Among developed Western democracies, the United States stands out for its extremely limited assistance to the poor.
I’d been praying for a way to keep the houses nice, to have fresh sheets on the beds, to be able to afford towels that were of enough quality not to fray, to get shades and drapes that properly fit the windows, and to keep the silverware drawer stocked, since it always seemed like utensils were up and walking away. Out of the blue, I received a phone call from Bed, Bath and Beyond. They said they had some items for A New Way of Life and I should come to the loading dock at the West L.A. store to pick them up. They told me to bring a forty-foot truck.
I didn’t know what this was about, but I went to U-Haul. The forty-footer was the biggest truck they had. It was also a stick shift—I hadn’t driven a stick in twenty years. But, there I was, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles and grinding into gear with forty feet behind me as I headed across town. When I arrived to the loading dock at Bed, Bath and Beyond, they told me to back it in, but after a couple harrowing tries, I got out and turned the driver’s seat over to one of the dock guys. He backed the truck up to the dock, and I waited, unable to see what was being loaded in. I didn’t ask any questions, just let them do their thing, and when they were done, they locked the back door and off I drove, grinding the gears up and down the streets of Beverly Hills.
When I at last returned to the house, I unlocked the back of the truck. Top to bottom, back to front, the entire forty feet was filled. Towels, sheets, bedspreads, pillows, silverware—whatever Bed, Bath and Beyond carried, it was in the truck. Not only was this the answer to my prayer, but God had upped it. As I began unloading I couldn’t believe the luxury. I’d never dreamed such things existed—memory-foam mattress toppers? Triple-milled soaps? Thread counts of 1,000?
It struck me, then, in a way that made me sad: all this was available to some people, but not others. Abruptly, I closed the truck and went into the house. I stewed on this for a while, the notion of so many have-nots and the financial divide of our society. But, there, in the driveway was my chance to make these things available to people who otherwise never could’ve afforded them.
The women with families had first pick of the items. From what remained, I weeded out the baby items and delivered them to the nursery at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. The rest I donated to the Watts senior program, personally delivering a memory-foam mattress topper to an elderly lady I knew had a bad back. A few days later she called me, exclaiming that she hadn’t needed to take her pain medicine since she started sleeping on the mattress pad.
Bed, Bath and Beyond then took their donations to the next level. Twice a week, I set my alarm for 5 a.m., drove to rent the U-Haul, and pulled up to Bed, Bath and Beyond’s loading dock before they opened for business. I could hardly give out the items as fast as they were coming in. I began storing things in the garage, then the backyard, and when I ran out of space, I rented a storage unit. But both the storage fees and truck rental were getting too expensive, so my brother Marvin sold me a raggedy Chevy pickup for $200. It held less than the U-Haul, but would have to do. The Bed, Bath and Beyond staff loaded up that pickup with everything it could hold, tying it all down. Through Beverly Hills I drove with that beat-up pickup filled with lamps and pots and pans and furniture tied to it, looking like the real Beverly Hillbilly!
When the store called with the news that their Torrance location also had pick-ups for us, I knew it was time to formalize a way of storing and distributing the items. I envisioned a place where people moving from homelessness into permanency could pick out essentials for a new home. I contacted other nonprofits to join with me in creating a Household Goods Distribution Center. With donor support, we rented a warehouse in South L.A. People with an agency referral and proof of a new housing lease were invited to “shop” for as long as they wanted, and leave with whatever they needed.
Folks were shocked when we told them they could get a vacuum cleaner and a comforter and pillows and a blender. Many people broke down in tears right there in the aisles of the distribution center. Every day might as well have been Oprah’s Favorite Things. Bursting with gratitude, people thanked us hundreds of times.
One of A New Way of Life’s first residents, Linda Washington, whom I’d first met in the lobby of CLARE, began volunteering at the distribution center. Linda had been on her own and doing well, working as a nurse’s aide, and she was eager to give back. “This place is my little piece of sanity,” she told me.
But soon, it seemed Linda’s tune had changed. “This place is getting so demanding,” she said. And she was right. Around five hundred formerly homeless people were visiting the center annually to help furnish a new residence. But Linda hadn’t meant this as a complaint, and the next thing I knew, she quit nursing and came to work full time at the distribution center. “It’s my baby,” she said proudly.
Year after year, Bed, Bath and Beyond continued providing twice-weekly truckloads. Other stores, including the Avenue, donated clothes that had been on clearance or were returned. A drugstore distributor donated diapers, tissues, soap, and laundry detergent. When President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, welfare-to-work programs enabled us to hire four employees to help Linda.
One day, I stopped by the center and saw a black man in his sixties assembling a cabinet. He looked familiar. As I moved closer, I was certain I recognized him.
“Senator?” I said. He looked up. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
Senator Rod Wright gave me what I’d come to learn was his ever-present smile. He said, “I’m doing community service.”
Rod had been a California politician for nearly two decades, serving in the state assembly until he faced term limits and was then elected to the state senate. He represented my district, and I’d followed him because he made good policy. He advocated for prison and jail reform and argued that releasing elderly or ill inmates into treatment centers or house arrest would save money and have no negative impact on public safety. He advocated against incarceration for parole violations that didn’t include new crimes, and he sought to eliminate the duplicate and costly medical exams administered for no justifiable reason every time an inmate was relocated. “It would be cheaper to send someone to stay at the Ritz Carlton,” Senator Wright told the press. “But we beat our chest and say we’re protecting the public.”
But, in 2014, the senator was charged with allegations of not residing in the working-class Inglewood district he represented. Through he maintained his innocence, he was convicted.
“Who had it in for you?” I asked.
He didn’t so much as flinch at my directness. “Do you know about the Book of Esther?” he said, gently touching my arm. “It’s about the power of persuasion. I’ve been in public service since college. But I also had a lucrative consulting business for campaigns and regulations, and I’ve been in real estate since college, too. I own four houses. The house in Inglewood they claimed wasn’t my domicile, I’ve owned and paid taxes on that house for nearly forty years. But they claimed I wasn’t living there enough. Most of the time I was living in Sacramento being a state senator.” Rod shook his head. “The way they came after me—they could take out half the legislature.” He described scenarios of senators whose children go to school in Sacramento, because that’s where Mom or Dad is five days a week. “You can’t tell me they disrupt their children’s lives every single weekend by putting the family on an airplane just to go spend the night in their district. There are so many examples like this. But it didn’t matter, because, at trial, the D.A. showed pictures of my Maserati and showed my charge account at Neiman Marcus.” Rod flashed his disarming smile. “What can I say? I like nice things. I worked hard and did well, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a longtime resident of Inglewood.”
He was sentenced to ninety days in jail, three years of probation, and fifteen hundred hours of community service, and he was banned from holding public office. But when he turned himself in to L.A. County jail to begin his sentence, he never saw a jail cell. Just like 13,500 low-level offenders each month in California, he was released because of overcrowding—one of the major issues he’d been working to reform when he’d been in office.
To fulfill his community service hours Rod visited a placement agency, though it was for the opposite reason that most people of means pay an agency to secure a certain placement. He didn’t want a cushy assignment behind a desk in a county or state agency. “When I saw Watts on the list,” he explained, “that’s where I wanted to be. To me, this is home. I’ve represented this area in some way for forty years.”
As Rod continued to work in the distribution center, I came to know him as a man of exquisite taste and knowledge, with a photographic memory and a connection to everything and everybody. And yet he had no airs; he was eager to roll up his sleeves—custom-tailored ones, no less.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Rod’s mother had worked in the post office until the day she died. His father was a photographer for the coroner’s office and, in the golden age of Hollywood, had photographed the murder scene of Lana Turner’s abusive boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato; the mysterious death of the original Superman, George Reeves; and the autopsy of Marilyn Monroe. Rod’s dad developed the film in a makeshift darkroom in the family’s garage. “I was too young to recognize the nostalgic value,” Rod said. “We had the negatives of Marilyn Monroe’s autopsy in the house, and I didn’t think to save them!” When Rod was eleven years old, his father quit his job at the coroner’s and bought a gas station. This was Rod’s introduction to owning your livelihood. Rod’s political aspirations were also evident early on: he was elected senior class president in high school and then study body president of his college, having earned an athletic scholarship for track to Pepperdine University. Majoring in city planning and urban studies, he graduated in three years.
“An Afro-centric movement was taking place in Los Angeles politics then,” Rod described. “And I wanted to be a part of it.” He went to work for the mayoral campaign of Tom Bradley, who was the son of sharecroppers and grandson of slaves. Bradley became the first black mayor of a major American city in which the majority of voters were white, and he went on to serve five consecutive terms. Rod continued to work on successful campaigns for City Councilman Bob Farrell and for Maxine Waters’s run for state assembly. And then he pursued office himself.
One day I asked Rod if he was burdened with anger about being banned from political office. “If you allow yourself to get caught up in what you were, or what you think you were, it would drive you straight crazy,” Rod replied. “I’ve left the senate, but more importantly, I’m a cancer survivor. I had prostate cancer in 1998 and, through something like that, you realize a lot of what you think is important, ain’t.”
I eventually moved Rod from the distribution center to help out in the office. When I mentioned that I was trying to get silent auction items for our annual gala, Rod came in the next day with a signed photograph of Venus and Serena Williams. “It was on my wall in Sacramento,” he said, proud to make the donation.
After Rod completed his community service hours, he continued showing up at A New Way of Life—every single day. Just like he was reporting for a job. By this point we had a bustling office, and Rod staked out a desk for himself. He printed business cards and hung framed photographs of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, along with photos of his granddaughters, and a collage from his days in the legislature. A year went by, and there wasn’t a day that Rod didn’t come in. He was there for good.