GOOD on PAVEMENT

Here’s a piece about PAVEMENT from Alissa Walker at GOOD. I did a story for GOOD about homelessness in LA called Welcome to Los Angeles and followed up with a 5 part doc series called On Skid Row. Kenneth Cole’s Awearness blog sponsored it and MySpace blasted it on thieor homepage for a month so it got a lot of attention. LINK TV, Hidden Los Angeles and others picked it up so it got a lot of attention. A lot of kids from around the world felt compelled to take action after they saw it and contacted me. Some of them did bake sales at their schools and donated the profits to School on Wheels and other enlightened philanthropies. Some wrote stories for their school papers and stuff like that.

While most of us in Southern California stayed inside during the latest bout of unseasonably cold rain, Sam Slovick spent last weekend under a tarp. “I was with a lost tribe of homeless people in the Valley, a mother and son,” he says. “They were shaking in a puddle, chilled to the bone. The police continually harass them. There was a guy with a bloody hole in his head, and stitches, trying to get a fork from his mouth to a styrofoam plate.”

A writer and filmmaker, Slovick thinks it’s important that people learn about Los Angeles’ unglamorous side, too. His new series, Pavement, explores ignored communities across the city. “These are notes from the underclass and the opportunity for us all to take a look,” he says. “If we’re open to it.”

Slovick has been giving a “voice to the voiceless” for years, covering underserved Los Angeles communities for magazines and newspapers, and producing GOOD’s series on Skid Row, “Welcome to Los Angeles,” in 2007. He may be the only person in Los Angeles who’s telling these stories in quite this way.

For each piece, Slovick produces a video, writes a story published in the LA Weekly, and shoots a photo essay. “It’s like I’m writing fiction but I’m not,” he says about his rich, hyper-detailed language and visual style. Using an accessible, trans-media experience is how he gets the attention of people who are likely not thinking about L.A.’s hidden populations. “You have to seduce people into compassion,” he says.

read entire story at GOOD

 

 

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