After spending a whirlwind week in Los Angeles , visiting a number of organizations that performed work within the city helping the most sidelined and minority populations . I had come into Los Angeles with my own biases and reservations about truly understanding and immersively experience the conflict of homelssness and poverty that was rampant throughout the city. But thats not all I saw, there was more, there was the glamour and the glitz that was the city which was the center of the Media movement of the Western hemisphere if not the entire world. And that was one of my biggest take aways, how this city of wealth and renown had many a skeleton in their closet, which included a population of homeless that were tried to be hidden away or the mentally handicapped who are thrown to the wayside because they do not fit into the cookie cutter ideal of mainstream society.
My week spent in LA, was more than just the class and the NGO’s we visited, for me it was a deeper experience in coming to terms with where I come from and what I look like and my own reservations towards issues like poverty, homelessness and gentrification.Before I left to L.A, I had very little regard or even empathy towards the homeless situation and population in America, I thought, coming from India where I had seen poverty on a much more extreme level that these populations could not compare, and moreover I could not recognize how badly the poverty and homelessness affected these individuals. I particularly had issues with the welfare system heling these individuals at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and how this was helping their situation rather than encouraging more of the same. After spending a week in Los Angeles, I could not be more wrong about the situation of poverty and the conflict of homelessness in the area. I did not understand the differences between the poverty in my own home country of India and in the United States until I spent extended time within the area. 
The idea that many of these individuals in the L.A area are veterans who served their country and now suffering from PTSD are forgotten and layed to waste on the curb, or the lack of help given to the mentally disabled who because of how expensive the medication they require and the services they need are, turn to recreational and harder drugs to ease their pains. These are the realities of those who live on the streets of L.A that no documentary or film or article can do justice to, these are the realities I only began to understand once it was time to leave. My personal understanding and recognition of the race dynamics in play in the Los Angeles area was one I hadnt felt almost anywhere else let alone where I am from, here it was like the community of persons of colour were one large family. While visiting the many NGO’s and other areas of L.A where we were observing these very conflicts of homelessness and poverty, I noticed how many of the times when a person of colour was giving us a presentation, or helping us understand the dynamics at play in that particular area or even just giving us a history of the art movement in L.A, I was made the focal point of many of these conversations. I believe this was because I was one of two persons of colour in our group, the other being our Professor. The idea that I was made more of a focal point of conversation just because of the colour of my skin told me a story of how far the racial minorities have been pushed out and how much they are at ease only with other people of colour.
Los Angeles, opened my eyes not only to the larger issues of gentrification, homelessness and poverty within the American setting but also within myself the idea and understanding of what race means. We were very fortunate to visit L.A at a time this country is going through much change on the racial and poverty fronts and on amny a level watching the populations of L.A come out and fight for what they deserve. In a time when coloured persons are being killed by law enforcement, and the rich poor divide only gets deeper, L.A stands out as maybe a haven where the people there have had enough, now we need to join this crusade, all of us, so that true change can be achieved.
