Talk:Dream Center

Located in the heart of the inner city

I edited this line (lifted from the Dream Center's promotional copy) to read "Based out of." It is disingenuous to still call the now gentrified Echo Park of 2015 the heart of the inner city. A quote from the current version of the Wikipedia entry for Inner City reads "[O]ften used as a euphemism for lower-income residential districts in the city centre and nearby areas, with the additional connotation of impoverished black and/or Hispanic neighborhoods." That phrase may or not have fit the area in 1993, but the 'heart' of ethnic ghettoized poverty in Los Angeles today isn't Echo Park. --David Hays, March 7th 2015

Hurricane Katrina & NPOV

Hmmm, not one word about the center's efforts in Hurricane Katrina relief. Could that be because of the allegations of proselytization and abuse alleged here? I smell a whitewash on this article, especially given the PR tone. -- SwissCelt 13:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see the PR tone of the article. Everything in the article is factual. The only line that I feel could be deemed PR-ish is the "miracles" line. If the neutrality of the article is in question due to the Katrina relief allegations, they should be added to the article.

One example of the article's PR tone (and the one which caused me to click through to the talk page) is the statement that the Dream Center "epitomizes the quote 'find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it.'" I would not consider it POV to say, for example, that the DC claims to epitomize that quote, or that a particular person said that the DC epitomizes that quote, with a footnote properly sourcing the statement. But just a flat statement that the DC does epitomize that quote seems POV to me because it's making a value judgment about the DC's work that Wikipedia should not be making. - Mark Dixon (talk) 15:44, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

As a side note, I spent a week at the Dream Center earlier this summer. A good friend of mine has worked at the Dream Center for close to a year now. Mcbutterbuns 05:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

And this side note would reveal to me your POV concerning this article. That's unavoidable; in fact, it's my own POV which prevents me from adequately and even-handedly presenting the Katrina relief allegations. I'm hoping, though, that by bringing these allegations to light, they can be adequately investigated and-- if necessary-- NPOV can be achieved by including in the article a statement addressing this. While I don't want this article to whitewash the subject in question, neither do I want to unfairly tarnish it. -- SwissCelt 14:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

The term "front group", in the href, seems overly dramatic to me. That an organization that serves the poor and the homeless is associated with a so-called Christian organization should not be a complete surprise to anyone. A "front" group means, to me, a "false-front" group; as in "façade".

Proselytizating in New Orleans does not require "whitwashing", IMHO. There would have to be another element added to it of some sort. The "alleged abuse" would be the item needing white washing. The charge in the LA Times article says that

1)people who came to LA from New Orleans were promised jobs, but were not given any, and

2)people had to accept drug testing to be allowed residence.

These do not smack of "scandal" to me.

3)Involuntary imprisonment, of course, would be. Martin | talk • contribs 02:41, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Source for statistics on falling crime rate?

If the statement about crime in the surrounding neighborhood is a quotation (it's currently in double quotes) then it needs to be attributed to the person who said it, and sourced. If it is not a quotation, then the double quotes should be removed and at least the statistics need to be sourced. Are those from an article in the Los Angeles Times, for example, or are they the DC's own statistics? - Mark Dixon (talk) 15:44, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The Dream Center is located in the Silver Lake neighborhood which during the time period mentioned went through considerable gentrification. That has more to do with reductions in crime than the establishment of the Dream Center, no? 69.233.139.178 (talk) 03:02, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I second that, there are no stats here at all. Even if it is coming from the LA Times Mapping project it needs to say so. 76.79.114.66 (talk) 16:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)