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East St. Louis statistics

Total population (2006): 29, 448

Total homeless: 1,106

Racial Breakdown: Black: 97.7%

White: 1.2%

Education: HS graduates: 66.3%

Bachelors or higher: 9.1%

Median family income: $21,234

Below poverty line: 35.1%

source: US Census Bureau

Dark clouds perpetually in the sky,

A city forgotten by all but cries

For help, it seeks but no one hears,

St. Louis of East just disappears.

When told that one can affect change,

Hard to believe at such close range,

When the rich get rich and the poor get poor,

We search for answers but find no cure.

Staying in a church with fellow friends,

Sharing bathroom items so we could cleanse,

Eating sandwiches made of PB&J,

We set out each morning invoking Labor Day (Do Work Son!).

We started out in a garden of green,

Each one working as part of seventeen.

We planted plants and uprooted roots,

Working with our green thumbs and working boots.

Up in the Arch we went that day,

From the highest point we saw what lay.

Dred Scott Museum we did see,

Ashamed, he was considered mere property.

Dark clouds perpetually in the sky,

A city forgotten by all but cries

For help, it seeks but no one hears,

St. Louis of East just disappears.

When told that one can affect change,

Hard to believe at such close range,

When the rich get rich and the poor get poor,

We search for answers but find no cure.

Ted Drewe’s we went for a treat,

Frozen custard that night, we did eat.

We went out with those from the city,

And forgot a bit about the nitty gritty.

Crossing the bridge to the other side,

Where the dreams of many have not survived.

An intro to the city we did receive,

In the change that was needed we did believe.

Some went to work to feed the poor,

Others drafted memos and leases and created brochures.

Still others sold unwanted clothes,

To the people of E. St. Louis they were exposed.

Dark clouds perpetually in the sky,

A city forgotten by all but cries

For help, it seeks but no one hears,

St. Louis of East just disappears.

When told that one can affect change,

Hard to believe at such close range,

When the rich get rich and the poor get poor,

We search for answers but find no cure.

Tuesday we went to projects of yesterday,

Some went to the zoo and saw monkeys play.

Others took a tour handing made-up food,

To those in need, lightening up the mood.

At night we saw the hockey game,

A playoff spot the Blues did claim.

After which we hit the Landing,

Early to work next day, our mutual understanding.

To kids we taught and then played,

Their futures hindered by what was yet unsaid.

Society, life, and culture we did learn,

The future of St. Louis still of utmost concern.

Dark clouds perpetually in the sky,

A city forgotten by all but cries

For help, it seeks but no one hears,

St. Louis of East just disappears.

When told that one can affect change,

Hard to believe at such close range,

When the rich get rich and the poor get poor,

We search for answers but find no cure.

After learning what was called the Stank-A-Leg dance,

The song of Poker Face was ours to enhance.

From dancing and singing to choreographed moves,

All of those that saw us probably disapproved.

After eating fried food for many a day,

Great character and food parents did portray.

An eventful adventure to Stake ‘n Shake we did make,

Going there after dinner was our mistake.

As we left the Show Me State,

We bring back with us a great weight.

To help those in need was our goal,

We did all we could that it was in our control.

Dark clouds perpetually in the sky,

A city forgotten by all but cries

For help, it seeks but no one hears,

St. Louis of East just disappears.

When told that one can affect change,

Hard to believe at such close range,

When the rich get rich and the poor get poor,

We search for answers but find no cure.

There is much to be done,

Aid we started, we have begun.

We must never forget such a city so great,

Policy, time, and effort it will take.

To the city of St. Louis and the East,

To the city forgotten but has yet to cease.

Thank you for opening our innocent eyes,

Now we must say our sweet goodbyes.

Thank you to all of those that planned it,

It was sad to leave when we safely landed.

Thank you to those that offered support,

I am happy to say great experiences we report.

Dark clouds perpetually in the sky,

A city forgotten by all but cries

For help, it seeks but no one hears,

St. Louis of East just disappears.

When told that one can affect change,

Hard to believe at such close range,

When the rich get rich and the poor get poor,

We search for answers but find no cure.

Thank you to all those that supported our trip. We could not have done it without you!

 

I can't remember what question we asked her, but I remember exactly what she said.  Jackee is a wonderful woman who works at a homeless service organization in East St. Louis and was willing to answer any and all of our questions.  Plainly and simply, in response to our curiosities about the way East St. Louis is, Jackee told us that East St. Louis was the town that time forgot.  The more time we spent there, the more the truth and significance of that statement settled in for me.

 

The need in East St. Louis is so striking to the naked eye that it is truly unbelievable that the whole seems to have gone forgotten.  What was once a bustling city, the center of the railroad and meat packing industries, is now falling apart.  The town is covered in garbage.  The roads are in such poor condition, it is almost impossible to move over them.  Traffic lights don't work, grocery stores and other businesses are abandoned.  The similarities to what I saw on last year's trip to Gulfport, Mississippi are striking - condemned house after condemned house, abandoned building after abandoned building, all perpetually sitting  patiently and waiting to be taken care of, all the while becoming more and more dilapidated, no matter how slow help is to come.  There's one big difference though.  There was no hurricane here.  Rather than being a victim of natural disaster, this community is just a victim of society.  And because it wasn't hit by some heart-wrenching and highly public disaster, people aren't showing up to help.  People aren't donating money or time.  There is no rebuilding.  There is no coming together and rising up again.  I thought I was shocked in Mississippi to see that so little rebuilding had been done in 3 years since the hurricane.  In East St. Louis, many of the larger buildings were abandoned in the 1970s.  They still sit as giant unaddressed problems in physical form.  It really is a town that has been forgotten.

 

While the help that East St. Louis needs is quite physically apparent, the issues facing they city run far beyond physical boundaries.  We began our trip at one of the only legal service providers in East St. Louis, Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation.  The incredible attorneys there attempted to describe East St. Louis's plight to us.  The government is endlessly corrupt (Later in the week we noticed that throughout the city, every once in a while a beautiful home would come towering up out of sea of condemned homes.  We were later told that these homes belong to corrupt politicians who must have local addresses in order to run for office).  Their organization was able to take down one extremely corrupt and destructive man known as Swampdog Bones, but the corruption runs too deep to be easily eradicated.  The local Housing Authority was taken over by HUD because it was so poorly run it was falling apart.  The local School District had to be taken over by the state because it was so poorly run and falling apart.  A giant lake of sewage plagued East St. Louis residents and the city refused to address it until they faced litigation.  The problems go on and on and on.  While these issues are interesting and tragic all at the same time, what really matters is why these problems aren't being addressed.

 

I asked the attorneys we worked with why they believe East St. Louis has tried for so many years to lift itself up by its bootstraps, but has always failed.  And why it remains so ignored and unaided.  They said simply that the problem is that there is no good part of town.  This became all too apparent all too quickly.  Without a good part of town bringing revenue to the city, and without a good part of town bringing people to the city, nothing ever changes.

 

I lived in St. Louis, right across the river, for 4 years.  I even ventured into East St. Louis on a few isolated occasions to do volunteer work.  I spent those 4 years doing all that I could to become and remain socially aware.  And it spite of it all, everything we saw during a trip shocked me.  Even the most community minded and socially active individuals, just one town and a 15 minute car ride away, have no idea what is going on in East St. Louis.  That is truly striking.  And upsetting.  It is hard to imagine that any place could become so forgotten.  It breaks my heart.

 

The worst part of a forgotten city, is all of the people that fall victim to the slip of consciousness.  As much as East St. Louis may at first glance resemble a ghost town, it is still filled with people who are struggling every bit as much as the city itself.  Over the course of the trip, I was touched by so many of them.  So many of their stories are so touching, they are worth being told.  We met a homeless man named Randy.  He has lost several of his toes to frost bite, but continues to be trapped in the cycle of homelessness.  He spends all of his days picking up trash around City Hall and all over downtown without any thanks, pay, or appreciation.  Rather than be thanked for this work, he continues to be persecuted by city officials.  We found him sleeping on a sidewalk near a bank, and we were actually nearly nit by debris flying off of the building next door.  Randy picked up, bagged, and disposed of all of the debris that landed on him while he slept.  A kinder man would be harder to come by.  We met another man named Jerry.  He lost his wife unexpectedly to cancer and how lives in an abandoned building while he struggles to get through the mourning process.  Cancer and respiratory problems are quite widespread in the city, as a matter of fact.  Many people live in asbestos-ridden condemned buildings and the city finds itself down wind from a number of chemical plants and factories on the other side of the river.  Not to mention the fact that sanitation is clear problem in the city and it has been somewhat of an dumping ground.  It is home to an disproportionate amount of CERCLA sites.  The many environmental hazards are taking their toll on the citizens of East St. Louis.  We didn't meet a single person that didn't look physically haggard by the conditions.  We met another woman who had lifted herself up out of homelessness, was working, and was turning things around.  She had a rough life, including being shot in an incidence of gang violence and losing an eye, but she was persevering and overcoming.  Not long after leaving the streets however, she too discovered that she had an aggressive form of cancer.  It was so overwhelming, she ended back on the streets where we found her.  I could go on and on about the people we met or heard about.  Their stories are terrible to hear, but should be heard.  Maybe we can allow a condemned piece of real estate or a corrupt bit of political infrastructure to slip our mind, but how can we forget the people that suffer as a result?  They are the reason it is time to stop forgetting, time to wake up, and time to answer the call to help.

 

During one particular day on our trip, we spent most of our time working with children.  We taught street law in a couple of different local high schools, and we played with young children at an afterschool program in the East St. Louis housing projects.  Thinking about the experience of a child always gives an interesting perspective.  Hearing from the very young children in the projects, especially, for me makes the issues facing East St. Louis seem even more pressing.  These children were as young as 5, but knew more about drugs and guns and gangs than I will probably ever know.  While we were at the program some police officers came to speak to the children about bullying and answer any questions they had.  Hearing the things they were worried about, and hearing the lessons they need to learn was saddening.  It also made me realize that we have got a whole lot to learn.  Poverty issues are incredibly complex, run incredibly deep, and in one short week we can't even begin to address them.

 

Though the tangible accomplishments we made during our time in East St. Louis may have been small, I still believe the trip was important.  We refused to forgot the place that everyone else did.  And it is my hope that we inspired some hope in the people we met and let them know that everyone has not forgotten, that there are people who are willing to help, and that compassion does exist.  It is just one step, but I think we all grew from the experience.  The people we met, both those in need of help and those who were helping, moved all of us in different ways and inspired us to continuing fighting the fight and answering the call to serve.  While volunteering at a thrift shop and soup kitchen, we met a remarkable man who gave up his career ambitions to devote his time to helping.  He taught us that you should choose a few special words and live by them.  His words included FORGIVENESS - EMPATHY - COMPASSION, and he did truly embody those qualities.  He inspired me as well, to decide what qualities are important to me and then live by them.  And I choose to remember the forgotten.  And to ask others to do the same.

 

Please learn what you can about East St. Louis, and other forgotten places, and choose not to forget that there are always people who need and deserve our help.

We’ve been back from East St. Louis for a few days now, and I remain at a loss in how to adequately express the experience. East St. Louis was an eye-opening experience because it shook many of my pre-conceived notions regarding impoverished areas and homelessness in general. Some of the homeless in this area were raised homeless and continued in the only way of life they’d ever known. Others had experienced such gut-wrenching heartbreak that they could not return to their lives as they knew it and were eventually swept into a life on the streets. We were told the story of a brain surgeon who lost a patient on the table through anesthesiologist error but was never able to return to work. Another man had taken his family on vacation in his new Cadillac and never forgave himself when his wife and children died in a car accident while he survived. This was an area that did not experience a disastrous event that shook its infrastructure and is in need of repair; rather, East St. Louis is more a representation of what happens when corruption and a “blind eye” are allowed to continue for far too long.


The most hard-hitting moment for me was driving by the School District building and seeing Jaguars, Mercedes, and BMWs parked in front of a building that is supposed to serve schools where many of the children attending do not even have a home address.

The homeless people I met while handing out lunches were some of the funniest, most genuine, loving, and socially graceful people I have ever met. I cannot imagine being handed my only meal for the day, perhaps for a few days, and being more concerned that everyone else has something to eat and a smile on their face. I was repeatedly told that God had been so good to them that they would pray for me in my journey.

On the first full volunteer day of our trip, I went with a group to St. Vincent de Paul’s thrift store and soup kitchen. I requested to work in the soup kitchen first and ended up staying all day. It was a fun experience because the people were all friendly and happy. One woman came through the line and then came up and asked if she could help with anything since she had been unable to find a job that day. The most noteworthy thing I saw was the families that would come through. These were people that were trying their best to create the best possible life for their children when they could not afford to put food on the table. It was inspiring to see what a great job of making something like going through a soup line seem fun to their young children. The first parent that came through while I was there was a young dad with two kids. He let them feed themselves and made them feel like they were having a special trip out without their mother—like it was a fun escape for just the three of them. The women who worked in the kitchen told me he was one of the few fathers that came in with his kids and that those that do come in often try to drop their kids off like it’s a daycare center. I went over and asked if I could pick up the younger of the kids, a one-year old boy. The little boy was very tense when I first picked him up, then seemed to sense he was safe, and just totally relaxed. His sense of relief was palpable and I don’t think I will ever forget that moment. I cannot imagine how much of his young life has been spent scared, hungry, or uncertain despite his parents' best efforts.

I spent about an hour later that day playing with a little girl named Ashley. She was in the soup kitchen with her obviously exhausted mother and little brother. Ashley was hilarious- she sang and danced non-stop. When I first picked her up, she whispered in my ear, “Never put me down, okay?!” I was only able to distract her by showing her my camera and taking endless pictures of her posing (with her hands on her hips and her eyes closed, naturally) and video of her singing and dancing. I asked her mom if I could pick up her brother and once I did, I realized he’d soaked himself completely through his clothes. I don’t think his mom had any diapers, so I did my best to pretend I hadn’t noticed and just walked him around holding his little hands. I think his mom was embarrassed because she later asked me if he had spilled his bottle over himself again and told me that “he does that a lot.” It was simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming to see these families that had so very little but were doing their best to raise happy and healthy children.


Another noteworthy experience from that day was speaking with the man who recently retired from the military and stopped his job search to volunteer six days a week and live off his military retirement pension. He is completely re-doing the thrift store so that it might actually generate profits instead of continually acquiring more debt. To me, his most impactful advice was to find three words that you find especially representative of who you want to be as a person and live your life as the embodiment of those words. His words are “forgiveness”, “empathy”, and “compassion”. Despite having to leave the area promptly after his volunteer shifts because of the increased danger of East St. Louis after nightfall, he accepts every person to walk through the door and helps them in every way possible.

Another memorable experience was in the after-school program we stopped by one afternoon. There were so many funny and excited kids. I was asked repeatedly, "Is that your real hair?!" My roommate Kara was asked if she was wearing colored contacts. There was no racism at all, just genuine curiosity. The police came by that afternoon to talk about what they do and many of the kids were nervous or uncertain. The little girl sitting next to me and basically lying on Kara's lap whispered, "I don't like the police." We tried to reassure her, telling her the police are here to protect her and there was nothing to be scared about. She whispered, "I don't trust them. They came to my house and shot my dad in the neck." It was so sad to have this incredibly trusting and lively little girl clam up so visibly. What do you say in a situation like that where almost any promises you make seem to just be providing false hope? And there are thousands more like this little girl, and like Ashley, who despite their undeniable wit, charm, and intelligence will in all likelihood probably grow up and get lost in the system, like countless others before them. The best answer I received was from the law professor who helped run street law classes in inner-city St. Louis schools: "You do what you can where you are. It doesn't matter where you go, it just matters what you do to help the situation when you're there."

All 17 HALO members

















Thanks to Grace and Peace Winter Shelter for the free lodging!

Handing out sack lunches around East St. Louis

Gardening at a St. Louis community garden





Teaching street law classes at local high schools

Similar to Fatima’s point about the significance of us traveling so far to see poverty not unlike what we could encounter closer to home, I too found myself searching for an explanation for why specifically traveling to East St. Louis was so important. Even on the airplane flight over, however, I started to realize why it mattered. It mattered to the woman who sat next to me from St. Louis, returning from a visit with in-laws in Arizona, who marveled at how far we were traveling to go to a place even she acknowledged needed help but admittedly did not visit. And it mattered for all the others who were shocked to hear how far we’d come, leaving warm soon-to-be summer weather for the Midwest in March, umbrellas and raincoats an imperative on our packing lists. Coming all the way from California was important, I think, to reinforce the point that even though E. St. Louis may be viewed as that place across the bridge to avoid by some of its closest neighbors, there are others who are aware that it deserves attention and aid, that its plight does not go entirely unnoticed. Maybe some of the people shocked at how far a group of law students came to volunteer will reevaluate their relationship with the town across the Mississippi, languishing in the shadow of the glistening and iconic Arch.

E. St. Louis is unique, in the short history of HALO, for being a “disaster zone” devastated not by any specific natural event like the hurricanes, but rather a sad social effect. Many of us struggled over the course of the trip with pinpointing exactly what led to the downturn clearly apparent in E. St. Louis, and to come up with a solution for this different type of devastation that seemed much harder to envision any sort of “quick fix” for—how to even figure out the root problem, or the one of the many that seemed even remotely manageable to remedy?

Especially poignant for me was some of my visits to schools and afterschool programs with the education advocates at Land of Lincoln. The traumatic and telling experiences children as young as five years old had been exposed to, and which already were affecting their behavior and outlook on the world, really made me wonder how, while education is one of the few ways to allow people to “get ahead” in the world, these children would really have the opportunity to escape the cruel cycle of poverty and violence that they were growing up in. A little girl in kindergarten blurted out in the midst of my helping her with her math problems that she was sad about something, and after I asked her a little more she revealed to me that she was troubled by having witnessed an elder woman she knew being killed. I didn’t even know what to say to her, or how I could possibly comfort her. Here she was, a little child supposed to be dutifully working on her addition and subtraction, and yet she could not focus because she was haunted by seeing things I cannot even imagine.

At this same homework-help session I was helping an eight-year-old boy with his grammar assignment—they were supposed to write metaphors and similes following an example sentence. For one of the sample sentences “The truck is loud like a grunting hog” he wrote “The truck is loud like people shooting guns.” This exercise was supposed to be a creative opportunity for children to compare common things with other accessible descriptors, and I found it shocking that this type of violence must be so commonplace and familiar that he would draw from it, in his realm of reality, as as natural a comparison as something more banal and innocuous as “the water is smooth as glass.” Othertimes, his playful and intelligent comparisons were striking—he compared the moon to a roller coaster, and when I expressed some doubt at the accuracy of such a descriptive comparison, he jumped into a detailed explanation of the orbit of various planets, to explain why he envisioned the moon that way (whereas I had suggested the much less imaginative comparison of “the moon is like swiss cheese”). It was both startling and heartbreaking to me to think that the same boy who had visions of dancing planets in his head also had the sound of guns ringing in his ears. No kid should be so familiar with that sound that it would be the first thing to come to mind when he’s trying to compare/clarify/communicate something.

During my week helping out at Land of Lincoln, I had the opportunity to drive around with one of the education advocates as she visited different schools and checked up on kids enrolled in special education and who had IEPs (individualized education plans, mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]) entitling them to special services. Of course, she told me that it is sometimes hard to tell when a child shows up to kindergarten not even knowing how to hold a pencil or how to spell their name, whether or not they just haven’t had the attention in their home and are just behind, or are actually in need of special education because their mother may have been on drugs when she was pregnant and they are now severely effected. She told me other stories about how difficult it was to just go to school in E. St. Louis, to hopefully get a good education and get out. She told me of a boy who, though lucky enough to be able to go to a private school in St. Louis, was struggling there and having difficulty adjusting. While his peers were able to go home to do their homework in the evening, he and his family would often huddle on the floor in the center of the house while gunfire was going on outside. His mother told the school psychologist that this was an almost daily occurrence in the summer; and occurred 4-5 times a week during the rest of the year. Also, the Land of Lincoln advocate told me that the elementary and middle schools get out earlier, at 2:45, explicitly so that the little kids can get home before the high school kids get out, with their gangs and their guns.

These images of young children growing up in such a difficult environment, although probably no different from what children face in many other troubled inner-city neighborhoods across the U.S., profoundly affected me. Even as education is supposed to be able to allow children to escape unfavorable circumstances, these children certainly face especially challenging obstacles towards taking advantage of that great equalizer.

It feels strange to have gone all the way to East St. Louis to see the stark differences of lifestyles in the US. 

Early Saturday morning, our group arrived in St. Louis, MO, a city on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Over the course of the weekend, we toured downtown St. Louis, bought tickets to the top of the famous St. Louis Arch, and marveled at the architecture of the mansions down the street from the Art Museum in Forest Park.  But it was during our second day while working at the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, that Caitlin, Ariel, Kelly, and I went on a short drive through East St. Louis, IL, a city on the opposite side of the riverbank and only a short drive away.

The differences between the two adjacent cities are conspicuous; St. Louis is developed and inviting while East St. Louis is seemingly desolate and almost unwelcoming. East St. Louis is much smaller in size and population, inhabited by around 31,000 people.* Roughly 35% of the residents live below poverty** compared to 24% in St. Louis.*** 

Driving down the street, it appeared as though every other house or business in East St. Louis was boarded up, had broken windows, and was engulfed by wild shrubs and weeds. The multitude of rundown houses, abandoned businesses, and unused factories reminded me in some ways of an unpleasant block I once visited in downtown Los Angeles – except here, it continued for miles and miles. Nothing indicated any sort of development aside from a Walgreens plaza and the new Casino Queen on the riverbank.  Moreover, according to some of the staff, Casino Queen has a paradoxical effect on the local community – providing employment for many residents of East St. Louis while enticing others to dangerously gamble their minimal earnings in hopes of supplementing their incomes.

At one point during our drive, we stopped at the home of the client whose case I was assigned to research as a legal aid volunteer for Land of Lincoln. The case involved an elderly man who spent his last days living in a house that violated all but a handful of provisions required by a local, unenforced city ordinance on fair housing.  In fact, unknown to him, the house he inhabited was condemned for occupancy by the city, well before he signed an agreement to purchase it. 

With the support of Land of Lincoln, our client was filing charges against the landlord, hoping to reclaim some of the money he spent on repairs. I learned that this landlord, like many other landlords owning several properties in the area, refused to take responsibility for the dilapidated state of our client's home and was not pressured to change his business practices due to corruption in local city politics. As a legal aid volunteer at Land of Lincoln, my role was to research provisions in Illinois Law and write a legal memo on ways to put additional economic pressure on the landlord, to deter him and others from selling similar subpar properties to future residents. 

Among other things, what disturbed me about this case is that our client attempted to repair his home using the meager stipend he received as Social Security. As I stood outside his former residence, now abandoned and branded with an orange citation noting various housing code violations, I wondered how much had to go wrong for things to get as bad as they were.  What did it take for an elderly man living in the US to be subject to such substandard living conditions and treatment?

Before returning to the car, I glanced down the street and noticed other seemingly abandoned and poorly maintained properties, also marked with the all-too-familiar unkempt landscapes and misshapen fences I noticed earlier on the drive.  It occurred to me that the elderly man whose case I was assigned to was likely just one of thousands facing similar struggles.

My experience in East St. Louis provoked many concerns. After doing a bit of research, I learned that dismal living conditions like those of East St. Louis exist in cities all around the US due to discriminatory housing practices and unfair lending policies that perpetuate the cycle of poverty.**** Coming this far to understand the extent of poverty in the US forced me to focus on issues that I know are not foreign to neighborhoods close to where I grew up in Southern California or currently live.   

Our time in East St. Louis was limited- too short to feel as though I could make a significant impact in solving the problems the community faces, but long enough for me to recognize that there is much work to be done and many questions to be asked. On our flight back to Sacramento, I realized that in many ways it was important to travel so far away. Perhaps I needed to temporarily escape the routine and rigor of law school to better appreciate the realities of the economic difficulties faced by so many, the significance of all the material I am currently studying, and the potential to make a difference.

* http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/17/1722255.html

** "Families and persons are classified as below poverty if their total family income or unrelated individual income was less than the poverty threshold specified for the applicable family size, age of householder, and number of related children under 18 present."  http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/17/1722255.html

***http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/29/2965000.html

****See http://www.ehocstl.org/acrobatdocs/2002ReportonHousingDiscrimination.pdf

Ji-hyun gave an introduction already to Paulyn and the wonderful work she does, so I won't repeat it here.

As we were driving around yesterday near one of the many condemned, burned out, and/or abandoned houses, a group of people saw the van and flagged us down. One of them, a man named Jerry, stands out particularly in my mind. The way he was joking around and teasing Paulyn was also a reminder that no matter how hard these people's lives are, life is still a precious thing and there is much to be joyous about. It was not until later that we found out that he had recently lost his wife to cancer in a very sad way, but what was even sadder was that his kind of story was not uncommon. In the span of half an hour we met 3 people who had cancer of some kind, with no healthcare or any way to pay for the treatments they needed. I had heard about the environmental pollution in East St. Louis, but the people it affects most deeply have no power to stop it or clean it up.

Driving on the streets of East St. Louis for those hours, we saw thousands upon thousands of homes and businesses that most people would be ashamed to have in their own neighborhoods. Most downtown business associations would have an apoplectic fit if one of their buildings had twenty broken windows, bars on the windows, parts falling off the roof, a faded sign with most of the letters missing, and a liquor store fronting drug dealing. Some people, like Paulyn, care and can do something to help. Jackee, another woman who works at the Continuum of Life Care Center, made the memorable comment that people have no problem donating things of theirs to the center, but it's difficult to get people to donate their time. I think this is absolutely true; spending time in the community has opened my eyes to the terrible things that can happen right here in this country, on somebody's watch. The current state of East St. Louis is not something that happened overnight, but it happened startlingly fast. In 1965, it was struggling, but still growing. All signs of that growth have been completely wiped out, and if I were to imagine what a warzone looked like, this would be it. It seems to be humanity v. poverty, and you can imagine which one has the upper hand right now.

Labels: 2009, East St. Louis, Illinois, poverty

The first time I visited a disaster zone was last year in Mississippi, with HALO. The towns of Gulfport and Biloxi were devastated by Hurricane Katrina--rubble was strewn around empty lots, entire street blocks no longer had standing houses, condemned buildings, and huge abandoned industrial buildings. (photo to the right is in Biloxi, MS)

Driving through East St. Louis ("ESL") was so similar to the hurricane zone in Mississippi that it was sad. There was no hurricane in ESL but urban blight has left the entire city in same type of ruin as Mississippi and the community is clearly in crisis. ESL is the second disaster zone I have been to, and the nature of the poverty is shockingly different from the poverty we have in California. There is so much land and so many abandoned buildings. Everyone we have worked with in ESL talks to us about what ESL used to be. Before everyone picked up and left. In the non-segregated country of freedom we live in, ESL has a population that is 97.7% black.

Paulyn, the amazing founder of Continuum of Life Care Center, drove us around ESL to hand out sack lunches to homeless people. We asked about the numerous abandoned, massive, industrial and commercial buildings that we saw. She told us it was like they picked up and left in the middle of the night. They left equipment in the buildings and abandoned ship. Now homeless people use these large, multi-story, asbestos-ridden, and dangerous buildings to find refuge from the cold. Enormous companies like Pfizer built massive manufacturing centers in ESL just to abandon them in the 90s. These deteriorating brick buildings are everywhere (photo below).

Paulyn showed us today that the poverty has a face. Poverty has a name, a story, a husband, a wife, and a disease. While we drove around ESL, homeless people waved down her van. They all knew and loved her and she caught up with them like family. Paulyn knows everyone's story. One person I had the chance to meet was Randy. Randy was sleeping under a mound of blankets next to a building. When Paulyn coaxed him out, he got up and danced and hugged her. He was delighted to meet five out-of-place California girls. As we drove away, scrap metal and foam flew off the building and showered around him. Later we saw these scraps from the building bundled up in bags on the street. Randy cleans them up and hopes the city will come pick them up. This is something he does incessantly, in an effort to clean up the littered city.

I am so happy to be in a part of HALO. I've learned so many things about each member of our group this week. We are learning so much together, and I know the impact ESL has had on us will be heard all around King Hall, and with our family and friends. Meeting the face of poverty is extremely important to my goal of becoming a public defender. ESL is symptomatic of the broken system. Instead of improving schools, social programs, and communities, the state spends millions on needless concrete public works projects and the police round up homeless people and slap them with misdemeanors. They have no addresses and do not receive notice of their court dates and their failure to appears turn into warrants for their arrest. People have to commit crimes to get by, and the city tries to assert that living on the street in itself is a crime. This cycle of poverty clearly exists in ESL and around the country and even though some kids from California can't solve the problem in six days we can hope that the system will improve.

(click on flyer for larger view!)

Thank you for visiting our site. Even though we will soon be on summer break, we appreciate any support you would like to give. We will be hard at work this summer and fall planning our 2009 Spring Break aid trip, as well as planning more local aid activities next school year. If you would like to send a tax deductible donation while we are break, please make your check out to "UC Regents" with "HALO" in the subject line. These donations may be sent to:

HALO c/o Madeleine Fischer
Accounting Services
School of Law
University of California, Davis
400 Mrak Hall Drive
Davis, CA 95616

Have a great summer!
HALO

A boarded up building. A dance school. Boarded up, empty, with a for sale sign in front, for a developer to absorb and turn into a tourist paradise.

But, on the boarded up windows, spray painted words: "We will dance." A smiley face. A phone number.

Life in Mississippi is going on. It will go on. It has to go on. Amid the boarded up buildings -- a coffee shop, a cafe, a drug store.

Things in Mississippi are still terrible. Very little is rebuilt, except for the casinos. The residents who have remained face many challenges in rebuilding their shattered lives, even years later. But life has to go on. And it will go on. Our responsibility, as a nation, is to not forget Mississippi, and to make sure that the lives that do go on in Mississippi are the best possible. No formaldehyde poisoning, no contractor fraud.