John Malpede
Performance Artist and Founder, Los Angeles Poverty Development
“L.A.’s Skid Row is called the last Skid Row in America. Other Skid Rows in downtowns across America have been developed, and resources for the poorest of the poor have been dispersed to less desired parts of town. Some 45 years ago, L.A. made a different choice: to concentrate social services and safe housing and build more of it in Skid Row. This community has coalesced through numerous initiatives large and small, and in myriad ways capably represents its own interests. Only the decades of consistent efforts of the people living and working in Skid Row has prevented the bulldozing of the neighborhood and the displacement of its residents.”
Biography
John Malpede directs, performs, and engineers projects and events that have theatrical, installation, public art, educational, and civic organizing components. In 1985, he founded Los Angeles Poverty Development (LAPD), a performance group comprised primarily of homeless and formerly homeless people who make art, live, and work on Skid Row. LAPD creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks that connect the experience of people living in poverty to the social forces that shape their lives and communities.
Five years ago, LAPD started the Skid Row History Museum & Archive, a community exhibition, performance, and meeting space that focuses on the artistic and activist history of the neighborhood and brings people together to understand and resist the threat of displacement. LAPD’s annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists and the biennial Walk the Talk parade bring the community together to celebrate and make visible their achievements.
Over many years Skid Row has emerged as a neighborhood with profoundly important values that are reflected in daily life and further imagined in neighborhood manifestations of arts and culture, empathy, sharing, redemption, recovery, inclusion, and tolerance. Skid Row has a high concentration of resources for people recovering from all kinds of trauma, and should be recognized as such. When the city listens to the community, amazing things can happen. The community has ideas for how to house everyone who’s now in the neighborhood, permanently—with respect and without displacement.
Photo Credits
“Homeless tents in Los Angeles Skid Row” by Russ Allison Loar, used under CC BY-SA 4.0“
Alcatraz Cells” by William Warby, used under CC BY 2.0