2001

pstrongHealth and Human Services’, Tommy Thompson’s “Listening” session on welfare reform became the day of REAL voices, real action and a little dialogue with Health and Human Services../strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/552/photo_1_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Lisa Gray-Garcia (a.k.a. Tiny) /p pi“My Mom came to visit Wade Horn - all I got was this sign....”/i Aimee Fisher, a low income mom struggling to go to college while on welfare, protesting Tommy Thompson’s “Listening” session outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel./p pThere were glasses of ice water at each corner.. tall shimmering glasses untouched, pure, without a bead of sweat, or a drop of unsightly moisture. The glasses stood erect and cool at each corner of the immense rectangle table—draped with an ivory starched table cloth bordered in a flowing ruffle. The carpet was the color of blood, with black and blue diamonds weaving through rivers of crimson acrylic./p pThe table was dwarfed by eight large flags. The focal point was a floor to ceiling banner proclaiming the purpose of the meeting I was allowed to witness, but not invited to: HEARING FROM THE STATES—HHS NATIONAL LISTENING TOUR ON TANF REAUTHORIZATION. /p pYou see, I, as a former very low-income, welfare recipient and current project director of an organization that fights for the rights of welfare recipients and attempts to create jobs for folks on welfare in journalism and media—a profession usually reserved for people with the privilege of time, formal education and financial stability—was not invited to this event. But, as a journalist, I was shuttled into the room by a velvet voiced man in a tan suit with honey colored eyes. A badge with my name on it was rapidly manufactured on a special badge-making machine. A few words were murmured to a blue-suited gatekeeper with a clear coil attached to his ears, and the palace doors were flung open. I was shuttled into THE ROOM joining a “court” of about 50 people who were sitting quietly, their faces carefully trained into an odd glaze of admiration, boredom and fear. /p pAt the head of the table was Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families for The Department of Health and Human Services; appointed by Tommy Thompson to facilitate these “listening” sessions. These sessions, according to the HHS press release was created by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson as a series of national "listening and discussion sessions”, to gather insights from those on the front lines of welfare reform. /p pThese sessions are supposed to help prepare for next year's reauthorization of federal welfare reform legislation. /p pThe nation's governors, state legislators, county officials, welfare program directors and welfare recipients will be invited to discuss ways to strengthen the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which was created by the welfare reform legislation enacted in 1996. The sessions will allow Secretary Thompson and other top HHS officials to learn more about states' experiences implementing welfare reforms and running assistance programs. /p pThe room was peopled by the heads of state and local welfare departments from the western states, including our own Trent Rohr and Dolores Heaven from the San Francisco Department of Human Services. There was one welfare recipient present./p p“ The central focus of work-first is still our priority”, said a man with a placard stating his name as Andrew Bush from the front of the table to the right of Wade Horn. As I entered, he was saying, “We should still get people a job if they can get one—but we should be able to include part time work and education in the plan.” /p p“ I make ten dollars per hour. I would like to be able to pursue an education that would allow me to make a better wage,” said Michelle Kramer, the sole TANF recipient in the room spoke /p p“ In Washington 70 percent of our caseload is cycling on and off welfare, we struggle with the dollars that go to direct services,” explained a representative from DHS in Washington./p p“ The problem with the old Welfare system is it gives people a lot of money to do nothing, and the American people are not interested in supporting that anymore. But I don’t think they would begrudge them (welfare recipients) funding for education...” I looked up from my tattered notebook to hear who had made that statement, and found it was him, Wade Horn, spewing out the “Welfare Mom Myth”, believing and subscribing to the stereotype that folks on welfare get “all that money” (345 dollars per month in California, as low as 139 dollars in several southern states) and that they do now or ever did do “nothing”. /p pAs a poor woman raised on welfare, when my mother was not able to work, there was never a moment that we did nothing, because survival is a job and 345 dollars didn’t come close to survival And we, like most of the folks who I work with now, are ialways/i doing a million things just to stay housed, fed and alive. Now, as welfare reform pushes folks into “work-first” jobs that pay less than a living wage we are doing even more. As the words continued to pour out of his mouth, I was unable to hear them. My ears became blocked and dull ache clouded my eyes./p pNeedless to say, I could not stay anymore. I could not stay in that room witnessing those lies and stereotypes as folks, my folks, stood outside this building protesting the farce of this so-called listening session. I begged a hasty good-bye to the honey-voiced man and asked him if another reporter from POOR could come in my stead. He sort of agreed and I ran out of the palace doors before he could say yes. /p pbThe Voices Of Truth..Outside... /b/p pi“Why won’t you listen to us Mr. Wade Horn—we got somethin’ you should learn....”/i/p pThe pillars were white and tall, with a wall of shimmering glass and concrete reaching up into the bright blue sky, framing the gold letters: The Grand Hyatt Hotel./p pThere were over 200 mothers, fathers, children and welfare rights advocates from LIFETIME, POWER, CEWR, Center For Third World Organizing, POOR Magazine, Every Mother is a working Mother, Homeless Prenatal Program and many more, walking in protest in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Martina Gillis from Coalition for Ethical Welfare Reform (CEWR) and Jason Negron from POWER were at the microphone in the center of the crowd. /p p“Why are we out here?” Because Wade Horn and Tommy Thompson only want to listen to certain people, and those people are not the welfare recipients themselves. We know what we need. We know what we want. We know that we need real support to go to school, to get a living wage job and we are not getting that now; we are getting time limits and sanctions for education—he wants to give sanctions to unmarried mothers.. And we know this “listening” session is just a dog and pony show.../p pAt that moment some street theatre commenced in the middle of the protest. Gigantic dogs and ponies slung fake promises and false stereotypes—my favorite was the forced Foster Care dog (DHS pays more to foster care parents to care for children than their own mothers). The last act of the street theatre included tearing up the signs of false promises./p pIn the middle of the action a police officer came out and told Martina Gillis that some of the people from the protest would be allowed to speak to Wade Horn. When Martina said that yes, she and others from the protest would like to speak to Wade Horn, they reneged and said it wouldn’t be Wade Horn, but someone else from DHS./p pAfter several more speakers including mothers in college from LIFETIME, economic justice organizers from Every Mother is a Working Mother, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, and poetry from Leroy Moore of The Po’ Poets Project at POOR Magazine, the action was over and we were all readying ourselves to leave....almost... /p pbThe Real Listening Session (sort-of )/b/p piIn 1965, Senator Moynihan published a report entitled; “The Negro Family A case for National Action”. The central thesis of his report was that, “ At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro Family —that at least half of the Blacks in America are enmeshed in a “tangle of pathology” centered around the “matriarchal family structure”/i.. excerpt From The Nature of Mama , an interview with Dr. Wade Nobles by Dee Gray in POOR Magazine Volume #4/p pI sat on the brick steps of the Grand Hyatt exchanging notes with Gretchen Hildebran, one of the reporters for POOR Magazine who took my place in the “Listening Session”, inside the hotel with Wade Horn and she attended his press conference which followed the session. She reported to me what the token welfare recipient said in the press conference that “welfare reform was great—she has no problems with it. ” And Wade Horn kept mentioning how well they (DHS) were doing “with children” which made Gretchen wonder what DHS was planning to do with policy. i.e., youth crime laws, etc..., that he would be able to justify with his purported welfare reform success. He also mentioned that the “protesters” outside just needed to learn how to communicate better. Finally, when she tried to ask her question which had to do with The Fatherhood Initiative, he barely answered and then closed the conference./p piOver the last four decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of children growing up in homes without fathers. In 1960, fewer than 10 million children did not live with their fathers. Today, the number is nearly 25 million. More than one-third of these children will not see their fathers at all during the course of a year. Studies show thatbr / children who grow up without responsible fathers are significantly more likely to experience poverty, perform poorly in school, engage in criminal activity, and abuse drugs and alcohol/i.... Excerpt from the overview of the FATHERHOOD Initiative /p pOne of the main concerns of all of us at the protest, as poor mothers and fathers on welfare, poor youth and children of poor single mothers and fathers was Tommy Thompson’s Fatherhood Initiative. The welfare reform law provides for performance bonuses to reward states for achieving certain measurable goals, including promoting marriage and reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Thompson’s Administration for Children and Families encourages states to use funding from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) to develop responsible fatherhood programs and has issued guidance with examples of such efforts. /ppToday, almost half of all states use TANF funds for fatherhood programs. On its face these ideas are good sound, but the reality is, as Dee Gray’s interview with Dr. Nobles in POOR Magazine outlines, the policy itself is based on the same kind of transubstantive error that Moynihan made in the 60’s, and in fact, from the same kind of claims, and penalizes or sanctions poor single headed households, just for being poor single parents./p piThe idea of transubstantiation is that in looking at the surface behaviors of a people, you can draw conclusions about the meaning and value of behaviors, but the meaning and the value comes from the deep structure of a people’s culture and values. and so in the Black Family at the time Moynihan was examining it, there was this whole notion of families with women without husbands raising children, which he deemed a broken home from his cultural deep structure which was not that of the families he was examining.../iWade Nobles in the Nature of Mama/p pAfter I said good-bye to Gretchen and several folks from the protest had left, Joseph Bolden from POOR and I were collecting our stuff on the steps when out of the corner of my eye I saw a four person brigade of suits and suddenly Joe’s hand was being shook and... “ Hello, I’m wade Horn.” A tall man in a gray suit with a red tie, a little tuft of curly black hair that sat on the very top of his head and blood shot eyes, was shaking my limp hand./p p“Hi. I’m Lisa Gray-Garcia from POOR Magazine,” I choked in response./p p“I know who you are.” I wondered why—was I on his wire tapping list? He continued, “Would you like to ask us some questions, I hear that you would all like to talk with us...” /p p“ Uh yea.. I guess,” I tried to think through the weirdness of the moment, and wondered where everyone else was.. “I mean, yes... just let me get my pen.. and notebook .” I desperately tugged at my impossibly disorganized backpack to find something to write on and something to write with. Finally pulling out an eye pencil, I commenced with the interview ..hoping that if Joe and I could stall them long enough with questions, some of the people who had remained would start to gather./p p“Is it true that you want to cut off welfare benefits of families who aren’t married? “ I asked./p p“We are interested in promoting two-parent families.. it is important to the health of the children that they have two parents.”/p p“ But are you saying that there should be sanctions against single parent TANF recipients?” I continued./p p“No, of course not, “ he shook his small hair tuft from side to side, “ We don’ t want abusive relationships to stay together, we are only instituting premarital education classes, conflict resolution training, incentives to families to stay married and [we are] trying to help them improve their skills to do so.”/p pAnd then everyone was there. We were surrounded—the small crowd that was left realized what was going on and Jason Negron from POWER cut in, “ We have a lot of folks here who would like you to hear their concerns. Libby, a mother on welfare from POWER began, “ As a mother I would like to be able to have my secondary and post secondary education accepted as welfare to work activity rather than sanctioned by welfare like it is now,” she proffered to him./p p“We are looking at educational opportunities right now.” I for one didn’t understand his answer..but.../p p“ I raised my children on welfare and I now work with mothers on welfare,” a representative from Every Mother is A Working Mother cut in. “ What I want to know and many of the mothers that I represent is why can’t you value mothering as a form of work—the work that mothers do is very hard and deserves wages just like any other job —we want you to answer that”/p p“ Well, I believe that the role of mothers is very important and we care a lot about children. They are our main concern.”/p p“But that’s not what I am asking, what I am asking is will you consider valuing mothering as waged work, i.e. wages for mothering? “/p pI watched Wade’s eyes. He gulp/blinked, unable to create another truly smooth reply../p p“I want you to answer that Mr. Horn.”/p p“Well...” Wade sputtered, his eyes blinking rapidly. /p p“Eschucha. Yo soy madre.” Nora Calderon from Homeless Prenatal Program and POWER interrupted with a similar question but geared toward the specific plight of poor immigrant mothers on welfare. Cindy Weisner, from POWER, acted as her translator. “She wants to know why you penalize immigrant mothers when they need to stay home and raise their children. She wants to raise her children. She doesn’t want to have to leave her very young children without their mother/p pWhen Nora was finished, he said nothing, the woman from Every Mother is a Working Mother repeated her question./p p“ Well, my interest in all of this is what happens to the kids. Ten years ago I went to Alaska to convince the Native-American mothers to not use formula or sugar water which was rotting their children’s teeth and to continue to breast feed. So I am fully aware of the importance of breast feeding and the importance of staying with the mother as long as possible..”/p p“ I am a mother that is trying to go to college...When are you going to support that?” A mother from Low-Income Families Empowerment Through Education (LIFETIME) asked. She continued, “ I need to get my degree, I am struggling but I will get it because I have to. And when I do, my children will be so proud when they see their mother walking down that aisle with her degree. But why do you make it so hard for folks to go to school on welfare? Not every one is as strong as me and they just give up when they are constantly faced with obstacles. I will get it even if you do sanction me.”/p p“ You see... You will get it no matter what.. that’s what we’re saying is that people can do things if they really want to, with or without welfare,” responded Wade. At that point, one of the suits flanking Wade’s right side lunged into the conversation, his name tag read CLARENCE CARTER./p p“ Well, guess what, “ I cried unable to stand it any longer, “ I have a sixth grade education and I am one of those people who got stopped by welfare, as several of the folks that we work with at POOR do—so I want to know, why doesn’t welfare to work mean JOB CREATION, in other words, really WELFARE to WORK for folks who have substance abuse, mental health and other issues that make it hard for them to find work?”/p p“Well, that’s up to the states, we can’t force them to do that” /p p.“ That’s not true. You can make it policy on the federal level,” I insisted./p p“I think its very important to help people get into jobs.” He looked at his aides./p p“So when will you meet with all of us for a REAL listening session?” someone from the back shouted to him./p p“Yeah. When can we meet to really talk?” another person shouted out of the crowd./p pHe looked down and then up, his aides motioned him to go./p p“Well, I’ve got to go.” He started moving backwards, toward the hotel./p p“ But when can we meet? Let’s set a date to actually listen to folks —to talk and to figure some of this out!” We all shouted to him./p p“ Sure, I’ll do that, “ he replied to easily./p p“But when can you commit to a date?” we continued to ask./p p“I will commit to the process—I am not sure when or where.” He looked down at the last sentence, his words becoming faint memories of political doublespeak, fading into the pillars of shining hotel glass.br / /p/p.“/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongIT’s Your Business:Men’s March To stop Domestic Violence /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/553/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Isabel Estrada/p pThe prevalent message at iIt's Your Business/i, an event organized by the Family Violence Prevention Fund in cooperationbr / with the Maxine Hall Health center, insisted that the issue of domestic violence is the entirebr / community's responsibility. For this reason the focus of the march andbr / meeting was not only on the victims but also very much on the perpetratorsbr / and the entire community./p pI arrived at the Third Baptist Church on Pierce and MacAllister, where thebr / march was to begin at 12 o'clock, feeling slightly awkward in a predominantlybr / male, African-American group. However, I was soon reassured. Everybody wasbr / smiling and I was immediately introduced to Reverend Lazanius Johnson, whobr / would be the main speaker. The group was small, about 35 people in all. Mostly men as well as some women and adorable children lead the march.br / One small boy wearing a red sweatshirt held a sign that read iBrother's andbr / Sisters, Let's Talk About It, There's No Excuse for Abuse/i. However, thebr / size of the group seemed to have no affect on the strength of the message. /p pAs we walked down Pierce towards our destination, the Fillmore Mini Park, ourbr / voices emanated a loud and powerful chant, "It's Your Business. It's ourbr / Business. Stop Domestic Violence." I laughed as I noticed one man staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed from hisbr / Victorian house as we passed. Another White man in full army fatigues didn'tbr / seem to notice what was going on until a member of our group handed him abr / blue and white "There's NO Excuse for Domestic Violence" bumper sticker,br / calling him brother as he did so. As we passed more people in the Western Addition a fewbr / kids looked at us as if we were crazy, but then a woman started clapping tobr / our rhythm from across the street as we passed. /p pWhen we arrived at the mini park, more people converged. As the time went bybr / they seemed to get younger. Before beginning, Reverend Johnson urged folks tobr / step forward, breaking any tension there might have been by saying, "Come awaybr / from the tables, ain't nobody going to take the food." He blessed God,br / Allah, Buddha and any other deity that stands for peace and love. He thenbr / led the group in singing the iNegro National Anthem/i. The anthem holds abr / powerful message and assures that the past is not forgotten, especially inbr / the second verse./p p i Stony the road we trod,br / br /Bitter the chastening rod,br / br / Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;br / br / Yet with steady beat,br / br /Have not our weary feetbr / br /Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?br / br /We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,br / br /We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,br / br /Out from the gloomy past,br / br /Till now we stand at lastbr / br /Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. /i/p pLinda Mack Burch, who organized the entire event, spoke next. She again madebr / the point that in order to conquer domestic violence, people cannot simply bebr / focused on their own problems, but must take the initiative for the entirebr / community. She spoke confidently while making quick gestures, "It takes abr / village, we are a village, to stop domestic violence." As even more peoplebr / arrived, Ms. Burch made her frustration concerning the excessive violence inbr / all forms in her community apparent. "We are tired," she calls out. /p pThebr / next speaker, Matty Scott, continued in the same vein and further insistedbr / that violence was an issue that seriously needed to be addressed by thebr / African-American community. She stated that it wasn't the police who neededbr / to intervene, the community needed to unite to handle its own problems./p pWhen Eddy Moor from RSVP spoke he insisted that "it's all aboutbr / accountability." He felt that as long as people continue to blame their ownbr / violence on others, or on the situation they find themselves in, violence would notbr / end. He made it clear that in an abusive relationship, it is not only thebr / victim's responsibility to seek help, but also the abuser's. /p pA silence fell upon the crowd as the reverend asked if there was anyonebr / willing to share their own experiences with abuse. For awhile everyonebr / seemed to exude discomfort, including myself. /p pI immediately began to questionbr / what exactly constituted abuse. I have never been in a physically abusivebr / relationship, but does that mean that I have never been abused? When I wasbr / ten-years-old I went out with a nineteen-year-old who had been sexuallybr / abused by a woman when he was a little boy. Many would think that just thebr / difference in age was bad for me. But there were other issues. Takingbr / advantage of my naiveté and the fact that I was still very much scared ofbr / ghosts, seriously, he constantly lied to me and often tried to make me feelbr / scared. I'm not exactly sure what qualifies as abuse but I know that when hebr / left, I was completely devastated by and ashamed of our relationship. It'sbr / odd how it would take me this long (seven years) and a march against domesticbr / abuse to question whether I too may have been a victim of emotional abuse. /p pSince I don't often like to think about this relationship, in which I wasbr / never hurt physically, I can certainly see how shame and denial plays a hugebr / part in the fact that battered women often go years without ever seekingbr / help. /p pWell, one woman had the courage to approach the microphone. I recognized herbr / as one of the first women who had welcomed me with a smile at the beginningbr / of the march. She started out by saying, "I thank the Lord for thisbr / community." She then proceeded to tell us of how she had been abused forbr / 12 years by her brother and then for four years by her ex-boyfriend. "Ibr / used to hate my brother," she said, "But God showed me that something wasbr / wrong with him." Shouts of agreements arose as she continued, "Thebr / perpetrators have been abused also." She then told us of how her brother,br / before he had died of cancer had asked only that she forgive him. Bybr / forgiving him, she was able to take the position of power that she had so beenbr / deprived of. /p pShe continued talking about violence in general in thebr / African-American community and stated, "We can't let society pit us againstbr / each other." As many of the other speakers had done, she was emphasizingbr / that the African-American community had to take care of itself. It seemsbr / that when the law steps in, it only means more violence. /p pAgain, the reverend took the stage but this time he spoke more directly to allbr / of us. "You are all black queens, you are all queens and you need to bebr / treated as such," his voice boomed. Shouts of acknowledgment grew from ourbr / throats. I really did feel proud to be a woman as he spoke those words. Hebr / then cast away any distant air he may have had as a respected reverend andbr / began talking directly to those who were not attending the event. "You can'tbr / sell no more dope on the corner," he shouted menacingly over and over againbr / directly to a group of young men huddled on the corner. The whole audiencebr / participated, echoing what the reverend would say. "We're going to get allbr / the crack people into institutions," he shouted. He doesn't just want to getbr / rid of people; he wants to help them. The reverend maintained that a greatbr / deal of the violence was due to "people closing their eyes." He made itbr / clear that ending violence not only in the Western Addition but in some sensebr / the whole world, was everybody's responsibility. /p p/pPNext, a tall, big man approached the stage. He too had earlier been at the marchbr / and I had noticed that his voice had been louder than all the others.br / He was the gospel rap artist Bigg E. Through his music he told the storybr / of how finding religion had lifted him out of being a dope addict on thebr / street. "I went from selling dope to smoking dope. I couldn't find a way outbr / until I found the Lord Jesus Christ." /p pThis was a very religious crowd so thebr / praise rang high. "All I want to do is live a righteous life, get my Jesusbr / on, keep it real, keep it right." One set of lyrics that I foundbr / particularly interesting exemplified a difference in the methods of religionbr / practiced by African-Americans as opposed to others. "Ain't no party like abr / Holy Ghost party 'cause a Holy Ghost party don't stop." /p pWhen I asked the reverend what had prompted this march he mentioned how hisbr / sister had died of breast cancer and how a local community member named Mariebr / had been stabbed 20 times by her partner. Both incidents had occurred inbr / the past year, making him think it a good time to bring the communitybr / together to create a base of support. As I left, the festivities continuedbr / and I could hear the strong, soulful voice of a woman singing jazz as Ibr / waited for the 22 Fillmore bus./p pLately I have been learning about some aspects of African-American culture.br / Mainly I Have been learning about how African-Americans have generally grown up in a morebr / community based system of eldership in which it is everyone's responsibilitybr / to care for and discipline those younger than them. Western culture tends tobr / put emphasis on being separated. I have often seen White parents get mad ifbr / anyone else attempts to discipline their child. This event certainly attestsbr / to the fact that a great number of African-Americans in the Westernbr / Addition have a desire to care for their entire community. They don't wantbr / to just allow people to get carted off to prison or to allow people to do asbr / they wish behind closed doors. They want everybody to participate in creatingbr / a safer and more peaceful environment. The reverend had no problem yellingbr / out at those standing on the corner because he most likely feels asbr / responsible for them as he may feel for his own child. /p pThis was an inspiring event. I wish that our whole society would take thebr / example of this African-American community and start caring for everyonebr / else, regardless of any actual family ties, as though we were all related tobr / each other as brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, mothers and fathers. Thebr / message again: IT'S YOUR BUSINESS, IT'S OUR BUSINESS, STOP DOMESTIC VIOLENCE!/p pIf you or anyone you know is being abused physically or emotionally pleasebr / seek help by calling 1 (800) 799-SAFE (Family Violence Prevention Fund). Somebr / resources for men who batter include, Manalive (415) 979-5933, Men'sbr / Hotline (24-hour) (415) 924-1070 and MOVE (415) 777-4496.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongThe October 22nd Coalition leads annual event in Oakland/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/554/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Dae-Han Song/PoorNewsNetwork/p pBeneath patchy, gray skies and atop a simple platform, stood a dozen people holding in their hands pictures of deceased loved ones. Under each picture were the name and the date on which the person had been killed. /p pOn this day, October 22nd, 2001, family members of police brutality victims came in solidarity with other like families to support each other and decry police brutality. In the words of Jose Silva with the Youth Student Network, one of the lead organizers of the event, "The purpose of this event was for family members to come in solidarity....Most of the time we are shut out and October 22nd gives us that day to express our voices." Jose Silva's connection to police brutality became very personal when his brother, Danny Ray Lopez, had been shot and killed by 53 gunshots from the Denver, Colorado police./p pIn fact, many of the activists involved were personally affected by police brutality. Loni Amaya, one of the people on stage, held a picket sign with the picture of the late Chila Amaya. Family members, fearing for the safety of Chila Amaya as she held a knife in a distraught state, after problems with her boyfriend, called the police for assistance in getting her some psychological and mental help. When police arrived, they stood behind a locked screen door and told family members to go to another room. As Chila Amaya turned around with her knife to see where her family members were going, the commanding officer gave the order to open fire. What had started out as a call for assistance to prevent Chila from hurting herself had tragically turned into her death. In response to police brutality, Loni Amaya admits that "there are good cops out there, but there are also bad ones....a lot of the time police abuse their power when they don't need to."/p pIn a nation where one out of every three African-American males spend some time in the prison system, it is no surprise that many of the victims of police brutality are African-American males. However, this did not prevent an ethnically mixed audience from coming to the event, as many realized the commonality of their experiences. As Yuri Kochiyama stated, police brutality is just another in a string of terrorist attacks against people of color in a history of lynchings, slavery, the taking of Mexican land, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of Japanese-Americans./p pThe long-term goal of the demonstration was to address police brutality not as a one-time event, but as one that happens continually and one that needs institutionalized change. In the words of Jose Silva, "Our long-term goal is that we want a national platform so that police brutality will be recognized everyday."br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongThe Story of David, a youth in and out of the criminal justice system since he was 12 years old. /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/555/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Isabel Estrada/Youth in the Media Intern/p pbMoney, Family, Respect/b /p p"Has anybody in here actually been to Juvenile Hall?" asked the facilitator of a workshop concerning the juvenile justice system, at the Upset the Setup Youth Conference on Saturday, August 29, 2001. The Latino with long curly hair and glasses—his 6-foot, 1-inch, 160-pound body spilling out of the small school desk—raised his hand. /p pTo me he didn't look like the "type" who would have been through Juvenile Hall. He seemed too quiet and well behaved and spoke with a sweet and innocent voice. I think he noticed that I was staring at him and felt slightly perturbed. I was just thinking that I needed to talk with him. When the class was over, I followed him around for awhile and when I finally got up my nerve to speak, I asked him for an interview. He didn't seem particularly enthusiastic but at least he was willing./p pI was expecting the story of a reformed youth. It's odd how things are never as simple as they first appear. I was speaking with a boy who was as intelligent and, in his own way, as caring as I. However, because of the completely distinct conditions in which we grew up, we have very different views on life. I feel as though I have a vague, universal, but undeveloped caring for all people. David cares as well, but he cares exclusively for his "own"—his family and friends, the ones who are, in turn, prepared to support him if he needs it. /p pWhile I think that only necessity justifies stealing. David used to see it this way: "If someone's gonna rob out of my pockets then I'm gonna return the favor, pretty much." Now that he has a job and a slightly less chaotic life he says, "If it's there and I have the opportunity then yeah. But I don't go out and go to a store and rob it. It's not valuable just for your own conscience to go out and take from another person, but if you're ignorant enough to trust people at a party then you're just asking to get robbed. If you're hard-headed enough then you're just asking to get robbed." /p p"Money ain't nothing, I can give it away and shit. But I still want it, you know, desire it. If you ain't got money you ain't got nothing." While David was trying to act as though money doesn't matter to him in this statement, in the end he ended up completely contradicting himself. I think that he in fact puts great emphasis on the role of money in his life. Not only for basic survival but also for how he feels about himself. /ppMy immediate reaction to this statement has made me aware of what I will now call "privileged idealism". I would never make a statement similar to David's in which so much importance was placed on money. I don't like the thought of giving great value to material possessions. /p pBut here's the catch. As David pointed out, I've never been forced to steal, go hungry or sleep in a shelter. This means that I am not in a position to dispute David's statement because I've never been truly without money; I've never been made to feel that "I ain't got nothin'". And in this society, not having money can change these words easily to "I ain't nothing". Society says: because you don't have money you are nothing and therefore you deserve nothing. The fact that he has felt at one point that he didn't have anything in the whole world, and the fact that I really haven't been made to feel this way is just another factor in how we have come to be such different people./p pWhen David was 10 years old his mother died in a train accident. Hebr / remembers circling the neighborhood to tell all the Jehovah Witnesses. "I love her to death," he says. David tells me about his life nonchalantly, in an assertive tone, his voice only dropping to just above a whisper when he speaks of his mother. /p pBefore she died, David had a premonition. "I just seen like a figment of my imagination. Before I knew, I ran home. I cut class and I just needed to get home. I just think its gonna happen and it happens. Oh fuck, my first feeling was excitement, [but] not like I was happy. A sense of fear but pleasure at the same time, it doesn't happen everyday, that's like big news. Something you could tell your friends for days." He pauses. "If I get down too deep your gonna have me in my bed crying," David tells me with an ironic laugh. It was around the time of his mother's death that he started getting into real confrontations. If anyone dared to insult his mother there would be a fight. That was understood. /p pDavid's father was jailed for bank robbery and hasn't seen his son in 8 years. David tells me that, "To be a bank robber you have to be brilliant,br / you have to be smart". In a matter of minutes you can either accrue 20 thousand dollars or 20 years in jail. His philosophy is, if you are prepared to pay the consequences of failure then it's a good risk to take, otherwise you're just being stupid. David says that the reason most robbers start getting caught is due to their greed for the "thrill". The thrill may be that of having people screaming on the ground, or of being chased, but in any case it eventually begins to cloud their senses, thus leading to their final downfall. /p pWhen his mom died, David moved to Modesto to live with his aunt whose sons were members of the gang Norteños. By the time he was twelve he was cutting school to hang out and drink beer with his friends. When David and his cousins jumped another boy and David’s aunt found out about it, she blamed David for negatively influencing her sons and sent him to his other aunt. As the latter was having financial problems and already had three boys of her own, she decided to send David to a shelter back in San Jose. There he was reunited with old friends from the Southside. /p pBoth David and I experienced somewhat chaotic childhood. I too, had an absent father. I had to learn how to be very responsible at a young age as I was the only person who could help my mother succeed in making our lives function. I also lived through a horribly alienating experience at a private middle school. I believe that in many ways these types of experiences while growing up serve to make a person more flexible when faced with life's abundant uncertainties. /p pHowever, the big difference between David’s and my life arose where our mothers are concerned. My mother is the only person who provides me with unconditional support. If I had lost mine, especially at such a young age, I can't say that I wouldn't be the interviewee speaking about an adolescence spent fluctuating between the streets and Juvenile Hall./p pDavid's first extended experience with Juvenile Hall arose because of a crime he didn't commit. It all started one charged night. David and his friends were hanging out when one of them noticed his girlfriend making out with another man. Except for David, perhaps because he was only fourteen, the whole group jumped the man, beating him severely. David took part after the man was beaten by stripping him of all his clothing and leaving him naked in a public park. /p pAs far as David is concerned, he deserved what he got because he was a friend of the girl's boyfriend. One thing lead to another and David ended up being charged with assault even though he hadn't truly participated in beating the man. He decided to take some of the blame because he knew that if he split up the time of the sentence with his friends it would be a less serious charge for all of them. /p pDavid, now 18, has been to Juvenile Hall 13 times since he was 14. He has a tattoo of SideShow Bob from The Simpsons on his upper left arm, and a Pisces sign on his right arm, the words “San Jose” on his left forearm and his mother's name scrawled across his chest. When I expressed surprise that he was a Pisces—the sign of the dreamer—he assured me that he truly was dreamy and sensitive./p pJuvenile Hall's B5—B for boys, 5 for the hall unit—is made up of 26 rooms with 13 on each side of a long, impersonal hall. The front desk, a watchful presence, is centered at the furthest wall, next to another meeting room with stacks of chairs and, "If it's cool it has a ping pong table," says David. "When I first entered into Juvenile Hall I was cold, nervous, scared. I felt contained. I wasn't scared, I ain't scared of nothing [but] it was really big. I felt like I was right at home. I was just alone. No one talked to me, it was just distant. I was happy. I felt like wow, don't mess with me, I'm hard, I been to Juvenile Hall. To people who haven't been there you're dangerous, you're a menace to society. [That night] I didn't go to sleep." /p pFor the most part, David didn't get along with the other kids and constantly got into fights. "It's a trust issue. I don't trust nobody. I don't trust another man, I don't even trust females, but I trust females more than dudes. I'd rather be hurt inside than hurt outside cause I don't want no one to think I'm weak, because I'm not weak. 'Cause if they think I'm weak then I'm gonna have to prove I'm not weak." /p pHe says that the smart kids who want to "take care of business" get along with the counselors. In return for their more respectful behavior they can get away with more things and sometimes even have their sentences lessened. It's the "lops" (lopsided kids) who get along well with the other inmates because they are constantly trying to show off. These are the ones who get into the most trouble and often have their time extended. "They're punks, they ain't nothing." David says that they also tend to snitch on other kids. Though the counselors don't generally respect them, they listen to them anyway. /p pIn Juvenile Hall David wasn't allowed to have a roommate because of hisbr / explosive temper. "There's this fool, he was my roommate in Juvenile Hall. I was sittin’ in my bed and he was saying shit. He got on my nerves a little too much, and you know we're hotheaded. He grabbed me, then I grabbed him by the hair, I pulled him down and his head hit the side of the wall and I hit him like 15 times. Naw I was over-exaggerating, it was like four times. He's sitting there talking shit. I had to do what I gotta do. I laid in my bed and stayed awake all night 'cause I ain't about to let no other man rise up on me, put hands on me while I'm asleep. " /p pLockdown: B1 and B2; these are the high security halls, often housing convicted murderers and rapists. Attacking a counselor is another reason you might be sent there. David, on the other hand, didn't have to commit any serious crime in order to be assigned to B2, where he was housed simply because the other halls were filled. "I was on C level. You're in your room all the time, 23 .5 hours in your room." Again, if a boy maintains a good relationship with the counselors it is possible to bend the rules. Sometimes David was allowed to go to the weight room, meaning he would spend three hours outside of the cell and 21 inside, a slight improvement over the previous figures. /p p "I been to the hospital [in Juvenile Hall], too," David announces to me after a moment of silence. When he was still 14 years old he cussed out one of his Hall counselors. "Counselors ain't nothing better than us, they just got jobs. They're making their money, if you ain't got money you ain't got nothing." /p p/pPThat same night he found himself transferred into a room with what is called a D-Risk. These are boys who, according to David are supposed to be given rooms alone because they display homosexual tendencies. David says that they were playing cards on the top bunk, when there was a sudden pounding on the door. As David turned around to see a counselor standing at the door, the 18-year-old D-Risk slammed his fist into David's head, making him fall off the bunk bed and crash into the floor. /p pThe counselor just stood and watched as the older boy "beat the shit" out of David. Finally the counselor, who was a friend of the one who had been cussed out, opened the door, saying he hadn't known if they were really fighting or just playing around. David believes that if the door hadn't been opened at that moment, he might have been beaten to death./p pDavid spent much of his adolescence locked up, his incarcerations ranged from 2 weeks for getting drunk at group home, to ten months for beating someone up. His time there was mostly passed sleeping, reading, writing letters to his friends and making phone calls. /p pA great deal of what David did was simply out of a desire for money or entertainment. One night David and a few of his friends were just "chillin’" drunk. "Man, I feel like having some money," blurted out a friend./p p"Fuck, let's do this shit," was David's response. They all decided to rob a few cars in the neighborhood. In their first heist David got only 20 dollars and 15 CDs. /p pEverything seemed to be running smoothly until they heard, "Get on the ground," yelled by a cop running out of an apartment pointing a gun at the boys. One friend was so drunk that when he attempted to run, his feet just wouldn't move. The cop grabbed this boy's head and slammed it into the ground while pointing the gun at a different boy. This kid had just frozen in place, wide eyed, because of the mixture of alcohol with pure fright. /p pAs the policeman continued to yell at the boy to get down, David took his chance and began running as fast as he could. "As I was running the only thing going through my mind is: which way am I going to go next." Apparently he made the right choice because he got away. As far as David is concerned, he's never really been caught in his life. Ten of the times he just stayed on the scene because he didn't feel like running and the other three he turned himself in. He believes that no matter what, he will not get caught unless he chooses to. /p pWhen I chuckled at his arrogance, David started getting mad at me for laughing when he hadn't made a joke. When I apologized, he became very serious and responded: " Don't apologize, where I come from if you apologize all the time it just makes you look weak." I returned that I didn't care about seeming weak, I simply didn't want to offend him. Again he repeated that he didn't like me laughing if he hadn't made a joke. At that point I became slightly annoyed. I'm sure he was well aware that I already felt very naive in the face of all his experiences. But when he saw that I wasn't going to stand for him trying to push his own code of behavior onto me, he was the one who said "sorry" and explained that I must have had an influence on him. David likes to say that the only difference between us is that he was taught how to manipulate people at an early age. I think in a way that he may be right. /p p"Family's the most important thing to me. I could be the worst fuck up in the world and she [his cousin] would still back me up," says David. When one of his seven sisters was raped he decided to exact retribution himself. David carried a knife around with him wherever he went. When he saw the rapist in an alleyway, he couldn't control himself. He took out his knife and stabbed him, ripping out his lower stomach. He remembers that his whole head was trembling as he brought the knife into the man's flesh. All he could feel was the hate that was consuming his entire body. /p pWhen the man fell, David ran. He doesn't know how he got out of the alley but he does remember thebr / strange feeling he had as he made his way to a friend's house. He saw the people walking and cars rolling by as though nothing had happened. "Does anybody know?" the silence of the day, and the mid-afternoon light made him wonder. David was 15 years old. /p pAs far as David is concerned, the point of life is "to live and die". Hebr / says you can either make money, fight and do whatever you want or you can lead a fake life. The fake life is having a job, protecting your family, having a nice little house and car and "going out once a month". He also says that your life is over after thirty. Still, David continually brings up his dream of meeting a nice "female" and having kids. He tells me that when that occurs he'll just dedicate himself to caring for them and stop getting into trouble./p pCurrently David teaches and mentors physically and mentally disabled kids at a local high school. His duties range from helping to calm down nervous, distracted or violent teenagers to changing their diapers. Some of the kids are high functioning while others have two-year-old IQ's. "I love my kids. I have a one-on-one with one of my students named Richard. In a way he's like me because he just needs some guidance and to be taught. He just needs a way out. I need a way out to make my life better." /p pWhat I am internalizing after this interview is a strong sense that I cannot judge someone else's life or actions based on mine. In the end the choices you make must correspond with what life sets in front of you and your choices are going to vary as a direct result of what life has prepared you for. A main reason why I have not done many of the things that David has is not because of morals or beliefs but because I did not grow up with people constantly challenging me. I did not grow up lacking formal education or job opportunities. My life has never been threatened. Essentially, it is impossible to judge another person fairly because you've only lived your life and not theirs. /p p"I wanna do something with my life but for now it's just all about my homies downtown, in a way I might be stupid but I still got love for the block [an area of downtown San Jose]." I could hear pride in David's voice when he told me that he was now renting his own apartment. When I asked why he chose to live in a dangerous neighborhood where the threat of running into problems with the law is always imminent, he said that it made sense to live in a dangerous neighborhood because that is where he had grown up. However, not everything is just the same, "I trust people now, a certain few, I trust my boys."br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrong pbAs voiced in a Popularbr / cartoon. Sept.11, 2001.br //b/p pSuicide Bombersbr / highjacking Americanbr / Commerical planes. /p pGave both 20th Cenury Adultsbr / and 21st Cenury Children.br //p pb"A SHOCK TO THEIR SYSTEM."/b/p/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Joe B./p p21st Century kids got it rough!br / "I ain't no goat, grup." See what I mean, born in the mid to late 1980's going through grade and highschool hell, guns, drugs, drive by'sbr / b[hearing or being shot from moving cars, motorcycles, skateboards even]/b and just when things cannot get anyworse BOOOOOM-September 11, 2001's New York's World Trade Center's Twin Towers get rammed into and falls in a hellish consuming fire leaving black, gray, smoke and thousands of dead in the rubble./p pTheir parent's are tramatized many being closer to them than they ever could imagine./p pTheir older brother's, sister's, friends joining the military or being called to active duty - already some have died in accidents, or from enemy fire lands people didn't have a clue about until... That Day!/p pMan, its' 'Freakin hard to be a Twenty First Century Child./p pBut these youngsters have something that other generations didn't have perspective and history of every conflict across the planet, the internet, revised his/hersory books, real documentary footage of those wars as they were fought and generations behind them, who can tell them the truth of those past conflicts./p pI believe these 21C's though traumatized now will come out the other end stronger, smarter, more compassionate, stable, and unfortunately know that they are mortal and that real immortality is coming and ending war before its apon them may be what sets them apart from the generations before them.br //p pThe World War1- 1914-1918 'Gens known as the lost generation because so young, "The Cream" or best were killed, maimed, psychologically crippled it took a long time to recover especially from Great Britain, Germany, France, Australia, and Russia.br / /p pThen World War11 1938-1945 where our grand mother's, fathers, grandfathers, older friends, siblings fought, died, were wounded, and survived.br / /p pIn 1946-1964 "The Baby Boom" Generation was born./p pKorea in 1950 is called "A police action" yet Communist Chinese and American soldier's in uniform died in this conlict; sounds awfully like a war to me.br //p p Then Viet Nam Conflict, and Israel's "Three Day War" in 1967. /p pNotice that a battle lasting less than a week is considered at war. /p p Desert Storm/Shield in 1991./p pI'm sure many facts were wrong, errors in dates, times, history./p pSo study them, ask your parents, grandparent, older siblings, or friends or a group of your best buds, home girls, 'bro's - 'sista's as something to do apart from school, study hall, video games, tv, radio, cd/dvd listening, drug or conventional 'part-ay-ing down./p pThis is the best and worst of time 'youngins-learn from it. /p pWho is this goof on-line? If you are still reading then I've made some sense; oh, I'm just joe-I don't a lot of things but learning about things seems to be my knack. /p pThough I'm rotten at math which is one thing I like to learn. /p pYou see to know Chemistry you must know some math. That's my bane of existance - not knowing enough math to learn chemistry which my personal long term goal./p pAny of you geniuses or adverage brained youngsters know any ways of ridding one's self of Math Phobia? I'd really like to know./p pIts the only way I know to become a 21C Alchemist already missed being a 20C one. Oh well better late than never. Bye./p pPlease donate what can to br /Poor Magazine orbr /C/0 Ask /ppJoe at 255 9th St.br / br /Street, San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA/p pFor Joe only my snailbr / br /mail:PO Box 1230 #645br / br /Market St.San Francisco, /ppCA 94102br /Email:askjoe@poormagazine. org./p p/p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrong pbWho's Behind Newsom orbr / am I wrong and he's his own man./bbr //p pbIts better know if ourbr / chain is being pulled andbr / who if anyone is at the other end./bbr / /p/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Joe B./p pI’ve been thinking about the so-called battle of the sexes, it occurred to me killing each other does not bode well for surviving generations repeating the cycle. /p pThere always be Misogynists on both sides of the sexes./p pHowever there are friendly allies the enemies. /p pI propose that we of like and love persuasion should build starships with cryonics sleep or suspended animation that double as emergency escape pods. /p pLeave earth for living on asteroids, natural or artificial satellites while groundhog earthers tare at each other’s throats./p pBy the time a few centuries have passed and they’ve learned what we already knew b"Peaceful Co-existence Between The Sexes" /b /p pWe'll have made other kinds of humanity, evolving quicker, living every where in the cosmos./p pI know it’s an extreme solution but better that than both sexes constantly killing each other. /p pI was just thinking of space as an extreme survival mechanism./p pOther than that I don’t how our species will survive let along survive if males are killing women or circumventing births of females assumed not as valuable./p pMaybe people will figure out what makes certain males rage enough to kill or women do the same. /p pAny neuroscience to prevent this from happening? br / /ppLast Thursday, July 18, 2002 after a meeting with the Coalition on Homelessness, Media Alliance, and I think another but I’ve forgotten./p pI don’t know where we went but it was in someone’s comfortable Van to a pro test against small business at O’Keeffe O’Keeffe Attorney’s at Law offices./p pOne of the green street signs has Taraval on it and across the street are apartments and a nail manicure business./p pA guy I’ll car Art has more investigative chops than I talk of Newsom loving the publicity and as cops on cycles, standing around, and across the street. /p pGetting 7 to 10,000 dollars overtime for essentially doing an easy stand-do-nothing payday while protesters and tax payers’ foot the bill while Sup. Gavin Newsom gets free on-air time./p pIt never occurred to me that constant talking about Newsome, his plans actually fuel-feeds his campaign run for mayor for 2004!/p pArt said, "It’s not Newsom we should protesting he’s probably a figurehead and behind him are people backing his run like The Golden Gate Restaurant Association and Small Business concerns" He is sure there are other organizations and people too and that who we should be targeting."/p pHmmm, Sup. Gavin Newsom, a straw-man or public face to focus on while others with more power and influence pulling strings like some bPower- Behind -The –Throne/b uPuppet on a string deal. /u/p pMr. Art may just be able to have something there. /p pHey, San Franciscan’s and I’m writing to those both for and against Newsom before I’d make a commitment to vote for a future Mayor, Senator, Governor, or possibly higher office holder./p p Wouldn’t you want to know where his true loyalties lie?/p pHe probably is his own man, however with former candidate for President Pat Robertson or Buchanan with his "Culture War" you may not have liked what he said but he was being real on how he felt and what he is for and against./p pWith Sup. Gavin Newsom what is unknown is most of his backers./p pThere’s probably an old hunter’s saying, "If a dog is tame, wild, or plain lazy watch who’s holding the end of the chain. /p pSo who is Newsom ultimately beholden too. /p pIt does not matter to me but for true blue for Newsom voters./p pWouldn’t you really want to know who is behind the Newsom campaign?/p pBecause win or lose if Newsom isn’t his own man it would be best to know it now rather than have folks come from out surrounding that cannot trust because you don’t know or recognize them./p pHope you all are thinking ahead a little bit about the people behind Newsom. /p pNow, its up to you readers to do what you can, choosing the next Mayor or other political posts … Bye./p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongDisplaced Hunter's Point Activist Keeps up the Battle.br / br /Pt 2 in the PNN series on the SF election process /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/913/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Gretchen Hildebran/PNN Community Journalist/p pOn the TV screen the strong, intelligentbr / African-American woman turns her face bravely towardsbr / City Hall, insisting on her right to retain her job atbr / the top levels of government. She is flanked bybr / people from her community denouncing the racism ofbr / commissioners who had recently fired her. Mybr / co-worker Nancy had just called me into the office tobr / watch Tammy Haygood, the head of the SF department ofbr / elections, fight for her job. Nancy turns from thebr / set and tells me in a hushed tone, "Her partner isbr / transgender! They don't want to give him anbr / operation! " /p pWhat is wrong with this picture? A scandal at the SFbr / Department of Elections is nothing new, but thisbr / scandal had nothing to do with the missing ballots,br / ballot box lids floating in the bay, undercountedbr / precincts, police harassment of voters or the generalbr / corruption and mismanagement that has plagued thebr / department over the last several years. Thebr / newscaster never mentioned the fact the SF Departmentbr / of Elections had yet to comply with CA Secretary ofbr / State Bill Jones demand for a recanvassing of thebr / November 2000 vote. Nor was it brought up that thebr / Elections Commission, who allegedly fired Tammybr / Haygood for mismanagement and overspending of citybr / funds, was created when voters approved Prop E in 2001br / to respond to our Cityís criminally sloppy elections.br / Thanks to commercial media we were instead treated tobr / a sensationalized version of Tammy Haygood's personalbr / struggles. Meanwhile at the Department of Elections,br / it is business as usual. Supervisor Tom Ammiano, whobr / is considering a run for mayor in 2003, says,"This isbr / a distraction from the real issue, which is to get thebr / election department running again and give the votersbr / what they voted for with Prop E."/p pAmmiano remembers the past several elections andbr / recalls, "We were very unhappy, there may have beenbr / widespread corruption, and the whole thing could havebr / been wired. We were looking forward to Prop E as abr / way to address electoral fraud." The propositionbr / created the elections commission as a means to makebr / reporting and investigation of electoral fraud morebr / accessible and effective. But when the commissionbr / took steps to fire Haygood, an appointee of thebr / Mayor's, things took a turn for the ugly./p p"The Mayor is unrelenting," says Ammiano, "He's notbr / letting the election commission do what we put thembr / there for." Itís no surprise that the Mayor wouldnítbr / be interested in enacting the reforms approved by thebr / voters. Willie Brownís legacy has included a stringbr / of elections marred by disenfranchisement and fraud inbr / low-income communities, especially those in Districtbr / 10 which encompasses the Bayview, Potrero Hill andbr / Hunter's Point neighborhoods./p pThis November, District 10, along with all other evenbr / numbered districts in the city, will elect Supervisorsbr / to represent their district in City Hall. And withbr / nothing changed in the elections department, itbr / remains to be seen whether voters will be toobr / discouraged to get to the polls. Unfortunately, whilebr / the community can still mobilize to get out the vote,br / one major factor will limit District 10 votersíbr / decisions at the polls. The community-based advocatebr / Marie Harrison won't be on November's ballot.br / In a recent interview, Harrison explained thatbr / environmental pollution and economic factors willbr / prevent her from entering the race this fall. Highbr / rents made it difficult to find a place in Hunterísbr / Point for her whole family to live. Her five year oldbr / grandson has developed environmental illness,br / including asthma. Her family found they had tobr / relocate outside the district. Supervisors arebr / required to have their primary residence in thebr / district they represent, so the move disqualifiedbr / Harrison from the race. /p p" We can truly not afford to live here," shebr / explained,"to put my family through this, I had to bebr / assured that this will be a fair and honest race."br / Harrison has reason to doubt her chances for such abr / race. As a candidate for District 10 Supervisor inbr / the November 2000 election, she witnessed widespreadbr / intimidation, coercion and election day violations inbr / the polls she visited. (See "Disappearing Votes,br / Disappearing Communities") Many votes from her corebr / constituents also vanished once the ballots werebr / counted. /p pMany of the groups who mobilize the community to vote,br / such as the A. Philip Randolph Institute, work tobr / ensure that their communities carry the big partybr / lines on election day. Not surprisingly, APRI wasbr / also at the helm of the campaign to reinstate Tammybr / Haygood after her dismissal. This kind of poorbr / leadership within the community, Harrison claims, hasbr / betrayed any real chance of its representation inbr / government./p p "In the era of Willie Brown, its all about how muchbr / money you have. People are not out there to representbr / the community, they are there for my folks, theybr / want to see what they can get out of it." Harrisonbr / made clear. According to her, nearly all of thebr / politicians out there "owe something to somebody."br / She insists that isn't a sacrifice she would be ablebr / to make, which has meant she has had to turn down manybr / offers of support that arrived with strings attached.br / Although she wonít be on the ballot, she insisted,br / "I'm not out of the game." Harrison still works inbr / the community and she is advising people to write inbr / their choice for Supervisor if they donít like any ofbr / the candidates." That vote is like money in the bank,"br / she said, "spend it like it was your last dime.br / Explore your options, take a chance and send abr / message." Over and over again she stressed thebr / importance of continuing to vote, a sign of her ownbr / powerful commitment to community power. /p pHarrison's rich and warming voice and her solidbr / philosophies come back to me as I watch the crowds ofbr / politicians swarm after Haygood on the TV screen. Thebr / media circus is yet another distraction from the realbr / issues that people like Marie Harrison are fightingbr / for. As she put it, "We are fighting for a chance tobr / survive, to see our children grow up healthy inbr / Hunterís Point." And while politicians and theirbr / appointees scramble for money and position, leadersbr / like Harrison carry on beyond the ballot box and thebr / media frenzy. As she concluded before hanging up, "Ibr / am still battling for my community. I will fight tillbr / this thing is done."/p pFor more information Read pt 1; Disappearing Votes, disappearing communities by Gretchen Hildebran /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongA poem about single mothers/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Marlon Crump/Poverty Scholar POOR Magazine/p p Did y'all see?/p pbr / Did y'all see?/p p You reekersbr / br / of public reliefers,br / br / when she told youbr / br / she had to work lengthy hours,br / br / while you smiled,br / br / a vile and vicious smile.br / br / You knewbr / br / she had to drift a couple of miles,br / br / with ancient shoes on her feet,br / br / a house with no heatbr / br / and giving her a workfarebr / br / she can never complete:/p p You did so,br / br / sitting in office leather upholstery,br / br / engulfed by lies of leisures,br / br / weekend planning of nightclubs,br / br / stacked with papersbr / br / of promissory poverties.br / br / You still askbr / br / her repeated questions to annoy her,br / br / frustrate her,br / br / irritatebr / br / and economically eradicate her./p p The babies are crying to be fed,br / br / then put into bed,br / br / so she can't utter defeat:/p p Your houses/studio-apartmentsbr / br / fuel your energy and ego,br / br / as her superior,br / br / while you shame and defile her plightbr / br / in light of her fight as a multiple mom,br / br / but inferior in your sight.br / br / Your eyes are shut,br / br / unseen that you too also lackbr / br / the great castle act,br / br / while she sought solacebr / br / and refuge with her young,br / br / in her habitat,br / br / with her back holding the shack:/p p Did y'all see?/p p When caseworkersbr / br / of no guest workers,br / br / when she so-desperatedly sought refugebr / br / in your country that you so vowbr / br / as the land of the free,br / br / but didn't lift a finger to aid her?br / br / Nothing but her ownselfbr / br / and little dignity she had left.br / br / Your sadistic manly desiresbr / br / falsely promised her salvation,br / br / if she let you pin her back:/p p Even in safehavensbr / br / you call shelters,br / br / she's promised a bottom bunk,br / br / a decent bath and a nourishing fed,br / br / you still bestow your powerbr / br / upon her to share your bed.br / br / "Unless I comply,br / br / I may die,br / br / as a resultbr / br / of hot lead" you said.br / br / At this point,br / br / her face is blood-red:/p p What about a pregnant mom,br / br / looking for someone tobr / br / at least be heldbr / br / and told that her childbr / br / will cry and not die.br / br / Shes see the father walk by,br / br / she asks why?br / br / He just sneeredbr / br / as he walks by,br / br / with a pathetic ass sigh.br / br / Her son will not live this lie,br / br / alive or dead:/p p Did ya'll see?br / br / When a young mom couldn't evenbr / br / complete the alphabet,br / br / but now lives to regret,br / br / being upset after tossing her childbr / br / from elevationbr / br / higher than Mount Everest,br / br / seeing and fleeingbr / br / for luxuriesbr / br / from a colored T.V. set?:/p p Her selfless pity,br / br / o iddity bitty,br / br / of siddity,br / br / with wealth and romance,br / br / of so much finance,br / br / with a decorated carriagebr / br / of her own initiated miscarriage,br / br / of a now drifted off life.br / br / A lifebr / who's own altitude bearing wingsbr / br / clipped,br / br / by a mom's longitudebr / br / of lust for leisures,br / br / a tale too tragicbr / br / for anyone to forget:/p p Did ya'll see?/p p When a mom plagued by demonsbr / br / and ghost whispers,br / br / brain sustained as insane,br / br / with no nerves of steel,br / br / no heart to healbr / br / or spouse to feel.br / br / She tries desperatedlybr / br / to love her off and spring,br / br / but agents of infantsbr / br / take them off as they sing,br / br / promising thembr / br / what tomorrow will bring:/p p What must I, how can I, where can I, who can I,br / br / or why can I,br / br / make any of youbr / br / feel,br / br / see,br / br / smell,br / br / hearbr / br / or even taste the earth,br / br / wind,br / br / water,br / br / or fire I walk through.br / br / I couldn't, wouldn't or shouldn't have to./p p Did you'all ever see?br / br / Hurry up and arise,br / br / before your bell starts to ring,br / br / Bling, Bling, Bling, Bling:/p p "To every struggling mother in the universe,br / br / The Lord thy Father,br / br / is one baby's fatherbr / br / that will never forgetbr / br / to hold the fruit from your womb,br / br / even while the other doesn't.br / br / Whether the child is downbr / br / below or up and above,br / br / he will never escapebr / br / His Undying Love."/p pMarlon Crump 10/31/2006br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongAn outline of a familiy's struggle with Child Protective Services/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby PNN/p pEditors' Note: i Our basic belief is that, as journalists in pursuit of "the story," we must give something back to the poeple who are involved in "the story." Through this method of "extreme advocacy," we believe we are practicing collectivism rather than individualism in our journalizing./i/p p Generally speaking, when breaking these cases down to the students, Court Watch facilitators explained that out of the several ways the journalists could intervene/ advocate- the most logical way was to advocate in some way for the case participants and to provide them with resources that they could m out of the crises they were in at the time./p pNeighbor's dog kills cat- neighbor denies this and angrily, to retaliate, calls Child Protective Services (CPS) regarding a 14 year old Severely Emotionally Disturbed (SED) girl, saying girl is abused (claims that girl sleeps on unlocked porched for 2 days and 2 nights) (girl had run away from unlocked porch anytime she felt like it.)/p p*CPS makes allegation of the charge and combined with other allegations like girl doesn't get presents (photographs of girl getting presents doesn't matter to CPS regarding allegations)/p p* Case goes to trial/p p* Parents get public defender/p p* Girl first placed in psychiatric hospital. They are anti-parent/ i.e. psychiatric M.D. makes psychiatric diagnosis of parentt without ever seeing parent/p p* Parent loses custody/p p* CPS worker makes more allegations/ CPS child workers practice medicine without a license/ make psychiatric diagnoses/ not qualified/p p* CPS puts girl in foster homes and group homes all over state- girl runs away/p p* Finally girl refuses all foster care and becomes street runaway/p p* Juvenile Dependency Court CPS claim ther's nothing they can do/p p* JD Court extremely biased against parent (thru entire case and in all custody cases)/p p* Public Defender not experienced int hese types of cases- court and CPS resent her for defending parent/p p* CPS abusive and divisive of family- attempt to turn child against family/p p* CPS worker threatens parent's professional stnading and job and criticizes public defender for representing parent (as a way to shut them up)/p p* Courts take jurisdiction over teen but unable to stop her from being runaway/p p* Court wants two psychiatric evaluations in order to reunify parent with teen/p p* Parent refuses two psychiatric evaluations on political grounds/p p* Public Defender appeals case/p p* Public Defender loses appeal because case law and J.D. court and appeal court are biased agianst the parent in custody cases/p p* Court Watch begins/p p* Many, many complaint letters sent to court, CPS, the city attorney by parent/p p* City attorney taken off case/p p* CPS worker taken off case/p p* Ombudsperson brought in/p p* Client asked to see report by Ombudsperson/p p* Parent never allowed to see report/p p* Therapy recommended and provided- child refused to recieve therapy services/p p* Child goes to relatives in another state against recommendations of parent, psychiatrist and social worker/p p* Placement failure- child returns to California/p p***Court Watch Responds*** /ppWe are citing some case law and welfare codes from Case #1. These need to be read in full by advocates for parents wanting to reunify with their children./p pThe Juvenile Dependency Court and Child Protective Services, in San Francisco and in other places we have ivestigated, are closed systems- the editors of POOR Magazine have had first hand experience with San Francisco systems and are glad to discuss them with anyone who hasquestions./p p In San Francisco Juvenile Dependency Cout, child welfare workers are called social workers to give them added status as expert witnesses./p pAlso in San Francisco, psychological evaluations are required for parents wanting to reunify, and the psychiatrists are paid by Child Protective services. It is always possible for anyone to get an expert witness if they are willing to pay./p p"Heresay" evidence from psychiatrists is admitted as evidence to prevent the parent from reunifying as well./p pFurther, child welfare wrokers essentially "practice medicine without a license" in that they can make psychiatric diagnoses that are used as evidence in trials./p pIn sum, psychiatry is now being used in the Juvenile Dependency Court and Child Protective Services to remove children from their parents, and case law supports these diagnoses. In totalitarian societies, people are sent to camps and to death based on the recommendations of psychiatrists. Fro some parents, not being able to reunify with their children is like death./p pCPS has gone way beyond their usefulness for extreme abuse reporting adn need to be reigned in- they have complete and absolute power, and the system has to increase its power in order to feed itself (ie pay the wages for all the people it employs)br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrong pbThe residents are in the picture,br / lets stay there with so many peoplebr / from 'M Street and surrounding areas./b/p pThat this kind of community unitybr / becomes a model for other citiesbr / and towns where citizens voices arebr / really heard and just maybe Urbanbr / Renewal and Redevelopmentbr / will have a positive meaning./p/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Joe B./p pThursday and Friday, Oct. 18th and 19th are rush days they came and went like phantom horses mixing with the wind, galloping across sped-up flickering sky. /p pSaturday, Oct, 20, 2001 went slow as cold molasses from a frozen bottle./p pIt's 8:26 am. Market Street is still sleeping with a few street folks, parents walking taking turns pushing their infant child in a stroller, a police car making its rounds, some guy with headphones rollerblading down the street./p pWhen I begin to record these gems of regular life - no taperecorder!br / Its safely on my soft, warm, if rumpled bed. /p p Up and down the blessedly working lift, out the door with a hi-by again to the desk clerk it is now 8:34 and I know I will be late at the office 9am./p pGood! Saturday Morining to me as with rest, reading, or any kind of relaxation is sacred and is hard to find a slow phase in these fast time of 21st Century Earth. /p pGlad Mr. Stuart Brand of the of the 1960's, Whole Earth Catalog and later theCo-evolution Quarterly now Whole Earth Review in 1999 was and is working on a Clock/Library in the Nevada desert that supposedly is built to last 10,000 yearsbr / b[that’s one long hobby to be working on/b] /p pAre most of its parts made from near indestructible Timex parts? /ppSomething like this or long range-view works can help humanity appreciate a true flow of linear time, not these new nano second spliting of infinity. /p pWorking on a high tech - low slow mechanical time machine (clock) in a desert to run ten thousand years and to slow ourselves down to me is a noble endeavor and other. /p pOn the bus I'm reading "The Turd Filled Donut" of 6th.Street, this is its 8th publication. I wonder how it began? /p pMy thinking is:a couple of girls and guys pick up a donut from a thrown away pastry box full or a few donuts. /p pThey see what looks like dark and light chocolate smears but the odor betrays what really covers the donut./p pQuickly throwing it away making sure their hands are clean, one of then decides to create a publication based on the incident for Sixth Street. Laughter subsides the friends get serious and they begin working on the ugly sounding and imaged publication./p pIt sounds gross but has lots of info. /p pI wonder if that ever really happened to anyone in the past or presence. /p pBy 9:40 I'm in POOR's Office. /p pSoon a little Toyata is racing to Golden Gate Larkin St. at 455 The Hiram, W. Johnson, State of California, State Office Building of San Francisco. /p pWe are in the building by 10:07 am./p pI don't know about anyone else but it feels like one long day for me.br / It ends at 1:30 pm. /p pOutside are faint far off voices of protest at City Hall. /p pHaving no idea what its about or having an inkling I know when its time to go home read a book or two, have free lunch at St. Anthony's or Glide Memorial's Lunchroom, or get some zzzzzz's./p pI had two servings in both Glide Memorial and St. Anthony's just in time before closing then walk home belly not belly ache and get my voluntary Z-on. /p pNothing like a good hard sleep after work then waking up in time to party the night away./p pSure-you right, soon as my face hit the pillow, body under sheets I od on z's-z'd out completely, my day is done folks... Bye.br / PS- How's life treating you like a limp, rank rag or soft silk perfect?/p pPlease donate what you can to b[laptops, webcams,palms-whatever]/bbr /Poor Magazine orbr / br /C/0 Ask /ppJoe at 255 9th St.br / br /Street, San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA/p pFor Joe only my snailbr / br /mail:PO Box 1230 #645br / br /Market St.San Francisco, /ppCA 94102br / br /Email:askjoe@poormagazine. org./p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongAfter 20 years of “abandonment” Slumlords reopen Single Room Occupancy hotel as a tourist hotel/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/551/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Lani Kent/PoorNewsNetwork/p pIt was Wednesday night and I found myself sitting in a stuffy room next to a fancy suit wearing a man with fish breath. This malodorous man exhaled often, and with great effort, for he was nervous and light in his seat. As I sat there, waiting for the Board of appeals meeting to convene, I realized he was the lawyer representing West Cork Hotel, and his stench suddenly seemed appropriate. The West Cork situation simply reeks!!/p pAfter twenty years of abandonment, the former Empress Hotel has opened its doors under a different name. But what should be happy news for local residents has turned sour, for this formerly run-down hotel did not reopen for them. Owner, Dahyabhai Patel, opened a now-plush West Cork to a different clientele. It now provides expensive nightly rates to wealthy tourists, not affordable SRO housing to low-income folks. Poor folks have once again been raped of their right to decent affordable housing./p pRandy Shaw, representing the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, showed up with a small army of activists and poor folks to testify the need for West Cork to continue affordable SRO housing. The main point of his argument being that the building was abandoned and did not get city approval to re-open as a tourist hotel. Zoning Administrator, Larry Badiner supported Shaw by saying: “Before they spent all this money [renovating], they should have checked zoning laws.” It has to remain a SRO hotel. And why not renovate for poor folks? Do they not deserve a flushing toilet?/p pDifferent numbers were tossed around as to how much money was spent “renovating.” I heard $2 million more than once, but Patel did not supply receipts or permits. Where I come from $2 million is a little more than a nice evening out. I’d keep THAT receipt. Annoyed, I tried not to dwell on the fact that Patel stole housing from the poor and cared little enough to balance it in his checkbook. But that’s just me. Some of ya’ll might have $2 million to “misplace.”br / Shaw also pointed out that San Francisco does not need another tourist hotel. “Tourism is way down, and many already established tourist hotels are suffering,” argued Shaw. Suffering to the point of laying off the poor folks and the students and the middle management that work for them. If you really think about it, Patel is not only stealing from the poor, he is stealing from the elusive working-class and the dwindling middle-class. Talk about alienating ones self. Greed and robbery on both sides of the fence! /p pUnfortunately this is not even a special case, or the most offensive part of the problem. Poor folks constantly suffer eviction, lame rules impose upon their privacy, and landlords destroy personal property. Patel is just one of many guilty of this crime, and he is so typically selfish it’s almost boring. Unfortunately, this constant assault silently suffocates, and few have the energy to fight back. Those who do, do so with little more than faith. These passionate souls showed up Wednesday to protest./p pShaw and his poverty heroes told their story thru testimony. Although the case was continued to November 28th, it seemed to end on a positive note. The fishy suit man, who by the way is Andrew Zacks, fidgeted and stood aloof from his clients, maniacally searching thru his fancy leather briefcase. He must provide ALL building permits to the board by the next hearing. Hee! Hee! Hopefully, then, the correct decision can be made. Tenderloin needs West Cork for itself. Patel cannot house rich tourists in poor folks’ rightful home. This is just a fact./p pI have always understood the Tenderloin to be the cheapest place in the city to live. So my question is this: If the poor are pushed out of this neighborhood, where will they go? I mean really? According to Residents, Tenderloin is the bottom of the bottom. Must we define new bottoms? Could things smell any worse?br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongThe death of Idriss Stelley and the case for increasing police crisis intervention training.../strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/517/photo_1_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Leroy F. Moore, Jr/p pAs a college graduate, I had to take many different classes before I could walk onstage to get my degree, so why can't we hold up the same standard for the San Francisco Police Department? In the case of Idriss Stelley, the young Black man with mental illness shot more than 20 times by police on June 13 at the Sony Metreon Theater, the officers were informed that the call they were responding to was a “5150,” the police code for someone in psychiatric distress. But none of the officers involved had received crisis intervention training to prepare them to save Stelley’s life instead of taking it. /p pThirty officers graduated in June from the SFPD’s first class of Police Crisis Intervention training, but only those 30 of the force’s approximately 2,000 officers — or less than 2 percent — are trained to respond correctly in a situation involving a mentally ill person. That is a frighteningly small proportion of the City’s police force, especially when you realize that one in four calls to the police regards someone in psychiatric crisis./p pThis is why Mesha Monge-Irizarry, Stelley’s mother, along with activists, community members, youth and people with mental illness marched into City Hall on Thursday, Oct. 4 — up to Room 263, where the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee held a special hearing to address police violence against people in psychiatric distress. It’s been almost four months since Stelley, a 4.0 college student, was killed by the SFPD. Once again, Irizarry was in front of another committee. Why is the system constantly making this grieving mother uncover her wounds from the tragic shooting of her only child when what she’s asking for is simply common sense? /p p“My son’s fiancé called for help for Idriss but got a firing squad instead,” Irizarry said. “The SFPD knew they were dealing with someone in psychiatric distress, but the officers involved were not adequately trained. They ran in with guns drawn, and within minutes Idriss was dead.”/p pShe and the other activists are demanding that the City increase the number of officers receiving crisis intervention training to at least 25 percent of the police force within the next two years. As I took notes and pictures of the hearing, I wondered how many times Irizarry and her supporters will have to preach, plead and organize around something so painful? /p pOnce again, the Idriss Stelley campaign made an intimidating space — the Board of Supervisors’ hearing room — into a warm family room. Samantha Liapes, director of Bay Area PoliceWatch, in asking for a moment of silence, called on the spirit and strength of Idriss Stelley and other people with mental illness who have been victims of police abuse. The compelling spoken word of Po' Poets of POOR Magazine echoed that of many spirits who are not at rest because there is still no justice. /p p “The 20 plus shots fired at Idriss Stelley are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Liapes. “Every day, because of SFPD’s negligence, people in psychiatric crisis end up in jails instead of hospitals and are beaten down or shot down instead of talked down. People in psychiatric crisis deserve help, not homicide.”/p pNine representatives of various community organizations and commissions spoke about the need to increase the amount of training police receive to handle people in psychiatric crisis. Many speakers put a face on mental illness by testifying to how they feel about the shooting of Idriss Stelley. One youth spoke about the power of the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee to pass a resolution that would implement the activists’ demands and put pressure on other political leaders. /p pThe resolution, written by a broad coalition of individuals, organizations and family members who have suffered from police mishandling of people in psychiatric distress, makes the following demands: Within the next two years, 25 percent of SFPD officers must receive Police Crisis Intervention training; within one year, at least four to five officers per shift per station must have volunteered and completed this training, enabling them to take the lead in any crisis involving someone with an altered mental status; training must continue until all police officers are trained./p pSupervisor Tom Ammiano took the lead by promising that he and the committee would sign the resolution by the following Tuesday and keep the pressure on to make sure that the PCI training is implemented. Many City commissioners are lending support as well. For example, Marissa Villa Nuelle of the San Francisco Youth Commission and Carol Patterson of the Mayor’s Council on Disability both spoke from the heart about why their commissions wrote a resolution calling for an immediate and mandatory augmentation of the SFPD crisis intervention program. /p pWith the backing of various commissions, organizations, community activists, people with mental illness and the family, friends, and girlfriend of Idriss Stelley, you would think that Mesha Irizarry would by now have learned all of the facts regarding her son's shooting, but this is not the case. She still has not been told the names of the witnesses to the shooting. You would think that after two more shootings of people with mental illness since the death of Idriss Stelley on June 13 that there would be an independent criminal investigation by now. Not true. And you would also think that the increase in police shootings of people with mental illness would spark the Department of Justice to look at these cases as violations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Not true./p pLast, but just as importantly, you would think that a representative from the SFPD would have come to hear what the public and Board of Supervisors are talking about and start to plan how the department could improve its treatment of the mentally ill. Once again, not true./p pLeroy F. Moore Jr., a reporter for PoorNewsNetwork, is also the executive director of the Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization (DAMO)./p p bSpeech made to the Rules Committee on Mental Illness, Race, Poverty and Policebr /br / By Leroy F. Moore/b/p pGood evening. My name is Leroy F. Moore, Jr. and I’m a resident of San Francisco and Founder and Executive Director of Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, the only organization that is for and by disabled people of color in the Bay Area and, I think, in California. I am also a staff writer for POOR Magazine and The BayView Newspaper./p pMy topic today is how mental illness, poverty and police brutality play a roll in the lives of people of color, especially Black men. As a Black, disabled researcher, writer and advocate of disabled people of color, I have noticed that in every arena of life—from education, employment, services industry and yes, to the mental health system—disabled people of color, especially disabled Black men, are at the bottom of the heap./p pThe National Council on Disability reported that over 70 percent of people with disabilities are living below the poverty line. Last year, the president and the CEO of the NAACP wrote that the national unemployment rate of African Americans with severe disabilities (including mental illness) is 85 percent. This percentage has not changed in almost ten years! /p pThe San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness reported that there are more people with disabilities, especially people with mental illness, living on our streets than ever before. All of the above, including institutionalism and more, have caused a lot of added tension, stress, depression and other physiological pressures which add to the overwhelmingly high rate of mental illness among African Americans and other people of color/p pPeople of color, especially African Americans, with mental illness have a distrustful relationship with the mental health system because of their history of being over-medicated, misdiagnosed, experimented on— the Tuskeegee Experiments— and the threats of being forcibly medicated and forcibly institutionalized. Today the last real threat to African Americans with mental illness is the increase in brutality and killings, i.e. police shootings. This issue now is to teach the Black community that we must be vocal about how the police, social service providers and even family members are educated about the needs and wants of a mentally ill person in and out of crisis./p pWe all know that there has been a drastic increase in police shootings of people with mental illness all over the country. However, have we noticed that over 80 percent of these shootings have involved people of color with mental illness who are poor, homeless and outside of the disabled or Black communities? Most of them are Black men. Have we noticed recently that many police nationwide have walked away with a clear record from these shootings? (Margaret L. Mitchell of Los Angeles, Eroll Shaw of Michigan and recently, Shannon Smith of Illinois) /p pLast but not least, the brutality committed against people with mental illness has not been on the radar screen of the Department of Justice, the department in charge of carrying out the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability laws. Mandatory training is needed across the board from the police to the justice system to the families of people with mental illness, from a culturally diverse platform. /p pOne last point I would like to make is that in July, Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization and many other grassroots organizations held the first ever Open Forum on Senseless Crimes Against People With Disabilities. In this forum, many advocates and specialists on this topic concluded that the primary cause of unnatural death of people with mental illness is police shootings. To put the icing on the cake, the justice system—jurors, judges and lawyers—has a lack of knowledge and special training in working with people who have disabilities. We also found out that there is a state organization called the Crime Victims with Disabilities Initiative that is setting up Crime Victim with Disabilities Specialists to provide awareness training to the general public, the justice system and the police and they also will be creating a speaker bureau on this issue. /p pFor more information contact Dan Sorensen of the Crime Victims with Disabilities Initiative of California at (916) 651-9304. /p pThere are too many mentally ill people of color, especially Black men, who have been turned away from the system and ended up in the grave because of police shootings and other street crimes./p pPlease, for the mother, family, friends and supporters of Idriss Stelley, lets make sure that no more youth, adults or elders with mental illness have to suffer what Idriss and his family had to! /p p***Find this story and more on the San Francisco Bay View's online site atbr / a href="http://www.sfbayview.com"www.sfbayview.com/abr / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/533/photo_3_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Staff Writer/p p/pPBorn into povertybr / BR /3 generations of poor womenbr / BR /consumed by marginalizationbr / BR /3 generations of women destroyed by subjugation.br / BR /3 women Not resisting just existing./p p/pPme - child of a mixed race mamabr / BR /she-orphaned as a child- tortured as a childbr / BR /she-born of a another tortured woman beaten by a man...br / BR / a man who had a plan to use and abuse until there was no more left to have /p p/pPauntie with no teeth..no soulbr / BR /lost to dpression and cigarettesbr / BR /bearing more tortured children more tortured women who did not eat - who did speak BR /who harm each other and themselves cause there are no more tears to grieve./p p/pPthese womenÕs livesbr / BR /are inter-twinedbr / BR /with the oppressor,br / BR /the oppressorÕs name is Shamebr / BR /Shame tells them it is wrong to be poor,br / BR /it is your faultbr / BR /and whatever you do - BR /donÕt ask for a hand-outbr / BR /starve your childbr / BR /consume that winebr / BR /sleep on the streetbr / BR /youÕll be finebr / BR /but IdonÕt /iask for helpbr / BR /these women believe the oppressor as tho he is the lover they can never keep-they BR /starve their children in honor of shame, they remain homeless in honor of shame- BR /they lose their soul... in honor of shamebr / BR /Shame is the name of the new colonizers, the gentrifying landlords, the policy BR /makers, the presidents/p p/pP3 generations of poor women destroyed by margin-a-lizationbr / BR /Not resisting..Just existing/p p/pPI am born of these women - I am born of this pain ...of the impossible relationship with BR /the new lover- shame-br / BR /at a young age I give up - unable to change - unable to save - ready to die, dead from BR /too many reasons to cry - /p p/pPbut wait there is a happy ending... No not happy... just angry... but anger has hope - BR /anger has possiblitites anger has names like Dorothy Allison, Shange, Toni Morrison, BR /And Zora Neal Hurston -br / BR /anger has clarity and words like resistance and strugglebr / BR /survival and organize/p p/pPso now the story can readbr / BR /3 generations of poor women fighting back-br / BR /3 generations of women.... Healing not Grieving -br / BR /Resisting..... Notbr / BR /just Existingbr / /pbr / /td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/519/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Liam Holt/p p On Thursday 27th, September 2001, an Ordinance tobr / amend Public Works Code 1407-1415 was debated by thebr / Rules Committee - a board consisting of Supervisorsbr / Tony Hall, Matt Gonzalez and President Tom Ammiano.br / This was the third in a series of meetings discussingbr / new municipal legislation proposed by President Tombr / Ammiano which would require that twenty four hourbr / notice be provided before the removal of unattendedbr / personal property. This legislation is being foughtbr / for by homeless people and their advocates to protectbr / the basic civil liberties of those living on thebr / streets. /p pThe basis of the legislation is the humanbr / right to own personal property. The legislation hasbr / become embroiled in many issues and has highlightedbr / many conflicts in the city. The concerns voiced by thebr / Parks Authority and Department of Public Works (DPW)br / pertained, for the most part, to the increasedbr / workload they would shoulder and the possiblebr / ambiguities that the legislation might cause./p pReferring to the previous two meetings, Supervisorbr / Gonzalez, who chaired the board, prefaced thebr / discourse by stating, “I think that the way that thisbr / whole discussion is being framed is losing sight ofbr / why people are compelled to do this. If many rulesbr / which exist were implemented properly, then there wouldbr / not necessarily be a need for this legislation.br / Unfortunately, the reality, when seeing the videobr / tapes which show what happens when there are encountersbr / between the DPW, police and the homeless isbr / disturbing.”/p p The concerns of the Park Department are chieflybr / that the legislation would contradict existingbr / anti-encampment laws. The department continues to pushbr / for amendments to exempt parks from the notificationbr / requirement citing a lack of resources to do so.br / However, John Viola of the Coalition for the Homelessbr / makes the point that, “It is important to recognizebr / that this is a statute about people’s basic rights.br / [Concerns regarding work burden] may not be the mostbr / appropriate way to look at this legislation.” /p p Indeed, if departments are not able to consider these rightsbr / with current staffing and procedures then thatbr / situation urgently needs to be examined. The samebr / necessity to reevaluate the importance of civilbr / liberties also applies to similar concerns from thebr / DPW regarding the feasibility of giving individualbr / notice. The discussion needs to be brought back, firstbr / and foremost, to those basic rights that must bebr / considered. /p pThe DPW head, Ed Lee, did suggest positive action.br / Speaking of collaborative and rehabilitativebr / initiatives, Mr. Lee said, “We have put brooms in thebr / hands of people in Caesar Chavez and have seenbr / results.” Referring to an initiative to encouragebr / collaboration rather than conflict at clean-ups in thebr / area, he rightly highlights the efficacy of suchbr / shifts of attitude. He continued, “We have contractsbr / with the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners; itbr / is their business to encourage homeless to build jobbr / skills and help us clean streets during hours when webr / cannot. We are very committed to going further in thatbr / direction. Obviously not everyone can do that, but forbr / those that are capable and willing we will encouragebr / that.”/p p Those advocating the legislation (including thebr / Coalition for the Homeless, POOR news, and homelessbr / people) cite, above all, the need to protect thebr / homeless, a vulnerable population who are alreadybr / massively disadvantaged by their situation. Kathleenbr / Gray, a homeless woman and member of the coalitionbr / pointed to the inefficiencies and dangers of currentbr / practices. “When you have systems which givebr / people blankets and medicines,” she said, “then turn around andbr / take them away, [it] is not only wasteful of resourcesbr / it is also very debilitating.” (See “Where’s Mybr / Stuff?” by Clive Whistle, POOR News Network, 7/10/01)/p pGray emphasised, "This legislation is aboutbr / permitting people to own things, to accumulate things,br / to go beyond just collecting bottles in a cart, tobr / have some nice clothes to enable to them to work abr / job.” She makes an important point about the currentbr / vicious cycle: Even if a homeless person can work,br / they cannot guarantee the safety of their possessions,br / they cannot save or accumulate property in order tobr / better their situation. She continued, “This is aboutbr / people’s right to own property. [That right] is selfbr / empowering, and those who are self empowered improvebr / their lives. When their lives are improved, thebr / neighborhood is improved.” /p p Ms. Gray referred to earlier comments by members ofbr / the 7th Street Commercial Association (SSCA) andbr / residents of the Potrero Hill area. The feeling frombr / these groups was that this legislation would makebr / their lives and business more difficult by augmentingbr / the accumulation of trash in those areas. The debatebr / has evoked strong feelings in many, some based onbr / perceptions which the homeless community is constantlybr / battling. /p pMaurine Sullivan of the SSCA implored, “Webr / are very concerned about this. To do an ordinance likebr / this would really cripple all of us who live and workbr / there. There was a cart in our driveway with brokenbr / bottles and syringe needles; it was terrible. I ambr / upset with that. The kids have a bad problem. We havebr / to escort employees after dark. We know thebr / statistics, we know [that some] are felons, we [alsobr / realise] that there are those who are mentally ill whobr / seriously need our help. You have got to help us. Webr / cannot be going through human excrement all the time.”/p pSullivan voices the erroneous fears shared by manybr / residents and business owners: that this legislationbr / will worsen these problems by hampering the police andbr / DPW in their work. The legislation does not intend tobr / do so. The language clearly accommodates the necessitybr / to remove articles posing a health risk (i.e. syringesbr / and broken glass) and the retrieval of stolen propertybr / (the abandoned shopping carts which are repeatedlybr / cited as cluttering large areas). /p pSupervisor Gonzalez attempted tobr / assuage Sullivan’s fears about the “felons.” Speaking frombr / his experience as a public defendant he contested, “I think when you’re speaking about felons,br / there is a huge difference betweens felons who havebr / engaged in violent activities and those who havebr / become felons due to very minor [infringements]. I canbr / assure you that you would not be scared of [thebr / majority of felons], and the ones that you would bebr / sc /ppared of are in the state prison.”br / Ms. Sullivan’s comments further highlighted thebr / need for this legislation as she asserted, “Abr / very small percentage of people have personal propertybr / in carts, they have all manner of objects that theybr / have gathered from goodness knows where, they are notbr / personal items.” This one sentence is justificationbr / enough for the legislation. Ms. Sullivan, the DPW, and thebr / police are not in any position to determine what mightbr / be useful to a homeless person or what might be valuedbr / personal property. Ifbr / individuals are notified that their belongings will bebr / removed if not claimed, they will make that judgmentbr / call; they are the only ones who can and they are thebr / only ones who have a right to./p pThe concerns of the affected departments, worriedbr / residents and business people are currently based uponbr / conjecture. The reality is that the homeless arebr / currently vulnerable; their lives are at risk. If thisbr / small piece of legislation can help then it should bebr / accepted, it should be given a chance. As Supervisorbr / Gonzalez points out, the Sunset provision will providebr / monitoring of the of the legislation. Post-br / implementation it will determine its effects ˆ”bothbr / positive and negative” and will make sure that it isbr / effective in its goals. If problems determine thebr / necessity, the board may modify the language of thebr / ordinance to facilitate the well-being of all. Whatbr / should not be confused is the legislation’s intent./p p During the course of discussion, Supervisors Tonybr / Hall and Matt Gonzalez and others have reiterated manybr / times that it is not only the city that will removebr / unattended property. When homeless people are forcedbr / to leave property unguarded, “whether it be to work abr / job, to go to hospital, because they are arrested orbr / just because they must use the bathroom,” thatbr / property may be stolen or removed by those notbr / authorized to do so. The point has been repeatedlybr / made that the ordinance in question only goes a verybr / small way towards providing security for homelessbr / people. Their property can only be secured if betterbr / facilities are provided- that is, storage lockers.br / This legislation is only a first step, a very basicbr / protection of the civil liberties of the homeless. /p pThe storage issue was expanded upon in Thursday’sbr / meeting by George Smith of the Mayor’s Office on thebr / Homeless. Mr. Smith outlined that there are threebr / storage facilities currently in operation: 219 lockersbr / at South Beach Resource Center, 100 at Bayview Hopebr / Center, and a center serving 375 low-income andbr / homeless people at 150 Otis street, a total of aroundbr / 700 storage units. Mr. Smith said his office wasbr / exploring possibilities to expand, mentioning thebr / use of shipping containers and the creation ofbr / self-storage sites along the lines of systems inbr / operation at airports. Mr. Smith said that he had madebr / a recommendation to the Mayor to convene a meeting. Hebr / suggested that this meeting would consist of abr / dialogue around the storage issues and requested helpbr / from advocates and interested parties. It is verybr / clear that providing safe storage is the essentialbr / next step, all parties agree on this. /p pIt has been pointed out that many interested partiesbr / may be precluded from this discussion due to the factbr / that the board meets on a nine to five schedule. Ifbr / you are unable to attend meetings because you arebr / unavailable at these times, your comments can bebr / directed to board by mail. Write to:/p pCity Hallbr /br / 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place Room 244br /br / San Francisco, CAbr /br / 94102/p pAlso, all video taped meetings can be observed remotelybr / on Channel 26 or at a href="http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/" title="www.ci.sf.ca.us/"www.ci.sf.ca.us//a. Video tapes ofbr / meetings may be requested from the main offices of thebr / public library, where they are stored for up to 30 daysbr / after the meeting. To order video tape copies or tobr / enquire about the scheduling of meetings call (415)br / 557-4293.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/533/photo_3_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Staff Writer/p pBR /my house - a car-br / BR /It was the last thingbr / BR /I owned./p p/pPIt was another ticket,br / BR /A red tag day.br / BR /They came around early- 2:39 am-br / BR /Just like thieves in the twilight./p p/pPI remember shaking in the cold,br / BR /afraid-br / BR /I knew I hadbr / BR /no where to go-br / BR /And feeling unlovedbr / BR /by all./p p/pPFor a moment mybr / BR /mind wanders,br / BR /A shock wave of feelingbr / BR /runs rapidly through mybr / BR /mind and body.br / BR /I remember thinking,br / BR /What has happened to society as a whole?br / BR /As they sit around in ivory government buildingsbr / BR /allocating themselves huge salaries,br / BR /While others be comebr / BR /impoverishedbr / BR /by the secondbr / BR /homelessbr / BR /by the second./p pBR /And finally a red tag day.br / BR /No housing and finallybr / BR /my homebr / BR /my only possessionbr / BR /My car.br / br / gone..gone..gone../p p/p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrong* Strategy Session: Community actvists respond to current McCarthyism in the radio airwavesbr /br / by Dae-Han Song /strong/p p*..DAVID DAVEY D WAS FIRED!.by Corporate radio moguls Clear Channel Communications from his post as Community Affairs Directorbr / br /by Jeff Chang/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/521/photo_2_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Staff Writer/p pbSTRATEGY SESSION:Community actvists respond to current McCarthyism in the radio airwaves /bbr /br / by Dae-Han Song/p pOn Saturday October 13th, in a packed room in the Oakland YWCA, representatives from Books not Bars, Let's Get Free, POOR Magazine, Media Alliance and Solid Thoughts met together with other community members to strategize ways to fight against the increasing McCarthyism emerging after the September 11th tragedy that had led to the firing of David D. During this strategizing meeting among community activists, David D made an appearance and stressed the importance of a strategized approach to protesting, warning of short-lived protests that begin and end with picket lines./p pThis coalition not only strategized ways of getting David D rehired, but also saw this as an opportunity for the community to reclaim the radiowaves. The resolution statement, in addition to demanding that David D be rehired, demanded local play for local artists and community access to corporate dominated radiowaves, by means of community shows. To meet these goals, those present planned to launch a massive publicity campaign that would include bumperstickers, flyers, and most importantly the strength in word of mouth. /p pb**.DAVID DAVEY D WAS FIRED**/bbr / br /By Jeff Chang/p pMost of you may know his work as a committed young progressive activist ofbr / color and one of the most articulate, sensitive voices for young people outbr / there today. He's developed a national reputation in over 15 years of beingbr / on the radio, and his show and his activism have given voice to the unheardbr / at some of the most important junctures in this generation's recent memory:br / the LA rebellion and its aftermath, the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, and nowbr / the war. He's spoken honestly and forthrightly for peace and forbr / consciousness./p pIt's really ironic that Clear Channel would fire him now. This is thebr / company that, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks out of its west coastbr / division, assembled a list of songs that whose lyrics were deemedbr / "sensitive"--songs which reportedly included John Lennon's "Imagine", Catbr / Stevens/Yusuf Islam's "Peace Train" and the entire Rage Against the Machinebr / catalog. /p pIn its efforts to counter-spin media outrage about this alleged blacklist,br / Clear Channel helped coordinate a Relief Fund that has raised millions ofbr / dollars to go toward relief efforts and the families of those who are nowbr / jobless because of the attacks./p pClear Channel is now eliminating the Community Affairs Director position atbr / KMEL, despite a requirement by the FCC that commercial stations havebr / community affairs programming. The future of such programming is in doubt./p pMake no mistake. While most commercial stations have treated communitybr / affairs as a stepchild in the early hours of the weekend, making itbr / impossible for folks to reach an audience, Davey D set a high standard bybr / making his show an open talk-oriented show geared towards young persons ofbr / color./p pHe took on controversial topics, hosted controversial guests (most recentlybr / Barbara Lee and Boots Riley of The Coup), even had folks like Hillarybr / Clinton come and pay respect. It was a program people talked about on Mondaybr / morning, and many other urban stations modeled their community affairsbr / programs after his./p pImagine a Rush Limbaugh type show, but geared towards a progressive, youngbr / set. Don't progressives always moan and groan about how we wish we had this?br / Well, Davey's been doing it, for over 15 years, around a decade at KMEL. Inbr / recent years, honest, reliable, truthful community radio outlets have beenbr / harder and harder to come by as media monopolization and community radiobr / in-fighting has intensified./p pIf you're as outraged as I am about the decimation of forward-thinking,br / challenging, truthful, youth-of-color-focused radio, here's what you can do!/p p*Call KMEL's General Manager Joe Cunningham at b415.538.1061/bbr /br / *or send an email to:bjoecunningham@clearchannel.com/bbr /br / * If you do send an email, send a hard copy ofbr / the letter to:br /br / Joe Cunningham, KMEL General Managerbr /br / 340 Townsend Stbr /br / San Francisco, CAbr /br / 94107/p pPeace.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/533/photo_3_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Staff Writer/p pbr /Half-staffed fo a twenty on gun ‘salute’br / br /silent cries in my heart fo being ‘confused’br / br /at times alone in my room isbr / br /not knowing what to do a smallbr / br /moment in prayers is due tobr / br /every youth that lost they lifebr / br /for being part of the that street life hustlingbr / br /overtime by the code do or diebr / br /holding back the demons that arebr / br /locked inside.br / br /Hear me Lord why is itbr / br /the good are the ones to die. I’m onbr / br /the outside of the world looking inbr / br /watching time pass by walking in thebr / br /hands of time puffing on the healingbr / br /herb to ease my mind. Followin intobr / br /footsteps of a lost ‘tribe’br / br /educate yo ‘mind’ know yo ‘rights.’br / br / They say increase da ‘peace’br / br /but how can ‘we’ when all webr / br /is deceit. Where’sbr / br /da ‘equality’ when brothazbr / br /shadows get swept from from beneath theirbr / br /feet. I’m on my kneez looking upbr / br /to heaven praying fo mybr / br /unborn seeds. Hopin they don’t growbr / br /up to “see” da shit thatbr / br /I’ve ‘seen.’ Creator please help mebr / br /wit dis situation.br / br /Pacin back and forth realizin we allbr / br /God’s children in dis babylon ‘war.’br / br /I’m juss a youngsta upbr / br /in dis ‘world’ down tobr / br /die fo what I stand ‘fo’br / br /and that’s helpin out mybr / br /community and da ‘poe’br / br /God Bless/p pSituations sometimes bebr / br /‘critical’ with all deze hatersbr / br /suckaz and ‘foez’ sobr / br /I hit da ‘studio’ droppin songsbr / br /usin my mentals andbr / br /getto ‘instrumentals.’ Hopin onebr / br /day that it paysbr / br /instead of sittin around waitinbr / br /fo judgement ‘day.’br / br /I got to keep my head upbr / br /and ‘maintain’ holdin onbr / br /to my ‘faith.’ Cuzz divide conquerbr / br /and ‘assasinate’ is howbr / br /we was ‘raised’ earnin mybr / br /‘ranks’ by bein threebr / br /steps ahead of da ‘game.’br / br /Earnin mines by da nationwidebr / br /‘fame.’ If U want be a thugbr / br /U gotta have heart andbr / br /know ‘why.’ Its either Ubr / br /fall victim to ‘genocide’br / br /or hustle to ‘survive’br / br /thugging til my lastbr / br /Its either U fall victim tobr / br /‘genocide’br / br /or hustle to ‘survive’ plan out and ‘strategize’br / br /obiding by da code ridebr / br /or ‘die.’br / br /Thugging til my last dayzbr / br /in da West ‘Side.”/p pbMarcello “Taisol” Lopezbr / br /Bio:/b/p pBorn August 9, 1981 Marcello Anthony Lopez. Oakland California Native, a graduate of Oakland Street Academy. Multi-Cultural background, so diversity is no stranger. Anthony has had the unfortunate experience of association with racial profiling, poverty along with social acceptance. Too light to be black, too dark to be white but his lyrics apply to all. At fifteen Anthony began attending the San Francisco Boys Girls Club and was introduced to a state of the art recording studio, and Taisol was incarnated. Fundraisers, festivals, protests and political awareness campaigns are some of the experiences under his belt. Older and even more knowledgeable, Taisol is here to put it on the minds of his generation. Jogging our memories to acknowledge, accept and create positive feedback on continuous unlawful and unfair acts surrounding the communities. Taisol will continue to provide consciousness to those whom are unconscious by building and strengthening the new generation. Opening the eyes of those blinded by constant casualties steamed by political injustice, empowering his generation with information pertaining to reality and longevity. A long lasting mental impression, food for mental intellect, and dialect everyone understands. As a young adult he has established his own publishing company, Poetic Hustla Foundation, is a member of ASCAP and is exploring all aspects of the Entertainment and Performing Arts industry. An artist, a lyricist with business savvy, a product of poverty, a statistic to the government but a prodigy to the ghetto.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongHow about something long?br //strong/p pbIts rare as 6 foot Pooka'sbr / but here it goes./b/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Joe. B./p pWednesday, Oct. 3, 2001, 7:35 am Market Street is empty of people, for the first time in many years I buy a $35 bus pass I know it will be a long time before that is done again./p pCalled UCSF School of Dentistry to change my appointment it its place I'd give fluid at Erwin Memorial./p pPerfect, my day off giving part of my life to persons unknown is not my idea of doing nothing but at least if one life is saved then its worth doing all the paperwork plus drinking an orange/cranberry juice blend with a wheat bran muffin and again after blood is given a grand reward and benefit to me. /p p12:41 pm. on Market Street, its noisy and I think how vunerable, fragile everything is, supposedly for ones day off nothing is what the plan except their are books, or movies to look at, ponder./p pSleep wins out maybe for me giving blood could be the effect or Sleeping the afternoon is what I really want to do - what's wrong with a few zzzzz's when you've done something good to help strangers./p pbrPlease send donations to Poor Magazinebr / br /C/0 Ask Joe at 255 9th St. Street,br / br /San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA/brplease/p pbr /For Joe only my snail mail:br / br /PO Box 1230 #645br / br /Market St. Sanbr / br /Francisco, CA 94102br / Email: a href="mailto:askjoe@poormagazine.org"askjoe@poormagazine.org/abr / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p