TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121790/1217170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.4 KB | 169 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 14

New York City

A Beacon On Lonely Street


Planned Parenthood's Street Beat vans bring health care and a
ray of hope to the down-and-out kids of the Bronx

By DANIEL S. LEVY


    Alice is a prostitute. She has worked the South Bronx for
a year, servicing the men in the Porsches and Volkswagens that
cruise the empty streets after dark. Scabs cover her arms from
shooting heroin; her skin is pale, her body thin, her eyes
puffy and tired looking, though she is only 18. Alice spends
hundreds of dollars a day on her drug habit. "I shoot up as
often as I can," she says, her legs twitching from the effect
of the narcotic. "Practically everything I make I spend on
drugs." She has no home and sleeps in other people's
apartments. "This isn't the life I want to lead. I have no
friends. I have no family. I have nothing."

    There are hundreds of teenagers like Alice in the South
Bronx, a crumbling stretch of New York City with one of the
country's lowest per capita incomes. They stake out street
corners and empty parks. They live in abandoned buildings,
discarded cars, rusting boilers and cardboard boxes. Most come
from broken homes with abusive parents. Nearly all are addicts,
have severe medical problems and are regularly beaten by their
customers. Some are killed. In order to aid these kids, Planned
Parenthood of New York founded Project Street Beat, a
neighborhood organization that trolls the Bronx, visiting the
places where teenage prostitutes gather. It offers free medical
treatment and counseling, hands out sandwiches, clean clothes,
"bleach kits" for sterilizing needles, and "dignity packs":
Ziploc toilet kits containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb,
soap, a towelette, condoms, tampons and sanitary napkins.
Sometimes the workers drive the kids to a local McDonald's for
a snack and a chance to talk.

    Street Beat sees about 50 people each night. Since the
program started in 1988, workers have made 7,000 face-to-face
contacts with more than 1,000 teenagers. They have distributed
100,000 condoms along with thousands of dignity packs. "Planned
Parenthood realized there was a population out there of
homeless, runaway, throwaway youths who are totally forgotten,"
says Liz Russo, 28, Street Beat program director. "A lot of
them haven't chosen to be there, and they are entitled to a
whole range of services that they are not aware of. It's
important that they get these services."

    Street Beat ministers to the most vulnerable in an area
where the high school dropout rate approaches 30% and where 1
out of every 43 babies is born with the AIDS virus. It focuses
on children and young adults 13 to 25, but will assist anyone
who requests help. "When you are on the streets, you can't be
selective," says Russo. "You have to service everyone out there
or else they will isolate you." Eighty-five percent of Street
Beat's clients are female; some have up to 20 clients a night.
"The girls out here work; they buy drugs; they sleep; they are
like robots," says Mary, 31, a cherub-faced woman who walks the
streets in order to support her own and her mother's crack
habit. Most work for very little money. "Sometimes they go for
a trick for $2 for a hit of crack because they are hurting,"
says Daniel Zayas, 32, Street Beat field supervisor. And then
there are the constant dangers. So far 17 of Street Beat's
clients have been killed by psychotics or gangs or in ritual
murders. "They take murder for granted," says Zayas. "It is
part of life on the street. A week out there and you are
crazy."

    Street Beat workers travel around in a minivan and a
31-ft.-long recreational vehicle, a wheeled
medical-office-cum-rest-area equipped with an examination room,
bathroom, shower and kitchen. The unit handles everything from
minor scrapes and pregnancy screening to gunshot wounds.
Forty-five percent of those tested for the AIDS virus are
positive. "These kids operate outside the law and the
health-care and social systems to such a degree that when they
get on this van, they have no ID, no address, no nothing," says
Ellen Flynn, 44, Street Beat's nurse practitioner. "We try to
handle everything on their first visit because you don't know
when you will see them again or if you will see them again."

    Help goes beyond the roadside visits. Staff members
encourage, even beg their clients to come in for counseling and
proper medical treatment. They try to get them IDs, welfare,
Medicaid, food stamps, equivalency diplomas and jobs, and
arrange for their entry into shelters and drug-detoxification
programs. "No one has talked to them about AIDS or hygiene,"
says Russo. "It is not that they are not educable. It is just
that no one gives a damn." Because of Street Beat's efforts, a
number of the youngsters are reconciled with their families,
back in school or holding jobs.

    Those who are still on the streets receive a basic level of
support they once lacked. The workers are hosts of a Friday
lunch program in their office. There they serve pizza and soft
drinks, let the kids talk about their lives, and screen Bambi
or the latest Schwarzenegger video on the office VCR. To
promote AIDS prevention, they distribute Knightvision, a
multicolor, action-packed comic book that tells the story of
teenagers who face problems similar to those dealt with by the
readers. There are also well-illustrated directions on cleaning
hypodermic needles and using contraceptives.

    When Street Beat first set up shop, the staff approached the
local police stations and hospitals to announce their presence
and to seek advice and assistance. Out on the street there was
initial tension with the pimps, who felt threatened by any aid
to their workers. But that quickly changed. "We have made the
point that we are looking out for their kids," says Russo. "We
are keeping their stable clean."

    Street Beat's mobile units operate five nights a week. On
this evening the medical van pulls up to a quiet corner below
a harsh streetlight that illuminates closed-up warehouses and
auto-body shops. The pavement glistens with water from fire
hydrants, which addicts tap to clean their needles. One woman
paces the sidewalk with her skirt pulled above her waist, and
another crouches on the ground injecting heroin into her arm.
Lines of cars circle the block. Girls, men and older couples
flock toward the van.

    Zayas leans out the window. "Hello, and how are you?" he
says to one woman in a sheer blouse. He asks her for her first
name, jots it down on his clipboard and hands her a number of
alcohol packs so she can disinfect her skin before she shoots
up, along with some condoms. "Be careful and make sure you use
them, for everything," he warns. Condoms are the most popular
giveaway, and many claim they always use them. Says Karen, 28,
a spunky black woman with cropped hair, body-hugging white
shorts and a loose-fitting top: "I got a bag full of rubbers
and don't even have room for my makeup." Others are not so
discriminating. Says Gloria, 19: "Sometimes business is so slow
out there that when a person doesn't want to use a condom, I
don't care."

    A few board the van to see Flynn, eat one of the free
sandwiches or look through the clothes bag. A young girl named
Susan in a tight leopard-pattern top anxiously awaits the
result of her test for the AIDS virus. "You are lucky this
time," Zayas says as he puts his arm around her and walks her
back across the street. "But you have to keep using condoms."

    Mary is not so fortunate. She is one of three people that
night who learn they have tested positive. She starts crying
as Russo tries to comfort her. "You guys always listen," Mary
sobs. "You always find the time to let us know you care." They
counsel her for about 15 minutes and then drive the van to a
McDonald's for a hamburger and a Coke. Afterward they have no
choice but to drop her off on the street, where she heads back
to work.

    The most important service that Street Beat offers is
friendly and helpful contact beyond the hard streets of the
Bronx. "We provide some dignity and respect," says Zayas. "It
is sometimes all they get." Alice finishes eating her
cheese-and-bologna sandwich and gets ready to head back
outside. "Street Beat is good," she says. "No one else helps.
If they didn't help, these kids would be dead."