Mike “Mudd” Thorpe, 63, has been homeless in Los Angeles for 5 years. He is a descendant of Jim Thorpe, the first Native American athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. What follows is testimony from Mudd based on his experience enduring Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Clean Streets LA” police/sanitation sweeps while living on the streets of rapidly gentrifying Chinatown.
Chinatown was the latest scene of the crime. No place to put our trash out here, which is easily spotted by their helicopters, and then the ground assault follows.
Police arrive in numbers, though none of them protect us from the thieves who arrive in hazmat attire.
Our stuff is shoveled into the gaping mouths of garbage trucks as we wait for our escape.
We also watch our vehicles towed to the $400 resting place.
I’ve lost seven so far.
After one sweep, I went to the storage facility the city set up and collected my smashed laptop. It worked perfectly before.
I lost around ten thousand dollars in property, but that could be replaced.
What couldn’t be replaced were books signed to me by authors that passed away.
A signed autobiography of Muhammad Ali, another by Mark Brannon Read.
My 1950’s Les Paul guitar.
My children’s baby teeth and baby pictures.
Imagine you having to move from your home in fifteen minutes and you’re being lectured that everything will be stored. While you’re imagining this add that they took a bulldozer and loaded your business too. Drugs may suck, but they stop most feelings and I was overloaded with them.
The developers involved with this gentrification do well. The city will serve them and the required percentage of low income units will be provided — though not at the recently approved College Station development in Chinatown. That one will have ZERO low income units.
And to prepare for this development and the one next to it on Llewellyn Street, the local government is eliminating the homeless in the way and stealing everything I own.
I’m only allowed one 60 gallon bag worth of possessions while a dozen acres are being developed?
The land stolen from my forefathers is acquired then resold, and the thieves profit.
This is America.
Me and the Olympics already aren’t very good friends — and now Garcetti wants to put this sporting event above homeless people? Is his plan the real life Hunger Games?
I can see the chariots circling a soup line.
Denver stopped the Olympics in 1976.
We should stop this one too.
