WELCOME TO SKID ROW’S AMAZING 30N3 STREETBALL LEAGUE
LA’s homeless columnist, Walter Melton, has written a colorful, comprehensive and entirely inspiring portrait of Skid Row’s 30N3 Basketball team that takes on any and all comers (drug dealers, addicts, and members of rival gangs)–as long as they absolutely, positively follow the leagues rules.
Here are a few clips:
The SKIDROW 3ON3 STREETBALL LEAGUE has been part of the fight for the soul of Skid Row since its founding two years by OG ‘n Service Association, a self-help community organization.
Manuel (OG Man) Compito is the driving force behind the league. He and his organization have been active in Skid Row for years, seeking ways to build community through efforts to clean the streets, cover graffiti-scarred walls with artistic murals, and other basic measures that residents can accomplish on their own.[SNIP]
“We do not judge men in this league,” Compito says. “We did not want to exclude drug dealer because that would defeat our purpose of having any influence of over them. We take away the negativity and insert positive thinking.”
Compito knew the players presented a potentially volatile mix, with drug dealers and addicts — and members of rival gangs — sharing the court.
“The first thing we said was that no drugs could be sold in the park during games,” Compito says. “People do not think the Skid Row Community is family oriented. That is not true. We are about family and kids. We do not want children around drugs, and we make sure that children do not see drug activity.”Compito also made it clear that the league would be an authority in the lives of anyone who wanted to play. Attendance to all league affairs became mandatory, and punctuality was required. Players would be held accountable — and expected to hold themselves accountable for their behavior.
I know Manual Compito, the league’s founder, who is a longtime resident of Skid Row and quite a remarkable man, a visionary really.—which is one more reason why it’s so great to hear about his league’s success.
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WHY IS THE AMERICAN MILITARY STILL IMPRISONING AN IRAQI REPORTER WORKING FOR REUTERS?
The U.S. Military has been holding Iraqi journalist Ibrahim Jassam for ten months and counting. Yet there have been no charges filed against Jassam?
NPR explores the alarming story.
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DID NEIL ARMSTRONG KILL THE SPACE PROGRAM?
In Sunday’s New York Times, Tom Wolfe, the journalist/novelist/writer-about-town-in-a-white-suit, makes the case that the Neal Armstrong’s Apollo 11 first step on the moon,—the near mythic event that occurred 40 years ago today—was the moment that the American space program was sent toward a forty-year slow death.
Wolfe is the country’s one public pundit who has the standing to advance such a theory. His 1979 poetic and entirely magnificent account of the Mercury program, The Right Stuff, is still the best analysis of the place that the quest for manned space flight fit into the American psyche in general, and the American political landscape in particular.
Agree with his thesis about what derailed the space program or not (or whether or not the space program should have been derailed or not), Wolfe’s passion for the program together with his grief for our lost—at least for now—desire to “build a bridge to the stars,” is both real and compelling.
In any case, read the essay.
Oh, hell. Even better, read the book. I reread it a year ago, and was blown away all over again.
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FATHER GREG BOYLE TALKS TO KPCC’S FRANK STOLTZ
Expanding on the issue I’ve been harping on here at WLA, KPCC’s Frank Stolz has followed up in detail with Father Greg Boyle who talks candidly about the hope that Homeboy Industries brings to so many in LA County, about its victories and its budget woes…and about how the failing economy is likely to affect the population Homeboy serves.
“If folks can’t feed their kids, then hang on…”
It’s a good interview, so check it out.
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Tom Wolfe is a great observer and writer, but proves himself not just something of a crank but delusional about the depth of his own insights if he thinks everyone with an IQ above room temperature didn’t “get” what the space program of the 50s and 60s was about. Quoting Werner von Braun’s in his “philosopher” mantle borders on the hilarious. Are we supposed to take this nonsense seriously ? Does Wolfe really think that’s an inspired vision or that “going to Mars” matters. There were tremendous benefits to the space program in terms of applied technological developments and it was cool as hell BUT… Today anybody with half a brain surely must understand that the challenge – the “Manhattan Project” we can and should aspire to, and that isn’t pretty much a waste of time and money, is clean, renewable energy. In fact, GWBush’s greatest follw was not using the months after September 11th to put such a Manhattan Project in place – couched in the language of “energy independence” and the West “breaking the oil umbilical cord to the Middle East.” No President had more political capital to unite the country and advance the next great scientific challenge. And of course, the stupid little shit blew it. Meanwhile Tom Wolfe is lamenting that we’re not going to “keep alive the only meaningful life we know” by…sending men to Mars.
Also, it’s been a while now since the “kaboom, kaboom” aural FX or putting a phrase in caps and repeating it THREE TIMES – THREE TIMES – I’m not kidding, THREE FUCKING TIMES was cute or even expressive. I love Wolfe’s early essays and his two seminal “new journalism” novels on Kesey and the astronauts, but did I mention that his fictional novels suck ? That his cultural theories tend to be remarkably shallow and ill-informed? Or that we’ve had to suffer through Maureen Dowd because of this guy ?
Is – The truth is out there?
This remarkable dialogue of Apollo 11, was picked up by hundreds of ham radio operators in the USA who had connected their stations to the same frequency through which the astronauts transmitted. During a two minute interruption both image and sound were censored to the public:
Armstrong & Aldrin: Those are giant things. No, no, no – this is not an optical illusion. No one is going to believe this!
Houston (Christopher Craft): What … what … what? What the hell is happening? What’s wrong with you?
Armstrong & Aldrin: They’re here under the surface.
Houston: What’s there? (muffled noise) Emission interrupted; interference control calling ‘Apollo 11’.
Armstrong & Aldrin: We saw some visitors. They were here for a while, observing the instruments.
Houston: Repeat your last information!
Armstrong & Aldrin: I say that there were other spaceships. They’re lined up in the other side of the crater!
Houston: Repeat, repeat!
Armstrong & Aldrin: Let us sound this orbita … in 625 to 5 … Automatic relay connected … My hands are shaking so badly I can’t do anything. Film it? God, if these damned cameras have picked up anything – what then?
Houston: Have you picked up anything?
Armstrong & Aldrin: I didn’t have any film at hand. Three shots of the saucers or whatever they were that were ruining the film
Houston: Control, control here. Are you on your way? What is the uproar with the UFOs over?
Armstrong & Aldrin: They’ve landed here. There they are and they’re watching us.
Houston: The mirrors, the mirrors – have you set them up?
Armstrong & Aldrin: Yes, they’re in the right place. But whoever made those spaceships surely can come tomorrow and remove them. Over and out.
Pokey – tht never happened, because everyone knows the moon landing was a hoax.
“The residents of Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, actually saw a different broadcast to the rest of the World. Just shortly before Armstrong stepped onto the Moons surface, a change could be seen where the picture goes from a stark black to a brighter picture. Honeysuckle Creek stayed with the picture and although the voice transmissions were broadcast from Goldstone, the actual film footage was broadcast from Australia. As Una watched Armstrong walking on the surface of the Moon she spotted a Coke bottle that was kicked in the right hand side of the picture. This was in the early hours of the morning and she phoned her friends to see if they had seen the same thing, unfortunately they had missed it but were going to watch the rebroadcast the next day. Needless to say, the footage had been edited and the offending Coke bottle had been cut out of the film. But several other viewers had seen the bottle and many articles appeared in The West Australian newspaper. Western Australia received their coverage in a different way to the rest of the World. They were the only Country where there wasn’t a delay to the ‘live’ transmission.”
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html
The correct assumption among the totally unmedicated is that the “aliens transcript” was a hoax within a hoax, generated to throw serious Hoaxologists off of the larger deception of the alleged “moon landing” itself.
Mystery cleared up. You’re welcome !
And whatever else you believe or don’t believe about the depth of “their” deceptions and mind-control, DO NOT FILL THAT PRESCRIPTION !!!
(The good news – I don’t feel bad about all of the rude insinuations I’ve made in responding to Pokey on a range of issues.)
Reg, do YOU really believe that the moon landing was a hoax? I believe we went to the moon.
It is hard to tell from your comment.
After due dilligence and watching Reg’s submitted link to the clip from the Disclosure Project and the statement from the Airman 2nd Class and the purported “smudged” clips of the extensive “base” on the backside of the moon,I have to say that the photo montage in the “mosaic” was surely a huge pile of semi-deflated weather balloons that had found their way there. There can be no other explanation. If it’s good enough for Roswell it better be good enough for all of YOU!
“It is hard to tell from your comment.”
I guess that’s why I didn’t get that Saturday Night Live job…
Pity.
The video below is proof positive that the lunar was a hoax, you can clearly see the coke bottle and flask.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1875585/moon_landing_hoax_apollo_11_coke_bottle_drinking_flask_seen/
Balderdash and Poppycock! What a waste of time and good conspiratorial paranoia. Wait’ll 2012 and we observe the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s shooting. Now that was a sham if ever there was one. Both Kennedy’s killings are dubious as they’re recorded historically, but NASA’s lunar program and subsequent landing is just to big a pallette to alter. Whereas the majority of principals in the K’s killings were disappeared conveniently, there were just too many support people and direct participants in the lunar landing to facilitate a hoax. Sorry, but no thanks.