Photo Credit: Star Montana
Photo Credit: Star Montana
Photo Credit: Star Montana
Photo Credit: Star Montana
Photo Credit: Star Montana
Photo Credit: Star Montana
The newly designed Crenshaw Dairy Mart “abolitionist pod," a modular geodesic dome containing an autonomous garden, will permanently reside at the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village.
The “abolitionist pod” was first unveiled at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary in May 2021 as part of WE RISE, an initiative of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health that takes place during May: Mental Health Awareness Month with the purpose of encouraging wellbeing and healing through art, connection, community engagement and creative expression. It includes hundreds of fruit and vegetable plants sourced from local Black farmers and gardeners and is the first prototype for similar pods that the Crenshaw Dairy Mart WILL implement across LA County to combat food insecurity.
The community garden's permanent location at the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village, an interim housing facility which provides 232 beds for people experiencing houselessness, speaks to LA County's commitment of a "Care First, Jail Last" framework―offering services and healing for community members so that jail is the last option rather than the first and only response. The original intent for this property was to serve as a parking structure for a Men’s Central Jail replacement; a plan that was canceled by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors at Supervisor Solis' direction after community organizers and advocates from Justice LA fought to stop the 3.5 Billion dollar jail construction plan.
in the corridor of the abolitionist pod, weekly workshops in four week curriculum sessions, are led by partner organizations.
Workshops engage with topics in and around abolitionist praxis, gardening and food justice, art and healing justice, intersectional feminism, patriarchy and toxic masculinity, job placement, resumé building, and re-entry.
Participating organizations in the inaugural Programming year for the abolitionist pod at the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village include
Dignity and Power Now (DPN) and their respective Health & Wellness team, Huma House, Community Services Unlimited, and Creative Acts.
Heal With Us, a performance work at the Crenshaw Dairy Mart abolitionist pod (prototype), asks the following questions,
What does healing look like?
Feel like?
Sound like?
Smell like?
Gather each other and follow this healing journey towards abolition.
This performance piece was filmed at abolitionist pod (prototype) during ArtRise and WeRise for Mental Health Awareness Month in Los Angeles County at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).
This project was produced by Crenshaw Dairy Mart in partnership with Trap Heals.
Credits
Shot by: Ismael Real Jr. & Gio Solis
Edited by: Gio Solis
Collaborators: Debõrah Hughes and Patrisse Cullors
Performer: Debõrah Hughes
Concept by: Patrisse Cullors
Song: "Walk With Us" by Alexis French
The Crenshaw Dairy Mart is organizing a series of happenings, installations, and commissions for #PrayForLA, an initiative developed to collectively grieve, pray, mourn, and honor those lives affected by the current surge of Covid-19 hospitalizations in Los Angeles. The disproportionate impact that Covid-19 has had on the Black, Brown, and poor communities of South Central Los Angeles has become increasingly evident capitalism has played the largest role in creating a disaster in the health care system. We are in collective grief with the impact this racism and the lack of a healthcare infrastructure has had on communities of color and we have developed this project as a coalition of artists and organizations committed to the transformative capacities of art, healing and prayer organizing in this moment for our community in need.
Pray for LA will emerge through a series of installations across the City of Angels, as healing centers, homes, sanitation stations, and greenhouses in the form of circular domes and pods. The installations will utilize space frames and be modular, to be used for a piloting program to combat houselessness and Covid-19 in Los Angeles. These liminal spaces will imagine entry points into a world lived within an abolitionist mainframe, assisting in our imagination to have seen the Covid response through abolitionists’ eyes. How different would have this pandemic been addressed? They help us ask the questions,
“Where can we go for people to cry and grieve?”
“What do we want our bodies to feel like (again)?”
These Freedom Portals are designed to address exactly how Covid has physically impacted our bodies, to revisit our senses: to smell, to touch, to hear. Most importantly, these portals will ground us in this grief and tragedy, but will also allow us to think through what life will look like after Covid’s aftermath, beyond the fallout, and into a world where abolition is foregrounded, where we lead with love. In addition to these installations, the Crenshaw Dairy Mart will recruit Domingo Project, a 63 square foot 1967 Chevrolet Step-van that was used as a delivery vehicle in the 1960s, founded by Crenshaw Dairy Mart co-founder noé olivas as a rolling social sculpture and mobile site for installation. As a satellite to these mobile stations and pods, the Crenshaw Dairy Mart will concurrently host an exhibition revolving these themes for Pray for LA.
