Image: Skid Row + Little Tokyo neighborhoods: our right and collective fight to remain. Doodles arts table activity at the UMEYA+Care Campus Carnival Day in May 2026, highlighting the continued collaboration, common struggles and common goals of the two neighborhoods.
Kind light / Բարի լույս* to you, dear neighbors, artists, collaborators, community partners, co-conspirators, supporters of arts in Skid Row and doodles without borders,
*morning greeting in Armenian translates as “kind light” (բարի լույս [baree looys])
Post highlights: (1) Events/Activities in and near Skid Row, (2) Thoughts Aloud, (3) Quote of the Month.
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***SUPPORT Doodles by supporting Arts Depot***
1) TWO T-SHIRTS ARE HERE! Doodles and Arts Depot journey into swag has begun:) Get one by donating $30 or more to Community Arts Depot
2) Become a sustaining member at $5/month or more (or donate once $50 or more) & get an exclusive t-shirt and art print or wordoodle of your choice.
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HIGHLIGHTS in and near Skid Row neighborhood, June 2026
Some neighborhood events, celebrations, and parties to join
- Look out for local Working Class rooted LGBTQ+ Pride Month activity/event recommendations in Doodles instagram stories throughout the month!
- Fri, June 5, 7pm: MOVIE NIGHT at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
- Fri, June 12, 5-7pm: ARTS JAM Open Mic at Studio526 (526 San Pedro St)
- Thurs, June 18, 11am-3pm – JUNETEENTH w/ Sir Oliver and Skid Row Advisory Board at General Jeff (Gladys) Park
- Fri, June 19, 7pm: MOVIE NIGHT at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
- Fri, June 26, 3p: Sock Puppets + 5-7:30p: OPEN MIC @ Skid Row Museum
- Fri, June 26, Dusk: Movie by StopLAPDspying in front of LAPD headquarters (sometimes location varies, check IG page
- Sun, June 28, 1-4pm: Community Resource Event by Skid Row Brigade @ General Jeff (Gladys) Park
You can VIEW, DOWNLOAD, or PRINT the monthly calendar at doodleswithoutborders.com/calendar
Pa/est/ine + Skid Row Actions: some places to find local downtown LA and nearby actions that make local Skid Row to global connections: Pal Youth Movement – LA, Organize – LA, StopLAPDSpying, LACAN
SAVE THE DATE / ONGOING
• ONGOING: Hotels in Crisis exhibit at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway), Museum hours are Thu, Fri, at 2-5pm.
OPEN MICS as places to come together, and plant seeds of collective struggle.
There are at least FOUR regularopen mics currently in Skid Row:
Weekly – (1) every Thurs, 6:30-9pm at Peace and Healing Center (116 E 5th)
Monthly – (2) 1st/3rd Fridays 11a-1p: BuckFest at Care Campus (442 S Crocker) by Urban Voices, (3) every 2nd Friday, 5-7pm, at Studio526 (526 San Pedro St); (4) every last Friday of the month, 5-7:30pm with Lorinda at LA Poverty Dept‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S. Broadway)
THOUGHTS ALOUD
Get up, come cast your vote, so they will shoo you away
Elections are perhaps the most common association with political participation, and so are a great starting point for discussing what is political, how all our social participation is political, in relationship with the political. The latest Armenian-English wordoodle takes on the word “election”, and this Thoughts Aloud section expands on the text from the original post.
ել • եկ • քշեն
[(y)el][ek][k’shen] / election
Arm | Eng Dictionary: ել [(y)el] – get up; եկ [(y)ek] – come; քշեն [k’shen] – (so) they will fend you away, shoo you away
This wօ՜դoodle/ wordoodle is not against voting.
But elections for public office in US capitalist racist society* (and all capitalist countries) are a form of political theatre, where you are convinced to GET UP, COME cast your vote, only to have your working class needs and opinions FENDED AWAY. They are happy if you drink the kool-aid, and they are equally happy if you are disillusioned in voting. In both cases you are an atomized in-di-vi-du-al legitimizing their irreformable colonial death cult.
So, if voting is your only push back on this 250 y.o. u.s. capitalist colonial imperialist political project, which you and we all living inside it have been hijacked to legitimize–don’t do it.
If you are involved in political or organizing or community groups, but you still center elections / election cycles –don’t do it.
But if you understand that elections and elected officials will do nothing lasting for us, unless there is a working class and oppressed peoples’ led collective power outside electoral politics (which becomes stronger than the capitalist monied interests).
If you understand the centrality of contributing to the cultivation of such collective power, and that electoral politics in US capitalist racist society will always try to co-opt and destroy building this kind of collective power.
And especially if your contribution is not individual, but is what you’ve committed to as group, as a member of a collective liberation minded political group.
And if your contribution is informed by your social and geopolitical positionality.
If you do your best to practice this type of political participation, and see voting as a SMALL, inessential, tactical tool in this framework–then vote.
Upon voting, lovingly and caringly curse all the candidates to experience just 10% of pain and suffering of the oppressed and exploited peoples, UNTIL these candidates and electeds abandon the political theatre that actively and intentionally perpetuates our suffering, and join the work of strengthening working class and oppressed peoples’ led collective power.
*Thank you Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly
If you are looking for a voter guide in LA region, Knock LA is one of possible options: https://knock-la.com/knock-la-progressive-voter-guide-june-2026-primary-election/
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Think about the body you live in: with every breath you breathe in and out, the idea that your body has permanent borders between what’s inside and outside it is revealed to be a fiction.
…Truer than the fiction of borders is the messy reality of how life operates in the zone between binary markers … Borderlands as spaces populatated by migrants drawn across fake national borders, by citizens living inside fake national borders, by nonconforming people who have the courage to live in between gender norms, and by people from all over the world speaking 167 different languages in Jackson Heights.”
– Steven W. Thrasher, from The Viral Underclass: the human toll when inequality and disease collide
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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!
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For previous newsletter(s), go to www.doodleswithoutborders.com homepage
doodles without borders is just starting to scratch the surface of our collective, abolitionist, liberatory work and I look forward to much much more together!
With much love and joyful commitment to universal equitable access to housing, healthcare, education, arts and cultural spaces, and a strong and vibrant community locally and globally, across timezones, beyond borders,
Հայկ [hike] / Hayk