This week in class, we got the opportunity to see a very informative documentary called “Taylor’s Campaign”. This followed around a man by the name of Ron Taylor while he was in the process of running for council on a platform of improving the lives of homelessness. He himself was once homeless for a period a little longer than ten months and decided to take a stand and make an effort to help improve the lives of the other homeless in the city of Santa Monica, California.
Not only does this movie just follow Taylor around while he campaigns, but gives an inside story of the struggles of homelessness in the city of Santa Monica with. The city has more than enough power to improve the lives of the homeless, but they choose to focus their time on trying to cut services for them while trying to hide them away from tourists, to not scare them away and ultimately increase revenue. There are many instances that the movie shows that the city could be doing more. A housing structure had to be built, but the problem was that there were only three-to-five beds for women while there were at least forty-to-fifty for the men. The services put in place to serve and protect the people are putting unnecessary time into harassing the homeless around the city. The police cite misdemeanors for shopping carts and kick others out of spots they found for the night to sleep in. It was also interesting to see how much time the police use to pointlessly hassle the homeless. In Lee Stringer’s book, Grand Central Winter, the cops use arresting the homeless for their own personal gain. One example of this is when the main character and his friend are woke up to an officer who was “calculating the overtime it will be worth to arrest the two of [them].” (44 Stringer) And these are people who are not trying to cause trouble to begin with. They are down on their luck and are doing anything they can to survive. A few of the homeless have a system to collect cans and bottles for money, and at the same time they are “doing a service for the city” by recycling, but the city would just rather bother and hassle them in hopes that they leave and go back to the shadows away from the residents and the tourists.