Hello. :-)
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I am The Spirit Of Venice.
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I have been here since 1904, when Abbot Kinney first created this city to be a unique population center devoted to the arts, creativity and freedom of spirit.
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I want to wish you all a HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY - the day in which all America honors the brave military men who gave their lives defending the freedoms under which we all live, and all the others who served in the military, who stood ready to sacrifice their lives to the same end.
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BY THE WAY, DID YOU KNOW THAT ONE OUT OF FIVE HOMELESS PEOPLE IN LOS ANGELES, AND IN VENICE, IS A VETERAN? But. more on that in a little while.
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There is something that is deeply troubling me. I have watched and listened in silence for a long time, but now I just have to speak out or I will burst.
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In recent years there has been a new wave of greedy, self-serving wealth-seekers who looked at Venice and saw an opportunity to get rich by running the unique, diverse, creative but low-income population of artists, free-thinkers and other gifted individuals out of town so that they could homogenize the neighborhoods here to resemble other, less vibrant and less leading-edge but higher-priced neighborhoods.
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Get it? Buy low, run out the riffraff and sell high.
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Now, I have nothing against money. Kinney was a tobacco millionaire, and the original residents of this community - at a time when it was far, far away from the city - were wealthy. It's just that most of Venice's greatness and cultural leadership has occurred during, and as a result of, its residence by a vast diversity of people - from very rich to extremely poor. The common bond has been art, creativity and exploration. The diverse mix of social and economic types is the very electricity that has produced so many of modern culture's trends, styles and artistic advances. Trends and advances that started in this unique community and spread across the country and around the world.
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This new bunch - the "gentry" I think you call them - don't care about any of that. All they care about is money. They are unscrupulous. They will stop at nothing, stoop to any depth, to get it.
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And so it is that under the influence of different "leaders" - the current one being this Mark Ryavec fellow - they have pursued a consistent campaign of dirty tricks, slanders, scare tactics, disinformation, persecutions and intimidations - all designed to turn Venice residents against the poorer and less stable members of this community. Very much like Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich, they have indulged in a ceaseless hate-campaign designed to dehumanize the less fortunate here so that no-one would really mind when they used political pressure to force the city to run them out of town.
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And so it is that I saw that this Ryavec fellow recently published a blog here in which he called the most unfortunate among us, the poorest and most defenseless, the most hurting members of our community, "murderers, rapists, muggers, burglars and thieves" - as though membership in the ranks of the homeless was voluntary and the exclusive choice of criminals whose only interest was preying on the rest of us.
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See, that's how Hitler got the Germans to look the other way while he murdered the Jews. First he repeated "the big lie" over and over and over, until the people felt that hating and persecuting the Jews was perfectly OK.
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Ryavec and his gang of "Venice Stakeholders" have been hounding, harassing, persecuting and demonizing the poor and unfortunate among us (and admittedly, there are a handful of bad apples among them, just as in any group) for months and years now, but this last effort is just too much.
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You see, recently an anonymous donor (and it has become all too clear WHY he chose to be anonymous) offered to buy food to feed the homeless for ONE MEAL A WEEK if Whole Foods Markets would organize it. After just one week, Mr. Ryavec began an orchestrated fear campaign among local neighbors and created so much opposition that Whole Foods had to back off, temporarily. Then they decided to take it to the Boardwalk on Sunday mornings and have been feeding these (for the most part) wretchedly destitute people ever since. And, let it be noted that many other people - from church groups to mothers-and-children preparing food in their kitchens - occasionally, or frequently, bring the Venice Beach poor and homeless food as well.
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But it was the Whole Foods weekly meal that set Mr. Ryavec writing his hatchet-job blog about how feeding the homeless didn't lead to housing and just "enabled" them. Of course, it wasn't ever meant to lead to housing. All it was ever meant to do was to "enable" people to eat one meal a week - but apparently that is just too generous for Ryavec.
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I know that James Bond starred in a movie entitled "Live And Let Die", but the original phrase was "Live And Let Live". Apparently this is not good enough for these Venice Johnny-Come-Latelys.
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At any rate, let's get back to the "disinformation" so essential to Ryavec's scheme.
I think you need to see with your own eyes the nature of the lies that he and his cohorts keep repeating endlessly to you.
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THE LIE - "The homeless are a bunch of lazy freeloaders who won't be responsible
as long as we take care of them"
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THE TRUTH - According to an L.A.Times article (June 9,2011) : "L.A. has 7,000
HOMELESS VETERANS on any given day…homeless vets account
for 20% OF PEOPLE LIVING IN SHELTERS AND ON
THE STREETS"
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THE LIE - "THERE ARE PLENTY OF SHELTER BEDS AND LOW INCOME HOUSING SUBSIDIES AVAILABLE FOR THE HOMELESS. They just don't want them.They prefer to live on the streets and beg & steal from us. If they insist on sleeping on the street, we have a legal right to arrest them."
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THE TRUTH - The Ninth Circuit Court has found that : " there is substantial and
undisputed evidence that THE NUMBER OF HOMELESS PERSONS IN
LOS ANGELES FAR EXCEEDS THE NUMBER OF AVAILABLE SHELTER
BEDS AT ALL TIMES… the Eighth Amendment prohibits the City from
punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks
that is an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless
without shelter in the City of Los Angeles…"
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The headline of an On-Central-News article Feb.21, 2012 read :
"LOS ANGELES FACES SHORTAGE OF SHELTERS AS NUMBER OF
HOMELESS GROW", and went on to state that : "According to
Reverend Andy Bales, the CEO of the Union Rescue Mission Homeless Shelter… : ' Los Angeles doesn't have enough shelters…L.A. HAS LESS
THAN ONE FIFTH OF THE SHELTER BEDS THAT ARE NEEDED…'.
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Moreover, according to the 2012 L.A. Almanac's article entitled
"Homelessness in Los Angeles County" :
"…the Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty at the
Weingart Center states that approximately 82,000 PEOPLE ARE
HOMELESS ON ANY GIVEN NIGHT"
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THE LIE - "They are mostly healthy young single men who are just unwilling to work. They prefer to commit crimes and sponge off of the government."
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THE TRUTH - According to the most recent L.A. Census :
"ONE THIRD TO ONE HALF OF THE HOMELESS ARE WOMEN AND GIRLS
and according to that same Weingart Center Study :
-- Their average age is 40
-- 40-80% of them do NOT receive public benefits to which
they are entitled
-- 20-45% of them are in families, typically headed by a single-
mother
-- 20% are physically disabled
-- 40% of the adults were employed within the last year and
15-20% of the adults are currently employed
-- 32% of them have a bachelor's degree or higher
-- and (an astonishing) 25% of them are mentally ill
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I stand on the corners.
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I go up and down the Boardwalk.
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You don't see me because I am a spirit, but I hear and I see. I hear what the poor and downtrodden - the average homeless persons in Venice call Mark Ryavec and his get-rich army.
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They call them "The Haters".
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Today is Veteran's Memorial Day. If you love living here, if you have ever felt me moving in your heart or appreciated what I have inspired in this unique community in which you live, then do me a favor.
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Go out today and find a homeless person and feed him or her. If it's a man, chances are one in five that he is a veteran. If not, chances are overwhelming that this is not some healthy capable person who could have a job and a place to live tomorrow if he wanted - not some antisocial criminal who wants to defecate in your garden, steal your money and rape your daughter, but some worthwhile person down his or her luck in an incredibly harsh time for all of us.
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To quote another poster to this forum :
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LET'S STOP HATING AND START HELPING.
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Have a wonderful Memorial Day! .
