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Alice Callaghan (born circa 1947, Calgary, Alberta) is an Episcopalian priest and a former Roman Catholic nun. She is also an advocate of the homeless and impoverished people of downtown Los Angeles.
Her family moved from Canada to southern California when she was a small child. Diminutive and athletic, she became a proficient surfer in Newport Beach. [1] She attended college and became a nun. She left the convent in order to become an Episcopalian priest. Seeing the grinding poverty of skid row, she decided to "make [herself] useful there." [ citation needed ]
Callaghan participated in anti-war protests during the Vietnam War. [2]
Callaghan founded Las Familias del Pueblo, a Skid Row community center, [3] in June 1981 in a one-room storefront near the neighborhood. [2] [4] She remained its director as of 2021, when it moved to a larger building. [5] She also founded the SRO Housing Trust.
As of 1982, she was an associate minister at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. [2]
In May 1983, she led a protest demanding that the city of Los Angeles install a traffic light on one block of Sixth Street, citing concerns for children crossing the street in the area. [6]
In the late 1990s, Callaghan worked as a tutor for young Latino immigrant students. In 1998, she supported Proposition 227, which largely dismantled California's bilingual education system, on the grounds that Spanish-speaking students were not being taught English nor receiving an equivalent education to English-speaking students. [7]
A skid row, also called skid road, is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to people who are poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or forgotten by society. A skid row may be anything from an impoverished urban district to a red-light district to a gathering area for people experiencing homelessness or drug addiction. In general, skid row areas are inhabited or frequented by impoverished individuals and also people who are addicted to drugs. Urban areas considered skid rows are marked by high vagrancy, dilapidated buildings, and drug dens, as well as other features of urban blight. Used figuratively, the phrase may indicate the state of a poor person's life.
A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tents or other temporary structures.
The Ávila Adobe, built in 1818 by Francisco Ávila, is the oldest standing residence in the city of Los Angeles, California. Avila Adobe is located in the paseo of historic Olvera Street, a part of the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District, a California State Historic Park. The building itself is registered as California Historical Landmark #145, while the entire historic district is listed both on the National Register of Historic Places and as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
The Toy District is a 12-block area in eastern Downtown Los Angeles, bounded by Los Angeles Street on the west, Third and Fifth streets on the north and south and San Pedro Street on the east. It is a multilingual, multicultural area that consists of one- and two-story buildings often painted in pastel shades and is home to roughly five hundred toy- and electronics-related businesses.
The Los Angeles Fashion District, previously known as the Garment District, is a business improvement district (BID) in, and often cited as a sub-neighborhood of, Downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood caters to wholesale selling and has more than 4,000 overwhelmingly independently owned and operated retail and wholesale businesses selling apparel, footwear, accessories, and fabrics.
In 2006–2007, millions of people participated in protests over a proposed change to U.S. immigration policy. These large scale mobilizations are widely seen as a historic turning point in Latino politics, especially Latino immigrant civic participation and political influence, as noted in a range of scholarly publications in this field. The protests began in response to proposed legislation known as H.R. 4437, which would raise penalties for illegal immigration and classify illegal individuals and anyone who helped them enter or remain in the US as felons. As part of the wider immigration debate, most of the protests not only sought a rejection of this bill, but also a comprehensive reform of the country's immigration laws that included a path to citizenship for all illegal immigrants.
The Great American Boycott, also called the Day Without an Immigrant, was a one-day boycott of United States schools and businesses by immigrants in the United States which took place on May 1, 2006.
Raymond Jay Castellani was an American character actor. As a former alcoholic, he founded the Frontline Foundation, which serves meals to the homeless on the Los Angeles' Skid Row.
Skid Row is a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. The area is officially known as Central City East.
The Midnight Mission is a human services organization in downtown Los Angeles' Skid Row. It was founded in 1914. A secular non-profit, the organization provides food, drug and alcohol recovery services, "safe sleep" programs, educational training, a mobile kitchen, and family housing with an emphasis on developing self-sufficiency.
The San Fernando Building is an Italian Renaissance Revival style building built in 1906 on Main Street in the Historic Core district of downtown Los Angeles, California. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, converted into lofts in 2000, and declared a Historic-Cultural Monument in 2002.
The Weingart Center for the Homeless is a comprehensive human services center for homeless men and women living in Skid Row, Los Angeles. It provides on-site short and long-term services including transitional residential housing, medical & mental health, permanent supportive housing, substance abuse recovery, education, workforce development, long term case management. The Weingart Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
The Cecil Hotel is an affordable housing complex in Downtown Los Angeles. It opened on December 20, 1924, as a luxury hotel, but declined during the Great Depression and subsequent decades. In 2011, the hotel was renamed the Stay On Main. The 14-floor hotel has 700 guest rooms and a checkered history, with many suicides and accidental or unnatural deaths occurring there. Renovations started in 2017 were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in the hotel's temporary closure. On December 13, 2021, the Cecil Hotel was reinaugurated as an affordable housing complex.
The Star Apartments are a purpose-built residential housing complex on Los Angeles' Skid Row that caters to the needs of the long-term homeless. Opened in October 2014, the Star Apartments include 102 units averaging 350 square feet, alongside amenities such as on-site medical services, counseling, fitness and art facilities and a community garden. The complex was developed by the Skid Row Housing Trust, and designed by Los Angeles–based firm Michael Maltzan Architecture. It received LEED Platinum status in August 2015. The building also houses the Los Angeles County Department for Health Services' Housing for Health division.
The killing of Charley Leundeu Keunang, a 43-year-old Cameroonian national, occurred in Los Angeles, California, on March 1, 2015. He was shot by three Los Angeles Police Department officers.
Philip Lance is an American psychoanalyst and former community organizer who began his career as an Episcopalian priest. He was one of the first persons ordained by the Episcopal Church whose homosexuality was openly acknowledged by the ordaining diocese prior to his ordination. He is the founder of Pueblo Nuevo Development, now known as Pueblo Nuevo Education & Development Group (PNEDG), and founder of the Camino Nuevo Charter Academy (CNCA) schools. Together with Douglas Sadownick, he is the co-founder of Colors LGBTQ Youth Counseling Services. He is a Fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association and a member of The Psychoanalytic Center of California.
María Luisa Legarra Urquides was an American educator and proponent of bilingual education. She spent her life in the US state of Arizona, but influenced national educational policies. Urquides served in local and federal roles, and received numerous awards and recognitions for her educational leadership and community work. She has been referred to as the "Mother of Bilingual Education" in the United States. She was inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.
Shirley Raines is the founder of the non-profit Beauty 2 the Streetz, which provides hair and makeup services, food, clothing, hygiene and safety items to thousands of homeless people in Skid Row, Los Angeles. In 2021, she was chosen to be the CNN Hero of the Year.
The Union Rescue Mission, commonly abbreviated as the URM, is a Christian homeless shelter in the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest in the city and the largest private homeless shelter in the United States. The organization behind the URM is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that was established in 1891.