2003

  • Tech Trek PLEH! Its sort of a column but not quite, just read on citizens.

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    Lugging servers upstairs with
    no elevators, not my favorite thing.

    Well, if POOR gets some it'll
    be worth a tug upstairs.

    Oh, yeah money and I-dates for Joe helps
    too 'uh look up date sites for what (I) means.

    by Joe B.

    My topic was to be about the perfect man and how women day dream of having one or a few in their lives.

    With a hypothetical (for now)immortal male or lucky mortal male growing up with the correct lessons too can be some blessed woman’s perfect man.

    But that’s for another time today on Friday the 13th I have an urgent message for all readers and tech-heads.

    ’Ya know about servers, those machines that keep PC’s running and programs from getting scrambled by minor human error glitches.

    We at POOR Magazine have a server only its way in ‘Freakin Washington D.C.!

    When glitches happen here or over there it takes hours and days getting answers by phone then getting a programmer to fix the system which may take more hours because of backtracking a problem or two from its origin.

    Folks, we need a sever. Me, I’d like to be state-of-the-art as can be barring that it can be second hand as long as it works.

    We may need 2 or 3 or more of them because constant
    mechanical ticks, program upgrades, and electromagnetic flare ups from our mutual star that at times acts up so we know not to ignore old shiny.

    We need video camera’s – persons willing to record monthly our community newsroom meeting(which can be comedy relief at times).

    Streaming Video to Broadcast PNN Newsroom at POOR Magazine/PNN [POOR NEWS NETWORK].

    A radical Community-Based News making process focused or issues of poverty, race, sex, age, and all the other "ism’s all Poor folks constantly battle, suffer through.

    Readers, Tech folks, anyone with spare servers lying around collecting dust that works but haven’t been hooked up because they may still be in their box or packed in foam padding and plastic; please send it or ask us to carry it over.
    [we’ll use carts, wheel ‘em over, getting ‘em up a flight of stairs will be a chore.

    Joe needs some exercise."

    "Thanks for ‘nothin Tiny." Anyway that’s it and as always
    donations would also be greatly appreciated.

    Donations C/0 Poor Magazine
    1448 Pine Street #205


    San Francisco, CA 94103


    Email:
    askjoe@poormagazine.org

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  • $6.75 No Es Suficiente !! ($6.75 is Not Enough!!)

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    A living wage campaign to raise the minimum wage to 8.50 per hour is launched in San Francisco

    by Tiny/PNN

    "For generations the owning class has been stealing from poor people, paying us wages that don’t afford rent, food, child care and healthcare…. A cool San Francisco breeze blew words around like leaves. My pen danced frantically on my notepad to capture each one of Steve Williams’ revolutionary utterances to my question on why he, Executive Director of POWER ( People Organized to Win Employment Rights,) a grassroots organization dedicated to getting rights for low and no wage workers was one of the sponsors of an attempt to raise San Francisco’s living wage from $$6.75 to 8.50 per hour

    "This is a first step to stop that theft", he continued slower in deference to my snail –like shorthand, "and that theft has been perpetrated by downtown corporate interests whereas this effort was spearheaded by working class people of color in communities such as The Bayview, The Mission and Chinatown." I wondered as he spoke, his eyes igniting unseen sparks on the warm pavement in front of City Hall, if my endless string of low and no-wage jobs would have been affected by this legislation…

    "Hey you, yeah you, we’re going to have cut the workforce in half and cause you’re new here, it will most likely be you that receives the ax" I had only been toiling at the bed factory placing the coils inside the second layer of each bed-to-be for two short months, counting up my meager almost salary,(6.00 per hour) when they found a reason to fire me. At first they tried to say I wasn’t productive enough, then they changed that to the old workforce problem, but none of these were really the issue. The only females who got to keep their jobs were the ones who agreed to date the oil-haired boss. I refused – so me and my sad self were out.

    I took it all very personally and felt so hopeless, that I could barely drag myself, to the welfare office the next day only to be met with a sixteen page "work assessment test that asked me the same question about my career interests at least 50 times, after barely scanning my test my newly appointed worker gave me my career results, "Ms. Garcia, you need to think about a more serious career than journalism – that’s just not a viable job for someone like you.." I wasn’t sure why she insisted on shouting each time she said the word "job" and "you" but it was probably aimed at making me feel horrible, which I already did, so at least she was successful in her chosen vocation.

    "Hey you, yeah you" It was two weeks later and this time I supposed I was hard at work at a more "viable" job for someone like me, collecting trash from the sidewalks of Oakland for my welfare check, "you’re not moving fast enough, we have to get out of here in ten" my workfare site supervisor didn’t like me very much, looking at me with that – "why are you such a bum?" look each time he spoke to me, or rather, at me.

    After several more months of humiliation at the hands of welfare bosses and minimum wage jobs – I became a member of POWER which was one of the interventions that changed my life – helping me to understand the disempowerment of the low wage worker by the Capitalist system and the urgent necessity to resist it through organizing and struggle. The education I received at POWER and other grassroots organizations even encouraged my pursuit to do the so-named "unviable" journalism career.

    "$6.75 is Not Enough !" The slogan for the minimum wage initiative which has collected over 20,000 signatures since its kickoff campaign two weeks ago is sponsored by a broad worker and community alliance base including such diverse organizations as The Young Workers Project, Mission Agenda, Acorn and Chinese Progressive Association and is part of a national movement for higher wages which has led to the passing of similar legislations in cities from New Mexico to New York and effectively works to send the message to the big bosses and corporations, that if you work you shouldn’t be poor. When employers are allowed to pay their workers less than a living wage, tax payers end up footing the bill, through food stamps, medi-cal and other emergency social services, and on the other hand, higher wages leads to lower absenteeism and higher productivity and when workers make more money they have more to spend on local small businesses.

    "I know that 8.75 won’t be enough in San Francisco", James Collins, member of Mission Agenda was explaining his reasons for supporting the legislation in front of city Hall last week at the press conference announcing the submission of the signatures, "but it will help me with basic needs such as affording my rent and still being able to get a fast pass"

    As Mr. Collins spoke, I remembered the last words uttered at me by my oily haired mattress boss before I left the building, " You know kid, you were lucky, we paid you ten cents more than most of the workers, and that’s only cause we thought you were cute" I said nothing at the time feeling truly powerless, now, as I left the living wage rally i yelled into the sky at his imaginary form " $6.75 is NOT enough...so there!"

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  • The right to reasonable safety....

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    The State of New Jersey Smacked with a Federal Lawsuit

    by Leroy Moore/Illin and Chillin’

    I’ve some bad news! The state of New Jersey could be
    smack with a federal lawsuit if federal investigators
    find that the allegations of inadequate care,
    dangerous conditions, abuse and deaths of
    developmental disabled and mentally ill residents in
    New Lisbon and Woodbridge Developmental Centers are
    true.

    According to a federal report involving New Lisbon
    Developmental Center, sited that there have been 4,400
    incidents, 242 classified as major including broken
    limbs and overmedicating etc.. For example, on
    February 9, 2002 a staff member intentionally smeared
    glue on Wilson’s face, and then rip it off when it
    dried. And on January 25, 2002 another staff member
    slapped Paula in the face, and pinched her “because
    she is a dark-skinned Black person’ and bruises don’t
    show up on her.”

    Many advocacy groups say that the New Jersey
    Developmental Disability Centers has a long history of
    being run down, overcrowded, understaffed and having
    creaky and dirty equipment i.e. wheelchairs. Governor
    James E. McGreevey has inherited this eye swore when
    he took office. Under federal law, individuals in
    public run nursing homes, jails and
    developmental-disability centers have the right to
    live in reasonable safety, receive adequate health
    care and be free from unreasonable restraint.
    These rights were violated at New Lisbon and
    Woodbridge Developmental Center, federal investigators
    concluded. There have been many plans on the table
    from hiring new staff to closing the centers down. If
    the negotiations between the state and federal
    government fail to produce a satisfactory remedial
    plan, the federal government could sue New Jersey.
    For more on New Jersey and California DEVELOPMENTAL
    Disability system click on Budget Crisis &
    Prosperity: SAME STORY and then Call Governor James E.
    McGreevey of New Jersey to advocate for our disabled
    brothers and sisters.

    By DAMO & New Jersey Minorities with Disabilities
    Coalition taken from a federal report.

    Tags
  • In One's Own Way.

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    Just want to warn you.

    If you could live as long as
    you wanted would you allow limits?

    Want a few thousand years of life
    before you die or never?

    by Joe B.

    Hard to get out of one’s own way difficult, frustrating, and futile if you are to close to notice you are your own enemy.

    Last Saturday I’m in a Filmore festival in the.

    I was told about it and decided to check it out.

    After three serving of lunch in St. Anthony’s.

    Its before Oakland’s Juneteenth on the 17th.

    The 38 Geary bus took me there in no time though it is less crowded.

    It’s a sun gorgeous day full of lovely women young, old, and mature of various ages and a men which I don’t notice since men don’t turn me on.

    After circling the area, listening to both Rap and Jazz enjoying exposed cleavage and backs of ladies.

    There are books, video’s, clothes, people selling their wares, and all kinds of olfactory seductive foods.

    Succumbing to wafting cooking odors I buy a peach cobbler for $4.50 taking a Geary bus home placing still warm food in my mini fridge.

    At home doodling, reading and old Toffler book I came across a paper on cryonics, a sub-science of Cryogenics involving the use of very low temperatures.

    It gets me thinking of The Flood Building that has a Cryonics address there.

    I go inside, sign my name, time, and take the elevator up.

    Frosted glass, polished wooden doors, and wall-to-floor white-gray marble made place quiet and creepy like walking in a mausoleum.

    I find the number but no words.

    Using the stairs is quicker. The guard explains how new clients moved in and some haven’t stenciled in their names on the doors.

    Recently I’ve joined a church, museum, and thinking of being a Common Wealth Club member as well.

    I figure between those and Life Extension, Elimination-Of-Death, Anti Aging Association, and Immortalist Organizations would encompass spiritual, cultural, social-intellectual and possibly after death revival.

    The last ones are organizations I’m almost too late for.

    Its said humanity has free will.

    Ultimately how long we chose to live should be up to us and not to Governments,

    Quasi religious oligarchies or false dynastic empire something like father and son Presidents with deeply held religious bent.

    A Bush bioethicist Leon Kass wants an end to life extension efforts, he too has his reasons too.

    From a column originally written Tues. Dec. 2, 2002.
    [Killing Immortality by Simon Smith/Forward Thinking – www. Better Humans.com].

    I read some of Mr. Simon’s column feeling slightly ill this Kass is a dangerous individual because being part of Selected President Bush’s Council on Bioethics with similar
    if not exact religious views on the subject.

    Remember President of the 1980’s 10 year ban on Bio technology and what has happened to him now?

    Well I don’t like this Mr. Kass holding up life saving technologies because he has problems with how far it will go.

    Hasn’t he heard of space habitats, platforms, asteroids and that we have the technology to train people and since age really isn’t a factor as 70 year Senator John Glen proved to the world.

    We’ve had people wanting to (for our own good) protect us from ourselves.

    Radiation from nuclear fallout, disease epidemics, sociopath, psychopathic, child molesters, rapists, murderer’s by law is vastly different from keeping is one thing.

    On the other hand folks saving their own or loved ones from needless suffering and deaths is different.

    Two oil men and a bio ethicist with similar view both slowing up new technologies have enough money for dead Dino flesh but want to ring every last drop while at the same time keeps converging life extension science under wraps.

    Maybe I’m wrong I hope I am.

    A revolution is brewing, bubbling, for all of and our choices in how long we live is in a the balance.

    We may need all life revival, anti aging doctors and other organizations to form new political parties because the main two or a few alternative here now isn’t seeing the new paradigm.

    It seems the only way to shake the country of its death culture is to prove there is an alternative to death to delay, slow, retard, reverse, and otherwise stop Grim in his/her tracks.

    The renegade want not only to live as long as they wish but have others do the same and it will be a global battle.

    It just may be the last most silent battle humanity ever has and its not about race, sex, age, religion, its about the ultimate battle for life itself.

    Everyone alive now, in the near or far future may not have a choice if our generation and others near us don’t fight for our own longer, healthier, lives.

    Life, Illness, sickness, disease, or Extended, prolonged life span is fleet as Mercury’s winged feet.

    It is easy to let our lives slip away but much harder to stay alive, see what the future holds and keep fighting.

    I know what I’ll be doing.

    What will be your choice? Bye…

    Donations C/0 Poor Magazine


    1448 Pine Street #205

    San Francisco, CA 94103


    Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

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  • Mi Ultimo Adios…1,2.&3

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    An insider journey to the Philippine Islands

    by Mariluna/PNN Youth in the Media report

    My first 72 horas.

    Tue, 24 Jun 2003.

    Wow!!!! Is the word of the moment…. I am living in Manila City in the district of Makati…. I stay in the Elizabeth home (which happens to be my sister name). This is a home for girls between the ages of 12-22 years old who have a common history of sexual exploitation, drugs, and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse… These girls are so sweet and beautiful and friendly. They are so respectful and all call me Ate Marissa (Ate means older sister) They have truly welcomed me into their family. During the day I work at SIBUHI, which is a rehabilitative arts center. They teach origami, Tae Kwondo, drawing, and other activities. I am going to be starting up the preschool there. I will be working on curriculum, lesson plans, designing the space, and training the other volunteers… It will open in mid july… I have already attended a Filipino University Baseball game. They had music while the whole game was playing, and the announcer was more like a DJ… I have spent much time with the youth and trying to learn more about them. The latest songs over here is called the "Spaghetti Song", which once you hear you will not be able to get out of your head. The radio over here plays Filipino music as well as American artists, and get all the latest songs.
    Like Sean Paul, Jennifer Lopez, and other mainstream artists.

    Things that are hard is eating. Since I am a vegetarian, I am constantly filling myself up with rice…I don’t know if this is good…. Also I miss you all…. It is very hard not being able to see anyone of you… I hold each of you deep in a special place in my heart, and cannot wait to see you all when I get back…. 55 days to go.

    Week #1 in the Philippines

    Wow, a week already passed by it feels like two weeks. I have done so much so far| I am getting to know the girls at Elizabeth home more and more| We joke and laugh, and they are constantly amazed that I am not married, engaged, or
    basically attached to anyone. I tell them I am not worried about things of that nature, that I have my whole life to be with someone I wanna be with. Actually the majority of people here are surprised when I tell them No, I do not have a
    boyfriend._* These girls have truly consumed my heart and soul. It will be so weird to leave when I have too. So, I have been to the shoe capital of the world. I took a picture of the worlds biggest shoe, which looks like a platform boot.

    I also have visited Rizal Park. This is home to Jose Rizal’s body, and where he was killed off by the Spanish. (Side Note: Today is Philippine-Spanish Friendship day.) He is the most remembered national hero of the Philippines. I read the letter
    he wrote before his death, Mi Ultimo Adios. It is very heart-jerking. I started shedding tears. I stood where he was shot by the Spaniards. I also rode a kalesa, which is a one-horse buggy. I rode this around Rizal park. If anyone one of you come to
    the Philippines, you must go to Rizal Park.

    I have also seen the Manila Hotel, former president Clinton stay here twice. I have also gone to the biggest mall in Las Filipinas. It is called Mega Mall. This mall closes everyday at Midnight. I have
    been to four malls already since last Saturday. The Malls out here are way better than the states. Not only cuz it is usually cheaper, but there is so much to chose from. I have already met two relatives, and thank goodness one of them is a
    vegetarian! So I got to eat more than just rice.

    I notice that I am barely hungry over here, I am just always thirsty. My favorite thing to eat over here is pancit canton. It is like ramen noodles. I still miss everyone, and cant wait to see, talk, or
    just plain email you all when I get back. Please keep sending me emails so what is going on over there, and what is going on with your lives. I love reading each one of them.

    Well, I hope you recognize me when I do get back. Just look for the
    girl with all the mosquito bites on her legs

    Now I must go because I am at the cyber cafe and can spend only so much for internet|.but before this letra ends I will leave you with Jose Rizals last farewell, first the way he wrote it, and the translation in English..
    Goodbye..for now!

    Rain

    Week #2

    Wow, so its been two weeks already_|. So that means my vaccine shots are working, no more jet lag, and my body is basically adjusting to the weather. I can even stand the heat sometimes without a fan. Over here, its not summer, its basically
    the rainy season_| It rains off and on_|. One thing I notice that is a difference between Filipinos and Americans is that we are scared of rain_|. How many times you see people running in the streets to get away from the rain_| How many times have you ran from the rain? It is not like that here in Manila_| People are playing basketball, taking showers in the rain, playing tag in streets, selling food, riding bikes_|. And also they are wearing sandals_|.

    While this was happening I was
    trying to get the girls inside the homes, but they were laughing at me because I was scared to get wet_|. In other news, I went to Patayas, which is in Quezon City, which is in Metro Manila_|. Patayas is a landfill dumping ground, basically a
    mountain full of trash, and a whole community live on this trash their houses are made of trash and they walk on trash. They get their source of living from the trash. Their clothes, shoes, toys, whatever all comes from the landfill. I have never
    seen poverty live this before_| It was crazy_| I feel very blessed for what I have_| The kids I worked with were the sweetest and also hungry. I helped served lunch and I never served like 30 to 40 kids in less than a few minutes_| I had to keep
    repeating to the kids â_œla mesa_* (which means the table in Filipino), because they kept on getting up from their seats_|. I must have had said la mesa like fifty times_

    |So I just happen to walk into a mall the other day, see I was getting off
    the LRT (imagine a subway) and the train stop is at a mall, which is called Metropoint Mall (this is in Pasay City), go figure_|. Also on the LRT, they have a car that is designated only for women. The women can sit in the manas section
    but the men cant sit in the womens’ section_|. I also have attended my first despedida party in the Philippines. This party celebrates someone leaving. One of our volunteers is leaving to China, so we had a despedida party in their honor.
    It was lots of fun. There was lots of food, Karaoke, and dancing. We danced hip-hop and the cha-cha. The youth and kids all know how to C Walk (a dance in the states), they can actually dance better than most people I see at the clubs in the
    States. Right now, the most popular American song is â_œIgnitionâ_* by R. Kelly. I am also getting to know Malate, Manila better;

    I am taking more jeepneys (one of the main forms of public transportation here), walking around more, and speaking Filipino moreâ_|. Don’t worry though even though I am getting more comfortable with Manila, I still miss each one of you dearly. Even though it seems I am so far away from everyone, just look up at the sky and think of me,
    because I always look up at the sky and think of all of you well until next week_|.

    Don t ever give up. Pray. It works_" painted on the side of an overpass in Quezon City, while I was going to Payatas.

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  • Fantastic Time Scapes, Thinking About Time, Our Future And The Powers Of Love.

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    When we have nothing but
    time and able to travel in it
    what will we do?

    Couple Lost Love with
    Time Travel and it can be Heaven
    or Hell for those who are the
    objects of timeless desire.

    by Joe B.

    Time, we either have to little or too much on our hands.

    Travels in time is an exciting concept many science fiction and the science of physics says the possibilities are there we just don’t have enough controlled energies for its control.

    For those who’ve have lost loved ones in wars, by tragic accident, or through disease must daily haunt the living showing them the raw, bare, reality that death is real and nothing can withstand its shroud covering all humanity living eventually in a unified gray sheet of the lifeless.

    But besides old Grim’s grip what if humankind became so technically, scientifically, enable humans to become pure energy an in this form as temporally incorporeal.

    In this incorporeal form one can race back or forwards in time.

    In this near invisible ghostly form one can enter just dead bodies of infants, older children, young teens, or adults.

    The second body within the one taken over expands adding to strengthen this outer body of flesh that would’ve and did die in another timeline.

    What if a suffering human that has lost his or her best friend, lover, husband, wife, or sibling was able to keep traveling over and over into various scenarios trying to prevent whatever cause the ceasing of life in the first place.

    Imagine a grieving wife revisiting her husband and able to take up bodies for physical contact in his timeline.

    A husband revisiting his wife learning everything about her he never could know when she was living and they were together.

    Or an ex boy/girlfriend either good to help them throughout their lives or cause endless extreme pain not that they are ex lovers.

    Imagine the hell ex friends can cause the other by systematically destroying their future at younger and younger ages.

    Someone they never knew now has the power with the expertise "Ghosting" into many bodies possessing physical forms of then supposedly dead people literally and physically haunting them!

    What could any man or woman do if the boy, girlfriends, or same sexed lovers do when they couldn’t know that every future lover they’ve been with is the same lover over and over again.

    How many times can these "living ghosts" intersect with a past love?

    To the traveler he or she has probably made physical love many times but to their unknowing loved it may always be the first, second, or seem like a new love they’ve run into.

    I thought of that and fairness goes out the window, it wasn’t fair to have a loved one taken suddenly by accident or slow disease and aging.

    If I could do those things without being caught there would be many lover’s I’d be keeping track of while possessing bodies about to die, stopping, reversing, necrosis of what was one a cadaver now a vehicle for a living ghost that haunts two or three lover’s in similar timelines.

    The only problem is time returning whole from an energy form or being trapped unable to change.

    It would be a form of accidental immortality but would it be really be alive, could one be called living when that can only be slightly sensed as a wraith of vapor or a breeze?

    Its just hypothetical blue sky spit balling but it would be interesting to be able to do that and return without any adverse reactions.

    Tell me reader’s, what would you do?"

    Donations C/0 Poor Magazine


    1448 Pine Street #205

    San Francisco, CA 94103


    Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

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  • A MOTHER'S DAY. Mother's and Father's day is done, I'm just honoring my own a second time is all.

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    If I have caused you any pain
    I am deeply sorry, if I've cause
    great joy...

    I am humbled, honored to have done so.

    If I've turned into a good and noble son.

    It is a Mother's gift for the Wife
    who will have me.

    by Joe B.

    Today is a special day, my first, love, argument, kiss, slap, joy, fun, hurt, painful truths.

    My Mother’s birthday is today she remains 21+ that’s all I’ll ever know.

    Its said she was born with a veil over face especially her eyes which meant to many second sight. Years later she proved it true and maybe her first and second son also might have the gift passed on genetically.

    She had two miscarriages both males before having me and Solomon.

    Married twice, Graduating from Nursing school as a full fledged Registered Nurse.

    Some trouble happens in New York, between catching me throwing dice, learning to play craps near my apartment, and my father veiled threat to take us away made Mom move us 3,100 miles to California.

    For years I was angry at her for that but over time when both my father and step father didn’t call or visit.

    For me the complexity and inexplicable vagaries of life and I no longer blame anyone because they did what had to all of them loved us enough for that.

    My younger smarter brother follows my footsteps into the medical field becoming a cell researcher while I let my C.N.A./H.H.A, Dietary Aide [Certified Nurse Assistant, Home Health Aide].

    Before those jobs my work was as a custodian, food service assistance or cooks helper, Local 6 Warehouse Worker, Security Guard, Library Aide, and Lab Aide.

    I should’ve directed my scientific bent to be a lab technician or pharmacist since I loved looking at diseased ridden test tube’s, having them sterilized for reuse.

    Dates, mistakes, hitchhiking across the country, working with a kind family, visiting mama but not staying because there’s lingering anger, and finally returned to the bay area.

    Early displays of that veil power came to me when I said "I don’t trust that man, and don’t put your house up as collateral."

    As with most person with psychically inclined they can see other people’s problems but not their own. Both my brother and me are correct about the new boyfriend whether it was colored by our mother being with men other than our father I don’t know but we both had an inkling this jack-of-all-trades-master-of-some we didn’t trust the guy at all.

    In 1979 my mother lost her house due to bad business decisions. It’s the first I ever saw this strong, intelligent, psychic woman falter, breakdown and weep.

    All I could say is "The I . R. S. owns our home. She wanted to burn it down too but it is decided instead to take every light bulb from every socket along with everything else and move to San Leandro or Hayward.

    My brother was away in his own apartment, I worked all over in and out of the bay area like a displaced Gypsy.

    Mother, in her wisdom and strength gather what monies she had saved and decides to take a trip to Mexico.

    By that time I’m homeless I left Oakland became homeless in San Francisco my mind in a constant fog, writing short stories losing ‘em, moving from place to place living on G.A. [General Assistance] looking, finding short term jobs until I’m able to get into case management to safe money for an S.R.O.(Single Room Occupancy).

    My Mother’s resilient made me do better and as for women they’ve always been a problem and mystery but always helping with a word, physical, mental comfort, and kindness.

    Happy Birthday Mother for everything you’ve taught me through example, and when you thought I was not listening.

    I still need to get her a nice home where her dogs can run free in a large backyard. [Someone else will clean dog mess from the yard not me].

    Well, this is my personal salute to my mother and I going to give to her this day on her birthday since my money is funny for now and between my girlfriend and mom today is my mom’s day; so I miss some bed time I don’t get a lot as it is anyway that’s why I’m on a few date-for-sex-sites not (sorry mama) but you raised me and my brother very well. Remember, you said "If I ever EVEN think you’re take drugs I’ll set you up to be in jail.

    "Well, mom both your son’s don’t do any drugs unless its medical and we have the flu.

    Thank You for your touch, eternal love.

    Like my brother I want to be married someday too if I find my perfect or near match it’d be wonderful for the so called near end of my life.

    Happy Birthday Mommy.
    From your eldest son Joseph O. Bolden.

    Donations C/0 Poor Magazine
    1448 Pine Street #205

    San Francisco, CA 94103


    Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

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  • MI ULTIMO ADIOS - The Poem

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    by Mariluna/PNN Youth in the Media report


    Por Jose Rizal (1896)

    AdiÃ3s, Patria adorada, regiÃ3n del sol querida,

    Perla del Mar de oriente, ¡nuestro perdido Edén!

    A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,

    Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,

    También por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien.

    En campos de batalla, luchando con delirio

    Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar;

    El sitio nada importa, ciprés, laurel o lirio,

    Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,

    Lo mismo es si lo piden la Patria y el hogar.

    Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora

    Y al fin anuncia el dÖa, tras lÃ3brego capuz;

    Si grana necesitas para teñir tu aurora,

    Vierte la sangre mÖa, derrámala en buen hora

    Y dÃ3rela un reflejo de su naciente luz.

    Mis sueños cuando apenas muchacho adolescente,

    Mis sueños cuando joven ya lleno de vigor,

    Fueron el verte un dÖa, joya del Mar de oriente,

    Secos los negros ojos, alta la tersa frente,

    Sin ceño, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor.

    Ensueño de mi vida, mi ardiente vivo anhelo,

    ¡Salud! te grita el alma que pronto va a partir;

    ¡Salud! ah, que es hermoso caer por darte vuelo,

    Morir por darte vida, morir bajo tu cielo,

    Y en tu encantada tierra la Eternidad dormir.

    Si sobre mi sepulcro vieres brotar un dÖa

    Entre la espesa yerba sencilla, humilde flor,

    Acércala a tus labios y besa al alma mÖa,

    Y sienta yo en mi frente, bajo la tumba frÖa,

    De tu ternura el soplo, de tu hálito el calor.

    Deja a la luna verme con luz tranquila y suave,

    Deja que el alba envÖe su resplandor fugaz,

    Deja gemir al viento con su murmullo grave,

    Y si desciende y posa sobre mi cruz un ave,

    Deja que el ave entone su cántico de paz.

    Deja que el sol, ardiendo, las lluvias evapore

    Y al cielo tomen puras, con mi clamor en pos;

    Deja que un ser amigo mi fin temprano llore

    Y en las serenas tardes, cuando por mÖ alguien ore

    Ora también, ¡oh, Patria, por mi descanso a Dios!

    Ora por todos cuantos murieron sin ventura,

    Por cuantos padecieron tormentos sin igual,

    Por nuestras pobres madres, que gimen su amargura;

    Por huérfanos y viudas, por presos en tortura

    Y ora por ti, que veas tu redenciÃ3n final.

    Y cuando, en noche oscura, se envuelva el cementerio

    Y solos sÃ3lo muertos queden velando allÖ,

    No turbes su reposo, no turbes el misterio,

    Tal vez acordes oigas de cÖtara o salterio,

    Soy yo, querida Patria, yo que te canto a ti.

    Y cuando ya mi tumba de todos olvidada

    No tenga cruz ni piedra que marquen su lugar,

    Deja que la are el hombre, la esparza con la azada,

    Y mis cenizas, antes que vuelvan a la nada,

    El polvo de tu alfombra que vayan a formar.

    Entonces nada importa me pongas en olvido.

    Tu atmÃ3sfera, tu espacio, tus valles cruzaré.

    Vibrante y limpia nota sera para tu o–do,

    Aroma, luz, colores, rumor, canto, gemido

    Constante repitiendo la esencia de mi fe.

    Mi Patria idolatrada, dolor de mis dolores,

    Querida Filipinas, oye el postrer adiÃ3s.

    AhÖ te dejo todo, mis padres, mis amores.

    Voy donde no hay esclavos, verdugos ni opresores;

    Donde la fe no mata, donde el que reina es Dios.

    AdiÃ3s, padres y hermanos, trozos del alma mÖa,

    Amigos de la infancia, en el perdido hogar;

    Dad gracias que descanso del fatigoso dÖa;

    AdiÒs, dulce extranjera, mi amiga, mi alegrÖa,

    AdiÃ’s, queridos seres. Morir es descansar.

    MY LAST FAREWELL(in English)


    By Jose Rizal

    Farewell, dear Motherland, clime of the sun caressed,

    Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!

    Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life's best,

    And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,

    Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.

    On the field of battle, 'mid the frenzy of light,

    Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;

    The place matters not - cypress or laurel or lily white,

    Scaffold or open plain, combat or martyrdom's plight,

    'Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country's need.

    I die just when I see the dawn break,

    Throught the gloom of night, to herald the day;

    And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,

    Pour'd out at need for thy dear sake,

    To dye with its crimson the waking ray.

    My dreams, when life first opened to me,

    My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,

    Were to see thy lov'd face, O gem of the Orient sea.

    From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;

    No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye.

    Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,

    All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;

    All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire,

    To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire,

    And sleep in thy bosom eternity's long night.

    If over my grave some day though seest grow,

    In the grassy sod, a humble flower,

    Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,

    While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below

    The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath's warm power.

    Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,

    Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,

    Let the wind with the sad lament over me keen;

    and if on my cross a bird should be seen,

    Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.

    Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,

    And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;

    Let some kind soul o'er my untimely fate sigh,

    And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high

    From thee, O my country, that in God I may rest.

    Pray for all those that hapless have died,


    For all who have suffered the unmeasur'd pain;

    For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,

    For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried;

    And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.

    And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around,

    With only the dead in their vigil to see;

    Break not my repose or the mystery profound,

    And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;

    'This I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.

    When even my grave is remembered no more,

    Unmark'd by never a cross or a stone;

    Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o'er

    That my ashes may carpet thy earthy floor,

    Before into nothingness at last they are blown.

    Then will oblivion bring to me no care;

    As over thy vales and plains I sweep;

    Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,

    With color and light, with song and lament I fare,

    Ever repeating the faith that I keep.

    My Fatherland ador'd that sadness to my sorrow lends,

    Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last goodbye!

    I give thee all; parents and kindred and friends;

    For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,

    Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e'er on high!

    Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,

    Friends of my childhood in home dispossessed!

    Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!

    Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;

    Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!

    Tags
  • SFPD - This Time Its <i>Child</i> Abuse

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    by Alex Cuff, Newsbrief Editor

    by Jaxon Van Derbeken

    San Francisco police officers improperly searched two girls last year and violated the rights of a 14-year-old boy they arrested, according to departmental charges that could cost five officers their jobs. The internal charges -- signed this month by Acting Chief Alex Fagan -- stem from a confrontation between police and three youth in Hunters Point that outraged the city's African American community. The incident occurred on Jan. 21, 2002 -- the national holiday set aside to honor slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. -- and led to an investigation by the Office of Citizen Complaints, resulting in the charges.

    Charged are Officers Marcial Marquez and Adam Choy and Sgts. Sherman Lee and Walter Cuddy. A fifth officer has also been charged but remains unnamed and has not yet been served
    with the complaint. The five officers will face hearings before the San Francisco Police Commission, which must determine what action to take against them.

    According to the internal complaint, police were summoned by a report of a woman screaming as well as word that two African American men were seen taking guns out of a burgundy-colored
    car near the Boys and Girls Club in Hunters Point. The complaint alleges that Marquez and Choy, after arriving at the scene, improperly searched two girls for weapons after ordering them out of the car at gunpoint.

    Marquez searched a 12-year-old girl, who offered no resistance but wondered why she was being searched, according to the charges. During the search, Marquez allegedly groped her with his open hands. Marquez's search violated the department policy that specifies that such searches of girls be done by female officers and was "unnecessarily intrusive, " according to the charges.

    Choy was also charged with being "unnecessarily intrusive" in his search of a 14-year-old girl.
    According to the complaint, Jerome King-Brown, a 14-year-old boy, started to protest the treatment of his 12-year-old cousin. King-Brown, who is 6 feet tall, afterward needed 11 stitches to close a wound received when an officer kneed him into the concrete, the complaint
    alleges. "Several officers descended on the juvenile," the charges state, "forcing him face-first onto the asphalt pavement, and handcuffed him."

    The officers left the boy with a lacerated lip that was bleeding heavily, the complaint states.
    No excessive-force charges were lodged against any officer in the handling of King-Brown.
    The acting lieutenant at the Bayview station that day, Sgt. Lee, is charged with six counts of misconduct related to the follow-up to the confrontation.

    Lee allegedly allowed an unjustified criminal check on
    the
    youths involved. He is also accused of abandoning the
    investigation of the initial report of armed men, of
    failing to
    properly advise King-Brown of his rights under
    questioning at
    the station and of failing to see that King-Brown got
    proper
    medical attention.

    Lee also allegedly did not respond to efforts by the
    boy's father
    to lodge a brutality complaint and did not conduct the
    mandated
    use-of-force investigation after he complained that his
    son had
    been brutalized.

    Sgt. Cuddy is accused in the complaint of neglect of
    duty for
    allegedly failing to follow the department's rules
    governing
    juvenile suspects.

    Witnesses have said -- and one police official has
    confirmed
    -- that someone at the scene asked the fifth unnamed
    officer
    why guns were pointed at kids. The officer allegedly
    replied:
    "As long as you people are here, we will act like this."

    The specifics of the allegations against the fifth
    officer were
    not available.

    A representative of the officers suggested that she
    would
    challenge the charges based on a failure to file them in
    time to
    meet a one-year of statute of limitations, which
    normally
    would have lapsed last January.

    "We'll be looking at all aspects, including whether they
    are in
    compliance with the statute of limitations," said
    Katherine
    Mahoney, attorney for the Police Officers Association.
    "The law
    does provide exceptions, including cases involving
    multiple
    officers as well as for when civil lawsuits have been
    filed. "

    Mahoney declined to comment on the specifics of the
    case,
    saying she had not seen all the allegations against the
    five
    officers.

    Police have said officers were compelled to restrain
    King-Brown because he was shouting and cursing and
    displaying a "violent demeanor" and ignoring repeated
    commands to "get back.''

    Police had cited King-Brown for delaying arrests, but
    juvenile
    authorities said the case had been investigated and the
    citation
    dropped.

    Susie McAllister, the mother of the 14-year-old girl,
    whose
    family has sued the department, says her child still
    fears and
    distrusts police in San Francisco.

    "My child was violated," she said.

    Witnesses have said that during the searches of the
    girls, their
    screaming, crying mothers were ordered by police to stay
    back.

    McAllister said the whole department needed to change.

    "The San Francisco Police Department has a bad
    reputation,"
    McAllister said.

    "It is not going to stop with those officers -- they
    need to redo
    the whole structure of the Police Department and the
    training."

    She said the "few bad apples" reflected negatively on
    the entire
    department.

    "It makes it hard on the community," she said. "Who can
    we
    trust and turn to in the time of need?"

    She criticized the lack of excessive-force charges
    involving the
    handling of King-Brown.

    "That's child abuse. . . . You don't need to use that
    much force on
    anybody's child," McAllister said. "You can't go around
    grabbing, pulling on them, not giving them their rights,
    ignoring their parents."

    She said officers would not respond to the angry parents
    at the
    scene. "The officers refused to communicate with us --
    we
    wanted to know, 'What in the hell is going on here? Why
    are
    you treating our kids like this?'

    "In turn, we got guns pointed to our face; we were told
    if we
    moved, we were going to be shot," she said. "In the
    meantime,
    our kids are screaming. They didn't know what they had
    done
    -- they were treated like animals."

    Ishmael Tarikh, director of Bay Area PoliceWatch,
    lamented
    that officers were not charged with excessive force
    against
    King-Brown.

    "I thought that allegation should have been sustained,"
    Tarikh
    said. "The underlying cause for them to ever interact
    with
    those people was bogus -- they had no right to get
    involved
    with those people that night, let alone taking a
    14-year-old
    and body-slamming him to the pavement.

    "They acted like thugs."

    Tags
  • growing up poor

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    a first person narrative

    by Jeff/PNN's Southern Ohio Correspondent

    I grew up in what is actually the Appalachian region of southern Ohio. There really wasn't much work, so my father could only get part time work as a hired hand on a farm and wasn't always around and mom couldn't have worked if she wanted to because there wasn't any transportation or healthcare accessible.

    That’s the thing about being out in the country, there isn't any easy access to healthcare unless you have the money for a car or gas which she had neither.

    I had one brother a few years older than myself, we lived in a small older house. It's the kind of house many parents wouldn't want their children staying over for the night. The paint had faded and it had an old leaky roof that had caused the plaster to begin to fall and stained the walls. I wasn't the only kid in the region that was poor, but we had it rougher than most kids I guess.

    When kids are young they really don't always know what being poor is all about. As you grow older there is more difference between the haves and the
    have-nots, especially by the time we went to junior high, kids seem to divide up into different socio-economic groups when they hang out.

    I was
    probably considered white-trash, there was no reason for any of the other kids to spend alot of time with me and all of the guys I hung out with were poor also.

    It didn't bother me as much when I was young but all of our clothes were handed down. I remember especially when I started to really grow always having to
    wear jeans that when I sat down were half way up to my knees. Me and my brother only had one pair of jeans that mom called school-clothes. She washed all
    of our clothes out by hand and they had to hang out to dry and there were times when me and my brother had no choice but stay around the house
    wearing just underpants, which was common when we were younger playing around the yard but more of a problem as we were a little older.

    I would sit in
    the back of the classroom so other boys in class wouldn't notice that my jeans were too short or the fact I had outgrown my undershirt. That’s all we ever wore.
    We never had any shirts like some of the rich kids had. After a while you learn to deal with it.

    I remember one day walking behind some other boys
    down the hall, they were talking about my brother, he was the one always getting into trouble, they said something about him being a redneck and the other
    one said he didn't even have any school-clothes kind of with a sneer.

    Class pictures were always kind of embarrassing too because most of the other kids
    were always cleaned and dressed up, and there I was with long black hair wearing the same old scummy clothes that I wore everyday.

    Other kids can be cruel.
    One reason I am still poor today is because the school system doesn't cater to the poor kids, if you’re having trouble in school, they only work with families that have enough wealth to pay the taxes to support the schools. If you don't have access to wealth then you don't have a fair shot at accumulating wealth as you get older.

    Day to day, life was difficult enough without worrying about homework and studying. It's not like we had
    areas to study. Our bedroom was just two twin size mattresses on the floor and an old dresser which was never used much.

    The problems of rural poverty in
    parts of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio are not always as apparent as what you may see in cities but in many ways more real than most people know.
    I remember one Saturday morning I had been out early with Dad to pick up some junk and it was in March so it was wet and when I got home mom had to
    wash out my jeans and some other stuff. So I was lying on the couch about 10:00 a.m. watching whatever was on T.V. . About that time a couple
    of boys from school who were in my class came by unexpectantly with their father. They were on their way back from basketball practice and this one kid
    Josh was apparently going to stay overnight at the other kids’ ,Scotts, house. Scotts dad wanted to see if my dad could either do something for him or find an old part or something so they came in for a little bit and of course Scotts dad had to visit for awhile in the kitchen and the boys came into the room where I was.

    I
    could tell from the beginning that Josh, especially, didn't want to be there and wasn't used to being around a house like ours where the wallpaper was peeling off the ceiling and the rug in the room was worn out.

    Anyhow, Scott wanted me to go outside with him to look through some old bike parts that were out back by the shed. I
    didn't know what to do when they walked in, I was lying there covered by a blanket wearing only a pair of underpants and I think they thought I was just
    getting up and wasn't dressed yet. So I said yea in a little bit and I could tell this Josh kid whose father had a lot of money, I think he was a contractor or
    something, would use any excuse to get Scott out of there. He wanted to go out and play football, I could tell. We were all in the seventh grade at the time.

    Then Scott said, “why don’t you get something on and lets go”. I paused but figured it might be better to show them the room me and my brother slept in hoping that they wouldn't find out I couldn't go outside because the only pair of jeans that I had at all was wet hanging on the back porch where they came in. So I took them into the bedroom to the twin size mattresses on the floor the old dresser with a couple of the drawers pulled out.

    I was the only one around, my brother had gone somewhere for a few days. My parents let him kind of run wild, I guess, and he was a few years older than me. Anyhow, Josh said,
    “you guys just share this little room, there isn't even a door it just opens up to the hallway and then you just have to sleep on the floor.”

    I could tell Scott wanted him to settle down a little bit and not say so much. Scott decided the best thing to do was get Josh outside but he didn’t want to leave without me.

    “You know,” he said "get dressed, we don’t have all day, dad will be leaving soon and I want to look through those old motorcycle parts".

    I said, “ I don’t know if there is anything in here to wear or not”

    Scott said, “There must be something in the dresser” and then Josh started nosing through the open drawer.

    I just sat down on the mattress looking up, there wasn’t much I could really say. The house was a mess, I knew all that and they weren't used to living the way we did. Josh said, “I bet there’s something in here someplace as he pulled out another drawer
    which only had a few socks and briefs in it.”

    Scott went on to say, “ You must have a pair of pants here someplace!”

    I said mom just washed our clothes and Josh made a joke about the briefs hanging wet on the back porch. I told them that I may not have anything to put on. Josh went on to say “but theres only one pair of jeans hanging out on the porch, let’s go ask your mom where everything is at so we can get going.”

    I finally said, “I cant, you guys go along I'll be out soon, my mom just washed my jeans and that’s all I got I think.”

    Josh said, “that can’t be right you have something around here besides that pair .

    I finally said, “mom never got us any other pair, that’s all I got and I outgrew all the others I had. I don’t have any clothes anyhow since we’re poor.” Scott acted kind of embarrassed about the situation and didn’t want to say much.

    About that time I could hear Scotts Dad calling for him that it was time to get going. I didn’t know what to do, I walked out with them into kind of between the kitchen and living room door standing there as all of them stood in the kitchen for a bit while my dad and Scotts dad said good byes which took a while. I was glad they were leaving but wondered what they might say at school about my house. They knew I was poor, but the fact that I was, you know, fifteen years old, I had failed the sixth grade, and was held back just wearing nothing but a pair of underpants.

    Tags
  • ADVENTURES ON MINIMUM WAGE

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    by TJ Johnston/PNN Community Journalist

    Part 1

    Some people blithely reminisce of their first job. My memories aren't so wistful. Still, those memories resurface when I signed on as a petitioner for $6.75 Is Not Enough, the latest drive to increase minimum wage in San Francisco. Assuming this ordnance passes in the November election, the minimum will start at $8.50 for all local businesses. For those who scrape by on the current level, it's money gratefully welcome.

    When I was high school, my parents recommended I get a job. They did so with enough edge beyond mere recommendation. My mother knew the manager of the local Howard Johnson's (HoJo’s) and pulled the appropriate strings. I joined the paid workforce as a dishwasher. At least this humble position served as a buffer between home and school.

    If you never set foot under their orange roofs, HoJo's is a family style restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. They became famous for serving milkshakes. I remember Wednesdays there were Clam Fry Days. Before I became a vegetarian, I enjoyed their hamburgers.

    Such, such were the joys of washing dishes at HoJo's. The tasks were drudgery. In addition to bussing and stuffing dinnerware in an automatic washer, I also had to take out the garbage, sweep and mop the floors, inspect the bathrooms hourly; in short, I did all the work that was beneath the waitresses, cooks and managers. As befitted someone in my station, I was paid minimum wage.

    I started working evenings during the week and mornings on weekends. Weekdays were often dead, but business was brisker on those weekends. I had to wait hours for a lull where I needn't perform some busywork. I remember before an inspection, the staff had to scrub the place down. Most of my downtime was spent socializing with the waitresses who were also my classmates (no, I couldn't get a date with them). Sometimes I would chat with one of the cooks whose musical tastes I didn't share. Between that and his obsession with one of the younger waitresses, he didn't seem together.

    Our HoJo's was located right off the town rotary and was open 24 hours. Senior year in high school, my routine changed. As the only dishwasher who was 18, I was assigned to work overnight weekends, often called "bar rush." I had to nap at home before work.

    Between 10pm and midnight, it was busy, but the late night crowd horded in to eat after tying one on. Even if they weren't partying, at least they seemed to have more fun than I was. Whatever a normal teenage-hood was, spending 10pm to 6am working at HoJo's didn't fit in. Occasionally, I'd see some of my peers on their way home from Van Halen.
    I brought a boom box to fill the kitchen air. It was better than the Muzak usually heard weekdays.

    As an adolescent, I knew no better employment option available. I remember actually being paid slightly more for overnights than regular shifts. I had to accept that and having a legitimate excuse to stay out as trade-offs. Then I noticed that a cook who was younger than me and was hired after me earned a higher wage. I brought this objection to my mother. She told me not to complain or else, they'll replace me. So I brought my uniform home for repeated washings through graduation and winter break of my first college year. The next summer, I worked another restaurant nearby that wasn't open 24 hours. That job also sucked (but at least I made salads).

    When I think of working minimum wage, I envision my colleagues as people working an after-school or summer job and still living with their families. It shocks me that people attempt to sustain families on these slave wages paid by the WalMarts and Starbuckses of the world. Factor in an increasing standard of living and diminished buying power of the working class and contrast it with the widening economic chasm, you could see how entire populations are truly being "nickeled and dimed" in the US. When I hear some "expert" proclaim that raising minimum wage spells economic disaster for businesses, I try to picture them in a HoJo dishwasher outfit, complete with silly paper hat. These employees face disaster without a raise. The pundits seem inured from this supposed fallout. If the current campaign to bolster the paychecks of SF minimum wagers succeeds, we could avert financial catastrophe.

    *****************************************************

    Part 2

    Late June 2003--- I got a job petitioning for a San Francisco ballot measure to increase minimum wage: instead of the current $6.75 an hour, a floor of $8.50 is proposed.

    It was fortuitous that I saw Supervisor Matt Gonzalez gathering signatures near a neighborhood Safeway and I asked where to join. Before, I was close to enlisting in a "Recall Governor Davis" effort. Increasing paychecks is something I could stand behind.

    I ran to the headquarters of the petition drive and started the next day.

    Exploring the territory of John and Jane Q. Voter in this town is already daunting. If they take public transportation to and from work, they already turn on a defense mechanism so they could ignore the clipboard brigade. The presence of other petitions further confuse would-be signers. Add language barriers and political disengagement to the mix and you have an idea of the challenges signature gatherers face.

    Unlike others, this drive paid by the shift, not by the signature: it works out to $11.00 an hour and I get reimbursed for public transit. The major caveat, though, was that the boss expected at least 100 signatures of SF registered voters. She said it wasn't fair for her to pay the same to one who gets 100 and another who falls short by about 50 or 60. She said she just flew from Texas for this campaign and I knew she had a lot to learn about local politics.

    In her article, "The World's Largest Gated Community," (Poor News Network, Oct. 22, 2002) Carol Harvey observed how the campaigns of Props N and R were concerted efforts to economically cleanse San Francisco. Gavin Newsom's Prop N, recently overturned by a state court, would have slashed welfare payments to the indigent. Prop R, a losing measure in the last election, would have displaced renters to condo conversion. The underlying intent of those measures' proponents is to evict low- to middle-income voters from the city electoral pools and make SF a wealthy enclave.

    If the initiative makes the ballot, the city's super-wealthy will take the offensive. When I asked suit-and-tie types to sign, they doubt the need to raise the minimum: some espouse Economics 101 lessons, citing how increases drive away business. Despite the talking points I'm supplied with ( a recent UC-Berkeley study figures operating costs increase less than 1 per cent), I can't seem to convince them. Minimum wage to these folks are what their high school kids make folding jeans at the Gap. They're not likely to know anybody struggling to feed, clothe and shelter themselves on a meager paycheck. Their bartenders, maybe…

    When you consider that California politics increasingly caters to older, affluent and whiter voters, it's not hard to imagine it's not a lightning rod issue for them. From these smaller ponds, the Establishment hopes to elevate their own favorite sons who will follow their agendas. A more diverse constituency that includes working class folk, students, retirees, naturalized citizens and others only makes it harder. Is it any wonder why getting so many valid signatures that difficult?

    .

    Tags
  • UNJUST-ified!!!

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    LAPD Disciplinary panel rule that houseless woman's (Margaret Mitchell's) death by police officer was justifiable

    by Scott Glover and Matt Lait/reprinted from the LA Times

    A Los Angeles police officer who fatally shot a mentally ill homeless women armed with a screwdriver in 1999 will not be disci-plined, although the civilian Police Commission had ruled that his tactics and use of deadly flawed that he should be punished.

    Repudiating the commission’s finding three years ago, an LAPD disciplinary panel found that Officer Edward Larrigan was justified when he shot 55-year-old Margaret Mitchell, according to transcripts of a May 12 hearing.

    Although the Police Commission found that Mitchell had not posed a legitimate threat to Larrigan, the disciplinary panel determined that Mitchell’s conduct had left Larrigan with no choice but to shoot. The officers said she lunged at Larrigan during their confrontation. As a result, the panel concluded, Larrigan will not be disciplined.

    “Officer Larrigan’s response was defensive. It was reactive,” said Capt. Richard Wemmer, who headed the three-member discipli- nary panel, which included another LAPD captain and a civilian. “It was his last, indeed his only, resort to prevent serious bodily injury or death to himself. And it was compelled in the end by the actions of the victim.”

    The ruling by the LAPD Board of Rights raises issues relating both to the shooting and to civilian oversight of the Police Department. Department leaders have wrestled for years over the confrontation that resulted in Mitchell’s death. Police Chief Bernard C. Park’s concluded that it had conformed with LAPD rules and two police commissioners agreed with him, but a commission majority found that had it violated department rules. Thus, the ruling, which effectively overrules the commission majority, calls into question the Police Commission’s judgement and its ability to be the final voice of such matters.

    In the board’s decision, Wemmer praised Larrigan for protecting others from Mitchell’s “frenzied and irrational” behavior. Mitchell was stopped because she was pushing a shopping cart that officers suspected was stolen.

    “Sworn to protect and serve, Officer Larrigan did not have the luxury to let her go,” Wemmer said. “Rather, he went in harm’s way and, consistent with policy, acted in defense of life,”

    Police Commission President Rick Caruso, who was appointed to the commission after the Mitchell case was reviewed, said he found the disciplinary panel’s findings “troubling.”

    “We, as commissioners, should have the last word on this,” Caruso said. He added that the decision, and others like it, also prevent the chief of the LAPD from imposing discipline when warranted.

    “You basically get your legs cut out from under you,” Caruso said. “I don’t agree with this process. I never have.”

    LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Berkow, who was traveling with Chief William J. Bratton in the Washington. D.C., and spoke to the chief about the case, said Bratton was not sufficiently familiar with the facts of the Mitchell shooting to comment on it specifically.

    But Berkow said Bratton has been frustrated with the disciplinary process.

    “He has less power here than in any other police department he’s been at,” said Berkow, who heads the department’s professional standards bureau, which used to be internal affairs. “Discipline is not in the hands of the police chief, who is responsible for managing the department.”

    Mitchell was shot May 21, 1999, near the intersection of Fourth Street and La Brea Avenue, shortly after Larrigan and his partner, Kathy Clark, both bike patrol officers, stopped her to determine whether the shopping cart had been stolen. As the officers sought to question her, Mitchell ignored them and began walking away.

    After an initial confrontation with the officers, Mitchell pulled a 12-inch screwdriver from a pile of clothes in the shopping cart and began waving it at the officers, who drew their guns. When she allegedly lunged at Larrigan with the screwdriver in her raised hand, he fired once, striking her in the chest. Mitchell died less than an hour later.

    The shooting sparked protests and criticism of the police, who were accused of overreacting to the threat posed by Mitchell, a 5-foot, 1-inch-tall woman who weighed 102 pounds.

    After a lengthy investigation, however, then-Chief Parks concluded that, although Larrigan had made tactical mistakes in the moments leading posed up to the shooting, the shooting itself was “In policy” because he was in fear for his life at the moment he pulled the trigger.

    A subsequent report by the police Commission’s report by the Police Commission’s inspector general, Jeffrey C. Eglash, disagreed with the chief’s findings. Eglash cited Mitchell’s age and stature, as well as the statements of witnesses who denied that Mitchell had lunged at Larrigan, in concluding that Mitchell did not present a deadly threat to the officer when he fired.

    The conflicting views of Parks and Eglash on the shooting set the stage for a heated debate among the five members of the Police Commission who, under the City Charter, had final say in whether the shooting violated department rules.

    After months of closed-door deliberations, the commission voted 3 to 5 to find the shooting out of policy,” with Commission President Gerald Chaleff and Commissioners T. Warren Jackson and Dean and Hansell citing some of the same factors referred to in Englash’s report to support their votes. Commissioners Raquelle De La Rocha and Herbert F. Boeckmann dissented. Boeckmann is the only commissioner who remains on the panel; his term is about to end.

    Once the commission had made its determination, Larrigan was ordered to appear before an LAPD disciplinary panel known as the board of rights, subjecting him to punishment ranging from an official reprimand to termination. Larrigan’s board appearance was put off for years because of the pending criminal investigation into the case and then because of other delays.

    Chaleff, now a civilian LAPD official, said he has long argued that the City Charter should be changed to give the commission a role in imposing discipline. He declined further comment.

    Eglash said the Mitchell shoots exposes a flaw in the system under which officer-involved shootings and other matters are reviewed at the LAPD. The problem, he said, is that officers such as Larrigan are not given a chance to mount a defense of their actions before the commission reviews the case.

    Because of that, the commission’s ruling was referred back to a board of rights to hear evidence and recommend punishment.

    Michael P. Stone, Larrigan’s attorney, said the disciplinary to evidence that had not been privy to evidence that had not been available to others who reviewed the case in the past.

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  • Death into Life, People have dreams that are doable. Mine make take a few decades.

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    Ever heard, out of 1000 people Born
    999 of 'em will die except 1?

    I'm one of those 999 but I might
    one day return.

    I'll ask Duncan Mc Cloud, a woman called Raven,
    Lazarous Long, and Ben Richards...

    How does eternal life work folks?

    by Joe B.

    I’ve thought of my eventual demise and how to face it.

    As a confirmed believer in both a deity, applied science and the human spirit not only dying came into mind but incredibly a possible return from the gray abyss of death.

    Cryobiology: the study of extreme cold on living organisms.

    My interest is Cryonics or freezing of the human body for revival in the not to distant future.

    You’ve read science or speculative fiction about men, women through accident of nature or technological mishap are awakened hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

    Woody Allan’s "Sleeper" movie comes to mind or the late Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda’s Captain
    Dillin Hunt, trapped three centuries near or inside an event horizon’s black hole, or Old Buck Rogers centuries
    long frozen orbit, and "Earth, Final Conflict.

    Remember Boone the main character who is wounded, place in a suspended solution then destroyed only to be recreated from bits of his left over d n a brought back literally from almost nothing by advanced Taelon nano technology but there was a catch in his recreation that Boone and earth freedom fighters are able to defeat.Check out show on The Sci Fi Channel.

    Just a few fictional examples.

    I think before I die I better buy an my own huge ice cube thurmus to encase my body in after death.

    But also thinking, what will the future be like when all my immediate relatives, friends have died or are so old have forgotten me through time and living their own lives.

    My idea, before dying to join a few clubs and organizations not too many but just enough so if and when I do reawaken from death to a renewed life some of those organizations still around would be a bridge from my dead past to a new living future.

    I thought about the Odd Fellow’s but think I’m odd enough as is to join it would prove too true.

    I’ll join that one if and when I survive my second shot at life.

    A church, Asian Museum, two life extension organizations connected with cryonics of course and The Common Wealth Club of California.

    The last one I chose because it is the one because the life extension might be there or not but Common Wealth is more a sure thing.

    What really concerns me is a connection from one century to the next.

    Human’s get old, forget, move, and die.

    Some organizations, clubs, institutions, change or fade away.

    But there always a few that will stand the test of time.

    I believe Churches, Museum’s, and certain Clubs have stood the test through time and as if I somehow by God’s or Goddess’s will and human science enable me to return to life no worse for the trip but slightly improved.

    I’d have to reapply to all the orgs I originally joined and in doing so having people who are both curious and cynically inclined help me on this new journey.

    I certainly don’t want to be the first to be revived, too much notoriety, an occasional crazy, religious nut, or someone who really wants to kill me because I’ve disproved one of their most cherished beliefs; that when people die they don’t come back, cannot regain youth and vigor.

    It seems whom ever is first to be revived will be either the most famous person alive or quickly assassinated before they can effect change.

    The Internet is stuffed full of technologies, old and emerging new sciences, stories, columns and whatnot.

    I never think my writing will mean anything unless everything is archived and obscure answers found here where you couldn’t find them anywhere else.

    Well, I know what I’ll be doing after death (on ice until revival).

    I’m betting we have brains evolved to use to improve are lot in life, live longer, better lives, and beat not only our genes but also improve them and in the process if not beat but delay death for a few hundred to thousands of years.

    Sure, people are laughing but a few under it are themselves thinking "Is it possible, can this guy or girl do it, die, get frozen, and someday be revived with added benefits besides?

    There’s only one way to find out and that’s I’ll do in years to come.

    I may not make lots of money, or be famous but I do have shot at a second life and if being anonymous is part of it so be it.

    Some people join the military, become daredevils, ski, snowboard on ice, skydive out of a plane from 10,000 feet in the deep blue. People snorkel or wear scuba gear or
    selfcontained
    underwaterbreathingapparatus.

    Everyone has ideas on life and death mines is just another opinion but knowing myself, living through these times I cannot go to ground and rot but see if there is an alternative way.

    That’s just me people have always said I’ve been a strange duck. Maybe that’s my saving grace.

    Bye, or until I do the death freeze a long time from now.


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    askjoe@poormagazine.org

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  • Heroes....

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    An interview with George Tirado- a narrative essay

    by Jasmine Syedullah/PNN Media Intern (Facilitated by Dee)

    One morning in February I was roused from dreaming, as I am every morning, by the hypnotic drone of NPR. Between reports of Bush’s preparations for war and North Korea’s preparations for the production of nuclear weapons, came an announcement that penetrated my half-asleep dozing and made me bolt right up from my warm sheets and comforter. Mr. Rogers had died. I listened to the report fighting sleepiness to catch every word, “at age seventy four… of stomach cancer…”. I leaned slowly back into bed.

    At four and fives years old I was not lacking in positive adult role models or affirmation. My father was the only preacher in our small church in Tulsa, and I was his only child, which put me smack in the middle of a whole congregation full of adorations and watchful eyes. The report on the radio ended with one of the bright piano melodies and smoothing voiceovers that had become like icons to me. At the end of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, he’d reassure me that he liked me “just the way I am”. That there is no one in the whole world like me. I came to expect and perhaps even depend a little bit on these small daily words of appreciation. Mr. Rogers had surpassed the status of mere children’s public television host and became, for that moment in time, my personal hero.

    After stirring myself out of this wistful land of memories, drying my eyes and making motions to get ready for my day, I continued to think about heroes. Where had they all gone? A class of middle school students over at King Estates told me last week that a hero is someone who helps you out when you’re in danger, helps to keep you out of danger, flies around town in tights and helps old ladies cross the street. This was cute, but not exactly what I had in mind. When I was little I needed someone who told me to love myself and other people. Who helped me find helpful ways to deal with my anger, confusions and concerns and explained to me some things about the way the world worked that I was not yet aware of. Not much has changed. But now, here I am at 24 and I sense my childhood heroes are dying with no adult ones to stand tall in their place. Are heroes things of comic books and make believe? Where can we find them when we really need them? Without the aid of a weekly show-time and theme song, how am I even supposed to know one when I see one?

    On May 17th I met George Tirado on assignment at a community organizers meeting in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, “The War on Terror”. Met might be a strong word, witnessed may be more appropriate. George spoke for about twenty minutes about how Bush’s “War on Terror” was affecting him at home. “We live in a police state. Face that… The politicians have politicized homelessness. It doesn’t have a face, its an issue now…”. This man is straight up keeping it real, no pretentious motivations. No sugary song and dance to convince you he’s right. There is no neatly coifed and parted hair or bright green cardigan that are gonna make you trust this guy. He certainly didn’t seem like someone I’d want to intentionally piss off. He’s gotta stand at least a head and shoulders taller than me tipping on my toes and thick and round as an old red wood. My first instinct was skepticism. Who is this guy and why is he so adamant about the limitations of our freedoms? I can do basically whatever I want. Right? Well, there was that time last Summer at JFK when I was asked to unravel my head wrap and explain to security that my grandfather had converted - had converted to Islam and that’s why my name is Arabic. And just the other week one of my youth from the YMCA got arrested during a dance for being too big, black and at the right place at the wrong time. There was nothing I could do. Is this what George meant by police state?

    “What we have to do is look where we’re at right now… over in my neighborhood, in the Mission, people are dying in the streets. I see mothers crying, but no protectors, no activists”. As George says, “this is a war of attrition..”. Over the next couple weeks, though I got laid off from both my after school jobs, I wasn’t the only casualty. Twenty or so more displaced youth of color became youth at risk of becoming POWs of a system that doesn't give a fuck, or may be would even prefer if they’d fail. I was definitely going to need a battle plan.

    A couple of weeks after the meeting I was fortunate enough to speak with George over the phone. I was tired. The prospect of being forced to deal with the Employment Development Department people was depressing. I had been reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X on the bus ride through the Mission to Bay View to work, getting worked up at eight in the morning about Child “protection” services and the racial exploitation that’s been going on in this country since before my great grandmother’s great granny was branded and whipped until she died. It was Tuesday, executive board meeting day, providing me a whole hour with no one in the office to interrupt my call to George Tirado for an interview and maybe some clarity and direction. I tried to sound gracious and not too nervous when he picked up the phone. “Hi. George? How are you, this is Jasmine. Is this still a good time to talk”?

    He said it was a good time and mentioned that he had a stomach ache. He was taking the day off work because he’d been under a lot of stress lately. Mr. Tirado works at Hospitality House in the Tenderloin. He explained that it’s a one stop agency for homeless services, job placement, harm reduction etc. I learned that as of July 1st the 60% of the drop in center’s budget the Department of Public Health is responsible for will not be going to fund the center which was responsible to 10,000 folks last year. George wouldn’t be the only person feeling ill.

    I only worked in the TL for nine months, but I know for a fact there are not enough services in that neighborhood for everybody. Before last summer I had only been in this time zone once, when I was four to visit my godparents and Mickey Mouse, the later of whom I ran away from traumatized and in tears. When I lived in New York, full of adolescent cynicism, California still maintained that same image, a place full of larger than life, fake stuff that was supposed to be fun but was really just scary. I interviewed for a job in the Tenderloin YMCA within the first week I was out here. After the interview, I walked out of the Y and turned to walk up Leavenworth towards Ellis. I felt like I had walked through a time portal and ended up in 1986, smack in the middle of the crack epidemic. It was larger than my life. It was scary. But not because it was fake. It was scary because it was please don’t reach out and touch me real.

    George moved to the Bay from Huston, Texas via L.A and Flagstaff, Arizona. His education was found on the streets and in the books. He graduated with a BA in English and Philosophy. He toured with a punk rock band, got into drugs, lived in shelters and just “stewed for a long time”. “There’re a lot of cats like that. We’re the most dangerous ones… because we chose to be there… We could stay where we were or chose to get out”.

    Everyone has their personal heroes and for George, it was James Tracy who flew in with the tights and cape. Tracy turned George onto his own culture. He led George to re-educate his mind and re-orientate his life through the stories, mythologies and poetry of his ancestors.

    “Revolt of the Cockroach People, Chicano writers, Mayan and Aztec myths… friends like James Tracy brought me back to poetry.. I spent a lot of time reading Che Guevara in shelters… I started volunteering at Coalition on Homelessness and Tracy taught me how to organize”.

    We continued to talk right up until the end of the board meeting. Our conversation picked up later on that afternoon. I think what impressed me about everything George was saying was that his philosophy, his identity, his poetry and politic are one- the way of the warrior.

    “A solider is a paid mercenary. A warrior does what he does because he has to”. Warrior, hero sage. This guy is pretty powerful. He models for me what it means to truly reject this culture of oppression, not just in theory, but in practice.

    “I’m anti-US, anti-colonialization… for 515 years they have been doing this in the name of democracy and freedom while the CIA and FBI have total access to all our health files, therapist visits, clinics everything”. The statement he’d made earlier about this being a police state no longer sounded like the rantings of a far fetched fanatic. It sounded like an emergency. I was beginning to feel like every moment that we don’t protest this progression is a moment of consent. The boat is sinking and eventually everyone’s going to get wet. I asked George what resistance looked like to him.

    It came as no surprise to me that George Tirado rejects passivism. “I will not allow myself to just get beat by the cops. Cops come with real tear gas, real clubs and real rubber bullets – they come to hurt you. If you want to just stand there, be my guest. But if they hit me, I’ve gotta hit back. You’re not hitting a man, you’re hitting the state”.

    I told George not many folks would be down to take a risk like that. “You have to know the right time to take that kind of action… that’s why I don’t agree with all direct action”, he responded.

    He went on to recall the actions of some of the more radical protestors during the anti-war protests in late March, just after the US started dropping bombs on Iraq. While the Black Block was provoking the riot ready and armed cops, “thirty feet away you have a big group of pregnant women. Now that makes no sense…”

    I asked George what he does when he feels the way I did at the time, that things are too big and that hope is hard to cling to. “I look to my elders” he said, “to Luis Rodrigez, James Tracy. I look at myself. If I don’t have hope I don’t believe in my cause.”

    And there it was; the nihilism that constantly keeps me in the land of but what ifs. What if, like Tupac said, things will never change. What if nothing I do really matters? I had thought that George was going to say, If I don’t have hope I don’t have anything or something cliché like that, but if loosing hope means that you have no more faith in the cause you’re fighting for then that’s spiritual suicide. Maybe, what feels like loosing hope is really just feeling afraid to act on the hope you do have. Maybe.

    “If we didn’t have politicians, we’d have a free society”, George’s voice took on that sense of urgency I remembered from the community meeting.

    “You mean we could govern ourselves?”

    “Tribal life in the third world was self-sufficient”, he responded. Its amazing how quickly we forget lessons they failed to teach us in school. George blames a lot of the anxiety we experience as a culture today on colonialization’s necessary break down of community. Without the support of our peers elders and collective stories, hope faith direction and purpose have to come to us by other means. In his neighborhood, the Mission District, this break down results in gang violence.

    “All these guys are dying for land, if they were smart, they’d turn their guns n the landlords…” The concept of ownership is another mental disorder of colonial takeover. George explained that before land was a commodity it was a gift.

    Truth is like cod liver oil. Tough to swallow, but sure to keep you regular, just like your daddy said. As I sailed home on my bike through the Mission, George’s words echoed around in my head. I was still freaking out about finding another job and battling the folks at EDD for a check before the 1st of the month. But I was 600 years of oppression filled cells waiting to explode. I felt reinvigorated. “It’s such a good feeling to know you’re alive/ such a hap-py feeling you’re growing inside…” I have to laugh when I find myself singing good old Mr. Rogers tunes, like some people find themselves reciting prayers.

    This search for heroes is really just boiling down to a search for faith. So some of my faith comes from a TV show. So what! These are desperate times. Faith is faith, wherever it comes from is sacred. George said that it one of the wholly personal things we take with us to the grave. And you just can’t touch that.

    The Narrative Essays on PNN are created by Interns in The Poverty Studies/Media Activism Institute at POOR. The class is co-facilitated by Dee and strives to attain journalistic excellence on issues of poverty and racism by combining literary art with journalism.

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  • Comfort Zones. Death may really be downtime until revival.

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    You die your way, I'll die mine.

    Burial, Cremation = no choice.

    Cryonically dead freezing a joke.

    I'll sadly be last laughing...

    after my return or just get on with living.

    by Joe B.

    Disclaimer:The views here are by the author himself Not POOR Magazine.

    If some of it offends readers send letters to Joseph Bolden /CO
    askjoe@poor magazine.org

    I thought I was done with the Cryonics (freeze after death stuff).

    But it occurs to me having organizations to help me ease back into society after being revived after death is one way of coping another is gathering past memories.

    This can be a combination of books, records, tapes, CD’s,(Compact Disks) video’s, dvd’s (Digital Video Disks)
    old radio, TV, personalities and shows.

    Its not living in the past but having things of the past from your era or era’s.

    Of course some people with way to much money and nostalgic longings for the so called good old days can end up living in a Village, City, where time literally stops.

    I don’t want that just to have memories of my personal time as I gradually learn how to live, work, and survive in my new future.

    While dead then after my brain is being renewed, rewired like that film "Demolition Man" I’d like to have languages, updated applied sciences, art, mathematics, civilian and military knowledge of how to training and self protection that could be hardwired into "sleepers" as an added benefit.

    Physical, mental, social living and writing in-field (outside of hospital/clinic facilities).

    A test for being close and detachment will be when Sex Surrogate/Psychologists themselves or their assistants physically interact with patients most likely ready to rejoin the living.

    For those not ready it may take longer to detach from their surrogates and if possible a surrogates truly loves his or her patient their jobs won’t be lost just docked a years pay and will be on indefinite leave pending outcome of inquiry.

    Fame for the very first revived human being can be a traumatic ranging from world love, hate, indifference, to individuals fascination with making out with a formally dead person akin to Star F___ing.

    This could be a similar form of F.F.F.Fornication with Formally Frozen

    C.C.C.or Cadaver/Corpse Copulation.

    More euphemism’s can and will be coined but imagine being the object of such intense lurid attentions from a few weeks to years because you literally embody people’s fear of sex and death?

    The world will have changed in 60, 80, or a century and for any individual stepping back into life from death will be a challenge not only to themselves personally but to the world at large.

    What happens if psychopaths, child molesters, or serial rapists or murder’s are brought back how will society deal with these looming issues?

    I do not know the answers to these serious questions.

    But I do know humanities longing for life extension and immortality won’t be stopped by politicians, corporate interests or religious organizations.

    If I am the first eyewitness to this technological breakthroughs

    I hope to be able to bare up to what happens if I am reanimated after what would to me seem a long sleep instead of real death.

    Maybe someone else, a woman, child, handicapped person given new body, limbs, or anyone coming back from death could fare far better than I that would make everyone coming behind have a smoother way in their second life.

    You already know my answer, death is part of life but death can be has been delayed, slowed, reversed, and some people have been brought back.

    I’m itching to find out that between the deity, human, artificial intelligent guided technologies a way will be found to revive people not only back to life but also made younger, their biological/chronological clocks also rewound for better and longer lives.

    In my humble way I hope to be one of many beneficiaries of the life extension emerging sciences.
    Not to try is to give up and human’s rarely give up or give in.

    I guess I’m part of 1 to 2% that never say die. Bye…


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    1448 Pine Street #205

    San Francisco, CA 94103


    Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

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  • A Literary Revolution!

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    City Lights Books in San Francisco celebrates 50 years of existence and resistance- a narrative essay

    by Tricia Ward/PNN Media Intern (Facilitated by Dee)

    I leaned against the wall outside of City Lights Bookstore in North Beach. It was a gray, misty day in San Francisco, but mood of the crowd that surrounded me was one of celebration.
    I had come to join a group of several hundred at the 50th anniversary celebration for one of the few remaining independent bookstores in the city, if not the nation, City Lights. As the celebration began with an introduction of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the former Navy Skipper, turned poet, turned literary crusader, I glanced through the window into the bookstore and noticed something that took me back to my own childhood. Inside the store, oblivious to the hubbub outside was young girl probably about age nine or ten who reminded of myself back when I was that age.

    She was in a chair with her head bent down over the book in her lap, her long brown hair hiding her face. She was in deep concentration over whatever she reading, and neither the celebration taking place outside nor the customers inside brushing past her took her eyes away from the novel. As Lawrence began telling the tale of the bookstore that has spent 50 years resisting mainstream culture and censorship, I watched the girl inside reading and was reminded of the way books framed, shaped, and developed my world.

    Books! I can’t remember a time when I didn’t devour them. I come from long line of great readers. My entire family mom, dad, sister and brother were all certified bookworms. I wasn’t allowed to watch much television growing up, the exception being any show that appeared on Channel 9, the local public television station. “TV makes your brains mushy” my mother always said. So while my friends’ brains were turning into Jell-o Pudding from too much Scooby Doo and The Bionic Man, I was immersed in my own world between the pages of books.

    As Lawrence and the other speakers at the celebration talked about the legacy of City Lights as a “Literary landmark, where people from across the country come to browse, read and just soak in the ambience”, I could relate to exactly what they felt. Books were my outlet while growing up. Books took me away from what a considered to be a painfully normal existence and created a whole new world for me. Through books, I could visit a mysterious and wonderful chocolate factory run by impish and seemingly mad man, I could travel to the Emerald City to see the wizard, I could hang out with Raymond as he hung out after bedtime in the land “Where the Wild Things Are”. While turning their pages I could become a princess, a warrior, a sassy little French girl named Madeline cavorting through Paris with her sassy group of friends.

    Near my house was an independent bookstore, not unlike City Lights, called Little Professor. It was close enough for me to walk to it on my own, something I did quite frequently growing up. I could spend an entire afternoon tucked away in that musty-smelling nook, in the corner between the massive shelves stacked from floor to ceiling with pages and pages of prose. This was before the days of the mega-bookstores with built-in Starbucks. Hanging out in bookstores was not yet considered mainstream cool, but those who were really in the know, like the so-called beatniks that frequented City Lights in the early days, knew it was cool to hang in the bookstore. I indeed, felt very cool perusing novels amongst the grown-ups.

    As I passed through my childhood I left the land of fairy tales and began to read all the teenage staples such as Judy Blume and V.C. Andrews. I also read anything else that looked even remotely interesting regardless of its ‘suitability’ (another mother-ism) for my age. I read “Helter Skelter” about the vicious murders committed by Charles Manson and his followers, and spent an entire month sleeping with my light on. I couldn’t even tell me parents why I suddenly developed a fear of the dark, for my greater fear was them censoring what I read.

    Censure was the topic up on the speakers’ platform outside of City Lights, as the infamous court case regarding Allen Ginsberg’s supposedly obscene poem “Howl” was being told. Throughout the trial in 1957, City Lights continued to sell the book that the court wanted banned, and even had it prominently displayed in the front window of the store. Lawrence’s victory at the trial blazed the trail for many great works of literature that might otherwise have been labeled obscene and been censured or banned outright.

    “That trial marked a literary revolution” a man standing near me commented. Revolution indeed. My own literary revolution of sorts happened one day in the bookstore sometime in my pre-teens. For some reason, my otherwise strict parents gave me free reign to roam around the bookstore. I would explore, wandering unsupervised through the aisles outside of the Childrens and Young Adults section. On this particular day I got the perfect opportunity to educate myself in a way that I felt my parents or my Catholic-school teachers never would. There it was - the large white book with the bright red title letters that had been making headlines and talk shows throughout the nation. Here it was right in front of me, my opportunity to gain insight to all the mysteries of the world! After making several trips up and down that aisle, pretending to look be interested in any other book but THAT one, and making sure at least ten times that the coast was clear, I quickly snatched it off the shelf and hurried to a corner, held the it flat on my lap, with my legs up hiding the cover of the forbidden volume; “The Joy of Sex”. I took a deep breath, opened the cover and began. …

    I numbly left the store two hours later surely with more knowledge than I had when I entered but most certainly more confused than ever. Perhaps my mother was right that certain things were ‘unsuitable’ for me at that age.

    In college when the boy, the only boy I was convinced I would ever love broke my heart, books overflowing with poetry and mournful tales of love lost forever became my bible, these authors understood, they knew my pain! I read and re-read these melodramatic tomes until the pages where worn thin or at least until the next only-boy-I-would-ever-love came along.

    Bookstores like City Lights allowed me to continue to read into adulthood without censure. Back in 1989 when the ‘Satanic Verses’ was published and promptly earned it’s author Salman Rushdie a death sentence, the chain bookstores rushed to pull the book from their shelves. City Lights, however, like my own local independent bookstore, refused to remove the condemned novel. Thanks to bookstores like City Lights I was able to read it and form my own opinions without corporate America attempting to form them for me.

    Books have taught me to think, to analyze, to criticize. Recently a friend of mine raised her eyebrows in surprise when she saw that leftist, liberal me had a copy of “Bias,” a decidedly right-wing criticism of how liberals are ruining the media, on my nightstand. I shrugged. “You have to keep your enemies close” I explained.

    In front of City Lights, prizes were being given to children who had read a book and written an essay about the meaning of the book to them. The children walked up one by one to claim their prizes. Many of the books they had read were the same ones I devoured page by page over 20 years ago. Probably the same books that the little girl, with the long dark hair inside the store poured over now.

    The Narrative Essays are created by Interns in The Poverty Studies/Media Activism Institute at POOR. The class is co-facilitated by Dee and strives to attain journalistic excellence on issues of poverty and racism by combining literary art with journalism.

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  • Newsom Bashing?!

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    Board of Supes hear The Budget Analysts' report on Prop N.

    by ADRIEL HAMPTON AND EVELYN RUSLI/San Francisco Examiner

    To deliver on campaign promises, Care Not Cash will cost millions more
    than The City currently spends on homeless welfare recipients,
    supervisors heard Monday.

    According to Board of Supervisors Budget Analyst Harvey Rose,
    providing housing, food, health care and mental health treatment for
    homeless welfare recipients will cost far more than the $13.9 million
    budget for cash welfare grants.

    Supervisors used Rose's findings to batter absent mayoral candidate
    Supervisor Gavin Newsom, who authored the measure.

    Supervisors Tony Hall, Chris Daly and Matt Gonzalez were particularly
    wary of the Department of Human Services' estimate that in the initial
    12 months of the program's implementation, 50 percent of participants
    will drop out.

    "We either add more money or we have to accept the claim that 50
    percent of the people will walk away," said Hall. "I'm having a rough
    time believing that 50 percent of the people will walk away. Neither
    option is what the voters voted on. No new tax dollars will be spent
    ... I just fail to see how that's possible," Hall said.

    Trent Rohrer, executive director of the DHS, supported the 50 percent
    figure by explaining that it is based on compelling data and reflects
    a slow, steady dropout over 12 months. In response, some supervisors
    voiced concern that even this figure was financially troubling because
    the DHS further estimated that half of the dropouts would still be
    dependent on The City if they move off the homeless rolls but still
    draw welfare checks. They can do so by claiming a residence that a DHS
    caseworker will then confirm.

    "Half of the dropoff is not exactly dropped off. They are still
    getting cash disbursements," Gonzalez said.

    Supervisor Chris Daly estimated that the cost would be at least $3
    million greater than what The City now pays in welfare grants to the
    homeless, just for housing and food.

    "The details were not thought out. It's almost embarrassing," Daly
    said. "We need to get back to the basics and get some things done but
    this model right here is not getting things done and the math doesn't
    add up."

    Gonzalez said it seems that a working Proposition N -- with new
    housing and treatment programs -- would look more like Proposition O,
    a Care Not Cash rival measure that mandated a specific number of new
    housing and treatment slots before cutting cash to homeless people. It
    failed at the ballot last year.

    For more than three hours, supervisors hammered away at the
    legislation without the presence of Newsom or a DHS representative,
    and committee chair Hall repeatedly criticized their lack of
    attendance. The meeting agenda, however, clearly stated that there
    would be no action on the item, and that Newsom and Rhorer would be
    unavailable. Both came to the hearing after 1 p.m.

    At issue for Hall were "thousands" of e-mails demanding that he stop
    slowing down implementation of Care Not Cash. After Newsom arrived,
    Hall called for a Tuesday hearing to take action on Prop. N.

    Newsom stridently objected.

    "To throw this on tomorrow without any notification to thousands of
    San Franciscans is to me wholly inappropriate and absolutely unfair on
    the basis of process and the basis of principle," Newsom said. "This
    is absolutely wrong."

    Pointing a finger back at Newsom, Hall replied, "Your office was
    notified about the hearing, how long do you want to delay this?"

    After more heated words, Hall recessed the meeting. Reconvening
    without Newsom, Hall explained they had agreed to schedule action on
    Care Not Cash for next Monday. That could put the legislation before
    the full board for action as early as July 8.

    The issue of time and the program's stalled implementation was a
    constant topic of debate throughout the hearing. As the July 1
    deadline looms overhead, there has been building pressure to turn out
    results. However, Rose concluded that Care not Cash will not even be
    fully implemented by the spring 2004 deadline promised to voters in
    November.

    The courts have thrown out key provisions of the measure, but Newsom
    has pushed the board to pass those provisions. Newsom says the reform
    will take a good deal of time to run smoothly.

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  • The SF Youth Commission in opposition to the war on Iraq

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    by Alex Cuff, Newsbrief Editor

    From the San Francisco Youth Commission

    The San Francisco Youth Commission is in opposition to the war on Iraq . We believe that peaceful solutions are always the best way to
    solve a conflict, whether it be in a fight between friends, a domestic violence situation or in conflict with another country. Innocent people will
    die in this war for which there was seemingly no provocation. By ignoring the largest peace movement in the history of the world, our
    government has decided to use our young people to play police of the world, a job that they neither signed up for nor are prepared to play.

    We as the Youth Commission are in a better position than any other governmental body to relate to and feel compassion for the troops
    fighting in Iraq . They are our contemporaries, our peers, and our friends. The Youth Commission fully supports our troops by demanding
    that they be taken from harms way immediately. There is no reason that Iraqi and US youth should be killing each other; not for oil, not for
    pride, and not for revenge.

    We are proud to see the millions of youth around the world participate and lead the anti-war movement. As youth, we must create the vision
    for what we want to see happen in our society. With our combined hope, vision, and other talents, we are unstoppable. We know that
    throughout history youth have always been at the frontlines of making social change happen. In the late 1960s, young people organized when
    they saw their friends, their brothers, their husbands and their boyfriends being sent overseas to fight in the Vietnam War, a conflict that many
    of them did not understand or support. Today our young people carry on that tradition by volunteering in higher numbers than in any
    previous generation.
    We are out protesting more than our parents, the baby-boomer generation, did. We are crafting a vision of a world where resources are spent
    on education, healthcare and housing, not on military action that results in death and destruction. Students have organized demonstrations
    against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , including students at Hampshire College who passed a resolution condemning the civilian death toll
    in the war on terrorism. More than ever before, we as young people are demanding that our voice be heard. We refuse to stay silent while our
    contemporaries are being ordered to attack a country in which 50% (9 million people) of the population is under 17 years of age.

    As Ghandi said "Strength does not come from physical capacity." Our greatest leaders, the people who have helped our society takes leaps in
    moral sobriety have been peaceful. People such as Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Henry Thoreau have strengthened our social
    consciousness and made the world better without relying on physical force, by instead letting their strength manifest itself in the power of
    conviction and an unwillingness to stoop to the level of violence. Our strength and courage as a nation does not come from killing, it comes
    from our kindness, love, and our compassion.

    The Youth Commission hopes that our congressional leaders and the president will reconsider the implications of this war and stop the
    invasion of Iraq before more blood is needlessly shed. We pray for the lives of all the participants in this war, whether they be combatant,
    civilian, American or Iraqi.

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  • Mis-Led?!

    09/24/2021 - 11:17 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    root
    Original Body

    An Opinion Editorial

    by Dee/PNN

    In the Sunday, June 15th edition of the SF Chronicle, Representative Ellen Tauscher, "one of only two California democrats", is quoted as saying (regarding the war in Iraq) "I was certainly misled about Iraq being an imminent threat."

    Why don't we believe this? Perhaps because Congresswoman Barbara Lee was not "misled". Why is that? Is it because she is so much smarter than Ellen Tauscher and the other North California democrat Diane Feinstein?

    We don't think so - we think it is because Ellen is a stenographer; a Republicrat; a stenographer for the Bush the administration - As is that other Northern California democrat Diane Feinstein.

    And now after the war, after these two gave a Blank Check to George Bush to destroy Iraq (in order to protect Israel and get control of the middle east, etc.) the only two Northern California democrats step back and say, "the devil made me do it."

    Isn't this a similar scenario to WWII - didn't the germans say "we didn't know there were death camps, we were misled by the government."

    Do you really believe we are fooled by your protestations of innocence - of being "misled"?

    It's obvious that "the only two Northern California democrats" want to be re-elected and they want the votes of the voters who were against the war in Iraq. They want those votes so that they can return to Washington and spend more of our time and money supporting the policies of the George Bush administration.

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