My Brothers Keeper
10 am Monday morning in Skid Row- street cleaning rolls out to wash away the traces of human decay that have built up over the weekend. Hundreds of people have outstayed their curbside welcome and are being ushered on by police, in a futile attempt to promote a cleaner and safer image of Skid Row. This displacement sends hoards of homeless residents shuffling off into a migratory route that will hopefully reveal a warmer piece of footpath for the next long, sleepless, night. The 4sq mile district is saturated with drugs and prostitution, creating a climate of sickness, hunger and violence. With a population nudging 20,000, the strain on community services and healthcare complete the picture for the largest humanitarian conflict zone in the western world. The concrete desert of Skid Row is furnished with used needles, broken crack pipes, loan sharks, and street gangs. All of these factors compound the image that this place is a lawless snake pit. Societies comedown, with track marks and scars that lead back to a great institutional failure of a nation neglecting it’s own people.
Today I’m in Skid Row to interview 67-year-old Erwin Ross. A well spoken, hard-edged elderly man, decorated with scars and stories from a hard life on the streets. Born in South Central Los Angeles, he cheekily describes his childhood as “good... for living in the ghetto”. He engaged with the world in the typical fashion of curious young boys, running through alleys, climbing trees, and attending school. Without a father figure in his life, Erwin’s Mom did what she could to get him into the right schools and fostered his interests. As Erwin hit his teenage years he started mixing with a more precocious crowd of boys, and after proving himself a handful to several schools in South Central, the insolent, but not evil Erwin Ross was sentenced to 4 years in the state penitentiary for vandalism. The 14yr old was deprived of any formal education or career prospects, now having to learn to survive in a cage full of animals.
Erwin was released from prison at the height of the Washington summer riots in 1965, to the winds of change and the words of Martin Luther King Jr reverberating around the Afro-American community. Whilst in prison Erwin’s masculine identity was formed in an environment that rewarded violence, deception and drug taking. Erwin found his way into a good time on his release experimenting with party drugs. It didn’t take long for him to graduate his way into a 22year long romance with heroin. Now in his old age, the streets have left Mr. Ross with a heavy heart, and a map of scars on his body to tell the tale.
Earlier this year, President Obama launched the ‘My Brothers Keeper’ initiative that supports underprivileged and vulnerable young men of color. The President spoke candidly of his own life and struggle with discipline saying, "I made bad choices. I got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do. I didn't always take school as seriously as I should have. I made excuses. Sometimes I sold myself short." The President then likened his own adolescence to that of underprivileged youth, and attributed his success to growing up in a more forgiving environment with softer consequences. The Presidents candid reflection of his youth resonates with the identity of many men young and old, some fortunate to triumph over poor choices and some, who have the odds stacked severely against them, end up falling through a gaping hole in our system. The President has by his own admittance engaged in a behavior that has resulted in the incarceration of many of his fellow countrymen. This however has not influenced the Department of Justice to loosen its grip on the mandatory sentencing of minor drug charges, statistically condemning young men who may have made one silly mistake to a life of hardship.
Erwin has spent majority of his life trying to get by on the streets of Skid Row. Nothing changed for Erwin in his 20 years of regular incarceration. The reality of getting a job or housing has always been a fantasy exclusive to white people. He describes his regular jailing as an illness. “I’m sick!... (silence) People ask me when I’m gonna stop goin’ to the penitentiary, I tell them, when I stop liking the drugs that I do” Erwin’s very conscious participation in systematic drug abuse essentially stemmed out of boredom and keeping poor company.
Baffled by the seemingly insurmountable odds society has stacked against him, Erwin explained how a young man might make a life for himself coming out of the impoverished neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles. “When I was coming up I shot a lot of dice, liked to hustle. It started with a car, back then you could go buy a car from the junkyard for 50 dollars, (laughs) and then all the parts... you stole! Old cars, sitting up, doing nothin’. That’s how you started off when you where 15-16 years old. Then as you get older you start either sellin’ weed, or taking peoples money... burglarizing, robbery. That can maintain you until you get into your mid 20’s, the you decide if you’re a player, or a crook! I decided I was a player. So my thing was shoot dice, and to conn people out of their money”
The graduation program of a gangster is a model reinforced by a lack of services and support in some of America’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Gangs have always offered young men like Erwin Ross the promise of family, riches, and happiness. It is a faulty model that exploits young men by giving them a masculine identity to live up to, but what they don’t tell
you in gang initiation is that minor offences will land you in prison, and that the United States have systematically isolated and condemned this population to a life devoid of happiness, and opportunity.
Heroin addiction is perhaps the worst affliction one can encounter whilst living on the streets, an uncontrollable dependence that perpetuates a cycle of crime, not to mention a slew of health problems. Erwin played with heroin for 22years, any hopes or dreams that the young boy running through the alleys of South Central quickly evaporate as the drug takes over. Heroin addiction didn’t deter Erwin from continually pushing the boundaries of his own life. Like an intrepid explorer, Erwin spent a lot of time re-discovering his own limits in spite of 4 overdoses, and vomiting up his own stomach lining. “At the time I was playing Russian roulette, I mean the gun was on the table!, spin it.. Then bam! When you miss you don’t die.” Mr. Ross now in his old age, bound to a wheelchair and connected to a permanent air supply because he can’t re-cycle his poorly oxygenated blood to his brain fast enough.
Who is the young black man at the heart of the Presidents “My Brothers Keeper” initiative? Barack Obama would probably tell you that it’s himself, observing his privilege, luck, and hard work, as the catalyst of a meaningful life, that could of otherwise resembled the story of Erwin Ross. Systematic incarceration and drug abuse are not the result of color, but the socio-economic gulf between the rich and the poor. The power of this initiative will be realized by a newly mobilized class of people previously devoid of equal opportunity. It has taken 50 years for this nation to begin to realize the words of Martin Luther King, and it comes as no surprise that the man behind the movement is another influential and proud black man. President Obama is spotlighting a greater issue then the fracturing the feudal system, he is showing us the power of perception, and challenging the stereotypes society have constructed around the issues of homelessness, incarceration, education, and healthcare.
At the end of our interview, Erwin reflected on his situation fighting back a tear wishing he had programs and opportunities that would have re- directed the course of his life. He is now enrolled in temporary housing with LAMP Community waiting for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to finally get him off the streets and make services available for him start enjoying the promises and dreams a younger version of himself once held dear.
The last time I saw Mr. Ross he was rolling downhill in his wheelchair out the front of a run-down motel. “Mr Ross! How are you doing?” at first he didn’t recognize me. I stopped to check in with him to be met by an elderly man in a wheelchair, eyes glazed over, slurring his words. “Got any change man?”
