Activists, Artists Brand Camp for Homeless as ‘Soweto USA’

A dozen homeless activists and local artists opposed to Mayor Tom Bradley’s “urban campground” for the homeless on Monday put signs reading “Welcome to Soweto USA,” “Uncle Tom’s Township” and “Manzanar” near the site at 4th Street and Santa Fe Avenue.

Artists led by muralist Judy Baca placed two large murals at the entrance to the site of the camp, which will operate for two months on a vacant lot owned by the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

One mural showed the face of a young black man behind a chain-link fence under the word, “Soweto.” The other was a drawing of five hotels in the Skid Row area that have been closed under the heading, “Save Skid Row Hotels.”

Baca said the detention-camp image captured on the “Soweto” mural was meant to be a “metaphor for this camp not being the solution to this problem.” Five artists completed the 10-foot-by-10-foot murals over the weekend, she said.

The campground was announced by Bradley last week shortly before Los Angeles police began a crackdown on sidewalk encampments along Skid Row streets.

Alice Callaghan, director of Las Familias del Pueblo, a family day center on Skid Row, said the group’s concern was that establishment of a camp would take attention from the “diminishing housing stock in Skid Row,” which she said was a prime cause of homelessness in the area. The camp, she added, showed “the refusal on the mayor’s part to address real solutions.”

John Dillon, director of Chrysalis Center, a self-help agency on Skid Row, said, “We’re protesting creation of a camp without creating the housing.”

The mayor said last week that the camp was to be an interim alternative for the homeless, while “we continue to look for more permanent solutions” to housing the homeless.