The Brown Bag Lady: Jacqueline Norvell
Images by Andrew Peters
The craziness all the world over is dizzying. It is hard to recognize ways to be a positive and productive force.
A good place to start is in your own backyard. That is what Jacqueline Norvell decided to do back in 2012 and has stuck to her mission of feeding the homeless relentlessly. Since it’s inception ten years ago, you can find Jackie, the Brown Bag Lady, in Skid Row hustling to get hundreds of meals out to the homeless on the first Sunday of every month.
She’s an absolute spitfire bubbling with personality, passion and charisma.
We caught up with her about the origins of her mission with Brown Bag Lady, how you can get involved or how you can go about doing your own thing to help out those in need and make this world a better place.
How are ya?
All is well man, stay workin at the law firm and doing Brown Bag Lady amongst all the other things.
So Brown Bag Lady isn’t your full time gig?
No. Hopefully it will be in the next couple of years cause I can’t really sustain both. It’s too much, it’s just too much. But right now the law firm pays my bills and feeds me and I feed my passion on the weekends.
How did you start doing Brown Bag Lady?
Well, the first time that I was shocked by everything was when I went down to Skid Row in 2012, actually by accident when the car went east instead of west. I saw what was going on, it was a Friday night and I thought about it all weekend. I went back to the office and was like, do you guys know what’s going on downtown on Skid Row. They’d heard it was bad but I was like, oh my god. There were a lot of elderly people trying to keep their hands warm over open flames. It was so sad and that image really bothered me for weeks. I decided I would make some meals for Christmas.
The first time I went down we were in my 2005 Nissan Pathfinder and we just loaded a bunch of food in the back. I felt so good about it and thought “I’m gonna show my son the importance of giving back and he’s going to see that one person can make a difference”. We were swarmed. I think I’d made like ninety meals and it was gone within probably thirty minutes and people were like “do you have socks?” And I hadn’t thought of that, and then they’d ask “Do you have a jacket? Anything? A used blanket? A hoodie?” So after that, all year at my office I had a coat collection box and shot an email to all my co-workers that if anybody had anything please consider donating it. The box was overflowing and I work for attorneys so it was really good quality stuff.
So for Christmas in 2013 I made meals again but we had socks and coats and jackets and by then the bug really hit me and I wanted to really start going down regularly. I’d asked my aunt, what should I say to keep this regular, the first of each month and she said, “no, it has to be a weekend to accommodate your job”, so she came up with saying I’d be there the first Sunday of every month, this way it’s not too hard to remember.
It’s now grown into a much bigger project with dozens of volunteers every month, how do you source the help?
It’s just totally by word of mouth, it really, really is. One guy I used to work with from the I.T. department once asked for me to send him my ‘ask letter’. I was like, what is that? He explained, “you know, the letter you send out, I saw you have Vans tennis shoes and sleeping bags and backpacks, how do you get that stuff?” And I was like, I swear, people just contact me, if I had a letter I’d give it to you. I don’t have a magic potion, people just come and they see the passion that we have. I always think about what I could do if I had like a social media manager or an assistant, you know, just someone who’s job title was to do that kind of thing full time, who knows what could happen?
How has Skid Row changed since you have been going down there?
The last few years were really hard on everyone. I saw a huge jump in people wanting to volunteer. During the pandemic it really made you stop and think. Everything was shut down and we were shut in and it made people realize, ok, I’ve got this big fancy car and I’ve got this big beautiful home but I can’t have anybody over and I can’t go and get any more fancy things from the store and they kinda turned to volunteering to help out the people that didn’t have anything. It let a lot of people see that most of us are a few paychecks away from being in trouble. For the average person, how long could you survive, seriously.
A big misconception is that everyone on Skid Row is on drugs. Of course, yes, there are people on drugs but a lot of people downtown aren’t on drugs. There’s a lot of mental illness and then there’s just some people down on their luck with no families to help them out. There’s so many layers of being homeless. Maybe you lose your parents when you’re young and have been thrust into the foster care system and not able to see your sibling all of a sudden. There’s victims of abuse. We have, thank god, wonderful families who support us and loving partners but imagine if you’re sitting at home and your parents get in a big fight and the next morning you’re putting all your stuff in a big trash bag and going to some persons house that you’ve never seen before. That can have lasting effects. There are wonderful people working out there in the foster system and then there’s not so wonderful people too. There’s a vast array of reasons how and why people become homeless and it’s not an easy fix. I saw somebody post a thing on instagram about how they’re going to get two hundred people housed and you know, I don’t wanna be a hater but you’re not. There’s many, many layers to it. There’s a man who’d been homeless for twenty years and we got him an apartment and he called me and said “I can’t sleep, it’s too quiet and I’m lonely”. We thought, ‘this is wonderful, we got him an apartment, and we got him a brand new bed and we put food in his refrigerator’ but he said he sat there and ate alone. He said he hadn’t eaten a meal and not shared his food in so long. You may look at the homeless and think, “Oh my gosh, look at those people”, but that’s their family.
Community is important.
There’s many layers of the homeless situation. There’s some people just like me. I met a woman who was sixty five, she’d worked at the same job for years, the pandemic hit and the office closed down. She was having a hard time but she had enough money to pay her rent for a year and then her family tried to pay her rent and they just couldn’t keep up and she ended up in her car. Every time I would go out she was in a blouse and slacks and it was sad. You could tell she was a business woman that just couldn’t pay rent and didn’t know what to do. I know this guy in Hollywood and he’s homeless cause his mum passed away and he just couldn’t get it together. He does the Hollywood bus tours and invited our whole crew on a bus tour and dude, he sleeps in a tent in Hollywood. It’s sad. First and last month rent in LA and security, you’ve gotta have like 6 grand. It’s crazy.
Have you seen many other successful programs in LA that are doing a good job helping the homeless?
I really, really love the work that PATH does, they do great work. There’s another program called The peoples Alliance, they really work hand in hand. A lot of the time I talk to the homeless they’re like “man, I just got my apartment by People’s Alliance”, so I really feel like they are out there in the streets doing big things.
The feeling of helplessness towards the entire situation is so overwhelming and I’ve never heard anybody with a really compelling strategy or plan to resolve the issue.
It’s so complex. In most cases you can’t just give somebody an apartment that has been unhoused for 10 years. There’s something that’s not connecting if you’re getting to the point that you’re sleeping in your car or sleeping in a tent. That’s not to say that some of us have not fallen on hard times but it doesn’t get to the point that you are in a tent.
There’s a lot of mental illness. I was sitting down breaking bread with a man and he said “watch how many people walk by us and don’t look us in the eye” and Andrew I was only there with him for an hour and it started to weigh on me and I felt like they looked at us with disdain, they were so disgusted that I even found myself after an hour being like, “that’s my truck over there, I’m not homeless, I’m just sitting here breaking bread with my buddy”. I can’t imagine day in and day out being ignored like you’re invisible. He told me, if people look at the homeless, they think it’s contagious so they look away at all costs. That’s just so true and I’m guilty of it too. When you get off the freeway, you just might not feel like looking at someone and it’s so sad. I know it’s my thing so I love it extra, but I try to explain to people that it’s a different feeling when you make sandwiches and pack it or bring a jacket that’s in the back of your closet that you haven’t worn in three years and you take it down and hand it to somebody and they’re like “oh my god, thank you!”. It feels so good. Just to chop it up with somebody for five minutes and say “how you doin’?” and they just want to tell you about their day.
I don’t know where we’re (Brown Bag Lady) going, I’d love to one day own a building. I have this vision in my head that one floor will be all mental health services - psychiatry and social workers. Then there’ll be a floor for women and children and also a floor for men. One day I’m gonna have to quit this law firm and give it 1000%. I’ll pray on it, that I’ll be able to survive and pay my own bills and still make a difference in the world. But I’m just scared. I have my job, I have my bills, I have my rent just like anyone else and I don’t take anything from Brown Bag Lady. Everything that is donated literally goes right back into the community. I don’t take a salary and everyone donates their time but hopefully one day man, one day.
You started to do this on a whim but it seems like this has now become your life’s work.
Oh yeah. My son told me recently, he said “mom I hope that one day I can feel what you feel for Brown Bag Lady. I haven’t found it yet but I hope I do. But mum you just give and aren’t you tired?” And I am but it’s just what has to be done. Bo was doing work on the van the other day and a lady came by asking if he was handing out food and said “I’ve heard of you guys and there’s a bunch of us in Venice, can you please come to Venice” and she gave him the exact location and said there’s about fifty of us over by this motel. That was last week and I am just fixated on, when can I go, when can I go. I already cooked the food and put it in my deep freezer, all I gotta do it is warm it up baby and I’ll be ready to go. Just knowing that there’s fifty people in Venice, I gotta get to them. I don’t know what it is and yes I’m tired, but I’ll drink a 5 Hour Energy baby and keep going.
You’re relentless with it. I’m happy to have helped a couple of times but you’re there every month which is amazing to keep that legacy going. Do you get out much more other than the monthly Sundays?
Well, it’s the first Sunday of every month but then there’s a black owned restaurant downtown called Papi and Rays and they donate meals on one Tuesday a month, so I’ll scoot out and pass that food out. Their foods amazing, it’s always a fried chicken sandwich and a salad. Then it depends on who calls, like a cooking show called a couple times and we’d pick up the excess and take that food out.
A couple of months over summer there was a program with Michelle Obama and she was making sure that rec centers and underserved neighborhoods had nutritious meals. It was really good sandwiches, jello, carrots, cheese, veggies and pudding. They had an abundance of overflow so we were helping get that out too. Then our biggest meal is still Christmas where we feed about three hundred people and it’s wonderful to see everyone come together. There’s no way I could feed three hundred people on my own but people always just start reaching out. We stand on that street corner and we feed over 300 people, handing out coats, jackets, hoodies. This year is gonna be lit.
How many volunteers do you think you have each month?
How many do you think that was? Twenty or twenty five? We have a solid group that is probably ten of us that never miss and then there’s a rotating door of volunteers after that. There’s always a solid twenty to twenty five and everybody is in it to win it. They are not messing around, hard core, feet on the street. There’s a whole crew of barbers that come on some months which is amazing to be able to give out free haircuts. When you look good you feel good.
If there was someone out there trying to do something similar to Brown Bag Lady, anywhere in the world, what kind of advice would you have to someone that wants to donate their time or services in a respectful way. Like a do’s and dont’s of trying to help the homeless, as it’s obviously a pretty delicate situation.
I think the number one thing is what we like to call “feet on the street”. You never wanna be rolling past in a vehicle and looking the other way while passing out food. Take time, we give eye contact, we make you feel seen. We address everyone as sir and ma’am. A lot of times I find if I say “are you hungry” it’s not as well received as me saying “I made a big pot of red beans and rice and I put a lot of hot links in there, have you ever had red beans?” That starts the conversation with people and not at them. People have pride. If you ask, are you hungry a lot of people will be like “no I’m good, I’ve just eaten”. But if you build a rapport and be consistent. That’s why I like to say, on the first Sunday of every month, we will be here, no matter what. I remember the first time I got to the corner and there was a line of people waiting I got emotional and my son was like “why are you crying” and I said I’m just one person that wanted to make a difference and these people know I’m coming and they’re waiting. It was moving to see. They know we give respect and we get respect.
Also, you don’t have to start off with some ridiculous goal. I started off making a hundred brown bag lunches, because that’s what I could afford. I didn’t think it was going to grow into anything, I just wanted to make a difference and thought “I can afford a brown bag lunch with a banana, a bag of chips, a sandwich and a water”. That was what was in my budget and then friends donated. People would give $20, or $5. I wasn’t asking for $100 from anyone to feed the homeless. You just learn as you go. I remember one of the first times seeing all the apples we’d handed out being thrown on the ground and I was like “why are you guys throwing all my apples away” and they were like “baby, we don’t have any teeth” so that’s how we got to bananas. But the number one thing is to be consistent. If you can make sure that twenty people don’t go to bed hungry, that’s amazing. Not many people can say that especially on a consistent basis. And it should be fun and it should be rewarding every time you go.
Andrew, I remember one time, one of the attorney’s came down, she was a female attorney and she was like “Oh I love this so much, I was telling my husband and no offense Jackie but he asked, in the big scheme of things what is that going to do, two hundred meals? There’s so many homeless, what is that really gonna do”. I think about that all the time but we did count recently of all the meals we’ve served and we were at ninety thousand meals. There’s almost eighty thousand homeless in LA but that means we have fed the equivalent of every homeless person in LA. One person with a crazy group of loyal crew of people who aren’t afraid.
There’s a misconception that the homeless are going to be unappreciative, or uneducated or even aggressive. But you get out there and everyone really does show you so much respect and patience on the line.
That reminds me, we were doing an event at the LA mission and I had to go and drop off the van the night before. We were down there at about 8pm and we dropped it and then called an uber. It accepted and then declined and then we did it again and the same thing. No-one would come and pick me up on Skid Row so Bo and I had to walk all the way west to the Staples center. People were like weren’t you scared? I had my purse with me and my designer glasses and all that. But not at all, not at all. A couple of people were even like “is that you Brown Bag lady? Where’s your t-shirt at”. I truly feel so safe. People are grateful.
You’ve mentioned a grand vision of where you’d like to take Brown Bag Lady down the line, but what is the next thing you are doing that you are excited to share.
Oh god, our summer camp that reunites foster children. That is amazing and I hope we are able to expand and take more and more children. It’s so expensive to do that. Just to get an insurance policy, you have to have a million-dollar insurance policy. When you deal with children it’s a whole other level. Every person that goes has to be finger printed with a background check. It’s not crazy expensive but it’s like $100 per person and it adds up. I can’t afford to pay anyone yet, so you’ve got the counselors and the junior counselors and people donate an entire week of their time. Andrew, that’s just so amazing to me so I would love to expand the summer camp and be able to invite and reunite more siblings. We always reserve the space for fifty but I would love to be able to double and triple that amount because it really is a phenomenal week.
How can people find out more about what you’re doing and ways to volunteer or donate?
There’s always volunteer opportunities on the website. To find out what’s going on with the latest, we have a quarterly newsletter which is a great update which people can sign up for. You’ll get four a year (not too many).
Any last acknowledgements or shout outs to the crew or organizations that have helped out along the way?
If there was a mud run or a competition, my crew will kick your crews ass every single time. I can’t start naming names cause I will for sure leave somebody out, but there’s a quote I want to leave you with. “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little” - Edmund Burke. I’ll leave you with that thought.
Get your sorry ass involved, here.