Friday, July 6, 2018 at 7pm – Skid Row Marathon
Location: Skid Row History Museum and Archive, 250 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Skid Row Marathon, directed by Mark Hayes, produced by Gabriele Hayes
Runtime: 85 minutes
Q&A with Judge Craig Mitchell, who started the Skid Row running club
Synopsis: When a criminal court judge starts a running club on LA’s Skid Row, lives begin to change. SKID ROW MARATHON follows four runners as they rise from the mean streets of LA to run marathons around the world, fighting the pull of homelessness and addiction at every turn. Their story is one of hope, friendship, and dignity.
About Judge Craig Mitchell: After teaching high school in South Central LA for more than 17 years, Craig Mitchell decided to go to law school and went to work as a prosecutor in 1994 in the L.A. District Attorney’s office. He became a judge in 2005. One of the defendants whom Judge Mitchell sentenced to prison approached him after he was released. He asked the Judge to visit him at the Midnight Mission. An avid marathon runner himself, Judge Mitchell started a running club in 2012, inviting Mission residents to run with him through skid row a few times a week. If the members stay clean and come to the regular training runs, Judge Mitchell takes them to an international marathon. Last March 40 Skid Row Runners completed the Jerusalem Marathon.
Movie Nights at the Museum Free movie screenings, free popcorn, free coffee & free conversation. Every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month, we screen movies about issues that are important to our Skid Row and downtown community at the #skidrowmuseum.
About Los Angeles Poverty Department
Founded in 1985, Los Angeles Poverty Department was the first ongoing arts initiative on Skid Row. LAPD creates performances and multi-disciplinary artworks that connect the experience of people living in poverty to the social forces that shape their lives and communities. LAPD’s works express the realities, hopes, dreams and rights of people who live and work in L.A.’s Skid Row. LAPD has created projects with communities throughout the US and in The Netherlands, France, Belgium and Bolivia.
About Skid Row History Museum and Archive
The Skid Row History Museum & Archive is an exhibition /performing arts space curated by LAPD. It brings forward the distinctive artistic and historical consciousness of Skid Row and functions as a means for exploring the mechanics of displacement in an age of immense income inequality, by mining a neighborhood’s activist history and amplifying effective community strategies.
