/ arms sales to Aзe/ba/jan, and major Tu/kish support). And I come from a region (South West Asia), a part of which, Pa/es//ne, is currently going through an intensified geno//de, directly financed by u.s. empire.  The money used to commit these geno//des in the part of the world I come from (as well as massive, devastating vio/ence in many other parts of the world from Africa, to East Asia, to South America and beyond), is exactly the money deliberately withheld from going for universal housing, healthcare, education, food access, etc in u.s.  Skid Row is at the receiving end of this massive domestic vio/ence, rooted in the overlap of anti-poor, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black genoc//al oppression across the country as a central, irreformable feature of u.s. imperial project.
So Skid Row is very personal. 16 years ago when I first starting working here, I did not understand all this. But along with long-term collaborations, friendships, and connections, these years brought the clarity that doing work in Skid Row makes a lot of sense for a (forced) migrant living inside u.s. empire. It can be one of the ways to seek out alignment with collective liberation minded Indigenous and Black working class led groups in u.s. empire, en route to liberation for everyone, across the planet.

And during Black August, it is also especially important to be reminded that Skid Row neighborhood is part of Black LA, and has it’s place in the creative, joyful, loving, caring, collective, abolitionist resistance work of freeing all political prisoners and abolishing prisons and jails. For more Black August resources, here is one starting point: bit.ly/BARHandbook
 

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 / Pairings: Mumia Abu Jamal and M. NourbeSe Philip

“August is a month of meaning, of repression and radical resistance, of injustice and divine justice; of repression and righteous rebellion; of individual and collective efforts to free the slaves and break the chains that bind us.”
― Mumia Abu Jamal, member of Black Panther Party, political prisoner and tireless author, journalist, activist, quoted in Malcolm X Grassroots Movement post at the top of this month; for more Black August resources bit.ly/BARHandbook

“I want poetry to disassemble the ordered, to create disorder and mayhem so as to release the story that cannot be told, but which, through not-telling, will tell itself. ”
― M. NourbeSe Philip, poet and writer with Afro-Carribean roots, author of Zong! 

…
For previous newsletter(s), go to www.doodleswithoutborders.com homepage

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.