Road Trip USA – Documenting Stories of the Homeless
Mark Horvath, an activist who has spent more than a decade advocating on behalf of the homeless, is featured in a story by Jessica Garrison in yesterday’s LA Times. Through his compelling videos, “…Horvath lets homeless people talk – raw and unscripted – about their panhandling, lost children, drug additions, sorrows and hopes. He punctuates their words with plenty of his own.”
By stopping to record interviews with folks that most of us would encounter (if at all) only fleetingly or from a distance, Horvath humanizes people who live on the streets and in tent cities – people not so different from us and our more familiar world.
Horvath embarked on Road Trip USA last week – to record video stories in 24 cities across the county – from the West Coast to the East Coast and back again. His return to LA is scheduled for October 7.
The Times story (online) links to Horvath’s InvisiblePeople.tv blog and recounts Horvath’s experience with homelessness in Hollywood a decade and a half ago. He had worked in the television industry before his descent into alcoholism. The article credits the Dream Center with helping him overcome his dependency, after which he began helping churches boost their media presence.
The Times article illuminates Horvath’s commitment, in spite of threatening encounters, to document homelessness; it doesn’t mention his personal blog, where he talks a bit about his faith.
In addition to the Dream Center (which I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous posts) the Times article mentions a couple of other local nonprofits combating homelessness: PATH Achieve of Glendale and the Union Rescue Mission.
