In the UK over 160,000 people are homeless. Just off London’s Oxford Street, in fashionable Mayfair village, a homeless film director and London band has teamed up with Rap Royalty’s Snoop Dogg to end homelessness now. When the hip hop beats of Hard Times and Snoop Dogg’s inimitable flow reached the ears of 87 year old Pope Francis he loved it so much he issued, there and then, a Papal Blessing for the charitable endeavour.
Hard Times ft Snoop Dogg
Homeless film director, David Fussell, met London musicians Ooberfuse at the Homeless Restaurant which provides restaurant style meals to Oxford Street’s rough sleepers. After a few jamming sessions Hard Times was born. Fussell says “the searching lyrics tell the homeless issue from a new point of view. The story is not told from an on-looker’s perspective like the great Phil Collins song Another Day in Paradise. Rather, Hard Times tells the story in the first person, drawing on real pain ‘shivering in the cold and the rain’. Hard Times makes it clear that being made homeless could happen to anyone of us. It starts ‘I never thought that it would be like this / Sleeping in a doorway on the streets like this….'”
Papal support
The Holy Father, Pope Francis, emphasises “the importance of caring for the most vulnerable in society’ and urges that we seize opportunities like this ‘to build a more fraternal world.”
CLCC
Central London Catholic ChurchesTwice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday, a group of volunteers from across London trolley donate food from local Mayfair eateries like The Connaught and The Mayfair Chippy to the tables of London’s rough sleepers in Farm Street’s Arrupe Hall Hal, musician form ooberfuse, says “the guy who runs the project, Dominic Robinson is like a modern day Robin Hood! He literally goes to the swankiest restaurants in Mayfair and takes food destined for the sophisticated palettes of the super-wealthy and puts it on the tables of the homeless in Arrupe Hall. It’s next level wealth-redistribution!” Youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBS6p91B-A8
