![]() ![]() My body was going into convulsions, and I thought I was going to die. “I was snorting more and my body was hurting. “I started running rampant with methamphetamines,” she told the crowd. She slept inside her van parked at a car wash until the vehicle was towed. She ended up on the streets of Los Angeles County after drug abuse and serious problems in her marriage. He’s also a published poet.Īrlene Melendez was an attractive 40-year-old mother of four who wore a blue-grey sleeveless suit and her hair in a conservative bun. He’s rebuilding his life with the help of D.C.-based nonprofit groups. “But what Rebecca did changed my life,” he said. “I told her about the bridge, and she drove me to the hospital and sat with me until the doctor was ready.” “She sat down and listened to me for a couple of hours,” Harris said. That morning, he met a volunteer named Rebecca at a soup kitchen. “I remember sitting there in the cold and thinking, ‘The sun came up and I’m still sitting here,’ ” he said. Perched on the bridge for hours, he watched the sunrise over Rock Creek Park. I looked down and thought, ‘If I just jump, I will no longer have to worry about being homeless, about being cold and about being hungry.’ ” ![]() “My depression sent me to the Taft Bridge in D.C.,” Harris recounted. Deeply depressed, he self-medicated with liquor. He soon found himself ill and living on the streets. In a hospital emergency ward, he learned he had congestive heart failure and suffered a stroke. Lacking health insurance, he couldn’t afford to see a doctor and grew sicker, until eventually he couldn’t walk or speak. He wed and worked in restaurants, mailrooms and telemarketing agencies to pay the bills. “To achieve that goal, my plan was to go to college and get a degree in journalism.”īut after Harris became a parent at 17, his life changed. “My hope and dream was to make a living as a writer,” said Harris, an articulate and soft-spoken 42-year-old. Reared in a suburban neighborhood in Washington, D.C., Harris was an excellent student who earned a score of 1,440 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test. I’m fighting back that way.”ĭavid Harris told students he was an unlikely homeless person. “I was totally taken advantage of,” the Army veteran said. He was given beer to perform what the videographers called stunts.Īt USC, Hannah told the student-filled auditorium that he is working with the National Coalition for the Homeless toward legislation that would make violence against the homeless a hate crime. Hannah, alcoholic and homeless for about a dozen years, became an unwitting star in the controversial videos. The videos show homeless people fighting, being pushed down stairs in shopping carts and jumping off buildings into Dumpsters. Police said a series of independent videos called “Bumfights” inspired the sometimes-deadly attacks. He said he wants to stop a disturbing trend in which teenagers around the world have viciously attacked the homeless. 13 to 17.Īt the conference, Hannah was one of three speakers during a session meant to humanize homelessness. Goodhill and Olyaie also were among the students who organized events on campus for National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, Nov. USC College students Marissa Goodhill and Donesh Olyaie led the effort in bringing to campus the three-day conference, which drew about 600 participants. “I regret I had anything to do with those videos,” Hannah, 51, told a crowd of hundreds recently during the 19th annual conference of the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness, held at USC. When he presses both fists together, a bold tattoo spells out: B-U-M-F-I-G-H-T. But his hands are a daily reminder of his troubled past. His rotted teeth have been capped and he flashes a white smile.Įmployed and sober, he no longer stumbles around the streets of San Diego County. Rufus Hannah’s once-feral hair has been cut and neatly combed. USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American LifeĬenter for Islamic Thought, Culture and PracticeĬenter for Latinx and Latin American Studies ![]()
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