Volunteers Give Skid Row a Spring Cleaning

A hot, bright Saturday morning on Skid Row and the area around the little park on Sixth Street and Gladys Avenue was jumping.

It was crowded even though much of the ground was fenced off for grass to be planted. A rough-looking group of young men were gathered under the roofed area at game tables. Music blared from a radio while some relaxed and most shifted around, making small talk, laughing, arguing or looking restless.

A Day in the Park

For all the noise, it was possible to hear birds chirping in the trees. Some people sat on the metal benches, catching the shade and soft breeze, visiting or nodding off. One burned-out man stood there dazedly passing out tiny fliers from the Free Tract Society; “A Sinner’s Prayer” on one side, “It’s Later Than You Think” on the other.

A religious group that regularly shows up with lunches had set up shop at a little table under the trees, passing out food and literature. A few women from the group were out on the sidewalk, heartily beating tambourines, smiling determinedly while they sang “This is the day that the Lord hath made,” trying without much success to get the park regulars to join in the joyful chorus.

And in the alley behind the park, a place infamous for muggings, stabbings, and the dealing, cooking and injecting of drugs, there stood a line of eight workers from Union Bank, patiently and cheerfully scrubbing graffiti, filth and urine off a brick wall.

Around the corner of the building, a crew from IBM was likewise engaged. Two members were even debating the quality of different brands of paint from a new criterion--how easily it washed off.

Worker Gil Flores allowed himself some black humor, informing an onlooker, “As soon as we finish this we’re coming back and put our initials on it. We want to show who cleaned it.”

The Union Bank and IBM crews were both part of the Corporate Volunteer Council. Employee volunteer programs from a number of corporations had come together for their first Los Angeles effort, project coordinator Ellen Linsley of Transamerica Occidental Life’s Involvement Corps, said. Other corporations involved Saturday, she said, were GTE, Security Pacific National Bank, Lloyd’s Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, and American Golf.

Scrub Brushes, Paint Brushes

Originally they had planned on cleaning Gladys Park, Linsley said, but since so much of it was being replanted, it made more sense to concentrate on the surroundings. So crews cleaned the alley, repainting the facade of the Ellis Hotel and scrubbing off its Towne Street wall, likewise the walls of the Merry Seafood Co., and giving a new coat of peach paint to the free medical clinic run by the Los Angeles Catholic Worker Community across the street.

Standing by the Ellis’ pale-yellow tile wall, cleaned of all graffiti and retaining just a little grime, council president Shirley Evans of Union Bank stood hugging Dean Thorp of Wells Fargo. They’d done it. Had they ever. They had put the word out for 100 volunteers; 200 had signed up; 213 had shown up. And now those volunteers were coming up to them saying, “Is this the only time we’re going to do this?”

No sooner had Evans made that claim than Sylvia Schultz of Transamerica, scrub brush in hand, popped around the corner with her testimonial: “This is a wonderful thing we’re doing here. If we do it again, I’ll be right back here.”

The object of their efforts is the park that has been given its last chance. Built five years ago, it soon fell prey to the worst of Skid Row’s residents, many of them drug dealers and users who commonly are called predators--a term that describes their relationship with the down-and-out inhabitants of Skid Row. Vowing to make the park work or shut it down, Jim Wood, chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, announced in March that the agency would redesign and refurbish it. The restrooms, long since used only for shooting and dealing drugs, were bulldozed, and the ground prepared for planting.

Down the block at Las Familias del Pueblo, a center that serves and helps relocate Latino families in the area, director Alice Callaghan volunteered her agency’s management and supervision of the park. Las Familias has been informally helping to keep the park clean, with the aid of some Skid Row residents, Callaghan said Saturday.

It was Callaghan who helped the council plan Saturday’s cleanup, Linsley said, explaining, “We couldn’t have just come in without someone familiar with the area who knew people here.”

The week before, a large crew of volunteers, many from local Newman Center clubs, had cleaned and primed the areas to be painted. And in October, Linsley said, the council would return for the finishing touches on the refurbished park.

But they all knew the obvious question: “Isn’t this all futile effort?”

The plan is for Las Familias to repaint or clean off graffiti immediately, Linsley said, since most studies have shown such action eventually discourages the practice.

The more far-reaching object of the project for the council was to raise the consciousness of volunteers who work just blocks from Skid Row, she said.

It seemed to be having that effect. As the volunteers were getting ready to leave, Joyce Canto came up to Callaghan and signed up to do some work for Las Familias.

“I haven’t done any volunteer work since college,” she said. “It’s about time.”