11 thoughts on “La Crisis, For Reals”

1. scary shit!!

2. I am a case manager at a shelter (I won’t use the agency’s name or my own due to confidentiality reasons). We are seeing way more families this year then any one can remember (and some of my co workers have been at this for 25+ years). These are families who up until a few months ago had at least one parent working, owned their own homes, paid all their bills on time, and had money in the bank. But as soon as there is no work and no income, shit happens fast.

   Today a family of 5, 2 parents and 3 kids, came in. The dad lost his job at the end of last year, the mom in March. The bank tock the house in October and they have been living in their van.

3. It is really scary, earlier this year I wanted to quit my job because I did not like it but they did not want to let me go, they offerd me a new postion which I am grateful for because at least five of my friends have gotten laid off in the past six months they all filed for unemployment of course and one even had to go get an EBT card just to eat since the unemployment money was to pay his rent.

4. Even though I dislike my current job with a passion, I’m grateful I still have one. Things are just too tight to be wondering around looking for a new job. The major media also seems to be focusing on the increase number of families going to food giveaways because of the holidays.

5. I’m getting to the point where I actually have a cash saving spot in my house, just in case. I’ve always been insanely cheap. Won’t use a credit card except to build credit, won’t buy new (except shoes I wear a size ten shoe, not too many tens out there, but I found this place that has shoes for five dollars in the MacCarthur Park area), but damn you know, but I look at my friends and lots of them are dropping off the economic road map. When I’m riding the bus everyone is filling out job applications and asking people where they are hiring. People are really hurting out there for work. There isn’t any work. Look on craigslist or monster there’s virtually nothing and the jobs that are available it’s like hundreds people applying for one spot.

   I’d like to know where are the jobs for the high school graduates and people with BA in humanities. Even the floating BA person with a degree in humanities or a non tech field the safety net of teaching has closed shop.

   I thank god I have a skill in something very specialized, but you know who knows, but I’m one of the few people who look like me in my field and it takes alot of training, if you don’t have someone supporting you and don’t know exactly what to do and when to do it how do you even go back to school to get training to do something and that doesn’t exactly take care of getting a job immediately.

   So any of you who want to go back to school get your financial aid forms out in January, don’t wait until the deadline it really is this year going to be first come, first serve. There is no money left, seriously I don’t know how badly I can stress that to people. And please don’t make any major purchases its just going to get worse. I’m not trying to be negative. I’m just trying to give you a heads up.

6. i started a new job two weeks ago. During the interview, the HR lady told me over 8,000 people sent in resumes!!!! fucking nuts!!!

7. 8000 people…jesus christ…I was going to say that in my previous comment, but I didn’t want to seem like I was exaggerating…wow…7999 people got told no.

8. I think those 7999 people who got turned away are going to become bitter toward others. As more and more people lose their jobs and can’t get back on their feet, tensions are going to be high out on the streets.
   This is going to get worse before it gets any better. I just hope people don’t start resorting to crime and violence in order to feed their kids.

   *Also this morning I realized something as I was walking to the bus stop, pawn shops must be getting a lot of new business since people who are struggling right now need extra cash. That and I see a lot more “yard sale” signs posted up.

9. If the gov’t doesn’t do something in regards to providing food in a non-complicated way people will certainly resort to crime, unless they are just the give up and die type.

   I’d steal if I were starving, I probably wouldn’t be that successful, but I’m not going to die if Ralph’s is up the street and I have a backpack or some baggy pants.

   My boyfriend is getting all insistent in walking me home from the bus stop and he’s asking me to reconsider the whole non driving thing, because he doesn’t want me in the streets when it gets really bad…though I’m not worried. The LAPD will protect me…lol….

   I’m really curious what kinds of new jackings will occur with all of this new technology. Email jackings, bike jackings, metro pass jackings, credit jacking…oh i guess that credit thing is already happening.

10. Last year I was researching foreclosure rates in the City of Perris, CA and the neighboring communities. A piece of information that I found showed Perris at a 11+% unemployment rate. And to compound the problem further, DHL which had an operations base in March AFB, just closed down their operations, leaving a few hundred families without work.

11. I took a new job a few months back and have been a bit nervous because my now position is in a small nonprofit whereas before I was working for the state. Although the $9 jump an hour in pay was something I had to say yes to, I also had to leave because I gave my boss an ultimatum she did not take seriously (and gave me the liberal corporate “try your luck with me mudperson” passive agressive BS, I had to begin looking when 2 freaken raises I had earned were magically gone when their enactment date came by). It also hurt me because I was working in South LA-East LA-SGV in the field of open space creation/preservation, although I work in NELA now.

    Anyways I am still worried, as the grant that pays my wage expires in 1 year, meaning I have to kick ass and stress about the uncertainty until we get a grant renewal. When I was in college my primary source of income was murals, but the uncertainty of that proffession has made me feen stability ever since (as well as a single mom project upbringing, I also crave consistancy). What’s even more f’d up is my wife has been a teacher at her school for 5 years but is not permanent because of some union rule BS (despite her winning teacher of the year 2 times and running 2 heritage clubs), and has to wait till late May to see if she is coming back this year. Usually she is fine because she is a badass teacher, but given the situation we are a bit nervous. We have 2 kids, ages 6 and 3, and have NO financial safety net in the form of moneyed family at all.

    But I know we have it pretty good right now. I took the familia to skid row last week to give out food and toiletries (we have a tradition of giving all our underused stuff to homeless on skid row or leaving it at bus stops in DTLA that lead to pico union or south los) and noticed the uptick in desperation as well as a lot more semi-normal people (they dont grab and help keep everyone else civil) around. One of the great parts of giving out stuff in the skid is around the holidays you begin to see a lot of working class latinos rolling up on trucks and giving out soup or other food (very few of any other demographic, which is weird), but I wonder if la crisis will affect their prevalence. I have gone down there 3 times the past week and seen nobody giving out food, which is unusual by now.

    Although I dont fully comprehend the crisis or why the hell it is such an emergency, I am pretty angry at our government dumping trillions into the rich while we pobres eat crow. If this economic system is not working then let it run its course, so that we go through the hard times now than wait for another crisis cycle. Im a poor mexican, i have no assets to lose nor does anyone I know. I heard this article that said if we gave the bailout money to every adult in this country they’d be recieving several hundred thousand apiece. That would be enough to pay off all the defaults and would stmulate the economy a hell of a lot more than licking Wall street’s anus. Plus I just dont buy that this coincidentally is occurring at the tail end of the most fiscal irresponsible administration in our history when a black democrat is coming in, Im getting the “theyre raiding the china cabinet and silverware before they leave” vibe off these monkeys.

    Anyways, enough of my rant. I know my fams wil be allright, I have enough training in specialized skills to make out fine, and I also know how to cook crack and rob people efficiently from my teenage years. Our nonprofit org (www.elacamp.org) si also something I have nutured for alomst 7 years, and we are at a period where we are expanding and capacity building. We generally paint murals and do art lessons in the barrio, but our mission statement and bylaws include a lot more community enhancing aspects that we can qualify for projects that vary.

    The people on this site seem pretty solid, and I would like to extend our org and its 501c3 stauts to anyone who needs to make money. All grant writers ger a %10 cut of the grant, and we have a pretty solid rep. Nobody else works with preschoolers and gang members, nobody else has dozens of murals in the hood without tags. If anyone is versed in the field and is interested/needs to make some fedia holla at me. But only serious folks please, when you waste my time you are sucking up resources from a small nonrich family that is devoted to helping out the barrio and spreading art education in our communities. And that especially goes for the MECHA/mexica crowd, I have a lot of flakeage problems with that set.