2011

POOR Magazine the publication arts and education project was started in 1996 by an indigenous, landless mother and daughter who struggled with extreme poverty, incarceration and criminalization in the US. POOR Magazine, the organization, is a poor people led/indigenous people led non-profit, grassroots, arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, arts, education and solutions from youth, adults and elders in poverty across Pachamama.

/>

We used to be here

Living, working and keeping families near

Then Land and lives were stolen

Through paper trails and legal theft

We the original peoples must get clear

We must resist ...

...excerpt from Walking Softly on our Mama (Earth)

The boards were up. Tall, thick, plywood boards, standing upright, like the multiple lids of coffins. Coffin lids covering vast plate glass windows that fronted the used to be thriving but now-dead Van Ness Bakery, the furniture store, the restaurant, the hotel,  and within a few months, the homes of 11 disabled elders in poverty who reside in the Single Room Occupancy Hotel rooms on the block of Van Ness to Geary to Polk. An entire block was dead and a hospital killed it.

The Block was “Killed”  by the Sutter Health Corporation and its affiliate, California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC)in a move of intentional blight to a thriving neighborhood by CPMC in order to garner building permits to construct a huge corporate hospital complex which hasn’t received planning commission approval yet a hospital built to serve rich people who don’t even live in the surrounding Tenderloin neighborhood.

“Many people in the Tenderloin rely on Medi-Cal and charity care services and are concerned that CPMC has one of the worst records of serving the poor in San Francisco,” said Nella Manuel, a Tenderloin resident and Medi-Cal patient who lives just a few blocks from CPMC’s proposed new hospital at Van Ness and Geary.  Despite record profits, CPMC has some of the lowest records in the City of serving charity care and Medi-Cal patients.

The Van Ness Bakery employed nine poor migrant women. Nine daughters, aunties & mothers. They were paid a living wage by the immigrant family who owned the shop. They had a steady and loyal business. The furniture store,  restaurant and hotel employed several hundred people . All of these workers’ are now unemployed

From our first day in San Francisco, while in and out houselessness and deep poverty, my disabled mama and I  always found a hospitable space in the Bakery to sit and drink pre-corporate, diner-style coffee and munch on chocolate iced cake donuts. Since my mama’s passing in 2006 and later, PNN co-editor Tony Robles’s Uncle Al Robles, my son and I still went in daily to get coffee, remember my mama and get her and Uncle Al’s donuts to place on their altars as an offering, always given to us for free by the staff of humble, indigenous diasporic daughters who worked at the Bakery to support families in struggle.

Monday, March 28^th 2011 was the Bakery’s last day open. POOR Magazine staged a grief rally outside the Bakery. Myself and fellow poverty scholars from POOR, Muteado Silencio, Charles Pitts, Bruce Allison and Carina Lomeli laid our bodies down on the sidewalk, while Marlon Crump, “playing” a character called, Corporate Death, covered us with a black sheet, a staging by POOR’s Theatre of the POOR to mark the death of a neighborhood by a corporation and its subsequent criminalization of the poor people who dare to sit, stand, congregate or lie on the now-empty block.

We used to be here

Walking Softly on Mama Earth

And then there were red-lines, bread-lines, outcomes

And paper trails

All leading to the stealing of our, land, jobs and homes

The Controller is the Shadow Master of the Senior and Adult Services Agency, part of the Commission On Aging and Adult Services, managing the budget of seniors, the disabled, and Welfare recipients.

The budget that you see is actually conceived three years before it is fought over in public and made policy.  Tweaking, adding or subtracting taxes, goes on while the back-door pulling of hairs out of heads happens.  If you want something done, you go to the Controller's office as soon as a budget is signed into law.

This poverty scholar has been in the Shadow Master's lair.  It's like being in Charles Dickens' universe back in the day.  Buried in the catacombs of City Hall are row after row of accountants.  They don't wear green eyeshades and sit hunch-backed over ledger books, they have computers destroying their eyesight. 

You make your way through a maze of office workers sitting at cubicle-less desks to get to Mr. Controller.  Once there, after greeting him you say, "We need X, Y and Z.  What can you do with the budget to get this?"

No beating around the bush, you'll either get a "Yes", a "No", or a "Get the hell out of my office!"  If you ask why he can't do something for you, he may give you TMI (Too Much Information), but it won't be said in million dollar wordage requiring a 20lb dictionary to decipher what he meant. 

Maybe that's why he isn't a Supervisor, or Mayor?  He's too honest.  He may tell you to go see a Supervisor to get this or that city ordinance changed, to get what you want if he had to say "No!"--and he'll tell you not to use his name when doing so or he'll having spoken to you at all.

An example.  In 2005 Elder San Franciscans needed extra money for food, medical care, and other necessities.  The Controller suggested taking 25% of the money that parking lots are taxed and transferring that to the part of the budget subsidising elder needs.  This was a "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours" plan, which would include setting up a mechanism for figuring out how much money the parking lots actually gross and net annually, since there wasn't a set-up for that then and any figure the parking lot people stated was taken for truth. 

The result:  for two years there was new money going to senior needs.  Other city departments, including the SFPD, went to court challenging the legality of the deal because they were looking for money to put in their budgets.  The SFPD has been sucking money out of MUNI's budget, via over-time and other tricks, thus they figured out their own back-channel means for beefing up their budget.

What you hear about the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors running the City of San Francisco is partly true.  The powers behind thrones produce the blueprints for the structure of our lives.  Sometimes heroes, sometimes villains, they are rats in The Amazing Race to keep the city from falling apart completely. 

This poverty skolah concludes this chapter of CrumbWatch.  We're always watching the people who trickle down the crumbs.  We always will.

In poor magazine we believe in reclaiming our roots, culture and indigenous languages we use the Spanish and English languages at all time, even do at the end they are colonizers languages,Linguistic Domination is the idea that only English and Spanish are the dominant languages.

Cleaning Lady

By RWS

Chinatowns of america--run from coast to coast, from Trinity county to sisikyu mountains, from locke california, to king street seattle, from stockton to San Francisco hidden cobblestone alleyways, from canton to fairfield. leongs, lims, chins, wongs, laus, lees, choys, toms fill the chinatown landscape. gung yan rise like winter storms. steel rails whip around gold mountain. --From "Chinatown Blues for Blues poets" by Al Robles

For some reason I look forward to seeing her.  I am a doorman. I sit at a fancy marble desk as classical music is piped in through the overhead speakers.   The apartment complex is much like a museum.  I spend much time cleaning the marble counter with a cloth and purple colored solution.  The floor tiles sparkle and I buff the countertop.  I see my reflection along with the reflection of the chandelier.  I buff rigorously, using circular motions.  I buff over my image, my face—trying to make it disappear but all I get is a shinier version of my own face and cleaning solution mist in my lungs.

She walks in.  She smiles to hide her shyness.  Hello, she says, carrying a vacuum, broom and bucket filled with cleaning supplies.  “I’m here to clean MS’s apartment”, she says.   MS, the CEO of some kind of marketing company.  I’ve nicknamed him “The whale” for his resemblance to that marine mammal.  I picture him floating, his back hovering over the face of the ocean looking into an endless sky, a small bird landing on his barge-like belly pecking away until it pops.  The bird flutters away and so does MS, like a big balloon farting away all that air, launching into oblivion among the heavens, only to create a blip upon hitting the water below.

I open the vendor book and ask her to sign it.  I look at her hands.  Her skin is the skin of a poem, a history of a people who built a civilization, railroads, and Chinatowns in Amerikkk.   Her skin is slightly burnt in the bursting sun and cool in the turquoise water of memory.  She signs the book and I tell her that someone from the maintenance department will let her into the apartment she is scheduled to clean (since the whale is not home to graciously welcome her with a cavernous belly full of kindness).  I call maintenance on the walkie talkie.  The supervisor, a burly Latino man who I’ve affectionately nicknamed, “Buffalo meat”, responds by saying that I should call someone in the leasing office to let the cleaning lady in.  I call the leasing office—no response, probably busy on the phone.  I want to call Buffalo Meat back on the radio to ask him to open the unit but he is gruff, with a tendency to grunt his thoughts as well as his afterthoughts, and, heaven forbid, that I make him grunt unnecessarily.  I call leasing again and again there is no answer.  The cleaning lady is standing there, on the clock—the clock on her—with a limited amount of time to complete the job—at a minimum rate of pay.  I look at the security monitor and see Buffalo Meat leaning against a wall talking to a coworker.  The cleaning lady smiles a nervous smile.  Is her time not worth anything to these people?  We wait.

There’s a musical quality to her voice.  When she speaks, the classical music on the overhead speakers fade—all that composition passed down through the ages—violins, oboes, cellos, harps, cymbals—all melt away when she speaks. I ask her where she's from.   I’m from China, she says, carrying her cleaning supplies”.  “I’m here to clean MS’s apartment”.  She’s conscious of her accent but not overly so.  Her voice is like the whisper of a bell, or the jazz notes of a vibe player whose sounds fill up a room with colors that only the heart can see.  Soon she is led to MS’s apartment, led by a leasing agent with a leasing agent’s voice, leasing agent’s walk and leasing agent’s talk.  She pushes her vacuum and balances her supply buckets and brooms through a world that is out of balance.  She is left to do her job.  She does it.  I’m at the desk doing mine.  Her name is in the sign-in book.  I close it, the classical music plays.  Suddenly I hear the vacuum cleaner and the sound of a broom brushing aside what needs to be brushed aside.  The classical music fades and i think of my father and uncles who did  janitorial work in the past, whose opportunities were limited but whose lives and songs resonate within me deeper than any symphony.  Their lives provide the music to which i write.  All is silent for a moment.  Then I hear the voice:  My name is Janice,  I’m here to...

Her voice fills this empty space for the moment.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Enid Conley from Johnson & Wales University. I was connected with her by a Ute elder, Kenny Frost.

He would tell me, you just have with her, you will love her! He was right of course, and this is the conversation that Enid and I had while I visited her. She talked about the use of language and defining one's self, and the history of Natives in a global perspective, and she schooled me on Natives from the Caribbean islands! I love her and i am so blessed to have met her! It won't be the last time, just the beginning of many times I will see her.

You can’t stay here no more
me being homeless again at thirtyfour
my sister let me move in for four days
than secretly kicked me out the door
one morning leaving I said
“I’ll see you later sister.”
She yelled “You can’t stay here no more”
She was refused by my payee for extra $
So I had to go
Now she say I can stay days weekly
Days maybe even four
RAM

 “From 1980, until this past year we did’nt have  the ‘Sit-Lie.” Ordinance”, says Bob Offer-Westort of  Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco Ca.
   Portland Oregon had four ‘Sit-Lie’ laws over the past decade”, he continues.  “The hatred of the homeless is really what this will become, this will lead to warrants which will block you for getting housing [in the futire]”.

Now politicians and businesses are trying to implement the ‘Sit-Lie Ordinance’ in Berkeley, Ca. The Sit-Lie Ordinance is going to appear on the next ballet mimicking Prop N and Prop O. Prop N and Prop O were set up in ’94 for drug dealers.Now it  would mean  getting rid of homeless people from their streets.

Teague Gonzalez announces “There will be 10,000 unemployed people in  downtown Berkeley, she continued, “
So with our country now in another recession, no jobs, no money, para las pobre, no honey. Now our government legalizing locking up people for being homeless/poor. “If you can’t afford no doors, still you cannot rest on public floors”.
                                                         RAM
 

HOME is a powerful song from the perspective of a person lost in the urban areas, as many of us Native’s find ourselves in living to survive in the 21st century.

The chorus is sung by Lihn Renkin in which she says “Home, I’m just trying to find my way home”. Lihn is a gifted vocalist, pianist and violinist. She offers an incredible sample of her vocal range on the outro of the song.

“We seen the world turn, our waters being burned, our mother being torn, industrial revolution. Steps forward or steps backwards? How we not listening to our elders, just cuz they don’t have a Masters (degree), who we fooling?, this living in excess and consuming, over population, pollution…” this is one of my favorite lines in the song because it came from an actual conversation I had with an elder,

Sunny Dooley, a Navajo elder and story teller shared her thoughts of her disappointment of the invalidating of knowledge of our elders because of their lack of western education. This she shared at the 2nd Elders Gathering I was honored to help facilitate at the banks of the Colorado River inside the Grand Canyon in May of 2010.

Sunny had said that “there are grandma’s out here that have an enormous wealth of knowledge to heal the world, yet their words are invalidated because they don’t have a Master’s degree, shortly after I wrote this song with those words in mind.

Also the part of the waters being burn is from a video I had seen of a river in the Midwest that was so polluted that it caught on fire in the early 90’s. Also touched on the of the wars that are tearing our world apart and the destruction happening from strip mining that is leaving our mother torn, our mother the Earth. I'm really questioning whether progress are steps forward for mankind or not?

This song is a longing for the feeling of what it would have been like in yesteryear without the modern technologies and the modern social ills. Also a longing to return home on the reservation where my heart and soul is, yet like many Natives of today I’m stuck in the city to be able to pursue a living, for now.

In the second verse I say “we come from a place where sisters are mother and mothers are fathers, we need to be raising our own sons and daughter”. This is a look at a ill that is all too common in communities on color not only in Native communities of the situations where sisters are raising their nieces and nephew and mothers are both mother and father to their children.

“Disconnect and reconnect, disrespect and re-respect” I finish the song with words of hope and in those words share the guidance that has been given to me in these trying times. 

For more information, go to: http://www.yaiva.net or http://www.facebook.com/yaiva

Growing up ,I always thought going to college was impossible for people like me,yet at that time I was only partially aware who people like me really were.With my 0.7 gpa’s and behavioral problems,the list of names that counselors,administrators,and teachers had for me grew as I went from elementary to high school.If you were to put all of the students like me,in a room you probably would get a large number of black and Hispanics,or whatever name the big headed suits are classifying us as this year.In fact in my 5th grade year,at a private school,I attended since 1st grade,they pulled a bunch of us out of the school,citing disruptive behavior,dangerous to the learning enviorment.As I looked around I saw we all shared a non white skin tone,and the seven of us were sent off,like the next destination was to be a padded room.Coming from a family that thought school was important,that incident made think school was not for minorities and whoever would listen to this crazy idea I had would be ready to send me off to that padded room I mentioned earlier.That was in the 80’s and the 90’s,so today’s non white students have much more pressure with the increasing of overcrowded classrooms at the public school level and the racist,demonic nature of standardized testing,which in my eyes is like Eugenics for the education system.In 2009 over 6 million students between the ages of 16 and 24 dropped out of high school or adult high school with 70% being black or Hispanic.Now the number is higher and the portrait is slowly gaining color and we can see that academia was not designed with non white students in mind.A lot of educators like to debate that non white students,largely black and Hispanic are not genetically capable to succeed in the classroom.In 1994,the controversial book,The Bell Curve was released.Written by the evil mad scientist Charles Murray and a now deceased Harvard psychologist Richard.J.Hammerstien.,it explores the ideas that IQ differences are genetic which result in racial differences in intelligences.Their central argument is that intelligence is mostly influenced by both genetics and enviorment and a better predictor for where someone is going to be in life.Sounds to me like these guys drunk and horny off of their own power,wanted to pay tribute to their forefathers and crafted this ill philosophy,which is currently still damaging the futures of non white children across the country,since it was a best seller and educators and institutions swear by it as the bible in dealing with minority students.This concept of IQ classism has slid it’s greasy backbone all across the board as it was reported in the Trumbull County Conservative,that the city of Dayton,Ohio and the United States Department of Justice recently lowered the testing standards on their civil servant test for police officers to ’limit the exclusionary effect of the city’s test while enabling the city to meet it’s urgent needs and identify qualified candidates through individualized interviews” says DOJ spokesperson Xochiti Hinojosa.Applicants for the civil servant test,only need to score 58% damn guys what a democratic way to let folks know how you feel about them.Talking to some homies of mine,the collective response to school, and for the matter,college is it is not a priority.Taking it even further one comrade told me that out of a group of 14 of us we know personally,none of the group he thought could not make it in college.Recently enrolled in school this years I took offense and a debate ensued.After the smoke cleared I asked him if he felt these brothas were not smart enough for college,and he said ‘ No they just don’t have the discipline”,bringing it back to where I believe I hit a sweet spot in the education system in the idea that academia was designed to disrupt and halt success in young non white children.Taking them from their original nature and reprogramming them to assimilate to fit in the culture and industry of the White Man’s world.Returning to the classroom has enlightened as well ,due to being in a class of mixed age.Seeing the instructor isolate adolescent non white students and literally set them up to fail as if it is part of the cirriculum is horrifying.There is a subjective criteria the teacher uses based on his opinions ,experiences and attitudes towards race which seem to fall into the Bell Curve type of thought.The one new female student this quarter has not been to class in weeks,the instructor says she has called in sick,my mind thinks back to the first week of class when she ran out to vomit after the teacher giving a lecture at the non white students about the use of a certain word being used in class demostrations. He chastised yelling out “You cannot use the words Nigger Niggers Niggaz with a z or me and my niggerz or any form of the word nigga, because if you say it then I should be able to say it and I cant.say it.“The blonde girl looked at me in shock and teary eyed and shouted out No,No,No,before running to the door.The teacher said “Go on tell on me,I am trying to improve bad habits before they follow in the workplace.My feelings were of disgust yet an understanding of the devil and his strategies.The word didn’t bother me Richard Pryor one of my heroes sold that word to those crackers in Hollywood when we won the grammy in 1975 for comedy album of the year for his masterpiece “That Nigger’s Crazy”. What got to me was the obvious push he was giving to students like me to “get out of where you don’t belong” Thank the Most High that I wasn’t in a quitting mood that moment,yet I witnessed how it affected the Black students including two Asian youths and a white female to a point of disconection.As the weeks follow these students have fell back and damn near disassociated themselves in some way from his class ,showing up late or not interacting and he continues to discriminate,failing them as he smiles in their faces.As he told us in a lecture,”You must discriminate,that’s how you find out who’s good and who can’t do the job.”Hearing that from the lips of the reptile motivates me to infiltrate this system and raise a stone hammer above “The Bell Curve”and smash it to unrecognizable smithereens.

Interview with the Raven known as Yoazz

I caught up with a raven while walking home.  The raven indicated that he was a philosopher.  I told him I’d been trying to catch up with him for quite some time.  He informed me that his name was YOAZZ…and that he didn’t really want to get into my shit—but since I was being a rather insistent pain in the ass—he’d grant me a few minutes of his time.

Q: Nice day isn’t it?

A: What Yoazz know about a nice day?

Q: Ok, then it isn’t a nice day.

A: Yoazz gettin’ smart with me?  If you is…then I’ll put my foot in Yoazz

Q:  You mean you’ll put your talon in my ass?

A:  Oh…yoazz an intellectual, huh?

Q: No, just wanted to ask you a question

A: Go ahead…make it quick.  I ain’t got all day to wait on yoazz

Q: What do you think about Twitter?

A: A punk ass bird of the highest order.  Yoazz would mention that.  Twitter is the type of bird that just flew into town and think they own it—the kind that wants to fly but don’t want to pay the fiddler.

Q: The Fiddler?

A: Yeah, you know…payroll taxes.  Yoazz know what that is…right?  I think Noam Chomsky had a name for it…corporate welfare freak…that’s right.  Twitter is a welfare freak with a bit of punk ass bird mixed in.  They are a typical hipster, filled with entitlement and subcriptions of  7 X 7 Magazine that they recycle as well as their thoughts.  They hover around the cafes posing and prancing and displaying their bad art/bad tattoos and hipster ways, gathering about like a preponderance of flies swarming around mounds of horseshit left behind courtesy of  SFPD mounted patrol.  Basically a high-tech hipster that wants a free ride.  I'm just a low tech bird on another altitude--and this ain't no platitude--but i'm into solitude.   That's why I didn't want to get into your shit today.  But i'm just hanging loose, you know?

Q: I see.  What else have you been doing with yourself?

A: just flying around here and there. I see lots of guys that look like YOAZZ…gathering together like barnacles on a defunct ship.

Q: Where are they?

A: Yoazz know where they at…they at the mall, getting into shape

Q: Shape?

A: Yeah…mall shape.  Yoazz can't miss 'em coming and going out of the parking lots, big guts hanging out stuffing their faces with cotton candy, corn dogs, burritos and lemonade.  It’s a shame, a lot of them guys are in their late 20’s, early 30’s, the prime of life.  But all the fire is gone, replaced by fat.  With all the injustice and wrongdoing staring them right in the nose, their big concerns are car seat cushions, videogames and air freshener.  And don't get me started on their cell phones.  Eyes and ears on those cell phones.  Why don't they just put those cell phones between two pieces of bread, slap a little mustard on 'em and eat them, then wash it down with a Yoohoo or something?  When it comes out the other end, it'll, no doubt, be one long text message that says very little.  I just shake my head and ask myself, these are men? 

Q: What’s the answer?

A:  I wish I knew.  These folks got to get some fire somehow.  The sad thing is that most people are gone, shot before the age of 35.

Q: Shot?

A: Yeah…shot.  You know, like a fighter that just can’t do it anymore…or the elastic on a pair of underwear.  When it’s gone, it’s gone.  Kiss it goodbye.  No more fire.

Q: Any last words?

A: Yeah, get yoazz outta my face before I lose my fire.

© 2011 RWS

You can thank billionaire Ross Perot, among others, for transforming the paper Food Stamps food assistance program into the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) plastic credit card-like set-up we have today. Now we are getting another euphemistic treat--the phrase "Food Stamps" is being down-sized, phased out because The Man is no longer dropping pieces of paper that dramatically (embarrassed) set us Food Stamps users apart from other shoppers in stores that take/took them.

The Feds call it SNAP: Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. These states also use that acronym: AR, CT, DC, GA, HI, IL, KY, LA, MA, MS, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, WV, WY.

Delaware, Maryland and Maine call it "Food Supplement Program". Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Utah call it SNAP FSP ("Food Stamps Program"). Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan and Ohio call it FAP ("Food Assistance Program"). Recently a Facebook friend invented a new curse word: Fap. I decided it was my favorite new word (although "oilcano" ties it...). Fap. Fap fap fap. It has a nice sound. Not.

San Francisco and the State of California call their piece of the Federal Food (Stamps) assistance program "CalFresh", to emphasize that a healthy diet includes fruits and vegetables. Duh. Arizona, Minnesota, North Carolina, Vermont, Washington State and Wisconsin are in the "other" category too.

Alphabet soup anybody? The infamous Blackwater, whose mercenaries soldiers blacked its eyes repeatedly in Afghanistan and Iraq, renamed itself "Xe". Everyone wants to reinvent themselves. Just call me "Bob" from now on. Really!

Why is this important? Brand name recognition is everything. "Food Stamps" was a universal phrase that everyone knew and used, and everyone will still be using (on the streets, at least, for a while, until we've been slapped around, I mean--made hip to the necessity of change.... Obama's favorite word). Bill Clinton dropped a big hammer on Welfare recipients, out-doing the Republicans endless zeal to demonize, fetishize, and traumatize poor people. Obama joined the parade. Big surprise.

Why do this (other than to confuse us even more about what to expect from The Man)? My main guess is so that all 50 states can confuse the Federal Government, and the Federal Government can return the favor, and the annual Budget Brawls in City Halls, State Legislatures, and on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC will continue to be excellent examples of lawmakers and lobbyists selling road maps to bridges to nowhere.

With the disasters that have hit Pacha Mama in the last couple years, it seems to affect poor people the worst--from the earthquake in Haiti, to the oppression in Egypt and the Middle East, violence in Mexico and now in Japan.

   I was not surprised of the little coverage devoted by mainstream media to those most affected by the tsunami in Japan--Poor people. The Majority of the people who live on the coastline of Japan are Poor people who depend on fishing as survival to eat and sell. This doesn’t happen only in Japan but in other so called “Third world countries” so when tsunamis, hurricanes and storms occur, poor people who live on the coastline suffer the worst compared with middle and upper class people who live in the downtowns or higher grounds.

    Poor people who don’t work in factories like Honda, Toyota, or in the technology industries which require some kind of education, end up as fisherman or living in poor areas next to coastlines.

   In a Article I read recently released by the BBC, it was mentioned how climate change will impact “underprivileged” the most.

   "It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

•    75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020
•    Crop yields could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia
•    Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020
•    20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise between 1.5-2.5C
•    Glaciers and snow cover expected to decline, reducing water availability in countries supplied by melt water
   From Africa to Japan over and over poor people are on the frontlines of disasters. It is sad that even in so called independent media, little is mentioned of the suffering of our poor people, the houseless, landless, jobless the elders.

   The elephant in the room that few want to confront is the Class issue. I remember hearing stories of Katrina and how people got stuck in New Orleans because they did not have a car to leave. It seems we poor people are destined to die.
Corporate media and Governments want to keep us silent but at poor magazine we resist, fight back, speak out, and shout.

By any means possible,

Being poor is not a crime
Then why get criminalized, brutalized,
For breathing
Left behind by society
All we trying do is to make a living
Is not about the color of your skin
Is about the class you belong
So I shout am brown proud
And love my poor gente

"If I said I was going to kill 99 of your friends as opposed to 100, does that mean you'd be any less opposed to the slaughter?"--ex-San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, commenting on the proposed Twitter payroll tax deal

The new kids on the block on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors got there, partly, by appealing to the generic weariness of voters with endless fighting over, well, everything.  Ex-Supe Chris Daly became the poster boy for this change.

"Progressive" is the buzz phrase of the day too.  Everyone who wants to be thought of as a nice guy or gal is a "Progressive", has "Progressive" or "San Francisco" Values.  What are those anyway, when San Francisco has a Sit/Lie Law and a Top Gun ex-Po'Lice Chief District Attorney who also turned his coat from Republican to Democrat?  Gives me warm fuzzy feelings it does.

Nobody could or would define "Progressive", etc., nor can they now, nor can they demonstrate them because they fear corporations like Twitter (Zynga and others now rattling the Supes' cages) will leave the city if they don't continue manifesting some version of Gavin Newsom's old, tired hostile-to-taxes (or any other way of actually raising new revenues) attitude to counteract the All Budget Brawl In City Hall All The Time atmosphere. 

Perhaps I should be more optimistic?  After all, things were better when Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, et al, were Supervisors.  We have been through a long, strange trip this 20-Odd years from 1990 to 2011, many moons, many Mayors.

Now we come to Twitterville Station, where we must temporarily or forever give up a 1.5%  payroll tax on the corporate vampires that feed on us or...they will take their fangs out of our necks and...go suck on someone else (in Brisbane...)!  Oh, God, No!  Say it ain't so, Mr. Grinch.

The tax deal would cut $22 million out of a city budget bleeding red in the hundreds of millions.  $22 million--for a corporation valued at $10 BILLION!!!  We seem to be a magnet for corporate bullies like Twitter and Amerikkka's Cup-obsessed Larry Ellison of Oracle. 

Twitter wants its own MUNI bus line.  Twitter wants the SFPD to provide more (foot patrol) security than they do for...well who do they provide it for anyway?  They were asked to participate in a Community Benefit District, a set-up that never benefits houseless or poor people.  No surprise--they apparently won't sign any dotted line on that idea--they want to MAKE MONEY, not spend it.

I live in District 6, near where this Twitterpated deal is supposed to go down.  POOR Magazine recently held a protest death ceremony for small businesses at Van Ness Avenue and Geary Street that will be destroyed to make way for the new Sutter Health hospital that will be built for everyone but houseless and poor folks.  Both ends of District 6 (including POOR Magazine's Redstone Building offices on 16th Street in the Mission neighborhood), plus everywhere in-between, are under intensifying pressure from developers, Twitter, etc.

My SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotel, the Elk, has a good neighbor, another SRO purpose-built by a well-known non-profit agency.  They a bad tenant, a cafe that many of us watched being put in--hoping it would be some form of coffeehouse.  It isn't a coffeehouse.  It's a karaoke bar.  My window looks out on the street behind it (where I get to listen to early morning massive noise from a meal providing non-profit I don't hate, though the noise has gotten worse in recent months), but a friend who does live on the Eddy Street side of the building gets to hear the music and the singing all night.

I may look warm and fuzzy (beards seem to do that to people...) but i'm not feeling warm and fuzzy about this. 

The Budget Brawl In City Hall will probably make the Progressive Happy Talk go away.  I must ask...what then?  Nobody wants to stick their finger in the dike because the corporate fishies might chew it off. 

To the Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee:  Stick a finger in!  You've got nine more.  Each.  Show some spine.  Show you care.  Show you care about poor people.

To anyone wanting to help them do that, contact District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim at
jane.kim@sfgov.org
or at her phone number:
415.413.7525

or contact Mayor Ed Lee at
his phone number: (415) 554-6141
or at his e-mail address:
mayoredwinlee@sfgov.org

Tom, Tom…Come in Tom. Do you read me Tom?”

I still laugh at my father’s reaction the moment I informed him—with unprecedented pride—that I’d been hired as a door attendant at a high-end apartment complex in the city. I had started off as a security guard at the same complex greeting the high end residents with a high end greeting (such as “well good morning sir”…followed by an under the breath “you son of a bitch”), high end nod, and of course, a high end—albeit chickenshit—smile.

I always pictured a door attendant as wearing one of those outfits with a wide shouldered jacket and captain’s hat—like the door man on that classic TV show, “The Jeffersons”. I was given a pair of tan pants—Dockers—a light shirt and well made, high end leather shoes. I slipped into the outfit and began to feel high end. My end had never felt so high. Anyway, it’s getting higher with every passing minute. “Hey dad” I said. “I got a new job…a house negro job, a doorman. Aren’t you proud of me? You think grandma and grandpa are proud, having braved the stormy seas to come to America like George Washington and John Wayne, in hopes of providing a new life, new opportunities to their offspring and their offspring’s offspring. Dad paused. He’s a native San Franciscan living in Hawaii. I heard the waves pounding the shore through the static of his Metro PCS cell phone. He finally spoke: You ain’t got no house negro job…you got an uncle Tom job. I listened to the waves and the sound of the ocean over the phone. My dad, working years and years as a janitor in San Francisco; he’s got the Hawaiian beaches now. Let him have that beach, he deserves it.

I stand by the door waiting. I look around. The building is big and spotless and I hear the calls of ravens outside. They sometimes call out to me. “Hey Uncle Tom, you think you can throw us a few breadcrumbs…at your convenience, of course”. I go to the lobby kitchen area and look for breadcrumbs but all I find is expensive gourmet coffee. I see a resident walking to the door. I step on it, moving with the swiftness of a gazelle, reaching the door and opening it with much class. Sometime the residents say thank you, sometimes not.

I am 90 days into my Tom-Hood.  I am doing a decent job but I have some concerns.  One of these concerns involves an old white man in a terry cloth robe--let's call him T.C. (short for Terry Cloth).  "T.C" comes down every morning to the lobby for his morning paper and coffee.  He is pleasant, and his robe is befitting of the terry cloth prince that he surely is.  He requested a cart from me to move a few items into his apartment.  Like the good Tom that i am,  I complied.  He came back with the cart 30 minutes later.  Put it there, he said, producing a fist.  He inched his fist close to me.  "Give it up" he said.  I looked at my hand.  "T.C" took a hold of my hand and formed a fist.  He then, in a beautifully choreographed moment, bumped his fist into mine--a "Brotherhood of the fist" of sorts--not predicated upon race, economic status, education or various other chickenshit requirements and/or sensibilities.  It's tough being a Tom, for you forget how to make a fist and must rely on older white men to give you an occasional refresher course.

 Sometimes I find myself dozing at the desk and at the door. I think of the neighborhood outside. Not long ago, my grandparents were prevented from moving here. It was in the 1950’s. Grandpa was a black man from Louisiana, grandma was San Francisco Irish. Nobody in this place knows this. I open the door and the ravens cry out. I step back inside and see another resident approach. They all look so important, all making so much money. What do they do to make so much money? I open the door and smile. “Have a nice day, sir”. I don’t earn enough to live in this place, yet I grew up in this neighborhood. Nobody knows this.

A coworker stops by. His name is “J”. We talk about the job. He mops the floor and changes the toilet paper consistently and with much expertise. He speaks of the former doorman, a fellow named Kissassman. Kissassman lasted a couple of months. “J” explained that Kissassman was running around every second, attending to every need. “Kissassman get me an umbrella, Kissassman make more coffee, Kissassman call me a cab, Kissassman arrange to have my dry cleaning picked up, Kissassman, kissassman Kissassman...etc, etc., etc. 

One day kissassman left—kissed it all goodbye like a snake shedding some unfamiliar skin. His last words, “I’m tired of being Kissassman. I’m going to have my name changed…legally. 

In the meantime, i stand by the door. I catch myself dozing off. My cell phone rings, a text message from good old dad. I read it: “Tom, Tom…come in Tom…do you read me Tom?”

More than 20 years ago I lived in Waipahu Hawaii. I’d arrived from San Francisco with my dad and stepmom. We stayed in the rear of Mr. Gutierrez’s house—my father’s father in law. Mr. Gutierrez didn’t say much—when it was time to eat, he’d say…eat…if he needed you he’d say…come.  Often times he'd call out: come, eat!  When he wasn’t cutting hair part-time, he tended to his garden. He grew upo squash, malunggay and other vegetables. There were also mango and guava trees that shaded me as I reached up to yank the gifts of their branches. Sometimes I’d be alone with Mr. Gutierrez while my dad and stepmom were looking for work. We’d sit in front of the TV in silence. Then, all of a sudden, he’d break into laughter. I often didn’t know what he was laughing about. His laughter was like a song with a long drawn melody. His laugh made me laugh. We didn’t exchange many words but we shared laughter.

I didn’t know about Mr. Gutierrez’s past, didn’t know about his life during World War II, how he’d survived the Bataan Death March. He never spoke of it, I never asked. I just waited for his laughter, waited for the fragrance of his dishes, made from the vegetables he grew. I can still smell it.

Back in San Francisco I see them, Filipino World War II Veterans…Veteranos. They walk slowly or get around on motorized scooters with mounted American flags. I see their large sunglasses as the sun rises in the sky. Their caps read: WORLD WAR II VETERAN. They congregate downtown. They do their shopping, access community resources such as the Veterans Equity Center (http://www.vetsequitycenter.org) and gather amongst themselves, observing and participating in open air chess games on Market Street, watching the movement of pieces on a board, a game that is a metaphor for battle. But for Filipino World War II Veterans, the fight for full benefits has been a game in which dwindling numbers of aging veterans are pawns in a game of bureaucrats that have not done right in honoring their service and sacrifice. Filipino World War II veterans and their supporters from across the United States will lobby congress, April 13th and 14th, demanding full recognition and benefits to veteranos and their families. HR 21--authored by Rep. Jackie Speier, D. San Francisco/San Mateo—The Veterans Fairness Act of 2011—is what Filipino World War II veterans and their supporters are pushing for. The legislation is an attempt to restore full equity of all benefits to Filipino World War II veterans, their widows and children. The bill also seeks to expand the criteria of eligibility to include all military records, not just the official records known as the Missouri List—a reference of US Military service of Filipinos during World War II—a list that was lost in a 1973 fire. The list included army personnel from 1912-1960.

The Speier bill is the latest in a long fight for justice for Filipino Veteranos, whose numbers are an estimated 50,000—40,000 in the Philippines and the remaining in the US. The Recission Act of 1946 classified the US Military services of Filipinos—who fought under the US armed forces in the Far East--as inactive, taking away their benefits as American veterans. Of the 66 nationalities that served the US during World War II, the Filipinos are the only group to not receive full military benefits. In 2008, congress granted Filipino World War II Veterans a one-time lump sum payment, on condition of a waiver that would free the US from any future claims to benefits such as a lifetime monthly pensions. 42 percent of all lump sum claimants to date have been denied. Joint Resolution 6 was introduced in the California Assembly in February asking president Obama to support HR 210. Resolution 6 supports restoring $1,500 monthly benefits for life—benefits that are given to all World War II veterans. It also urges providing benefits to the widows and children of veterans.

I think of Mr. Gutierrez, who still lives in Waipahu, still tending to his garden. I visited him not long ago. He gave me Malunggay from his garden. I watched his hands pull the ripe vegetables. I watched his brown feet dig into the earth that is a part of him. I wondered if flowers sometimes feel like barbed wire in his hands. He still didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. His hands, his laughter—his garden—is the fragrance of his life.

(c) 2011 Tony Robles

San Francisco has a “Housing First” policy. The (very extended) Patel

family, which owns the vast majority of SRO hotel (Single Room

Occupancy: a.k.a. Poor People Housing) properties in the city, is

spitting in our faces by leaving SRO’s vacant for years. There is one

in the Mission (22nd and Mission, above the Ritmo music store, with 40

units), and one in SOMA—the already earthquake code-improved 100-200

unit four-story Chronicle Hotel (across the street from the

newspaper!) and the retail space under it.

Housing in the city translates into money spent in the city, including

jobs for people staffing SRO hotels; of course, getting the empty

Patel spaces clean and useable as living spaces would also generate

those oh-so-wonderful short-term (a.k.a. temporary) jobs the “job

creators” love to talk about (contractor stuff, construction…) too.

The SRO in the Mission only needs $500,000 (current costs) to be

returned to service. The electrical wiring is up to code. Sinks and

bathrooms would need to be installed. The SOMA space, abandoned for 20

years, used to have a blood plasma donation center on the ground

floor. Bruce and Thornton remember it well. A lot more money would

need to be sunk into it to make it liveable.

City services, funded by local, state, and federal taxes, would not be

strained by an effort made to maximize housing for poor people, the

tax base would be improved by it. This modest proposal would take

approximately 200 people off the streets. More would be better.

Editors Note: The following is a story by Leroy about his experience with profiling by po'lice while riding his adult tricycle in Berkeley as a visibly disabled Black man. Leroy's story is just one example of many thousands of examples of profiling by Po'Lice officers in cities across Amerikkka. Many of us peoples of color and poor peoples in the US face these acts of harassment by po'lice for the sole act of walking, bike, adult tricycle-riding, shopping, driving or residing while Black, Brown, Poor or Disabled...

 On April 3^rd 2011 around 2pm Leroy Moore  was on his adult three-wheel tricycle coming down University Ave. in Berkeley CA at the corner of University Ave and MLK on the sidewalk. 

A Berkeley police officer approached him and said "get off the bike!" and Leroy said "why" after the officer repeated himself three times. 

Then the officer asked, “Do you know why you have been stopped?”  Leroy said, "because I’m Black?!" 

Then the officer tried to pull Leroy off the adult tricycle. Leroy got off and walked the adult tricycle around the corner where he saw another Black man against the wall with his bike.  

The officer’s partner, an Asian woman officer, took Leroy’s i.d. to run it while the White cop was finishing with the other guy.  The officer, wanted the other profiled Black man to sign a paper i.e. an citation but he refused.  The White cop said sign it or I have to book you for riding on the sidewalk. 

He signed it and left.  The White cop turned to Leroy and asked, “you said no while you were on your bike!  Leroy said “no I said why!”  The officer said, “why is no!” Then Leroy said, “why is why!”  

The officer asked, “where do you live and do you live alone?” The officer asked that question like five times.  Leroy said his address and said he lives alone.  The officer asked, “you know there is no riding on the sidewalk and a lot of people are reporting that they have been hit by bikes on the sidewalk.”   Leroy didn’t say anything. 

The officer looked at Leroy's three-wheel adult tricycle and said “usually people ride in the street.  Next time take the back streets, stay off the main streets.” 

The Asian police officer appeared with Leroy's id gave it back and they let Leroy go on his way with a warning..

Photo of the Franciscan Towers

Photo Credit: Charles Pitts/PNN

I live in Twitter town where its not safe to be poor, black or brown...I live in Amerikkka where poor peoples and peoples of color are displaced, criminalized & incarcerated EVERY (pinche) DAY ….

“Tiny, my room is burning down”, I got one of the most terrifying calls of my life last night from a disabled elder and poverty scholar friend who lives, or rather used to live, at the Franciscan Towers, a poor people housing complex in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. The most terrifying part of the call was not only that her life was in danger but that my recently displaced and evicted body was miles away,  without money for transportation to go and help her.

The elevator was also out of service in the 105 unit residence, a property of Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) and there were several people that were injured and narrowly escaped with their lives. Happily, my friend got out safely, but sadly, as of now, she has nowhere to go.

"Twenty-two people were injured in the fire,  including four who required hospitalization, but none of the injuries were considered life-threatening," said Deputy Fire Chief Pat Gardner

“A lot of us tenants think there was foul play, we just don’t know by who,” After my friend managed to get through the craziness of last night she and I spoke about the possible cause of the fire, “ but we have been worried about something like this happening for a minute,” she concluded ominously.

When I heard her speak about the possible arson of the hotel which supposedly started in the garbage shute, I was haunted by the reminders of the Gentrification By Fire series of 1998-2000 re-ported and personally felt by many of us poverty scholars at POOR Magazine. This extensive insider investigation focused on a series of arsons started by slumlords so they could qualify for insurance pay-offs and redevelopment funds. The series and the deadly fires culminated with the tragic fire in the Hartland Hotel, also in the Tenderloin at Geary and Larkin streets.

I have lived through slumlord perpetrated evictions by fire, twice, once in an Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Hotel, not even as nice as the Franciscan, and once in a sub-standard apartment building. In both cases, the landlords had made multiple attempts to intimidate us out of the buildings before they resorted to out and out attempted murder.

Oddly enough, I got another call last night, one from a friend who told me that the Mid-Market/Twitter Tax give-away had passed, a tax giveaway which will increase the shortage of affordable housing, un-criminalized streets and services for poor people which led me to think the kinds of things I am inclined to think, maybe “they” are trying to burn the rest of us poor folks out of this increasingly rich and white town.