TBC Recommends: We the Unhoused on iHeartRadio

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Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast. The questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephi beast start changing with the Bechdel Cast.

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Speaker 2: Hello, Bechdel Cast listeners, it's us. Oh, I thought you were going to say your name? Hi U.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, we welcome to the Bechdel Cast. We're going to be doing something a little bit different this week, in fact, extremely different, in fact, something we've never done before.

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Speaker 2: Wow, and isn't that thrilling. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Toronte, and this is normally a podcast where we look at your favorite movies from an intersectional feminist lens. It was last week, it will be next week. However, this week we wanted to.

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Speaker 3: Share a little bit of a new podcast, or rather a newly revived podcast that is coming to to iHeartRadio called We the Unhoused. Full disclosure disclosure alert. I am a producer on this show.

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Speaker 2: Amazing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: We want to sort of spread the word about this show as much as possible. It's a show that I first learned about in twenty twenty although it started releasing episodes.

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Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen.

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Speaker 3: It is created and hosted by the incredible THEO Henderson, who is an unhoused activist and artist and reporter who lives in Los Angeles. He began with The Unhoused as a first person account of the unhoused experience in LA from the perspective of the unhoused, and that is what it will continue to be. So obviously, I mean, it's something that we've talked about on the Bechdel Cast in passing because we're a media criticism podcast, but houselessness and the treatment of unhoused people as a monolith is something that's very important to us and something that this show I think uniquely addresses. So we wanted to share a little bit with you and would really encourage you to subscribe to the show and also just follow THEO Henderson's work in general.

00:02:14
Speaker 2: It's invaluable, yeah, and find ways if you're able to support the unhoused community in your area, your unhoused neighbors. In LA there are over seventy five thousand unhoused people living in this city and our local government is doing very little to support them, and so many unhoused people rely on mutual aid from individuals and kind of small groups. So yeah, we encourage people to find ways they can get involved in supporting their unhoused neighbors.

00:03:00
Speaker 3: And also just be armed with knowledge. I mean, I've learned so so much from wee then House over the years about the many complicated issues that face unhouse people today and the many many perspectives that unhause people come from. And so with that, we're going to kick it over to the amazing Theo Henderson. This is the first chunk of the relaunch episode of We the un Housed. We'll be linking to the feed for the series in the description, and if you want to hear the whole thing, which you should, head over to the feed and subscribe. We'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks on Tuesdays, So get your widy on house on Tuesdays, becdelcast on Thursdays.

00:03:48
Speaker 2: Really pace out your week, beautiful.

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Speaker 3: All right, Here is the first episode of the We the on House relaunch with Leo Henderson.

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Speaker 4: It's a simple truth that we can't escape. Houselessness is everywhere. It affects over half a million people in the United States alone. We try to make sense out of this tragedy, but it is a senseless endeavor. What I'm going to ask of you is a very tall order. I want you to take what you heard about houselessness and I want you to forget it. Are you still with me?

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Speaker 3: Good?

00:04:32
Speaker 4: Let us have a conversation. My name is Theo Henderson, hoston, creator of Weeding in House, and I'm going to take you on a journey in this crisis. Being on house is a twenty four hour job, and my lived experience in houslesness is extensive. I was one of over seventy five thousand people experiencing houselessness on a given night in Los Angeles. Now, contrary to ill of people, I did not grow up and say, gee, I can't wait to live on the streets to encounter societal rejection and violence. I don't fit the stereotypes of what news media, movies, and many house people think of an unhoused person. Most on house people don't. Being on house is so often made out to seem like an individual's fault, not the hundreds of thousands of systematic failures that have to take place to put someone in that position in the first place. Needless to say, the un housed are not a monolith. My history as an activist has been difficult but unnecessary journey. I drew inspiration on my role as an activist from this quote from Shirley Chisholm. Activism is my rent for living on this planning, which is kind of ironic. Isn't it paying with activism to fight for dignity and empathy in an indifferent world? However, the bill must be paid to foster a better world than I found it. My family has ties in activism, fighting in the Civil Rights era and the reelection of the first black mayor in Chicago, mayor Washington, where I was born and raised. Living in Chicago taught me a lot, and Los Angeles has been an entirely new kind of teacher after I moved here. As I made Los Angeles my home, the motivation to speak out against housing and justice became too great, particularly when I became unhoused myself in twenty nineteen. The house world was in complete obliviousness cows. People were concerned with the humdrum issues of their lives, that pumpkin spice lattes, and most importantly, making sure that they don't see the unhoused person sitting in their neighborhood. But for the unhoused people, hell was being unleashed with the new ordnance that was voted in called forty one eighteen. A word about forty one eighteen is touted as the new Jim Crow of Los Angeles. As you have known that from the history, majority of unhoused people are black and brown community members. And what this does It makes it illegal for unhoused or people to sit, sleep, and lie within five hundred feet of a postage sign that has been posted all over the city by city council members, neighborhood councils, and business improved District owners. In twenty nineteen, most people never heard of a show that was going to be made by an unhoused person for unhoused people. Sure they hear the occasion of New York Times, NPR or god forbid Fox News broadcast, but even the good coverage was always presented by house people for house people about unhoused people. I tried to make an SOLS symbol with this podcast, hoping to find a knowing year and build alleyship between unhoused people and house people. The disinformation campaign about the Inn House is threatening our will to be compassionate and empathetic to each other. We in House is constantly up against a pernicious belief that houselessness is a moral individual failure. Case in point, I have a friend a friend who is adamant that the unhoused community likes being out there. There's no critical thinking required, just quit uninformed sound bites that is being reinforced by mainstream media. I have always believed that if you can demonize a person, then you can criminalize in I wanted to show how individuals are affected by houselessness and weed in House does that. Took a figurative and literal breath and created this from scratch. Living outside, I had to utilize the twos I had available. I used the cheap phone, I edited and released episodes with the help of a couple of friends. I would speak with people about their stories, how city hall policies affected them, how the police disrespected and abused them, and how the young house were mistreated throughout the pandemic. It was all from the expert opinion by the people who are affected. Initially, I expected the show to hit local needs audiences. Imagine my surprise at people reaching out to me from out of state and out of the country who were displaced and unhoused and wished that Weedyan House was a part of their experience in their place of origin. This podcast became the lightning rod for the world's moral consciousness. All of a sudden, the mainstream media outlets that had been treating the unhoused as a monolift for all those years we're talking about my show, one that finally centered the community they've been misrepresenting for so long. My medium became a diverse attempt to get the message across. The podcast was always just the beginning, as I moved in these circles of people wanting to hear about the unhoused community and their struggles. I was installed as activist and Residents in UCLA in twenty twenty two as a way to awaken the sympathy and empathy that was so sorely lacking in housed and very affluent communities. Then creating a newspaper that highlighted the struggles of unhoused people and being read by unhoused people in twenty twenty two as well, and currently in twenty twenty three, my newsletter, which highlights the struggles that are beleaguering our communities. We in House as a one man production was an important job, but an exhausting and really heavy lived. More polished shows did not have to continue with the obstacles that I endured. But I pressevered and now we're relaunching the show with a little more polished But the mission of the show is still the same. So why would lost the show now? Housesness did not go away when I stopped doing with You in the House, and in September of twenty twenty two, it has continued and now has escalated. We have a lot to talk about, we have a lot to explore, and we have a lot to do to change the narrative about houselessness and how we look at our fellow human beings. If I told you that anyone that's in a medical emergency is in risk of being thrown from their home, would you believe it? If I told you that there are over sixty eight thousand unhoused children and the Los Angeles Unified School District, would you be empathetic or dismissive? If I told you that the people who picked the fruits and vegetables in your refrigerator are un housed even though they are employed. Would you be motivated to speak out against this and justice. This is the truxt of my show, getting you informed so we can do something about it. The show deals with all aspects of houselessness, not just the obvious unhoused encampments. Weed the in House will break down terms such as agency and laguage such as nimbies in what they mean to our community, and in every episode will spotlight unhoused news which is crucial to the unhoused community. My goal is to consolidate all things in house here, educate the community who would be unaware of the nuances of houselessness, and motivate people to do something about this humanitarian crisis. Before we delve deep into this topic, I want you to get to doving my story, my dessentant to houselessness and how I navigated it, through it and out of it. So we're bringing in a good friend of mine at podcaster and her own right be Honey, and that's what's up next on weedia House.

00:13:14
Speaker 2: Once again, that was the first chunk of this episode of We the Unhoused. We encourage you to subscribe to the show listen to it as it comes out.

00:13:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a lot of amazing episodes coming up. The next one is going to be about the Unhoused Day of Remembrance, which happens every year shortly before the Christmas holiday in LA. It's a day where the unhoused community memorializes people in the community that have been lost in the past year. So THEO will be covering not just the event, but the history of the event and speaking with and memorializing those we've lost this year. So a lot to look forward to listen to. We the end House, and thank you for listening to this unconventional episode of the Bechtel Cast.

00:14:06
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, we will be back next week with our regularly scheduled programming, but we appreciate you giving this a listen. And yeah, we'll be back next week for a live episode on It's a Wonderful Life?

00:14:24
Speaker 4: But is it?

00:14:24
Speaker 2: But is it?

00:14:25
Speaker 3: Tune in next week.

00:14:28
Speaker 2: Bye bye bye,