Preserving the Los Angeles Downtown Women's Center: Cast Your Vote

Help a local historic institution out! The Los Angeles Downtown Women’s Center (DWC) is a haven for thousands of women living without a home across Los Angeles and is the only organization in Los Angeles focused exclusively on serving and empowering women experiencing homelessness and formerly homeless women.

The DWC is in the running for this year's “Partners in Preservation,” an effort by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to preserve historic places. In the running 20 local historical sites from across the country, all with significant ties to Women’s History. Now those sites are rallying their communities to compete for a slice of $2 million in preservation grant money.

Cast your vote here.

Here's more on what the DWC is up to:

In 1978, DWC founder Jill Halverson used her savings to open Los Angeles’ first drop-in day center for homeless women. In the 1980s, DWC’s services grew to offer the first permanent supportive housing program for women. In 2010, and with a female architect at the lead, DWC completed a $35 million capital campaign to revitalize a historic building constructed by female developer Florence Casler in 1927. 

Funding will cover the re-design of current external signage, as well as support the revitalization of DWC’s external facade. As an advocate for historic preservation and a firm believer in managing rather than preventing change, DWC demonstrates how historic buildings can continue to serve as beacons of hope for the community.

This Saturday, the Downtown Women’s Center will hold a "Partners in Preservation Open House Event" to showcase more of their work, and why preservation is so important. Check it out:

Saturday, October 19, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
442 South San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013

Scenes From The Women's March 2018 In Downtown Los Angeles

We had to miss last year's Women's March, as I was flying to the Sundance Film Festival that day. With no Sundance for me this year, we weren't going to miss it again. Maria, the Blogger Kid 2.0 and I all donned our "Feminist" t-shirts (thanks to "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"), the kid made a sign ("Women and Immigrants Make America Great"), and we took the Metro Gold Line from Highland Park to Little Tokyo.

And what we saw was as inspiring as we hoped. Women of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. Amazing young girls marching together, chanting. Men and boys showing their support. People of all walks of life marching together. Some highlights:

These girls may have been our favorite of the entire march.

"Worst 'Black Mirror' ever."

Good use of cheetos.

More amazing young women.

Loved seeing this female cop talking to these young girls about using their voices.

Another great scene: Women with "Love Trumps Hate" signs surround a few awful hatemongers in the crowd.

Ten more months. Ten more months.

Deceptive Clinics

Fishbowl LA's Tina Dupuy goes undercover at one of those misleading "pregnancy centers" -- the ones that aren't actually clinics at all, but religious operations -- and writes about it here for the Pasadena Weekly.

Writing of her experience at Glendale's Avenues Pregnancy Clinic:

I just spent nearly two hours of my time to get an admittedly unreliable pregnancy test, erroneous medical information and find out more than I ever wanted to know about the life of a sexless 35-year-old bass player. This is a licensed medical clinic.