Following a press conference held Jan. 11 in conjunction with National Poverty in America Awareness Month 2005, a small group of religion writers was taken on a "poverty tour" of some of L.A.'s most down-and-out blighted neighborhoods.

We saw up close what most Angelenos, and Americans, try so hard today to avoid --- the faces of the poor. We heard firsthand the stories of men, women and families struggling desperately to establish an economic toehold in our affluent society. We witnessed the appalling living and working conditions California's newest immigrants encounter every day.

But we also observed more than a glimmer of hope on our five-hour private bus tour. Each stop also highlighted a grassroots effort supported by grants from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, sponsor of the tour, to empower the poor themselves to break out of their cycles of poverty, which currently bind nearly 36 million individuals in the world's wealthiest nation.

First stop on the afternoon inner-city trip was at the Dolores Vazquez Family Childcare Home, a few blocks from the sprawling University of Southern California campus. Half a dozen pre-school boys and girls were asleep on colorful cloth mats in the converted living room. Older children were taking their naps in other rooms. Plastic toys and storybooks laid scattered about.

In a long back room, Vazquez, a stocky, middle-aged woman, told us that she had worked in childcare for two decades and operated her own business for 10 years. Fourteen children up to 12 years old were currently enrolled at her center, which was open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Ten of those 14 pre-schoolers were subsidized by state money.

Standing beside a chest-high poster board listing "Proposed Budget Cuts to Subsidized Childcare," Vazquez lamented Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed $119.5 million decrease in funding her profession.

"The people here have very low salaries," she said in Spanish, which was translated into English by a volunteer from ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)'s California Childcare Providers for Action project. "But there are some programs that subsidize childcare. So they can go to work and leave their children in a place like mine. The problem is our governor is cutting the budget, and he is cutting big money from childcare.

"A lot of children potentially can lose quality childcare," she pointed out. "So they will have to go to a neighbor or a friend of a friend, or we do not know where they are going to end up or what they will be doing all day. Here there are activities. With neighbors and friends, they will be watching TV."

SRO family

Our next destination was 463 S. Bixel Street, a few blocks west of the Harbor Freeway near downtown Los Angeles. From the outside, the two-story, off-white stucco apartment building with brick tile trim didn't look much different from apartments in much more upscale sections of Los Angeles. But when Oscar A. Santos led us inside his small SRO (Single Room Occupancy) upstairs apartment, where he and his wife and their 11-month-old daughter, Genesis, lived, one's impression quickly changed.

Their bed, on which the baby played, took up most of the single room. A closet-sized space served as a kitchen, with a steel sink, refrigerator and two-burner gas hot plate somehow wedged in there. The bathroom, on the opposite side of the room, had standing water on the floor. The apartment would have been too small for a single person, never mind a growing family of three.

Santos said his bathroom --- and the whole apartment --- was much worse before ACORN got involved. In fact, only four bathrooms in the building's 37 apartments worked at all. He showed us old photos of gaping holes in walls, exposed pipes and rotting wood doorways.

"We needed a new bathroom, but the owner said no way," the 45-year-old unemployed furniture worker reported. "If you think the apartment looks bad now, it was in terrible shape before ACORN started to help us tenants organize to fight the landlord."

After a break for a late lunch, we arrived at Dolores Mission before three o'clock. The social justice-minded parish in Boyle Heights has been a first stop for Mexican, as well as South and Central American, immigrants since 1945. Today, its Proyecto Pastoral non-profit organization provides training, education and social services to families and individuals. Proyecto coordinates five community-based programs, including a women's cooperative, homeless project and alternative school.

But we were here to see the "Safe Passage" campaign, which began in 1999 to make sure children walking to and from school arrived safely in a community divided by numerous gangs' turf. And it was easy to spot the volunteers in their bright green T-shirts and dark green windbreakers on almost every corner in sight. In fact, more than 50 persons, mostly women, have been trained and are currently serving in the program, which monitors some 10 different locales over two square miles.

"We started this program because it was dangerous here," said Claudia Martiņon, director of Proyecto Pastoral's Comunidad En Movimiento, which initiated Safe Passage. "The kids were coming from school and the gang members tried to jump them. The parents were very concerned and wanted to get involved. So they asked for this program. We are working together with the police, too. We all try to work for the children in this community."

Our final bus stop was the Garment Worker Center at 12th and Los Angeles Streets, south of downtown. Lupe Hernandez, who labored in the garment district for a dozen years, told us about her 12- to 14-hour days, with few meal or bathroom breaks, working on a dangerous cloth-cutting machine where accidents happened frequently.

When her sister asked her boss for a penny raise on pieces of material she was sewing together, he literally threw her out on the street, where she had a near-fatal diabetic reaction. The young Hispanic woman decided right then and there that she wasn't going to let herself, or any member of her family, put up with such deplorable job conditions any longer.

She sought out the GWC, whose mission is to empower garment workers to advocate for their rights as employees, immigrants and women. It provides workers like Hernandez --- whose highest garment worker salary was $3.28 an hour --- with the tools to assert their rights to minimum wage and overtime, to health and safety and to a workplace free of discrimination.

"Unions are giving up on these workers," Kimi Lee, GWC's director, told us. "So the Garment Worker Center is doing what unions are supposed to be doing."

Poverty rate rises

The Los Angeles poverty tour started and ended at Mercado La Paloma near Grand Ave. and 37th Street, a community development project of Esperanza Community Housing Corporation. The former 34,000-square-foot warehouse now houses ethnic restaurants, folk art shops and nine nonprofit agencies.

At the morning press conference, Father Robert J. Vitillo, executive director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, pointed out that the poverty rate in the United States increased from 12.1 percent in 2002 to 12.5 percent in 2003. The bleak result was that 1.3 million more Americans fell into poverty, bringing the total to nearly 36 million individuals.

He also pointed out that in Los Angeles County the income spread between wealthy families and other Angelenos has widened. While 10.7 percent of children in Los Angeles County were poor in 1970, by 2000 the rate had shot up to 23 percent. Nearly 45 percent of all children in Los Angeles lived in high poverty neighborhoods.

"For the past several years, since September 11, 2001, the citizens of this country have been concerned about threats to our security and safety that come from outside our borders," Father Vitillo said. "Perhaps we have not sufficiently taken into account, however, an internal threat posed to ever-increasing numbers of those living in our country --- that is, the damage wrought by poverty to individuals, families, communities and society-at-large."

In a statement read by Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, Cardinal Roger Mahony agreed that the gap between rich and poor Angelenos continued to widen --- especially among immigrants. He commended the Catholic Campaign for Human Development for its "tireless efforts" to fulfill the dual mandate the fledgling organization received 35 years ago from bishops to raise awareness about poverty in the United States and to support creative solutions to solve the national tragedy.

The cardinal reported that groups funded by CCHD in Southern California had worked for more affordable housing, helped many families finally earn a living wage and established safe and affordable daycare for children. He called these social justice efforts "models of grassroots organizing" that inspire other low-income communities.

"Poverty is not a condition people either desire or bring upon themselves," Cardinal Mahony stressed. "More often than not, it is a cruel, self-perpetuating cycle that steals hope from the lives of children and families while diminishing our society as a whole. Despite today's stark reminder that the state of poverty continues to grow, we can draw hope from the work of poor and low-income people across the country who are breaking the cycle of poverty for this generation and those to come."

Contributing writer Bob Dellinger has written about social justice issues for The Tidings and other religious publications since 1986.