By Deborah Lashever

Note:  Deborah, who participated in Sleep Out was asked by Update to write an article about such.  It was planned to put article with the pictures.  Deborah apparently was sick after sleep out and Update published pictures without her article.  So here is article without the pictures and her comments.

The Third Annual Venice Community Sleep Out took place at Beyond Baroque Saturday and Sunday August 24th and 25th, and was the biggest and best one yet! Started three years ago by Venice Community Unity Coalition, a group of progressive Venice activists and activist organizations, to show support for the unhoused members of our community as it became clear that the state of simply being poor and without housing was being systematically criminalized in our city where no real solutions for mass housing nor coordinated localized services exist. Currently, Los Angeles is nationally–and internationally–touted as being the cruelest City in America for our treatment of our community members currently without housing! For shame! It absolutely doesn’t have to be that way, and actually hurts the general population more, with much money spent on emergency services and criminalization rather than solution oriented services, and, of course, more low cost housing!

This Sleep Out event has become a one of a kind, much anticipated community celebration for ALL Venetians and friends of same. Occupy Venice has really taken ownership of the event the last two years and made an excellent idea into the spectacular weekend it has come to be. Really a must experience for all true Venetians! It is an opportunity to hang out with Venetians of ALL (and I mean ALL) economic levels, have a wonderful day, and remember that whatever our life situation at the moment-we are all just people trying to live life in the best way we can and enjoy ourselves in the process. And the best way, most of us putting on and attending the event believe, is in the spirit of Community and Cooperation which is the true legacy of Venice and the core idea for the Sleep Out event.

Clear even at the outset that this event was community driven, spontaneously a core group of some of our local unhoused people went to work early and in earnest setting up the stage, chairs, pop up shade and such for the event area, the result being that when most Occupiers showed up at the agreed time, much of the hard work had already accomplished! This purposeful and comfortable cooperation between everyone there held through the entire weekend to everyone’s joy and mutual reward. This is proof positive that when we have mutual goals of benefit to all, people from all walks of life do show up to joyously do their part, even vying with each other to go above and beyond the call of duty. People are more than willing to contribute when they feel that their contribution is honored, whatever it is. They are willing to put their hearts into it. It is a microcosm of what we can accomplish in the macrocosm of Venice, and possibly even Los Angeles as a whole. We can work together to create something wonderful. We had proof positive that weekend.

One of the very best parts of this annual event is always the unadulterated joy and gratitude of people that are currently without housing commenting that for one blessed night they have a safe place to just relax without having to worry. They wish that could be every night. It should be. For people in houses and not currently in houses alike.

Many of us are diligently working on that, but in the meantime to have it for one 24 hour period annually keeps the vision fresh and real and the hope of justice and compassion for all people alive.

At the Sleep Out this year, along with celebratory aspects that just serve to make it a fun and entertaining day like free films, massage, tarot reading, face painting, live painting and chalk art, tee shirt screening, the ever popular Housing Game (an iconic take on the classic Chutes and Ladders that graphically shows the pitfalls of going from street to housing),Teach-In workshops and more informational speakers were added to round out the event.

Occupy Venice wanted to make this a time to relax and enjoy, but also a place to get information on local services, volunteer opportunities, and a place where many like minded organizations can come together, discuss what they are currently doing about the issues surrounding being unhoused and talk about solutions for the future. To that end we had an excellent variety of organizations represented doing Teach-Ins and providing booths with pertinent information. LACAN, Occupy Fights Foreclosures, the Human Rights Housing Collective, POWER and LA Indy Media provided high quality Teach-Ins on Knowing Your Rights, Foreclosures, Community Outreach/Alliances and Citizen Media respectively.

Info booths included the Venice Family Clinic with toiletries and health screenings, LA Indy Media who conducted interviews with celebrants, Reach for the Top, Safe Place for Youth, The Free Venice Beachhead, Venice Peace and Freedom Party, Safe Place for Youth, LACAN, Venice Justice Committee and Venice Community Housing.

Opening with a traditional blessing from the Cuahtemoc Mexica Aztec Dancers, we had inspiring speakers, musicians and poets all day long with Councilman Mike Bonin starting us off with a few words, followed up by comments from Carol Sobel of the National Lawyers’ Guild, Bilal Ali and Becky Dennison from LACAN, Carlos Marroquin from Occupy Fights Foreclosures, David Busch, local unhoused activist, Alison Hurst from Safe Place for Youth, Peggy Kennedy, long time Venice activist, and Bill Przlucki from POWER.

We also were blessed with wonderfully varied musical entertainment from amazing local musicians, Pete Seegar-esq, Ross Altman, sweet voiced Harriet, rocking Skylar Funk, hot rapper, Wil B, and a few surprise guests, with awesome Spoken Word by Tanya Alexander, Matt Sedillo and Mark Lipman.

Finally, we got to hear our own Steve Clare of Venice Community Housing quoting some resounding statistics on homelessness and reminding us that, although this is a daunting and multifaceted issue, there are real things we can accomplish immediately, for example the heralded Safe Storage pilot project last winter sponsored by VCHC that made it possible for many more unhoused people in Venice to access the winter shelters. The pilot program went exceptionally smoothly and provided the opportunity for many more unhoused people (some extremely elderly and some with children) to be safe, dry and warm with food and showers available. Steve introduced Becks Heyhoe from the Costa Mesa Church Consortium who then spoke to us about a great Check In Storage/Service project that has had wonderful success in her town, with businesses, visitors, residents, the religious community, police and politicians all supporting it because it is a simple, very, very low cost solution for so many issues that residents, businesses, police and politicians have with this population, and something that is not punitive but extraordinarily helpful for the unhoused people taking advantage of the program. It is an exceptional working model that we can easily modify and utilize here in Venice.

Saturday night at the Sleep Out traditionally ends with a film. This time we ended Saturday evening with a few words from co-producer Michelle Kaufer, and a clip from her hard hitting documentary, “American Street Kids,” shot with haunting reality in Venice and being edited as we speak, and the 2012 Academy Award winning documentary short, “Inocente,” a vivid tale of one beautiful young Latina’s struggle to be recognized as the amazing woman and artist she is while growing up living on the street. Non-GMO popcorn, of course, was provided.

Speaking of which, food was central to the day for everyone, as usual, especially since many of the more than 500 people that stopped by the Sleep Out are currently without housing and are not able to have a good, solid, healthy diet most days as they struggle to survive. To create a real community flavor (and because we had a budget of exactly $102 with which to put on the entire event…) we asked for food donations from local businesses. Wow! The generosity that we were blessed with was really quite astounding! Whole Foods came through like a champ and donated so much fresh fruit, veggies, juice, dried rice, beans, quinoa, organic coffee, turkey and other great stuff it was just unbelievable! We had a good five or six shopping carts filled to the brim! We are so thankful to Dave and Gabe and the crew at Whole Foods Venice for their superb generosity! Trader Joes and the Santa Monica Cooperative also did their part so we were able to provide snacks all day long and into the evening, serving a massive dinner of delicious turkey and veggie chilies, tangy quinoa salad, super yummy pasta and other outstanding side dishes. Our Occupy Venice volunteers and friends worked tirelessly cooking, chopping and serving to make it all happen. We must have served dinner for a good four hours altogether. All the food was of high caliber. And not a bit got wasted!

Then Give a Penny Organization showed up with boxes and boxes of fine pastries and granola, bagels and turkey sausage for breakfast! Again our tireless Occupiers stepped up and manned the propane griddles for hours Sunday morning-and after not much rest the night before! Needless to say, we feasted the entire weekend with the few remaining loaves of bread, granola bars and such going to the Boardwalk to feed other people who need it. Wow! The bounty was amazing. It really shows without a doubt (donations talk!!!) that many people and businesses in Venice support a helpful rather than punitive way of working with our unhoused neighbors.

Sunday morning the people that slept out Saturday night and some that came back the next morning for a beautiful denouement. We enjoyed coffee, granola and some hot turkey sausage on bagels while we listened to a couple of Martin Luther King’s most famous speeches along with music and a small open mica discussion. We call it, “Breakfast with the King.”  Inspiring.

Speaking of inspiring, we had so much support from so many great folks! Pat Connelly of All Star Sound deserves special thanks for again donating all the superb professional sound equipment that made this event really rock, and Kevin for running it all day and evening. There would be no way we could adequately thank Richard Modiano and Jim Fleck at Beyond Baroque who, as usual, helped us to go above and beyond anything we could have imagined as far as putting this event on, and, yes, SPARC for letting us use their portable stage and their grounds for camping and the very essential Porta Potties.

Heartfelt thanks to all who participated, especially members of Occupy Venice for their tireless and selfless service that made this important and well loved event possible. Occupy Venice is dedicated to decrying injustice while also creating and recognizing opportunities to live and thereby model a better world. It shows.

Please feel free to attend Occupy Venice’s extremely popular (and free) monthly film/discussion community events–for which we have recently been honored with a grant from the Venice Neighborhood Council. Top notch films and speakers. A different topical and inspiring subject each month. Lively discussions.

Refreshments served. For info or to get more involved please go to Occupy Venice Beach on Facebook or email OV at OccupyVeniceBeach@yahoo.com or just show up at our weekly public Occupy Venice General Assembly meetings upstairs at Beyond Baroque every Monday night at 8pm.