2011

June 4, 2011

I thought as an Afro American parent I made the right decision in putting my son in private school. I believed the public school system would damage my son. I see the struggles of substandard education, discrimination and harassment Afro American children go through. The problems don’t only affect our boys but our girls too. My son was very outgoing and smart and loved to learn. I decided to enroll him in St. John's Catholic school in San Francisco—I was advised St. John's is one of the top Catholic schools in San Francisco. I was happy when my son was accepted.

I believed St. John's Catholic school would challenge my son mentally; however I had a rude awakening. All of a sudden normal childhood behavior became ADHD, or as we know it behavioral problems. I remember my son's kindergarten teacher telling me, “I’m receiving my Ph.D in psychology, and I thought your son may need medication as he is a black boy, but now I don’t think so.” I was shocked. AS I had conversations with other Afro American parents, and apparently the kindergarten teacher told them the same thing. Every time I went to pick up my son from kindergarten it was always, "your son did this, your son did that." The kindergarten teacher accused my son of robbery and threatening another kid with physical harm. I had enough, just to find out later the other kid was lying about my son.

The interesting part of it is I thought the problem was only focused on my son. Yet as I started interviewing more Afro American and Hispanic parents, the majority said they were having the same problems with St. John's, that the teachers were all Caucasian and had no connection with the children of color.

Still I kept my son in St. John's until the first grade. "Wow," I thought, "a new start.” Boy was I wrong. Apparently my son carried a reputation from kindergarten that passed onto the first grade. I couldn’t believe now his first grade teacher wasn’t trying to educate him, but a matter fact he was always in detention and was ignored by his teacher. My child was now labeled AS a problem child with behavior and learning problems. I was in a desperate battle with my son’s principal and teachers.

I decided to investigate; I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. I saw my son's first grade teacher yelling at him, the teacher strongly disciplining him; I watched as my son asked for help while the teacher walked away from him; I watched how the teacher took her time with the Caucasian children, but the children of color were constantly ignored, and were put into a smaller groups for behavioral problems. More and more I observed the teacher totally not educating children of color, but accusing the children of color of being substandard. The teachers at St. John's forced children of color to fear learning and being kicked out of school, yet St. John's teachers and principal poisoned parents to believe our children are below reading and math levels.

I realized at that point I had a battle on my hands; the interesting part is the harder I advocated for my son, the more the principal and the teacher treated him poorly. More and more the teacher accused my son of being a thief, disrupting the class, fighting, not doing his work in class. The principal's statement was, “Well you know he had this same problem in kindergarten." I couldn’t believe it. Most Afro American parents either left their children in St. John's or transferred them to a better school. Afro American parents said we just want our kids to pass to the 2nd grade, and all the harassment will be over.

Well I transferred my son to another school; I thought the behavioral problem label would disappear. The principal emailed me and threatened to slander my name to my son’s new school. Here’s a section of the email sent from the principal: "I will inform the new school where Mark Anthony is attending of your balance." Meaning they were going to tell the new school my financial info.

I chose to stop paying St. John's due to the harassment and discrimination of my child, yet the damage is done and the principal of St. John's contacted my son’s new school and told the principal, ‘’he has a behavior problem, and the parents are intimidating." I was shocked again. I wondered why am I going through this battle just for my child to receive the proper education.

Due to St. John's failing my son, I home school him part time. Please parents of color fight for your children; the educational system is set up to fail them.

Revolutionary worker scholar I am--that's what POOR Magazine calls me--and I am out of work again. You might remember an article I wrote a few months back where I spoke of the non-profit organization in the city that gave me the boot after a year of altruistic service to my fellow man and woman. The organization is still there--in fact I saw the woman who fired me. She came through the front door of a donut shop on Market Street. I darted to the rear of the donut shop like a mouse. All the verbs and adjectives and expletives I'd saved for a chance meeting with this woman disappeared. I waited for her to leave. She took her time. Some revolutionary worker scholar I turned out to be.

Funny thing about being unemployed is that I keep running into the people I used to work with--people I helped get jobs. I see them on the streets. To be honest I try to avoid them but I can't escape 100% of the time. It's not that they are not pleasant, good, personable human beings--they are but they ask me inevitably if I have found a job yet. I tell them no and they start telling me of positions that might be available. They take out napkins and wrinkled business cards, scribbling on them with pens low on ink. One fellow gave me the phone number of a friend who runs a towing service in South City. "You'd be good at it" I was told. "Be good at what?" I asked. "Towing cars" he replied, incredulously. This was a guy I had helped get a job as a janitor in a church. He was cleaning the toilet in the house of the lord and giving me a tip for a job in hell. I took the number and tossed it.

Despite my ducking and dodging and meandering ways I ended up finding a job at another non-profit organization (a temporary assignment). My title was vocational rehabilitation counselor in a job-training program serving people with various mental and physical disabilities. On my first day I walked into the bathroom. Inside was a Chinese guy at the urinal with his pants down at his ankles letting it go. He stood with his hands on his hips staring at the ceiling whistling that US Marines tune:

From the halls of

Montezuma

To the shores

Of Tripoli

I turned around and walked out thinking, my God, what have I gotten myself into? My job was teaching job skills to the participants--about 25-30 of them--some of who were monolingual Chinese speakers. My co-teachers were young, in their 20's, and I wondered if they had ever been fired from a job. We covered various topics such as job interviewing techniques, skill assessment and how to make a good impression at a job interview. I would be at the front of the class, giving my bullshit lecture, drawing from my bullshit experience that really wasn't bullshit at all. I would watch the reactions of the participants. Some of them--no, most of them would doze off. I didn't take it personally though. I just figured that these folks were tapping into their subconscious minds; perhaps they were cultivating solutions to the world's problems such as houselessness, police brutality and world hunger. Rather than rudely and abruptly wake them, I watched as they dreamed.

The job-training program included hands-on work in the warehouse where participants sorted through boxes of mosaic tiles destined for hobbyists who use them to spice up bland picture frames or make coasters for frosty libations. I watched as the workers counted mini tiles that resembled cheez-it crackers into cellophane packages. Some folks weighed the tiles and others heat-sealed the cellophane packs while others stuck labels on cellophane packages. The division of labor was concise and everyone did their jobs. On occasion, a worker or two would break into a fit of laughter out of the blue. I would watch these folks from the corner of my eye, laughing inside. I caught the eye of a fellow in the midst of a laughing fit; I smiled at him in a display of laughter solidarity. He quickly lost his laughter and asked me, "what the hell are you laughing at?" I turned away and tried to walk with a supervisory gait (which generally means, without grace).

The workers were paid piece rate. Some had not worked in decades and some had been in the training program for a decade.

Initially I was told that I would be filling in at this program for a woman on maternity leave. My job was to end upon her return--which was scheduled for December 24th, Christmas eve. I began to enjoy the job and the people I was around. The guy I saw in the urinal on my first day whistling the US Marines anthem turned out to be a pretty revolutionary guy. He blurted out the following one day in class: Just because you were born in America or have a job in this country doesn't make you better or your work more valuable than anybody else's. I thought, here's a guy with some balls; how often do you ever hear that on a gig?

Another participant of the program going by the name of Big Mack approached me and asked me if I were a client. I told him that I was the new trainer. He then asked me if I liked old school music. I answered in the affirmative and he reached into his pocket and produced 3 cassette tapes. He told me of his side business making "mix tapes". "Yeah man" he said, "I got the stylistics, Blue Magic, Switch, Bobby Womack, all that shit". He offered me a deal--3 tapes for 5 dollars. He had that look in his eye that told me music was his life. I signed up for 6 tapes. He informed me that the other tapes might take a little time to produce because he is buying a new cassette player to replace his broken one. He told me what songs he was going to put on that tape and I could taste that music as he spoke. It didn't matter that I no longer listened to cassettes or I hadn't owned a cassette player in years--it was in his eyes, the music of life. He asked me to loan him a dollar for cup o' noodles. My tapes are pending.

I spent some of the classroom time reading poetry. I read Langston Hughes, Bukowski and a little bit of Raymond Carver. It was hit and miss. Sometimes the poetry went well and sometimes folks dozed off. Some of my coworkers probably wondered what poetry had to do with a job-training program. It had everything to do with it. Making a poem is the hardest work of all. All those cellophane bags stuffed with poems; all those heat sealed bags filled with poems; all those punch presses punching out poems--what a beautiful thing.

One funny thing I remember were the stickers that were used on the cellophane packages destined to hold those mosaic tiles. The stickers were small, like the kind you see on bananas. They read: Made to be broken. I got into the habit each day of putting that sticker on my chest above my heart (and occasionally on my forehead). My co-workers laughed and I'm sure the clients thought I was crazy. I sat among the workers, some laughing to themselves, some swaying and rocking back and forth. I fit in like a puzzle. Never had I known such peace at a job.

Christmas Eve finally came. I was summoned to the boss' office and told how much they liked me and how they wished they could retain my services. The woman who I filled in for had resigned but due to the budget crisis at city hall, the organization had been forced to eliminate the position.

I bid everybody farewell. I never got my mix tapes and to be honest I never would have played them anyway. What I got was something better: laughter and poetry and true revolution on the job with folks who supposedly had mental/physical disabilities. They were among the most sane I've ever met and on a job that's rare to find. I left that place with my discharge letter and my final check. As I approached the door for the last time I peeled the "Made to be broken" sticker off my chest. I went outside.

Seniors (60 or above) or Low Income Households

Do you have legal Questions?

The Asian Law Caucus and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation Offer Free Legal Clinics

Consultation and referrals provided on housing, public benefits, immigration etc.

When:  10:00 am to 12 Noon, last Tuesday of every month

Where:  Manilatown Center (SOMA), 953 Mission Street, Suite 30.   San Francisco, CA  94138

Next Clinic: May 31, 2011 10 am to 12 noon

RSVP at 415-777-1130

Bring your ID, proof of income and any documents relating to your question

Americans With Disabilities Act rules for Service Animals changed in March 2011 at the Federal level.  Only dogs or horses count as service animals-- for people with PHYSICAL disabilities.  This doesn't affect San Francisco (yet) because the city and county benefits from California state rules. 

How long until the Feds challenge the CA law?  Bill Clinton had a service dog!  Being the President is both the cushiest and gnarliest job imaginable.  Times change...

I'm on this because I saw the driver of the last MUNI #49 bus (of the night several months ago) to my 'hood (Van Ness Avenue and Eddy Street) refuse to allow a young woman with a service dog to ride his bus--he wanted to see papers stating the dog was really a service animal.  Another MUNI driver told me the other guy was wrong because nobody has to "show papers".

After that experience I had a conversation with one of the desk clerks at my SRO hotel, a very politically conservative guy, who told me about the change in the law.  He loved it.  The San Francisco Examiner recently wrote about the change.  They quoted someone who uses Seeing Eye dogs who also liked the change, because it makes life "simpler" for many people.  The Examiner, being a very kkkonservative paper, liked it too.

Why is this important (other than for the fact that quite a few people having trouble coping with fast-paced harder-than-ever-edged life in any big city you care to name--not just San Francisco--deal with their challenges far better with an animal that both depends on them for food, shelter, etc {plus giving up some mostly unconditional love})?  Ever see a houseless man or woman with a dog, a cat, or a bird?  Know any housed poor people with a pet?

Those animals are companions, sharing the challenges of houseless or poorlife.  Guards of property and psychological well-being, they are incredibly important.  Many people who aren't poor deal with animals better than other humans too, so the injustice bleeds over quite a bit of territory here.

There is a hugely profitable Animal Industrial Complex (not just the Agricultural Industrial Complex, which raises a lot of our meat-flesh food in conditions none of would want to live in) devoted to breeding, raising, feeding, pampering, selling and doing other things for and to animals considered pets.  Murdering the ones that become surplus, unwanted, is just as big an industry, or side-effect.  Disposable animals, disposable material goods, disposable people.

Service Animals must be kicking the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex in the balls pretty hard, or they just don't wanna give up any itty bitty potential profit to be squeezed out of any nook and cranny of the world.  Or both.  No profit to be made when cats, dogs, and birds heal souls better than psych drugs do.

At my SRO hotel, there's a guy who lives at the other end of my floor who was pretty much a lost soul when he moved in.  He said a few things to me that might have set off a bar brawl-style fight if I hadn't been instantly aware that he is/was one of those people we use euphemisms for to dance around the "lack of a full happy meal or a deck of cards" when we want to be semi-polite about talking about mental illness.

Soon after that he got what I call an "ankle-biter" dog.  A very small dog.  He said he was holding onto it for a friend, but I have a different opinion about that.  He slowly changed into someone who can talk to other people without making them want to be somewhere else.  We were just talking about a "Homer Simpson Lookalike Contest" (I said I'd look it up on-line, which hasn't happened yet...) in the line for our Wednesday afternoon SRO-tenants food pantry.

I know what I know.  I have all the proof I need that some folks in the Federal Government have lost what's left of their tiny little minds; they need a dog themselves, at least, so they can chill out and stop making life difficult for the rest of us.

The Protest

We left the San Francisco City College Mission Campus at 12 Noon, heading up Highway 80 to Sakkkramento.  We took sleeping bags--our plan, if everything went in our favor, was to have someone rush them into the state capitol building at the last second.  Along with teachers, college and high school students went to the protest.

Two protesters had already started the action when we arrived, so the California Highway Patrol (CHP) was already on high alert.  People were also posing with the massive $100,000 bear sculpture that Arnold Schwarzenegger bequeathed to the hallway outside the Governor's office. 

Six p.m. came quickly.  Two other random acts of demonstrating about budget cuts happened before we officially got going.  Zero hour came.  This poverty skolah is large, and can sneak more stuff in than a skinny person (including a CA Teachers Association banner...).  It is forbidden to bring banners inside the capitol building.

Let me explain why I gave the teachers union an "F".  The union, which called for the demo, began forcing teachers to leave while the official protester teachers were threatened with fines. 

"Education should be free!"  "K to PHd should be free!" were two of the protest chants.  I believe I saw the same camera man 12 times as we marched past the statue of Eureka, a goddess on the state seal.  The Highway Patrol began telling us we should leave, it was our last chance to leave freely before being arrested.

We began a teach-in.  I was sitting listening at first.  I asked the students: "Who wants a free education at any of the state's colleges?  That isn't a myth--it was real when I was your age.  It was real during the Depression!  Charging a 1% tax on any corporation, partnership, or person that earns $1 million or more a year would not hurt anyone and make college/university educations free again.

The Highway Patrol gave us 5 minutes to leave or go to jail.  The citation they gave me cites "602Q PC: Failure to leave a state building".  The situation began to feel like a Woody Allen movie ("Take the Money and Run"). The senior officer present made sure his CHP officers were as non-violent and polite as possible.

Why Do You Have To Get Arrested To Get Decent Health Care?

Sitting on the ground outside the CHP station was hard for me.  I was given a chair--other Po'Lice departments haven't been that courteous and nice, treating protesters like cattle. 

One student had food and shared it.  The CHP officer managing the students cut her plastic cuffs and said he was happy to let her do that as long as she (wink-wink) didn't escape custody.  One of the teachers said some of the officers have kids the same age and understood how to behave with them.

There was a Sacramento Po'Lice officer present who wasn't so nice.  A CHP officer showed up with a drunk yuppy who was driving a BMW.  The drunk guy was rude, as was a Sacramento Po'Lice officer who happened to be there--the CHP officers on duty at the station weren't.   

I started out in plastic cuffs, graduating to metal ones (which I, and most people would prefer to wear if circumstances require them...) so I could go the bathroom.  We were taken to see a nurse, as everyone arrested by the CHP does.  My foot was infected from cuts that happened earlier in the week.  The nurse was very concerned when she saw this.

She ordered the CHP to take me to a hospital and have me released.  I was taken to UC Davis.  Why do you have to get arrested to get decent health care in Amerikkka?

I was at UC Davis for six hours before having my foot looked at and treated (in a brand-new hospital).  I was given an antibiotic shot and two different pills.  On the way to downtown Sacramento I called Tiny.  I took Amtrak back to San Francisco and slept for 16 hours. 

Reno, Nevada-
“He is my favorite fighter,” Santiago, 7, looked up at me. Not a young man of many words, that’s all Santiago said and then showed me a color photograph of him with his father, small hands covered in boxing gloves bigger than him. Through Santiago’s eyes, I saw the love and hope of thousands of Mexicano young boys and their fathers in diaspora, past the lies of Amerikkka false borders, and low or no wage work, to the dreams of the first Mexicano heavyweight boxing champion to be, Chris Arreola, from Riverside, Ca, by way of East La

“Arreola was the aggressor,” said POOR Magazine Revolutionary Worker Scholar Tony Robles. Tony was the only reason that for the first time in my life, I was witnessing a deeply corporate (ESPN) boxing match between Chris “The Nightmare” Arreola and Kendrick,”the apostle” Releford. Tony concluded,“Arreola threw the most solid punches, telling blows, the fight should have been stopped earlier.

We arrived in Reno on a windy Friday night to begin a very cheap and very rare mini-vacation, courtesy of Tony. The boxing championship was at the Reno events center and included all the requisite sexist and corporate trappings, women dressed in micro-bikinis repping Corona beer and men drinking from an omnipresent river of alcohol supplied by the on-site bar. There were also a lot of young children, mamaz, elders and workers flying Mexicano flags filled with anticipation for the their favorite boxer in ESPN’s Friday night fights

We witnessed five fights, most were “under-card” fights as Tony referred to them, fights which were really just stepping stones to other fights, a process that seemed crazy to me, so you got seriously –f-ed up just to get the privilege of getting seriously f-ed up again!
“That’s boxing,” Tony reminded me.

“From Washington DC, Tony “the tiger” Thompsen versus Maurice “Sugar Mo” Harris ” , said the announcer in old-skool style over the PA system. This fight was such a clear example of a corporate promotional “set-up” at least in my eyes, Tony, the tiger” “knocked down” Sugar Mo, without even trying, almost WWF style and then before there was even a fight at all, “the tiger” somehow “won”. This whole travesty promoted me to ask Tony “the Bear” Robles what happened.

“You cant say that for sure, these guys weigh 270 pds, if you were hit by a punch with that force you would go down too’, he concluded with his own kind of verbal punch.

I thought about my meager experience with “boxing” at the hands, or gloves, as the case may be, of Tony’s cousin Eric Robles, an amazing boxing teacher and athelete in his own right who held a boxing class a few months ago until a back injury took him out of commission. In one class, one meager workout with boxing, I got a work-out harder than I had ever gotten in my whole life and I work-out all the time.

Men Do Cry- and African Flags

The main or co-main fight of the night was between Arreola and Releford. Both fighters arrived sporting beautiful outfits, Tony keeps reminding me that outfits arent’t important, but I'm from LA and style, contrary to what Tony says, is always important.

Arreola’s body was a portrait of LA Raza cultura, bringing me back to my East LA born Xicano stepfather and me and my mama’s herstory in East LA, Compton, Wilmington and East Hollywood. His shorts claimed Men do Cry, which I thought was a beautiful and telling message about his character and soul. I found out later it’s a reference to a previous fight with Vitali Klitschko, for the heavyweight championship of the world where his trainer, Henry Ramirez threw a towel into the ring to stop the fight in the 10th round because Arreola, who fought valiantly in an attempt to become the first Mexicano Heavyweight Champion of the world--was absorbing much punishment at which point Arreola famously began crying in the ring. This latest win over Releford gives Arreola a 4 fight winning streak and a likely return championship fight against Klitschko.

Releford, with his smooth ebony skin, crown of mid-length dreadlocks, and tasseled shoes was wearing shorts that were a re-mix of the African flag.

Arreola, who is the son of a boxer from Mexico is also a big fan of Julio Cesar Chavez, from Culican Mexico, and has a big following in Southern California with Mexicano gente.

In the end, Arreola did “slaughter” Releford which truly made me cry, the pain inflicted on Kendriks face and head was way beyond ok, even though I do “understand” its an inherent part of the sport.

After the fight was over Arreola, who recently re-dedicated himself to becoming heavyweight champion of the world, didn’t just walk out the back of the auditorium, like all the other fighters pushed by their corporate handlers, instead he jumped out of the ring to sign multiple autographs culminating with arguably his most important autograph,

“Check you out young brother," Arreola said to Santiago after Santiago approached Arreola with the picture of him in boxing gloves, and Arreola responded with an autograph and a lingering high five. Santiago's entire face became a smile, The ESPN cameras were off and the handlers were trying to get Arreola away from Santiago and his father as quick as possible.  "Keep it up young brother", Arreola said as he was whisked away.  As I watched Santiago's face filled with pure joy, I realized, this was truly a moment in PNN, not ESPN, herstory.

On Libyan-Tunisian border, it’s back to the future with refugees

Djerba, Tunisia, June 3-4, 2011 – During the last air sanctions against Libya, imposed by the United Nations in 1992 over alleged Libyan involvement in the bombings of PanAm 103 and UTA 772, many Libyans traveling to and from Tripoli were forced to fly through Tunisia, traveling overland to and from the Tunisian border to their homes in Libya. With European Union sanctions now imposed on Libya, the old travel regime is back in force.

However, there is a new dimension to the air embargo on Libya. Attracted to the Libyan-Tunisian border by refugees, most African guest workers from sub-Sahara and pan-Sahel African nations, fleeing the fighting in their country, scores of international aid workers now occupy the tourist hotels of Djerba, the once popular Tunisian resort that has fallen on hard times after tour operators canceled excursions following the Tunisian revolution earlier this year.

Today, prior to crossing into Libya, this reporter is witnessing representatives of the “misery industry,” young international aid workers with groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross, EU and International Organization for Migration lounging around the tourist hotels mingling with German and French pensioners eager to take advantage of the special travel packages being offered by a depressed Tunisian tourist industry.

Not only is war good for the weapons industry, but refugee crises brought about by Western-implemented wars fatten the wallets of NGOs anxious to cash in on the human misery created by Pentagon and NATO overt and covert military operations. Meanwhile, here in Djerba, near the Libyan frontier, it’s poolside and cold Heinekens for the NGO community here to “save” the Libyan refugees.

Western Libya portrait is not what is being painted by the Western media

Tripoli, Libya, June 4-5, 2011 – Western media reports continue to indicate that Libyan rebels trying to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi from power, backed by daily NATO air strikes, are gaining ground in western Libya. During a six-hour drive from the Tunisian border to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, this reporter saw no signs of Libyan rebel successes in western Libya. In fact, I witnessed a spontaneous pro-Qaddafi demonstration on the main Tunisia-Tripoli highway in a town about one and a half hours west of Tripoli.

The DIGNITY Delegation witnessed a spontaneous pro-Qaddafi demonstration on the main highway from Tunisia to Tripoli. – Photo: Wayne Madsen

The green flag of the Libyan Arab Jamahiryah not only adorns flag poles in towns from Tripoli to the Tunisian border, but a number of private residences are flying the green flag from their rooftops, on flag poles, and even from outside of top floor windows in medium size and small towns alike along the main highway.

There are some telltale signs of previous fighting in the western part of the country – bullet holes in the walls of some buildings and even some more extensive structural damage – but there are no signs that the rebels, backed by the United States, NATO and the European Union, have any substantial support in western Libya.

The one major sign of the Libyan civil war lies not in western Libya but across the Tunisian border where several refugee tent cities have been set up to accommodate thousands of refugees, most of them Black African guest workers from sub-Sahara and Sahel nations who were set upon by rebels who said the workers were “mercenaries” brought to Libya by Qaddafi to fight on his behalf.

In fact, there is a strong anti-Black racialist element within the Libyan rebel movement that used the mercenary meme to justify heinous war crimes by rebel units against Blacks from other African nations, as well as native Libyan Blacks.

While many of the refugee camps on the Tunisian side of the Libyan frontier are sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, one is funded by the United Arab Emirates, one of the nations participating in President Obama’s “coalition of the willing” that is waging a war on behalf of the Libyan rebels. From our hotel on the Mediterranean coast, we expect to see and hear the attacks conducted against military and some civilian targets a further few miles inland in downtown Tripoli.

The EU and NATO sanctions on Libya are being severely felt by Libya’s civilians. Petrol stations are rationing gasoline and long lines of cars sit waiting for gasoline to be delivered to the pumps.

The NATO, EU and U.S. policy of “collective punishment” of western Libya’s civilian population is being compared to Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, many Libyans believe that Obama’s crippling sanctions on western Libya were crafted by Israel’s lobby in Washington, which pressured the Obama administration into adopting them.

NATO has conducted nightly air strikes against western Libya, including downtown Tripoli, since March 19. The attacks begin around 12 midnight local time and at the time of this report we are expecting another NATO bombing of Tripoli in a little less than an hour.

NATO war crimes in Libya exposed

Tripoli, Libya, June 5-6, 2011 – In the current NATO war on Libya, the citizens of European and North American NATO countries are being treated to the largest propaganda blitz by their governments in cahoots with corporate media outlets since the U.S.-led invasions and occupation of Iraq. The situation on the ground in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, could not more different from what is being portrayed by Western news networks and newspapers.

Col. Qaddafi's wife's handbag and some of her clothing were blown several hundred feet from the bedroom of her home when it was hit by bunker buster bombs fired from a U.S. warplane on April 30. – Photo: Wayne Madsen

The NATO missile attack that killed Muammar Qaddafi’s son, Seif al Arab Qaddafi, on April 30, was an attempt to kill Muammar Qaddafi himself. This editor visited the devastated home where Seif was killed, along with his friend and three of Muammar Qaddafi’s grandchildren.

The only reason Muammar Qaddafi survived the blast was that he was away from the main residence tending to some animals, including two gazelles, kept in a small petting zoo maintained for his grandchildren. Muammar Qaddafi escaped the fate of his son and grandchildren by only about 500 feet.

The residence was hit by bunker buster bombs fired from a U.S. warplane. One of the warheads did not detonate and was later removed from what remained of a bedroom in the home. Libyan authorities do not have the technical capabilities to determine if the warhead contained depleted uranium.

The Pentagon insists that the Qaddafi residence was a military command center. Perhaps the Pentagon mistook the above equipment for what the Pentagon brass trains on every day. – Photo: Wayne Madsen

NATO and the Pentagon claimed the residence was a military compound, yet there is no evidence that any military assets were located in the residence that was flanked by the homes of a Libyan doctor and businessmen. The Qaddafi residence actually is owned by Qaddafi’s wife.

The neighbors’ homes were also badly damaged in the U.S. air attack and are uninhabitable. Only a few hundred yards away from the Qaddafi compound sits the embassy of Cote d’Ivoire.

The presence of a foosball table and swing set in the yard of the Qaddafi compound belies the charge by the Pentagon that the home was a military target.

However, considering that Qaddafi was present in the compound during the attack, it is clear that President Obama violated international law and three executive orders signed by three past presidents – Ford, Carter, and Reagan – in trying to assassinate the Libyan head of state. In fact, while Obama’s order to kill Qaddafi was being carried out, the President of the United States was preparing to yuck it up with Washington’s illuminati and Hollywood’s glitterati at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington.

This is the garment Col. Qaddafi was wearing in the living room before he left for the backyard children’s petting zoo, where he was tending to the animals when the U.S.-NATO air strike hit the house. – Photo: Wayne Madsen

Obama’s order to kill Qaddafi is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s order to kill Sadaam Hussein at the outset of the U.S. war against Iraq, an assassination order that was also a violation of international and U.S. law.

Putting into context what occurred at Mrs. Qaddafi’s home and the aftermath, let one say that there is an unprovoked and surprise enemy missile attack on a secondary U.S. presidential residence, say Camp David. The world’s major media then claims that the attack was justified because the U.S. president was committing unsubstantiated war crimes, all reported from sketchy sources. A group of independent journalists and human rights activists drive to Camp David and are welcomed by a plainclothes member of the Secret Service’s Presidential Protective Division.

The Secret Service official then proceeds to show the delegation one of the bombed out bedrooms of the main residence and points out that one of the pulverized bedrooms is where the president’s daughter was killed in the attack. The delegation is then shown the First Lady’s singed handbag thrown several hundred feet away in the explosion.

This gazelle is one of the fortunate but still traumatized survivors of the children's petting zoo. – Photo: Wayne Madsen

Although the president was taking a walk away from the main residence, the delegation is shown a windbreaker bearing the presidential seal lying on the couch of the destroyed living room. A room said to contain military command and control systems is then found by the delegation to have a destroyed pool table and a shattered pinball machine.

The attacking nation claims that the Camp David compound was a security threat. But the American people rally to support their president and his family after the attack.

Now, you can begin to understand how the people of Libya feel after the U.S. attack on Mrs. Qaddafi’s house that killed her and her husband’s son and three grandchildren, along with a family friend.

The DIGNITY Delegation of independent journalists from across the United States is on a truth-telling, fact-finding mission to Libya. Headed by former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the delegation will be joined by former Sen. Mike Gravel and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. For more information, contact Don DeBar at dondebar@optonline.net.

"I just want to make sure that we are taking into account other policy priorities"
San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener

A 5/11/11 San Francisco Bay Guardian editorial asks the San Francisco Board of Supervisors not to wreck the city's historic preservation process.  San Francisco has lost a lot of its historic buildings in the name of 'progress'.  Seattle destroyed a classic old movie theater in the downtown core so a giant Nike Town (since closed...) could replace it, and there are countless similar stories about GentriFUCKating destructions everywhere in Amerikkka.

When POORMagazine began working on the first GentriFUCKation Tour, we wanted to ferret out the stories of the places the tour would visit--the anti-herstorical mostly single-word-named supposedly ultra-cool-chic invader restaurants no conscious economic justice-minded person would be caught dead or alive in.

Worker-skolah Tony Robles knew the herstory behind one location, knew who lived and worked there before it became something...other.  We sort-of knew one or two other stories, but the Redstone Building's history is the only place on the first GentriFUCKation Tour that is truly deep because so many people have fought, and are still fighting to preserve it.

Finding the stories about other places on the tour was an exercise in great frustration.  Elder skolah "Bad News" Bruce Allison and I trekked to City Hall and the downtown branch of the San Francisco Library.  The library staff couldn't help because the deep herstorical info we were looking for was forbidden to us by Federal law.

City Hall's paper records weren't much better, and the electronic versions had only one potentially useful avenue to pursue--but there were so many possible documents to look at I quickly realized it might take days we didn't have just to figure out if one address on the Tour list had been through some particular adventure in urban planning, defenestration, who-knows-what...or not...

Herstory, history, San Francisco's got story, we all have stories and we damned well should be better at recording it, preserving it, giving more than (Scott Wiener) lip-service to it.  The book and tv mini-series ROOTS generated an explosion of interest in Black American family histories (and Dr. Henry Louis Gates has done some truly fascinating work with PBS series' AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES and FACES OF AMERICA, tracing some families back into slave trade times). 

The Mormon Church has also become a major player in the movement to know one's family tree.  The internet has many ways to find that kind of info, mostly for a fee.

My relationship to my family's history has been an arms-length kinda thing.  I knew one set of grandparents and met another chunk of family when my father re-married in the 1970's--but, aside from his having a Kimes family tree book going back to some medieval "Baron Von Kime" I didn't (and still don't) know diddly and there weren't any details on the actual lives of the people on the branches of that tree.

You try googling Baron Von Kime.  I did.  Um...

I didn't really understand the importance of herstory, personal or institutional, when I was young.  That, along with anything else parents think is important for their children to hold dear, has to be worked into the family's psychic dna, someone has to care that younger generations know what is the what of the family.  I vaguely knew my maternal grandfather knew some big batch of people he regularly visited.  Before I could get really interested in that, he was dead, so I never did find out if those people were relatives--or just old buddies.

I learned in my 40's that my mother had the kind of upbringing you'd expect of a first-half-of-the-20th-Century white woman, with the added funk of being a sickly child and an adult with back and other physical limitations.  She told me once her family spent time around Princeton University and saw Albert Einstein out walking one day.

Interesting stuff I'd have loved to have heard, more than once, at a tenderer age, with more details--or just more.  More sense of a family with historical roots in this country, instead of just living in it.  How many other people out there have a similar story to tell of not knowing much about who their people are/were?

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Mayor should unite to create a herstory/history preservation effort that makes it easier to know who lived or worked somewhere that is now or will become a supposedly cool new place to be seen to eat, get drunk, buy $100 shoes, or...twitter.

Many people would love to have a job doing that kind of meaningful cultural work.

DEPLOYMENT

TO AFGHANISTAN

We were doing 60 mph on 580 heading to East Oakland, me and one of my best friends  who came to visit; who I had not seen or heard from since he got deployed to the War in Afghanistan.  I am always hella happy to see friends from Melrose Elementary in Oakland.  I was happy to see him 'cause I knew he got deployed couple years ago. It was good to see him alive.  He asked about our homies (friends we knew) and the neighborhood so I broke it down, told him what I knew.

I felt my homie different from the homie I grew up with in elementary, who joked around a lot and laughed like clown. He seemed serious, more quiet, strict….I guess the basic training and war can make you a different person.

When my homie from 4^th grade told me he is getting deployed to Afghanistan again…I replied “ No chingues guey otra vez” “are you kidding”

I felt sad, anger.  As a writer we are supposed to show and not tell with words. I felt empty, anger--I don’t know how to explain it.  In my mind I said damn you military industrial complex.   I felt  like telling him to not go back to war. Have the sons and daughters of politicians who started the war go and fight. Rich people make war and poor people fight.

But I kept It to my self after knowing that by the end of this month he will be in Afghanistan.   I told him I disagreed with the wars that the United States had started, but I wished him well and to be safe and that I will write to him.

Be all you can be

We don’t need to go to war, to be all we can be

We can start here by helping our communities

We don’t need to show our manhood by carrying guns and

Taking others people land

We don’t need see those kids cry for their parents that lost their lives

We don’t need to see those kids die by missiles that struck their lives

I wont be part of that

I wont be brainwash by your college funds

I opposed to be part of the master plan

I wont kill people to secure your homeland

I don’t need to be in the battle field to knows how war feels

I can take look my own city and get sense and feel how war might

Feels

I trying to say is don’t need blood in our hands to become man

Am trying to say is stop this non sense

Of

Kids killing kids

Hate killing love

And

War killing peace

Despliegue a Afganistán

Veniamos como 60 (MPH) millas por hora en 580 en dirección Del Este de Oakland yo uno de mis mejores amigos que vino a visitarme, que yo no habia visto ni oído hablar de él, desde que lo mandaron a la guerra en Afganistán, siempre me hace feliz de  ver a los amigos de la primaria de Melrose, en Oakland. Yo estaba feliz de verlo porque yo sabía que lo habian mandado ala Guerra hace un par de años, fue bueno verlo con vida, Él preguntaba acerca de nuestros Homies (amigos conocidos) y el barrio, le dije lo que sabía.

Sentí que mi amigo hera un poco diferente, ya que el amigo que habia crecido

conmigo en la primaria, que bromeaba mucho, y reía como payaso, parecia mas serio, más callado, mas estricto .... Creo que el entrenamiento del ejercito y la guerra puede hacer que una persona cambie.

Cuando mi amigo del 4 º grado me dijo que lo ban a mandar ala Guerra en Afganistan otra vez le dije "No chingues guey otra vez" "¿Estás bromeando"

Sentí rabia, tristeza, como un escritor se supone tenemos mostrar y no decir con palabras, me sentía vacío, con miedo no sé cómo explicarlo, en la mente que me dije, maldito complejo militar-industrial, sentí decírle que no volviera a la guerra, senti decirle porque no los politicos que empezaron las guerras Mandan a sus hijos y hijas a pelearlas ellos., ¿Por qué los ricos hacen la guerra y los pobres las pelean?

Pero me lo guardé en mi pensamiento, después de saber que a finales de este mes estará en Afganistán, yo le dije que no estaba de acuerdo con las guerras que Los Estados Unidos habian empezado, pero le deseo lo mejor y que se cuide y que le hiba escribir.

From Marina Drummer

A3 Newsletter

International Campaign to Free the Angola 3

Transition of a Soldier

On 2 June 2011 we lost a soldier....geronimo ji jaga. It's no exaggeration to say that without geronimo's initial efforts, the Angola 3 Coalition would have never existed.  In 1997, Colonel Bolt, who had spent 20 years in CCR with Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, went to geronimo's release party to talk to him about the Angola prisoners, and so the campaign to free the Angola 3 was born.  

From that moment on, the effort took on a life of its own, but geronimo ji jaga was always there to support. In 2001, geronimo provided us with a statement of support for the Angola 3 Coalition's first newsletter. It barely seems possible that just a few weeks ago, geronimo attended the commemoration of Herman and Albert's 39th year in solitary confinement in New Orleans.  

geronimo's generous nature and philanthropic efforts were given full reign during his fourteen years of freedom. His work through the Kuji Foundation, which he founded, and his deep ties to Africa are just two of the many highlights of what he contributed during his years in minimum security.   

We are thankful that his passing was swift and know that those of us whose lives he touched will forever keep him in our hearts. To the thousands of political prisoners in America's Gulags his contribution is an inspiration and his warrior spirit lives on wherever freedom struggles continue.

(*His way of being humble, geronimo never capitalized his name, so out of respect for him here, we spelled it as he did.)  

In 2001, geronimo issued the following statement in support of the Angola 3:

Robert King Wilkerson, Albert Woodfox, and Herman "Hooks" Wallace are very dear to me because they come from my home state of Louisiana. The Louisiana chapter of the Black Panther Party was one of the best chapters we organized and they were some of our best, most disciplined soldiers. They were the kind of soldiers who never cried out to anyone for help, even though they were facing life imprisonment.  

Understand that after being in that kinda situation for so long, I can personally attest to the highly disciplined and dedicated nature of these askaris. They endured, and they survived, over all the years, with very little help from the outside world. They are the kind of unsung heroes who we must come forward to help, because they never asked for anything from us in exchange for suffering what they have suffered.  

To Struggle for the People and not expect anything selfish in return is a rare thing and this is what King, Wallace, and Fox have personified throughout all those hard years. They most certainly deserve our strongest salute.

There will be a memorial service at 10AM on June 18 at the Morgan City Auditorium in Morgan City, Louisiana, geronimo's hometown. For more info call Jones Funeral Home at: (985) 384-8643.

There will also be a memorial service for geronimo at the Eastside Arts Alliance in Oakland on July 15th at 6pm. This is a celebration of the life of a Revolutionary. East Side Arts Alliance is located at 2277 International Blvd. For more info call  Billy X at (916) 455-0908. 

Urban myths hold secrets only revealed
by hidden cameras mandated by the state
while also underneath lies a vast underground so cruel

Our families can try to remain hidden in body armor
or venture forth with no weapon but trust,
a mission possibly ruinous
hiding in oceans swirling in hate propelled by
imagined flippers until we disappear
or to stay behind in smoking ruins, blacking out

There is no chance without maps, our only weakness denial

As for survivors we fathom these waves chancing on treasures
or a fetid corpse

There is little nourishment but hard tack left by others
who have drowned

Their fouled compasses left revealing lost chances,
in communal ruin.

Will you venture forth to stand your ground?

Monday, April 29, 2002;

Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia and her mother, Dee Gray, take exception with the phrase "those people," as in those homeless people, or those poor people, or if only those people got their act together.
In their minds, this seemingly innocuous phrase divides society and diminishes the humanity of a set of people, particularly men and women who find themselves among the have-nots.
As founders and editors of Poor magazine, they have decided to tackle this expression and the thinking behind it. Setting themselves apart from mainstream media approaches to covering the poor, the duo reports and writes about poverty, and trains its staff to find the universal "I" in them, as in "those poor people." Hence, we.
"I stress that people write in the first person so they don't feel separate from the people they're writing about," explains Dee. "They may not have the experience of sleeping in the doorway, but they may have had the experience of being afraid to speak out or feeling like they couldn't speak out." Both experiences, Dee says, are a form of alienation that most can relate to.
Tiny, Dee and the San Francisco magazine's four staffers and 10 volunteers see themselves not only as journalists, but as advocates, challenging misconceptions about poverty and a system they believe does more to keep people in their place than to help them rise.
A variety of nonprofit organization and private donations provide support. They also get support from the San Francisco Department of Human Services, which sends a handful of welfare-to-work clients to the magazine's Journalism and Media Studies Program for training. Their budget last year totaled $85,000. This year, they're not sure if they will make it through the end of 2002.
Tiny, 30, says she and the staff live in constant crisis. Many of the staff are homeless or living in dire situations and constantly struggling to survive. Tiny tries to advise and support them. She and Dee always worry about the operation making it to the next month. In the midst of these crises, they manage to produce an online publication ( www.poornewsnetwork.org ) weekly and a glossy magazine. Mothers was the theme in the last issue. Others include, "hellthcare," "homefulness" and work. They have published four times so far, one a year.
" 'Poor' usually means we're the subject of the news," Tiny says. "We don't get to shape the news. Until we are heard, there won't be any real change."
From the time Tiny was in sixth grade to about five years ago, she and Dee shuffled from evictions to squatting in abandoned buildings to living in their car.
As a single mom, Dee had always struggled to stay afloat, but when she was struck with severe asthma, she was no loner able to work as a social worker. They were evicted from their apartment in Los Angeles. Tiny dropped out of school. They started living out of their car.
"Mom was an orphan. She had no family," Tiny says. "When you have no family, it's one tier from having no money. In some ways it's worse."
They trekked up to the Bay Area and, for many years, eked out an existence selling T-shirts and soliciting change for their street performances, which usually involve acting out issues related to homelessness.
The year she turned 18, Tiny landed in jail. She and Dee had racked up a bunch of unpaid parking tickets, citations for sleeping in their car, driving without car registration and failure to appear at the hearings on those offenses. Tiny calls those crimes of poverty.
The judge ordered her to perform community service. She hooked up with a Berkeley nonprofit called Community Defense Inc. The man running the operation, civil rights attorney Osha Neumann, asked her what she could do. She told him she could write. He told her to write a piece about being poor. She came back after a few weeks with a piece on the experience of being evicted.
"It was sort of surprising," Neumann says. "Many people say they can write, and you never know what you'll get. She was an incredible writer."
She submitted the piece to East Bay Express, which published it. Tiny calls it an intervention, one of a series that would ultimately take her to Poor magazine. "Oh, my God, I was alive," Tiny says. "It was like someone threw me a life jacket."
She felt the power of being heard and craved more.
Writing had provided a lifeline for Tiny from an early age. She has kept journals, written short stories and chronicles of her life. Being published buoyed her hopes, but the misery in her life continued. She wanted to avoid welfare - in her mind, then, it carried too much shame. But she broke down and applied.
She never gave up on writing, though. While in a Berkeley bookstore in 1996, flipping through the magazine rack, it occurred to her no one spoke about the lives of poor people. She got to work, raising money from artist friends and poor friends who sacrificed what they could. She and Dee conducted writing workshops in shelters, community based organizations and advocacy agencies serving poor people. Within nine months, they had raised $2,000 and enough material to publish a 65-page glossy issue of Poor, with color art, poetry and prose - and no advertising.
It cost $10,000 to print 1,000 copies. They forked over what money they had, and paid the remainder with magazine sales. The latest edition, a run of 3,000 copies published in December, cost $15,000 to produce.
As always, half the run was distributed free to low-income readers; the rest sold for $3.95 each at Modern Times Bookstore and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco and Cody's Books in Berkeley.
"We wanted to create a pretty product that yuppies would want to pick up," Tiny says. They also wanted a magazine that would raise the value of poverty issues to the status afforded mainstream magazines.
When the welfare-to-work program rolled out in 1998, case workers told Tiny she had to get a job, insisting that she apply for a receptionist position. She explained to the counselors her desire to become a reporter, but they kept telling her she didn't have the education. She told them she'd be willing to go back to school. She says she was told that would take too long.
Tiny developed her own welfare-to-work program. The Department of Human Services signed on. Now, Poor magazine staffers are training welfare recipients basic reporting, writing, graphic design, Web design, investigative reporting and advocacy at a South of Market union hall. It may be the only welfare-to-work training program that focuses on journalism. In the past four years, 15 people have completed the program.
Amanda Feinstein, a project manager for Human Services, says Poor and its media studies program gives clients skills that transfer to other jobs. Clients have gone to work as a desk manager, an administrative assistant and as a peer adviser for a juvenile-justice advocacy group.
"They've had some real successes," Feinstein said. "People get hands-on training in computer software and writing skills, which are helpful in a variety of ways, including self-expression."
From Osha Neumann's perspective, the magazine has a greater social impact.
"We tend to talk about the homeless as a collective noun, as a definite, generic homelessness or homeless condition," he says. "It's a political act to insist on individuality and humanity of a person. ...Tiny and Poor magazine (are) at the center stage of that battle. Giving voice to the poor is both a literary program and a political project."
The politics assert themselves at the start of each article. Every Thursday, Tiny and Dee lead a community newsroom meeting at the union hall. All are invited, especially anyone who has lived in poverty. About 105 people have taken part either in meetings or in producing the magazine.
"The establishment says it's wrong to be poor, and it's something to be ashamed of," Tiny says at the beginning of a recent meeting. The group listens intently. A Poor News Network promotion poster behind her head reads, "Driving While Poor, Part II." The folks at Poor want people to take pride in their ability to survive the toughest of circumstances. During the introduction, Tiny invites people to admit their poverty status.
Twenty people sit in a cramped circle. The group is a mix of races, ethnicities, ages and economic classes. Some participants are City College students or writers interested in social justice issues. Others are "poverty scholars" whose life experiences have made them experts on the subject. As introductions go around the circle, veteran staff members openly state their poverty roots or status.
They throw around story ideas, searching for the poverty angle in each one. The first is about coverage of a Free Tibet demonstration that overpowered an affordable housing protest on the same corner. The issue is finding the connection between the Tibetan cause and the affordable-housing movement. The consensus is that society seems to have more compassion for the oppressed in other countries than the oppressed in their own country.
They eventually map out an angle for the story, which ultimately includes the history of China's takeover of Tibet and draws ties between the Free Tibet movement and the struggles of poor people in the United States.
And so they jump from one poverty issue to the next: the disabled poor may lose their rights; medical marijuana clubs, which often serve the poor, are being shut down; San Francisco is set to renovate and expand a decrepit juvenile hall, in which many poor youth have been held. Every story gets assigned. In some cases, Tiny lets the subjects of the piece become co-authors of the article.
Isabel Estrada, 18, a media intern, has two stories in the works. One is a piece examining the "real" story behind the shooting death of Jerome Hooper in Chinatown in February by an off-duty cop. Though she may not be as poor as some of the other interns, she finds her universal "I" in this story. She tells how, as a child, she watched her mother get into a shouting match with a police officer over a parking ticket in the Mission District. He arrested her, and she went to jail.
"Since then, I'm scared of authority figures than most people, even though I don't do anything wrong," she says. Her distrust of the police pushes her to find answers in the Hooper case.
She also has been assigned a piece about an Oakland family that is being evicted.
A week after the meeting, Tiny and Estrada sit in the living room of Javlyn Woods. Woods and her father, Scott Sloan, recount the Byzantine story of how they got to the brink of eviction. Evidently, Sloan's mother owns the property, but the county took guardianship of her estate a few years ago. Now the county wants to evict the family since one of Woods' children got lead poisoning. Graying beige paint flakes off the walls. The stairs outside sag, and the wood floors are snarled and worn.
Tiny later explains that the interview is more like a conversation, a "crisis dialogue." Before Woods begins her story, Tiny sets the tone with a pronouncement:
"My mother and I were evicted on and off," she says.
Woods shows relief, as if she's found kin, someone who understands. After Woods and Sloan tell their tale, Tiny explains how she believes this is a pattern in Oakland: landlords evicting tenants for small reasons or none at all.
"We'll help you find and attorney and put it in the article that you need a lawyer," she tells Woods. "And we'll picket. We can take action."
Tiny says later: "That's what we mean when we say media advocacy. Connecting the dots for them and, in this case, for her getting an attorney. It means getting involved in her life as much as possible to solve the problem."
For more info
To read Poor Magazine online, subscribe or find out how to donate, visit www.poormagazine.org. Call for the time and location of the weekly community newsroom meetings. (415) 863-6306 or send e-mail to deeandtiny@poormagazine.org.

A year or two ago the San Francisco-based The Bay Citizen flexed its muscles, joining the ever-growing on-line newsworld, with a nice mainline shot o' green from financier Warren Hellman. Now the “Bay Citizen” provides Bay Area news for issues of The New York Times that include our part of the world.

Minister of Information JR of the San Francisco BayView paper, and Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Robles of POOR Magazine, wrote, at the time, of the GentriFUCKation of the on-line wwworld—the Bay Citizen was one of their main targets. Warren Hellman, unsurprisingly, is not content to merely PAY for news content on computer, cellphone and other screens, he makes news too...and not in a good way.

The Bay Citizen's section of the New York Times recently covered an on-going bit of the all-the-time Budget Brawl In City Hall which resurrected a phrase I've never heard before: “The City Family”. People got tired of “brawling” in general in City Hall, or that's the story being sold on E-Bay these days, thus San Francisco ex-Supervisor Chris Daly is the blackest sheep in the city “Family”, the invisible elephant in the corner, made irrelevant by fiat.

The Budget Brawl seems to be mutating into “this is how it's gonna be, see”, aka “play ball by my rules or you'll see Hell before I do!”. Interim Mayor Ed Lee and others have gotten in bed with Twitter and are eager to get in bed with other devilish partners, among other things. It feels like I live in Chicago instead of San Francisco!

I've said it before, I've never had a union job. I'd love to have one, if there was a union out that with real sharp teeth. Unions have been hamstrung by politics since day one back in the day in the 1930's when they were raising hell for working folks' rights. They are constantly under attack in San Francisco and everywhere else. The MUNI bus drivers' union is constantly in the crosshairs, and City of San Francisco government workers have had bullseyes spray-painted on their backs for some time now.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi got into this particular aspect of the 24/7 Budget Brawl with a plan to take an axe to the pension plan of city workers, and he's still at it. Interim Mayor Lee and others have their own plan, apparently less hostile to workers than Adachi's, with Hellman on board as a big bucks supporter. Less hostile doesn't mean friendly.

Especially when the undead rise from the grave, aka the “City Family” thing. I don't really care who wins or loses in most of these Brawls, the winners and losers tend to not be friends of the poor—except that Adachi has been doing really good work defending SRO hotel tenants from the San Francisco Po'Lice, who have been performing illegal home invasions and stealing property from tenants and getting caught on video tape doing it.

Adachi has been threatened with Chris Daly-like irrelevance if he continues to push his pension plan. Is the campaign to stop the SFPD's abuse of SRO hotel tenants (among others they routinely abuse) the real reason for the attack on him?

City. Family. No family is “normal”, no family is without its own disagreements. Words are important. If you're gonna use those two words together, best not to leave anyone out of the family, best not to attack and hack 'n slash away at the crumbs doled out to the family members on Welfare. My yahoo and facebook identities are “redbeardedguy”. Coming into this story I felt like a storybook character who wanders in from the woods to an empty house with three steaming bowls of porridge on a table: one bowl marked “Hellman”, one marked “Adachi”, the other marked “Lee”. Which one do I eat?

The San Francisco Examiner recently printed a story, from the African country of Zambia, about charges being dropped against two Chinese men, supervisors at a coal mine, who shot 13 miners during a 2010 protest over wages.  The managers fired shotguns into a crowd.  Nobody was killed.

The Zambian government paid off the workers so no charges would be pressed by them.  China spends over $1 billion annually to get what it wants from Zambia.  This is, as the headline said, "the daily outrage"--but the real crime is Amerikkkan newspapers and journalists failing to connect the dots:  Amerikkka does whatever it takes to get what it wants, just like China.

Amerikkkan corporations closed their domestic factories and used cheap Mexican labor to keep prices at home as low as possible until Chinese labor became a "better" cheaper means to greater profits.  When the Sub-Prime Mortgage scheme popped like the Dot-Com Bubble, Chinese workers felt the pain too. 

Chinese peasant-workers, moving by the millions from the country to cities where the jobs were, either became homeless on the spot or went back to their home provinces and villages.  Americans caught in the Sub-Prime Crosshairs lost houses and the Amerikkkan Illusion, and they still are as more houses are foreclosed and taken by banks.

Democrats and Republicans play Chicken with the Federal budget just like they did when Bill Clinton was President.  I know, I know, I can't expect a conservative rag to analyze anything the way I do, but willful blindness to reality and the part one plays in it is, indeed, a "Daily Outrage".

RYME- Revolutionary Youth Media Education for youth 12-19 years old.

The RYME program includes radio, video and on-line journalism (blog) production as well as poetry, performance and theatre, organizing and consciousness on poverty, racism, migration, police brutality and liberation

All classes are taught bi-lingually and include lunch

Full scholarship and stipends offerred to low-income youth.

Program begins June 7th-Space is limited. Registration deadline is May 15th.

Applications can be downloaded here

For more information contact us by email at deeandtny@poormagazine.org

 Black Kripple love story

Porgy singing to his lady

Love against all odds

Black kripple beggar

Took care of business

Made sure that they were together

Bess u is my woman

I loves you Porgy

Dealt with the public’s pressure

Today’s Porgy & Bess

Have to play chess

Filling out government boxes

Porgy was strong as an ox

Now beat down by Uncle Sam

Bess doing her best to love her man

They pass by singin',

They pass by cryin',

Always lookin'.

And they keep on movin'!

When God make cripple,

He mean him to be lonely.

Night time, daytime, He got to travel that lonesome road.

Night time, day time, He gotta travel that lonesome road. 

Summer Time and The Living is not easy

Baby is crying because she is hungry

Porgy picked up on sit & lie city policy

Can’t make his money

Can’t provide for his family

Existing & fighting in poverty

Bess singing and crying

My man is gone now

The Po po took him some how

Got him bowing down

Three strikes bail so high

Bess, back to the oldest occupation, selling her body

Just to get her man out of the penitentiary

I Got Plenty O’ Nothin’

Don’t need anything

Just give me my Porgy

Gentrification sweeping

Closed down Catfish Row

Here come those buzzards

Man & woman just working

Troubles are coming

Buzzards pack your things & fly from here

Porgy is young again look out all you politicians

It Ain’t Necessarily so

What is in the Bible It Ain’t Necessarily so

Everybody, queers kripples, all races

Jump over the broom get marry be happy

Darla, my Strawberry Woman with her red hair

Was wrapped up in Porgy’s chocolate skin

Oh Bess Where’s My Bess

Bess I want her now

Tell me the truth

Where is my girl

Where is my Bess

The state can’t get in my way

Dragging my feet across this country

Oh Lord I’m on my way

Illegal love

Some say

Porgy & Bess came a long way

Living but not like Romeo & Juliet

Being Black Kripple & poor real day image

From 1912 to the end of time

Surviving in the saying of Fredrick Douglas

“no struggle no progress”

That is today’s Porgy & Bess

By Leroy Moore

4/23/11

Ocama…. Ocama – Ocama.. Pachamama

For all Taino of Borike'n, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Beyond

Ocama… mama

Ripped of skin

Blood and kin

Spirits and medicine

Called a sin

By kkkolonizers with guns and poison

Land and elders destroyed

Then told that we had met our end

Filled with love for Creator

And Pachamama

Innocent to kkkolonizers tricks and drama

Hands, Songs and spirits

Stolen and cut

Removed, displaced and shut

Our medicine is love

Which is why we could be shoved and kicked and

Hated and then missed

Until our ancestors moved through us – their descendents

To Resist the Anthro-pologists Wrong-ness

The philanthro-pimped funded theft of gangsters

With papers defining them as legitimate

Putting our stolen art and souls in ornate prisons named

After alien beings like

De Young and Carnegie

It is time Taino to take the herstory back

Wayyy back

So we can deconstruct the un-justice

And reconstruct our liberation based in

Love

Ocama mama….

February 7, 1999