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Life & Times Transcript

01/20/06

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Is this any place for a child? You might be surprised at how kids on Skid Row answer that question.

Franklin Arburtha>> There's lot of family here. There's lots of friends. People we love, people we close to. It's a community, a big family.

Val Zavala>> And then, a truck stop where drivers get more than a bite to eat and a quick cup of coffee. They get a healthy dose of old-time religion.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Val Zavala>> For most of us, Skid Row is a place to avoid at all costs. But for some children, it is their home, the community they grow up in. So what is it like to grow up on Skid Row? Well, now a thirteen year old boy has produced a remarkable documentary called "We're Not Bad Kids" and, as Toni Guinyard tells us, it all started when he witnessed a murder.

Franklin Arburtha>> You learn how to live down here. You learn how to block stuff out.

Toni Guinyard>> Franklin Arburtha has seen enough misery to last a lifetime. Poverty, addition, homelessness, the kind of despair most children are shielded from, but Franklin can't escape it. He lives in the middle of it in Central City, Los Angeles, the area better known as Skid Row.

Franklin Arburtha>> The kids out here don't deserve to see most of the stuff they see. It just ain't right for kids to see this, a little baby seeing people getting killed.

Toni Guinyard>> During the summer of 2004 when Franklin was only thirteen years old, he saw something that would change the way he viewed the people around him. From the balcony of Skid Row's Ford Hotel where he lives with his mother, brother and sisters, Franklin watched his neighbor, Doris Moore, being chased down the street by a man.

Franklin Arburtha>> He swung the knife at her and we're just thinking that he's trying to hit her. Then my sister said, "No, he's got a knife." I didn't see the knife and my friend didn't see the knife. Then she fell down and he started stabbing her. We was kind of stuck. We was trying to run down there, but we was just stuck on the balcony because we wasn't believing that this was happening. Then he just started stabbing and stabbing her. Everyone just circled around her like it was a movie or something. No one tried to help. They was just watching.

Toni Guinyard>> He watched Moore, a mother of four, die.

Franklin Arburtha>> I had to do something. I just felt like doing something.

Toni Guinyard>> Franklin armed himself with a plan and a borrowed camera. He went to Moore's funeral and a street-side candlelight vigil held in her honor and then he started asking questions.

Franklin Arburtha>> "So how do you feel about the murder?"

Shaddai>> "Do I feel happy? No, I don't. I hope his ass burns in hell. I want to spit on his body and, as soon as he's buried, I want to dig him up and burn his ass again."

>> "What do you think of little kids going to the cemetery?"

Franklin Arburtha>> "I think it's normal."

>> "No, it's not because little kids are going to see somebody dead. Come on, now. Be real. Let's be real."

Toni Guinyard>> What started with one young man's idea to acknowledge the life and death of a neighborhood woman ended up being a much bigger project. Franklin and his friends spent two months interviewing youngsters on Skid Row. The result is a documentary giving us a very unique perspective of what it's like to live in this community from a kid's perspective.

Franklin Arburtha>> I wanted the film to endorse and then it just led on to other stuff. I started seeing stuff that didn't look right. I filmed it and it turned into the little movie. "The reason I made this documentary is because some people think that everyone on Skid Row is bad and some people don't even know there's children on Skid Row, right?"

Toni Guinyard>> An estimated six hundred to seven hundred children or more live in Skid Row. Franklin put them in the spotlight with help from volunteers and the staff at the United Coalition Prevention Project. Hours of videotape were edited into what Franklin calls "the little movie". It's a twenty-five minute long documentary called "We're Not Bad Kids" featuring young people who live in the neighborhood. It exposes us to what they're exposed to.

>> "You got to watch out for those crazy people because they're smoking crack everywhere."

Toni Guinyard>> Where they live.

>> "Look at the roaches coming out. Oh, God. See that? Oh, my goodness. They have a whole colony of roaches living up in the light socket up there, a light socket, and that ain't cool."

Toni Guinyard>> And what they think.

>> "You know, they should take all the drugs like no people or any kids in there. Only mothers with children, not like regular people."

Franklin Arburtha>> I want people to know what America, land of the free, so rich, all that beautiful stuff, it ain't like that down here. I mean, it can be though. There's lots of good people and smart people down here. You see bums or homeless people on the street. Lots of these people are smart. Lots of people. They just need help. All this community needs is a little help.

Charles Porter>> I think that the documentary is really a snapshot of what it's like to live in this community, to live in Skid Row, and I think that is a snapshot of what it's like to live in extreme poverty.

Toni Guinyard>> Charles Porter is prevention coordinator for Social Model Recovery Systems United Coalition East Prevention Project. The organization works with area residents to deal with community issues related to drug and alcohol use. When neighborhood children started showing up at United Coalition's office, they weren't turned away.

>> "I'm not Skid Row. This is just a place. It's just the environment. It's not me. Skid Row being a nasty, dirty place does not make you a nasty, dirty person."

Toni Guinyard>> This is where Franklin came to borrow the camera used to shoot the documentary.

Zelenne Cardenas>> I think it showed a glimpse of their reality and the video also that they are very resilient and showed humor in everything that they do. I felt sad that their environment was surrounded by such negative influences.

Toni Guinyard>> But you know this.

Zelenne Cardenas>> But not from a child's eye.

>> "Everybody in the building is like family basically. If we move, I ain't going to want to move. I like it there now."

Franklin Arburtha>> There's lot of family here. There's lots of friends. People we love, people we close to. It's a community, a big family.

Toni Guinyard>> It's a big family with big problems. A survey of children by children titled "Toxic Playground: Growing up in Skid Row" found that more than seventy percent of the children questioned have lived in the neighborhood for more than one year, some for more than seven years.

Charles Porter>> I think it's very challenging for young people to grow up in this community because there are a lack of resources and recreational opportunities and activities.

Zelenne Cardenas>> There's a park less than twenty-five feet from us, but the children are not allowed to go into the park. Basically what has happened is the children are locked out of the park and we've conceded the park to the hustlers and the drug addicts.

Toni Guinyard>> The city-owned park at Sixth Street and Gladys Avenue has become a haven for the homeless.

Anita Nelson>> It's not a healthy environment for children unless they're supervised and monitored. As it stands right now, we don't have a staff to monitor children who are going to be running in and out and adults that we know are mentally ill and many of them are sexual predators. That's not a combination you want to mix together. It's not healthy.

Toni Guinyard>> The park is operated by SRO Housing Corporation, a private, nonprofit organization that provides services to the homeless and very low-income residents and operates Skid Row area's single-room occupancy hotels. Anita Nelson is CEO.

Anita Nelson>> Ideally, I would love to, say, have them come here and everybody can live happily ever after, but we know the population that's living here and that's in this community and we know it's not safe.

Jan Perry>> Well, I don't think it's realistic to expect that a park in the middle of Skid Row will ever be safe enough for the kids.

Toni Guinyard>> The park is just outside Los Angeles City Council member Jan Perry's district, but she represents a major portion of Skid Row.

Jan Perry>> It's a difficult issue because, when you begin to create more facilities for children in the area, then that will encourage people to want to stay here for the children. I think the objective is not to have children in this area.

Toni Guinyard>> But they are here for now. The population of youngsters in the area has jumped fifteen percent from 1990 to the year 2000 and those children are finding their voice.

Franklin Arburtha>> I want to be heard.

Toni Guinyard>> And demanding we listen.

Franklin Arburtha>> Skid Row ain't really no place that families should be. There's lots of stuff that kids shouldn't see out here and I guess that's what I wanted to show everybody. I don't want to move out of here. I just want them to change this place. I ain't asking for nothing but to change this place.

Toni Guinyard>> A place where he sees hope even though others see nothing but despair. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> If you'd like to learn more about what life is like for children on Skid Row, you can go to a survey called "Toxic Playground". You can find it online at socialmodel.com.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> An estimated one million children in the United States suffer from autism and the numbers are growing dramatically. Autism seems to imprison children in their own world and they're unable to communicate normally, but little by little, scientists are unlocking the mystery.

Scientists at UCLA's Brain Mapping Center have identified a part of the brain that is linked to autistic behavior. People with autism have trouble interacting socially, communicating both verbally and nonverbally. They seem to be in a world of their own, not able to empathize and connect with other human beings. A new study published in the journal, "Nature Neuroscience" points to a certain system in the brain as the mechanism behind these autistic symptoms. The lead author is Assistant Professor, Mirella Dapretto, at UCLA's Department of Psychiatry and Bio-Behavioral Sciences. I talked with Dapretto about the study which focused on mirror neurons. Mirror neurons help us imitate and relate to others.

Mirella Dapretto>> Basically, the essence of these mirror neurons is that, when you see somebody else doing anything as well as displaying an emotion because they're feeling sad or happy, you are internally mirroring that action as well as the emotion that they're feeling. So this mirror neuron system is supposed to be very important doing social interactions because it is a way by which you can implicitly and automatically read other people's minds, their intentions and how they feel.

Now the individuals with autism are particularly impaired in the social domain, in social interaction, in understanding others as well as in their ability to imitate others and to empathize with how people are feeling. So that's why we were interested in looking at this system.

Val Zavala>> The study involved ten children with autism and ten typical children and mapped their brains as they looked at photos of facial expressions.

Mirella Dapretto>> Now in the typically developing children, they were, again, just by looking at the faces as well as when they're imitating, activating this set of neurons that allow you to read another person's mind or emotion and empathize with them. Interestingly, in the children with autism, we did not see any activity in that particular region.

Val Zavala>> In other words, children with autism have less activity in an area of the brain called the pars opercularis, which is a key part of the brain's mirror neuron system.

Mirella Dapretto>> It's pretty much around here, so it's in the frontal lobe in the interior portion. You can think of it as being situated kind of like above the eyes and a little bit behind.

Val Zavala>> So this is real breakthrough to be able to say this part of the brain has direct correlation to this kind of behavior?

Mirella Dapretto>> Yes.

Val Zavala>> The cause of autism has been attributed to everything from bad vaccines to bad mothering, so does this contribute to the knowledge and the belief that it's biological?

Mirella Dapretto>> I think it does, although ultimately we still would have to address the question as to what makes this region of the brain or this neuron system not functional in the autistic brain. There may be a variety of causes and some of them may be environmental and some of them may be genetic based. So it's just a different level of analysis. I mean, it's clearly pointing to biological underpinnings in this disorder, but yet you can always ask the next question as to what caused this dysfunction in the first place.

Val Zavala>> So we're still many, or at least a few, steps away from some kind of treatment at this time?

Mirella Dapretto>> Well, I don't necessarily think that you need to have the answer to that next question in order to implement a treatment. I actually think that these findings do open up some new areas for treatment. Perhaps in light of this finding, perhaps a more targeted intervention could be designed.

Val Zavala>> Well, Dr. Dapretto, thank you so much. Appreciate your work.

Mirella Dapretto>> Thank you.

Val Zavala>> It's not a likely place to get religion, but then believers will tell you that God has been known to show up in some unusual places. Saul Gonzalez takes us to a truck stop in southern California where truckers can fill up on more than hot coffee and gas.

Saul Gonzalez>> Sixty miles east of Los Angeles along a stretch of freeway near old Route 66 sits one of the busiest truck stops in America. For bone-weary drivers, the stop is a welcome if spartan roadside oasis, a place to rest and relax, grab some food and coffee and do the wash. Some drivers, however, pull in here to refuel their religious faith in a truck trailer turned House of God.

Reverend Doug Young>> "And I think as truck drivers, I think we can appreciate the Book of Corinthians."

Saul Gonzalez>> This is the Southern California Chapel of Transport for Christ. It's an interdenominational Evangelical Christian group that ministers to some of America's three million cross-country truckers. The chaplain is Doug Young, a former big rig driver turned ordained minister.

Reverend Doug Young>> We have a mission statement and it's a simple one. To win truck drivers to Jesus Christ and to help them or teach them to grow in their faith. So it's evangelism and discipleship in the world for the truck driver.

Reverend Doug Young>> "I don't know if you've ever gone down the wrong road in your truck. I have. The place I got to go is back the other way. That's what I got to do. I got to make a complete turnaround and go back the right way. Well, that's what the word repent means."

Saul Gonzalez>> Reverend Young's ministry is but one outpost in a growing roadside missionary movement with Transport for Christ and other religious groups operating hundreds of chapels and prayer services at America's more than two thousand truck stops. Reverend Young says it's a movement powered by religious faith within the trucking community.

Reverend Doug Young>> There's a lot of talk among drivers and, if you talk to them long enough, they'll tell you, well, you know, I believe in the man upstairs. He's kind of a macho God. Their God is probably a truck driver.

Saul Gonzalez>> With drivers constantly coming and going, Reverend Young finds new congregants by walking the sprawling truck yard.

Reverend Doug Young>> "Good morning."

>> "Are you with that church thing right over there?"

Reverend Doug Young>> "Yes. We're having services and a wedding this morning."

>> "Okay, yes. I thought about coming to it."

Reverend Doug Young>> "All right. Well, you're welcome to join us."

>> "Okay, well, thank you. I love Jesus too. That's why I love my gospel. I tell the whole U.S. about Jesus."

Reverend Doug Young>> "There you go."

>> "Women truck drivers rule."

Carolyn Young>> "May I have your attention, please? Church services will begin at 11:00."

Saul Gonzalez>> Reverend Young's assisted in his ministry by his wife, Carolyn. When her husband was a trucker, she drove thousands of miles with him. Now she's something of a truck stop den mother.

Carolyn Young>> These guys and gals are warm, they're loving, giving, generous people, and they'd give you the shirt off their backs, but they need to be treated decently. When you give them love, they just love back in return and it's just such fun.

Saul Gonzalez>> Common among drivers is a conservative religious faith married to a fierce independence.

Daniel Ponder>> I like truck driving right now because, in a short sentence, I don't like going to work at the same place doing the same thing with the same people in the same building every day. I don't like it.

Saul Gonzalez>> Daniel Ponder says attending truck stop chapels helps him feel connected to a religious community when he's far from home.

Daniel Ponder>> If you were home every night and you could go to church every Sunday and go to bible study every Sunday at the same church with the same people and do that kind of fellowship, you know, that's what I hunger for.

Saul Gonzalez>> A job spent traveling the highways of America might seem romantic to some outsiders, yet many road-hardened drivers say trucking is a profoundly lonely life, taking them away from loved ones for weeks, even months, at a time.

>> It gets isolated. Nobody to talk to. I mean, it's good to have places where you can go talk.

Saul Gonzalez>> I don't want to get in your private life, but how does that affect things like a relationship between father and son, a relationship between husband and wife?

>> Hard. I missed my kids growing up. Like I say, my oldest one will be nineteen this year and I missed him growing up. I missed my sixteen year old growing up and it makes it difficult. I try to make up for it when I am home, but you just can't make up for the time that you've lost with them.

Saul Gonzalez>> Loneliness can lead to alcoholism, drug abuse and marital infidelity, temptations easily found on the interstates.

Edward Morrow>> I come into these truck stops. Now this one is not as bad as it used to be. This used to be a bad truck stop here. At most truck stops, you can get anything here you want and a lot of things you don't want.

Reverend Doug Young>> "Hi, driver. Come on in. You're just in time."

Saul Gonzalez>> Reverend Young says truck stop chapels are sanctuaries for drivers in strange surroundings.

Reverend Doug Young>> Drivers will come into the chapel and they don't want to talk about trucks and trucking. They know it's a chapel. They walk through the door and they're looking for answers to their loneliness, to their problems, to their situation.

Saul Gonzalez>> America's just-in-time economy creates other problems for drivers. With shippers demanding ever-faster delivery schedules, truckers will routinely spend sixty, seventy, even eighty hours a week behind the wheel. Grueling work schedules are further encouraged by a wage system that pays drivers by the mile and not the hour. The work also claims lives. In the year 2000, the last year when numbers are available, eight hundred fifty-two truckers were killed in accidents, the highest number of fatalities in any industry.

>> We just came from Washington. It was snowing. It was windy, rain, ice on the road. Man, we seen a lot of trucks being jackknifed, people getting killed on the road. That makes you think twice if you really want to be out here. But if you believe in God, God will always be there for you. That's for sure.

Reverend Doug Young>> "Everything we have, everything we need is found in Jesus Christ in our relationship with him."

Saul Gonzalez>> Many truckers say that prayer and faith help them deal with the burdens of the job. For husband and wife drivers, Peggy and Edward Morrow, God is a constant traveling companion.

Peggy Morrow>> You can feel Jesus behind you. That's an uplift right there. You know, just kind of push. You know, like to keep going, keep going, keep going.

Edward Morrow>> One year we came out here and we lost a transmission in Oklahoma. Two thousand miles from home. We were stuck there for six days getting the transmission replaced. When you go, what do you do? Without God, it's just not worth it. I wouldn't be out here on the road without Him.

Reverend Doug Young>> "Have you helped enough people?"

Saul Gonzalez>> Along with saving souls, truck stop chaplains like Doug Young preach a message of dignity to their congregations.

Reverend Doug Young>> I think everybody wants to feel like they're valued, like they're worth something. Everybody needs to have that feeling like they're contributing. They need somebody that will listen and I found that the best gift that I could give them is to listen to them. Let them talk. Let them share. Then I can share some good things with them.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> They have thrilled thousands, helped us win wars and propelled America into the modern aviation age. They are old planes, everything from gliders to bombers, but many of them were ending up on the scrap heap. That's where the Planes of Fame Museum comes in. Vicki Curry went to Chino and talked with General Manager, Mark Foster, about giving these war birds the respect they deserve.

Mark Foster>> Well, the mission of the museum is really to collect and preserve and display these vintage aircraft and what we want to do is really just build a future for the aviation's past and have them here for future generations to enjoy.

Vicki Curry>> And how many planes do you have here?

Mark Foster>> Oh, we have really a hundred sixty overall in the collection at various states of assembly. At the museum in Chino, there's about a hundred of them on display. We fly about three dozen of those on a regular basis.

Vicki Curry>> Really? So most of these fly regularly?

Mark Foster>> Yeah, that's correct.

Vicki Curry>> So you guys restore a lot of these old aircraft?

Mark Foster>> Yes, we do. Over the years, we've restored dozens of these aircraft to flyable condition and, of course, we maintain a lot of the static displays as well, some of the aircraft that aren't really appropriate for flying, but we do keep a lot of them in the air.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> And what goes into restoring a plane like this?

Mark Foster>> Well, the first thing that we do when we have an aircraft is that we decide is it worthy of restoration? Is it something that, you know, there's enough of the plane there, it's historically significant, and we take that plane, bring it in and really start tearing into it to look and see if there's corrosion in the air frame. You know, what's it going to take?

And then, of course, the big part is building the budget to do that. You know, these airplanes take a lot of money to get restored. It's a real -- you know, it takes years worth of sheet metal work and so forth to get an airplane air-worthy again and that's probably the biggest challenge. It's just getting all your ducks in a row to go out and put these things together.

Vicki Curry>> You said the museum is about fifty years old. Aren't some of these planes about the same age?

Mark Foster>> Yeah. In fact, most of the airplanes that we operate are older than fifty years old. You know, they're World War II vintage airplanes and, you know, we're at the sixtieth anniversary now of the end of World War II. So we're operating airplanes that are sixty years old and we think, based on, let's say, the last ten to twenty years' worth of wear and tear on the planes that we currently operate, they will easily be flyable still when they're a hundred years old.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Why is it important to have these planes and especially to have them in flyable condition?

Mark Foster>> Well, you know, you can go to a lot of museums and you can see almost the same airplanes, but they're not flyable. They're parked in a hangar and it's really like going to a zoo and seeing stuffed animals, you know, instead of a real lion or a real tiger, you know, breathing and walking and you hear the sound of it roaring. And that's what we do with these airplanes here. We want people to be able to see them in their natural environment, you know, the sky. So that's why we keep them air-worthy. We fly these airplanes every month for events, so that's something we just don't want people to miss out on. We want them to be able to know what the schedule is and get out here and join the membership and be part of it and really enjoy seeing this stuff fly.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Many of the planes have been featured in films and television and, if you're a member of the museum, you get to fly in them. For more information, you can go to their website at planesoffame.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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