2011

June 2000

Trent Hayward died nearly within spitting distance of the gleaming,gold-bedecked dome of San Francisco City Hall. On the evening of Friday, June 2, he laid his head to rest on a ragged patch of earth one too manytimes. He never arose from his final sleep. We close our eyes, a poet dies.It was a lousy place for a great writer to die, a shabby, vacant lot on thecorner of Larkin and McAllister that had become a last-ditch sleepingquarters for those who couldn't pay their way into even the worst slumhotel. Trent Hayward, an outspoken and prophetic writer who tried to rightthe wrongs of this rotten, corrupt system, slept on this street corner formonths, a place where his dreams were invaded by the roar and toxic exhaustof passing traffic, his inner peace assaulted by the mind-bending chaos ofstreet life.

The ultimate mockery is that he died in full view of the golden dome ofCity Hall, where San Francisco officials, in their ice-cold arrogance,invested hundreds of millions of tax dollars to build a decadent replica ofthe opulent Palace of Versailles, presumably so all the unsheltered, unfed,and, in too many instances, unliving bodies of homeless people sprawled onthe unforgiving ground all around could be comforted by thismultimillion-dollar monument to Mayor Willie Brown's ego.

Every night when he bedded down, every morning when he arose, Trent couldsee where the city had blown all its shelter money, its drug detox money,its mental health money - instead of wasting it on the destitute likes of him.On June 13, about 100 of Trent's friends gathered at the street cornerwhere he slept, and dreamed, and died. We held a memorial service organizedby Lisa Gray-Garcia of Poor News Network and Connie Lynch of the GeneralAssistance Advocacy Project. As I offered flowers and a tribute to Trent, Iwanted to say, "Trent still lives in our hearts and is resurrected in ourstruggle for justice."

But those words just wouldn't come out. His death seemed too sad forsolace. All I could offer was a curse to the world of injustice where helived and died: "Fuck you, San Francisco, for spending your money to coverCity Hall in gold while your people live and die in poverty and misery onthe streets all around it."

In my heart, Trent Hayward is absolutely irreplaceable, the finest writerto grow out of the homeless movement. I mourn his loss tremendously. He wasthe most passionate and dedicated writer out of the hundreds who havewritten for Street Spirit in the past five-plus years.

Trent was the one with the guts and the nerve, the one with the spirit andthe sarcasm and the spunk and the style, the one who would not be silenced.The one who could rescue comedian Doug Ferrari from the oblivion of povertyby the sheer humanity of his writing. The one who could use that same pento hurl thunderbolts at the agents of injustice in positions of power. Itis heartbreaking that his voice will be silenced forever.

Andrea Buffa of Media Alliance and Lisa Gray-Garcia (Tiny) called me withthe awful news after Tiny found the cops putting Trent in a body bag on thevacant lot where he died. That night I was shaken at his loss, rememberinghow vital and enthusiastic he had been in the days before his death, askingme constantly for new writing assignments, wanting to take on a whole worldof injustice with his pen.

But as much as it hurt to contemplate his senseless death that first night,the next morning was far worse. I felt such a heavy sense of irreplaceableloss, a feeling I can't get over to this day. I felt then, I feel now, thata part of our hope has been stolen. In Trent's absence, many life-and-deathstories on the mean streets of poverty will never be written - not with asmuch passion and outrage and investigative zeal as he would have mustered. On the morning after his death, it felt like the world was a lesser place,drained of vitality. I have not been able to fathom to this day how to makeit right again. In spite of well-meaning platitudes, life doesn't always goon again, and not all wounds are healed by time.

Like a setting sun

Neil Young's haunting song of mourning and loss plays in my mind for Trent:

"I've seen the needle and the damage done,

A little part of it in everyone,

But every junkie's like a setting sun."

Trent's sun set gloriously. He was writing furiously for Street Spirit,Street Sheet, and Poor magazine. His powerful moral indictment of themismanagement of Hospitality House came out in the June issue of StreetSpirit the very day he died. On the last day of his life, when Trent wasfading away and becoming permanently voiceless, the fates granted him thisone last chance to be a voice for the voiceless. It felt like an unquietghost was still raising hell in our publication, disturbing the peace ofthe unjust. With Max Nolan, Trent had spent months researching thisinspired piece of muckraking journalism that spoke out for all the homelesspeople and artists who got shafted by the agency.

His first on-line column for the Guardian was reportedly in his backpack,the same backpack his mother Connie Connell wrote about in a farewell prayer:

Trent, oh Trent, my only son

You left this world with only a

backpack by your side

And as you laid down upon the ground,

Earth mother hugged you and cried.

At the June 13 tribute to Trent, it was overwhelming to see how manyhomeless friends, activists and media colleagues came to pay tribute to afallen warrior. Connie Lynch read a beautiful, wake-up call of a letterthat Trent's mother had written especially for the service (the full textis reprinted on page five).

Perhaps the most heartfelt tribute was paid by Doug (Dougzilla) Ferrari, agifted comedian who had undergone a harrowing descent from the top of thecomedy world down through the end-of-the-line slum hotels and emergencyshelters of San Francisco.

When their paths crossed fatefully on the tough streets of the Tenderloin,Trent threw Dougzilla a lifeline, disguised as a pen. Writing in StreetSpirit under the pseudonym Harpo Corleone, Trent wrote a vivid account ofFerrari's life story so that you could feel the exhilaration of Dougzilla'scomedy career, and also the anguish of his addiction and mental disability.Trent made you see the hellish plummet into hellhole slum hotels.

Trent's story in the May issue of Street Spirit lifted Doug Ferrari out ofthe silence of poverty and got him onto the front page of the San FranciscoChronicle. Kevin Fagan picked up the story, wrote about Ferrari's plight inthe Chronicle, and enlisted Doug's old circle of comedy friends to come tohis aid.

With his voice full of emotion, Ferrari said at the memorial service thatTrent had saved his life by writing his story. Ferrari had been laid so lowby poverty and disability that he had resigned himself to enduring thelousy, unspeakable conditions in slum hotels, and had resolved to nevertell anyone who he really was, or ask for help. Then Trent stepped in, andeven though he was busy battling his own demons, he found the heart towrite an uplifting story about a world-class comedian struggling to survive.Despite his essential role in rescuing Ferrari, Trent's own rescue nevercame. In one of his last acts on earth, Trent - a bright spirit savagelyeliminated from our midst - may have helped save another spirit from thebrutality of the streets. This is how instant karma repays him?Harpo Marx in the Tenderloin

Trent's pen name was Harpo Corleone, an uneasy alloy of two very differentpeople, Harpo Marx and Don Corleone. Trent was an anarchic spirit, a HarpoMarx stepped down from the movie screens into the hard-edged streets of theTenderloin, there to unleash the Marx Brothers' subversive, surreal attackson the status quo.

Harpo, Trent's hero and namesake, was the most wildly imaginative Marxbrother, a riotous and lawbreaking role model, brazenly stealing everythingthat wasn't nailed down from the pompous stuffed shirts, then outrageouslymocking the police who came to bust him.

Trent was as free-spirited and out of control as his alter ego, Harpo, yethe was simultaneously something tougher: a raw-edged, blunt-spoken fighterfor the rights of the poor. Harpo Marx's musical instrument was the harp;Harpo Corleone's chosen instrument was the harpoon, thrown with greatrelish and piercing accuracy to puncture the bloated egos and moneybags ofthe rich and powerful.

The needle and the damage done

"I know that some of you don't understand

"Milk-blood to keep from running dry."

Trent was facing double jeopardy as a sensitive soul and a destitute streetperson. Blessed and cursed with the hypersensitivity of the artist, Trentwas shoved out of society and onto the streets, there to face everydehumanizing hardship and soul-crushing indignity imaginable.

He turned to alcohol and to an even stronger anesthetic, the "milk-blood"of heroin, to numb out the pain of the streets and to find shelter underthat comforting chemical warmth. It's not just homeless human beings whofall prey to the death-trip of addiction. Countless creative artists,writers, poets and musicians have ended or shortened their lives becausethey turned to alcohol or drugs in stupefying amounts for solace orinspiration or numbness or unconsciousness.

A shield from the pain of life, self-medication with drugs and alcohol isone of the surest ways to be delivered from pain for all time. It's arelatively short journey from numbness to anesthesia to feeling nothing atall ever again.

"I watched the needle take another man,Gone, gone, the damage done." The heavy street drugs are natural born killers. They comfort in the shortterm and destroy in the long run. Once you're addicted and living on thehopeless streets, fighting your way out again is like frantically sloggingout of quicksand. The harder the captive thrashes about trying to escape,the more powerful becomes the deadly pull downward. At the very moment oneseems to be making it to the surface, the quicksand of addiction cansuddenly pull one down into oblivion - all the way to nothing.

Truffaut's film, The 400 Blows, shows how a series of hard knocks finallylands with the cumulative power of a knock-out punch and sends a derelictboy reeling right off the face of the earth - the final frame freezes on ahaunting image of the youth running blindly into the ocean.

So it was with Trent. Enduring the 400 blows of poverty islife-threatening. Many of his friends wondered at the timing of his death,for his life seemed to be on the ascent, his spirits lifting. But thestresses and burdens of poverty, substance abuse and disability aren't laiddown so easily. Just when it seemed an escape hatch from homelessness hadopened up, when Trent's writing career was taking off, one final, fatalblow landed. That's all it took.

That's what we did not see or suspect. Didn't Gandhi warn us that povertyis the worst form of violence? Didn't the 169 homeless men, women andchildren who died on the streets of San Francisco last year teach us thatpoverty is lethal?

Somehow we did not see it coming.

We lower our guard, a friend dies hard. We close our eyes, a poet dies.

To Weep or Not to Weep

"Aw,go on ahead now, child, and just cry..."

--This voice--rumbling up from the depths of conscientious self-being
Crumbled the last vestige of self control
And the reins/rains were loosed
And the claws, no longer bared
The steel trap entrance to the innermost soul
Scathingly, screechingly smidged open one big eency bit
Which produced another         which produced another       which produced
...almost more painful than that act
of holding back.
Allowing the wrenching of the floodwake upward
Salty pools,ebbing high, to ease over the
Lip of the lower eyelids
Sloshing overboard in twos and threes
Carving roadways of rivulets down
The countryside of cheek, burrowing
Alongside the hillside of nose, careening
Over the upper side of lip
Gravity dictating their shiny, wet course to
Face the face
Droplets splashing wham! zam! wherever they may land, below...

The shoulders, the back
Joined at the neck in this
Symphony of sadness
From distraught to distressed to
disdain to despair--their chambers
Mutually echoing the havoc that had been held captive
Detained by sheer willpower
Now, to only disincline the effort to strain
Against, and release the pain
ALL AT ONCE
A mammoth wrenching
erupting from inner burial grounds
Bringing with it a fury
a heretofore unknown
Barrage of melancholia
Some of it for others
Most of it for one's own sorry self.
"How I'm gonna miss you..."
Is laced within this song of sorrow

After clenching all this
With the fierce, self-imposed
Death grip to deny its release
It finally explodes! Deploying
the bucketful of aquatic agony
the terrified sobs of the otherwise
unexpressed, tortuous,
anguished agony
Finally exonerated with the flush and roar of upsurging tears
At Long Last
because of that voice
That Voice, bearing the undeniable flavor of truth
Made itself known
From within and yet, from afar...saying
"Aw, go on ahead, now, child, and just cry.

Friday, July 16, 2010;

Bruce-

In May 2010, from the 21st to the 25th, the Arnieville IHSS encampment appeared

to protest Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget cuts to In-Home Supportive

Services (IHSS) and other programs. June 22nd, 2010, the anniversary of the 1999 U.S.

Supreme Court’s “Olmstead Decision”, ruling that “the unnecessary segregation of

individuals with disabilities in institutions constitutes discrimination based on disability”,

brought Arnieville back to life. The participants in the encampment intend to keep it

going “until a just and fair budget is signed”.

I arrived early, June 22nd, 2010, to scout out the area, at Adeline and Russell Streets,

one block from the Ashby BART station in Berkeley, and walked right by the location

of the “Arnieville” encampment. A man in a wheelchair, Dan McMillan (co-founder of

Disabled People Outside), appeared to help a port-a-potty truck driver, and me, figure

out where to find it. Arnieville was started because of California Governor Arnold

Schwarzenegger’s actions, taking $75 out of monthly SSI checks, removing foot care,

chiropractors and acupuncture from the list of allowable health care—among other

We started talking. We discovered we have many things in common, like getting our SSI

faster than usual. Dan was denied SSI for 10 years, being told his amputated leg would

re-grow in a year. He slept on the streets until someone told him to sleep in front of the

Social Security office and apply again—he got the first ticket the next day. Rinse and

repeat 12 times until the director of that S.S. office told him he’d get his case expedited to

get him out of their hair.

At Noon, other campers arrived. I helped put up three tents, despite the written

instructions. We broke for lunch, and began to get to know each other. We were an

eclectic bunch of people: the KPFA radio station “Pushing Limits” disability program

host; an anarchist named “Fireball Dragonspit”; and an 80-year-old deaf activist named

Bob (a member of ADAPT: Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit). Three

people in wheelchairs from the neighborhood rolled in to give support.

At 2 p.m. we had a staff meeting to talk about the next day’s activities, who would do

what (washing dishes, greeting the public, etc). We also wrote a letter to the rest of the

people living in the neighborhood, explaining Arnieville and that we didn’t want to cause

them any problems.

At 6 p.m. we had a vegan soup dinner enjoyed by around 20 people. This elderscholar

reporter isn’t a vegan skolah, but the soup hit the spot. We had a mic-less poetry reading

and went to bed.

Day two, in the morning, an unfriendly passing driver (the day before the score was 100

friendly toots on car horns) told us “Communists” to get outta Dodge. We (including

new friends who showed up to serve breakfast) laughed. Strangers walking by during the

day were shocked by our information about the threat to eliminate In Home Supportive

Services altogether, and other nastiness.

Thornton-

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010, before going to the poormagazine office, I heard on the radio

(National Public Radio) that a class-action lawsuit brought against Skilled Healthcare

Group, Inc (SHG), which runs many eldercare facilities in California, was not only won

by the plaintiffs, but a massive penalty, $600 million, was levied against the corporation

for failing to have enough staff to give even barely adequate care of elders. The case was

brought because SHG didn’t meet state standards for staffing levels in such institutional

housing.

Of course, SHG is “vigorously” defending itself against having to pay that much money,

$500 per affected elder per day they had to suffer choosing either to sit in their own pee,

or get staff to help them and then sit alone where they got the “help”, for hours--or other

outrageous indignities.

The “Governator” can’t, or won’t figure out how to do this stuff either. The corporate

folks don’t care, why should he?

Bruce-

Later on the encampment population shot up to 30-ish. We were visited by a wheelchair

and ventilator-equipped Disabled Studies Professor from Stanford University, and we

all talked about the press conference planned for the next day. Disability activist Jean

Stewart, author of the novel THE BODY’S MEMORY, read from the “Swimming in the

ocean” chapter (and discovered new fans of her writing) during the poetry part of Night

Day Two’s dinner had a choice between carnivorous and vegan diets via a professional

caterer. This elderscholar won’t complain (much) as long as the food tastes good!

The press conference happened at Noon on Day Three, drawing a 100-person crowd.

Channels 2, 5 and 14 interviewed Arnieville participants (and put the encampment

on their 6 p.m. newscasts), Channel 7’s crew was there until a murder in Vallejo sent

them racing for a more “interesting” “if it bleeds, it leads” story. Night Three we saw

THE PEOPLE SPEAK, a documentary based on historian Howard Zinn’s celebrated

alternative history book A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Day Four I left (concrete and 60-year-old bones don't get along for very long...), returning July 4th weekend (Saturday) after getting info for a future story.

All the usual suspects were there, plus some new friends, including a college student

who nicknamed me “the Noam Chomsky of In Home Support Services”, which had to be

explained to me. I found out later it was a compliment.

Arnieville continues. Anyone who wants to be part of the encampment, help

out with food, etc, has several ways to contact the camp. The email address is

arnieville@gmail.com.

It can also be reached at the CUIDO (COMMUNITIES UNITED in DEFENSE OF

OLMSTEAD) website at

www.cuido-arnieville.blogspot.com

or at

510-684-5866
 

June 2000

In a world where optimism is hard to come by, Trent was the embodiment of hope. A couple weeks back I figured: a guy with such a huge talent, with such sharp intellect will undoubtedly pull himself from the depths of despair. The streets that have devoured so many of my friends won't get this one, I thought.

Trent, I assumed, would use words to skewer the demons that chased him. He'd teach us all a lesson in personal fortitude. He'd be tougher, stronger, more compassionate, smarter for his days on the streets -- a Nietschian hero who once dwelled in the maw of darkness. Like Lee Stringer, the soul-touching New York writer who wrested himself from a decade in the clutches of crack, Trent would tell the world his story, and his words would send shivers through us. Harpo would thaw out some of our frozen dreams, fuel us with inspiration to keep on living.

Knowing him put a wry -- yet earnest -- smile on my face and a warmth in my heart.

But the story is cut mid-sentence -- I now add Trent to the list of friends who killed themselves. (Even if he didn't, on that day, mean to off himself.)

And like all of us, I ask what I could've done, lambaste myself, get Catholic about it.

And I am uglier and angrier, my fingernails digging crescents into my palms.

And I look at my comrades who are still with us and try to appreciate them a little bit more.

Whew! I am drinking a hot cup of herbal lemon tea, out on this cold corner people are passing by to catch the buses. Noisy traffic is darting out in every direction of the city. It's been a long cold winter but today I can see some sunshine, tis the middle of February .
 
February is the most strangest month of the year. According to wikipedia: " February was named after the latin term februum,which means purification, via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calender."
 
Some years February has 28 days: on leap years it has 29 days. It's the shortest month of the year, which is good as a spring festival because it brings us closer to spring. Spring make me think of green. Trees and grass come alive, people get out of the  "cabin-coziness- mentality" and spring forth and spend some green money, like buying a street paper from you with some of their tax return.
 
 Speaking of return, I need to return to the gym before spring gets here and get some of these overweight pounds gone.
 
My, My, My brain has been working out, reading, writing, and studying. A writer's lot, just like a street vendor's lot, aint easy. It ain't all strawberries and cream or cheese cake supreme.
 
The world without writers and street news paper vendors will be like a notebook without ink, quill me! 

My Name is Trent, which is an River in England. I'm The first born, of The first born, of The, of The first born, And Also 1st Fuck-up In my Family.

I was The Great Great Son of The Black Family, with close ties/Marriage To The Grants. Yeah, Ulysses; The Famous Drunken Pres. And The Gov. on The North who Quelched The Civil War. Maybe I'm A Relative of Shirley Temple, But I Don't Know the words to "Good Ship Lollipop". I'm Also Irish (O'Connell): My GRANDDAD on my mother's side (her dad) who chose to live in a cave in Torrey Pines Ca. He CARVED EGYPTIAN MOTIFS AND mythical IMAGES into THE Stones AND LEFT A Guestbook For Fellow TRAVELLERS TO Sign. No one Trashed his House. NO ONE DEFILED THE SANCTUARY. HE WAS AN ARTIST, AS IS MY MOM.
HE DIED IN 1992 AND IT ALMOST KILLED me. THEY FILLED HIS ART WORK AND SANCTUARY WITH CONCRETE, DESTROYING A LIFETIME OF WORK. HE WAS OFFICIALLY CALLED ÔTHE HERMIT OF TORRY PASS'. THAT WAS MY GRANDFATHER... .

Two words come to mind, right off the bat.  1) brutal, and 2) hypocrisy.  As defined by Webster's "New World" dictionary, brutal means: 1.like a brute; very savage, cruel, etc. 2. very harsh.  And hypocrisy means: 1. a pretending to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not; esp., a pretense of virtue, piety, etc.  This, I say here, is something to consider when one contemplates the motto printed on every standard police car in Seattle and beyond...To serve and protect. 

Granted, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that there are instances where brute force is necessary to apprehend a dangerous criminal...but it seems to me, that when there is an attack by a police officer or a case of severe negligence on the part of an officer on duty, words get bantied around and meanings and stipulations take on a convenient vagueness--as if one could conjure up a smoky veil to hide the hideousness of the truth when it comes to shielding the reputations of those wearing the shield. In the case of Officer Cobane who said to a Latino man as he lay face down on the ground, "I'm gonna beat the #*%@#*! Mexican piss outta you, homey.  You feel me?" he and his partner were simply reassigned duties until further actions may or may not have been taken.  It was said by the department that they did NOT use unreasonable force.  But what do you call using your boot to knock someone's hand away from their face and kicking them in the head in the meantime? Reasonable?  Whoops? I'm sorry?

The platitudes and vague, if not downright deceptive terms that get tossed around like bread crumbs to birds are a horrendous injustice to the victims of police induced hate crimes, and they make a mockery of the justice system, which, obviously, in the light of untainted facts, needs to be overhauled and, in some cases, overruled.  "Justice"--"just ice" Joni Mitchell says in one of her songs. 

One redeeming factor in all this is the fact that more and more, situations involving the police are being filmed...and there, one cannot fall back on these thinly disguised misrepresentations of the truth.  No room for the "he said, she said" syndrome to play into effect when the honest-to-goodness truth needs to come out and be made known to all, involved or not. Cameras are not inclined to lie.  Just as a civilian might turn criminal and not be civil in some situation, so can an officer go from being a decent cop into a raging pig. Humanity has its virtues and its flaws. 

 The Seattle Times quoted one woman as saying "The community is of 'one mind' about the incident on the tape...We are incensed, we are offended, we are 100 % committed to doing all we can to make sure that it never happens again."  This particular incident happened right outside of the China Harbor restaurant in The International District, about what? five miles away from where John T. Williams, the beloved Ditidaht Native American woodcarver was gunned down by a police officer working on his own volition, just a few months later.  To protect and serve--who?  Their own best interests?  Granted, enforcers of the law all over the world, in every country that has any sense of organization and hierarchy, commit various acts of heroism, saving lives and defending the hapless.  We don't always hear about them.  But then, we don't always hear about the badged criminals due, in part,  to the victim's inability to prosecute or complain...sometimes, for fear of retaliation.  Seattle is a good-sized city, but not so big that one can easily disappear. Look at the case that happened in Tacoma, where the police Chief's wife was being brutalized--what was she supposed to do?  If I remember right, and I think I do,  he finally killed her.  My only sense of consolation in cases like this is my belief in GreatGrandFather God's judgment abilities, and the afterlife, where goodness is rewarded and evil is punished--both in an eternal manner. So there.

Quoting  a representative from Amnesty International,"Muslims and people of Arab descent have joined Blacks, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans to most likely be profiled by law enforcement and other agencies.  Targeted law enforcement affects people's lives on a broader level, she said.  [They] can be racially profiled while driving, walking, flying, shopping, staying at home or while praying."  In my case, singing and putting my walkman away...
Alot of questions hang in the balance, but I think the utmost query to be posed is this: Who polices the police?--A chant I heard expressed at an October 31st rally here, in Seattle, a few years back. And the gut-wrenching question: How do we stop it, and moreso, how do we prevent it altogether?  Can it be prevented?  Will upgrading and re-aligning training procedures do any good?When you pin a badge to someone's chest and put a billy club, a taser,a set of handcuffs and a gun in their hand, is there ever any guarantee that these devices will be used to safeguard joe citizen/s life/lives? or are we deluding ourselves into thinking we will be protected by the same person or persons who can use those same devices against us--to our unwarranted demise--even our death/s? Will the availability of cameras become necessary in order to not have a "hung jury" or in order to prove, without a doubt, what happened in certain situations, so that NO ONE can lie to save their own skin or their partner's, etc.

I truly wish I had some definitive answers to these and other related questions.  All I can say, is that as United States Citizens, we are supposedly guaranteed certain inalienable rights, namely: Life. Liberty. And the pursuit of happiness. What's more--these rights are meant for everyone--not just for some and not for others.  And these rights--other than the "pursuit" part, are not vague or subject to prejudiced interpretation. They are explicit and binding.  Our Forefathers were quite adamant about this.  Many citizens fought and bled and died on the battlefield so that we could have the freedom we enjoy today.  Or are supposed to be able to enjoy without being profiled or discriminated  against.

So, there you have it. In a land of justice and freedom, it doesn't mean that a person should run wild and run amuck and hope to break even--it means a land where all individuals deserve respect and there really is no place for unwarranted brutality or the deception of hypocritcal  thinking and unfair actions.

sources include, but were not limited to: the seattle times, the real change newspaper, ch. fox 13 news, poor magazine, and the san francisco bayview publication.  A Couple of Clarifications:

--the woman that The Seattle Times Quoted as saying "the community..." is actually a spokeswoman from El Centro De La Raza.

Central City Hospitality House (CCHH) is a shelter and a social service provider with a long history in San Francisco. Founded in 1967 at the onset of the Summer of Love, it was a safe haven for the multitudes of youth that flocked to the city chasing the dream and finding the Tenderloin. In the early years, Hospitality House was committed to a nonjudgmental and nontraditional approach to social work. The outfit offered sandwiches, referrals to treatment programs and a place to sleep - as well as publishing a neighborhood newspaper, the Tenderloin Times, and an open arts studio for poor and homeless craftspeople.

This community center built to serve those who have hit the skids has fallen on hard times of its own in recent years. Last year, financial woes forced Hospitality House to axe its entire youth program, including Orlando House, a 12-bed home for street kids. The closure left some 30 staffers looking for jobs, and hundreds of homeless youth looking for help. In the process of a city-ordered reorganization, the agency has acquired its fifth executive director in as many years. Paul Boden, executive director at the Coalition on Homelessness, as well as being a past resident of the program and a former staff of Hospitality House, recently was asked to serve as board chair and take on the task of restructuring the troubled nonprofit.

"It's [CCHH] been in trouble for so long," he said. "I think losing the Tenderloin Times was the beginning of the endS when they lost their spirit."

A Raising Our Voices investigation shed some light on CCHH's troubles. An inspection of the nonprofit's financial records found the statements of CCHH and outside parties to be noncorroborative, showing either negligent bookkeeping, gross financial mismanagement, or, in the worst case, white-collar crime.

Problems with arithmetic

The agency is funded in large part by government monies: federal, state and city funds accounted for 80 percent or more of $3,237,936 in operational assets for fiscal year 1996-97 (the last year available), according to forms filed with the IRS. But a close look at the books shows that CCHH must have had a problem performing simple arithmetic. The Raising Our Voices investigation has disclosed the following: v CCHH does not acknowledge any funding from the Roberts Foundation in 1990 and 1991. But Roberts Foundation IRS filings show a total funding of $103,050 in those two years.

In 1994 IRS filings, the agency claims to have received $1,300 from the Leanne and George Roberts Foundation. However, the Roberts Foundation IRS filings report funding CCHH a sum of $101,300. v In 1995, CCHH told the IRS it received $54,000 from the Roberts Foundation. The Roberts Foundation reports funding for $88,500. Where did the money go?

The annual report filed with the State Attorney General for FY 1996-97, fails to report $400,000 received from the CCSF. It also fails to report $52,672 received from the San Francisco Department of Public Health of a total of $561,473.

"I don't know enough to say for sure," said Boden. "So far I haven't seen any money that was stolen, but I'll tell you right now if money was stolen, whoever stole it is gonna have to deal with me as president of the board directly coming after them."

Were poor artists underpaid?

The Art Studio is the most renowned component of Hospitality House, offering a creative and productive outlet for low-income people to find a voice in self expression, and a diversion from the realities of life on the street.

The agency sells some of the artwork that low-income artisans create in the CCHH studio. The nonprofit claims that the artists receive a 60 percent commission on their pieces. But IRS documents for the last three fiscal years show an average commission rate of 18 percent. CCHH officers consistently misrepresented themselves to potential donors and clients in their advertising and brochures made available for fundraising purposes.

In a 1992 edition of the Tenderloin Times, Board member Cheryl Ward quotes a 60 percent commission to the artists, while in a sales brochure of the same year Art Director Sharon Tanenbaum quotes 50 percent. "The fact of the matter is, they never even paid one third of thatS and they didn't bother to match the numbers," said an artist formerly with the program. "Sending a CCHH card makes a difference for those who receive it as well as those who created it. Funds from card sales support our artists, who earn 40 percent of the profits from their designs." - statement quoted from a 1993 brochure.

In an interview in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Jed Emerson, director of the Homeless Enterprise Development Fund at the Roberts Foundation, publicizes $250,000 in sales of Christmas cards produced by artists at CCHH's Art Studio in 1995 and more than $500,000 in total funding. In the book, New Social Entrepreneurs, CCHH shows only $100,000 in sales. Where did the money go?

"From 1995 on, Hospitality House got smarter and they didn't mention an exact commission rate," said a former craftsman.

In an April, 1997, letter to AFL-CIO Local 3, CCHH Director Kate Durham attempted to avoid a picket at CCHH's annual anniversary and fundraising event by citing "the difficult financial situation currently facing CCHH [and the need to] eliminate our debt," as her excuse for the shortchanging, while at the same time, spouting charity rhetoric praising CCHH's mission in helping the less fortunate.

Durham also ignored clients' written complaints, and the air of secrecy surrounding the agency left the artists suspecting this as a sign that the nonprofit was being run by an administration with its own agenda. At this time, Durham did not complete proper tax returns, and when asked recently if she ever had any involvement with CCHH or the Orlando House, she denied her position of three years. "No, not that I know of," Durham said.

In February, 1998, the CCHH Board of Directors decided to shut down the rent-free store at the Crocker Galleria where ceramics and paintings were sold. Meanwhile, Executive Director Michael Bala also implemented a 50 percent cut in the artists' commissions. In a written response to the artists' concerns, Bala attempts to justify the cut by giving as his rationale: "The longstanding financial issue and [the need to] reduce our expenses and reduce [the] costs of the arts program." Bala also stated, "Hospitality House has an annual audit performed every year. When the audits are completed you are welcome to review them." Both statements, the artists felt, became landmark examples of blatant falsehoods. In a March, 1998, "Town Hall Meeting," 26 craftsmen in person and in writing requested to review Hospitality House's financial records. They were met by a wall of harassment and intimidation.

In retaliation, Arts Program Director Kathy Gernatt banned the use of the program to at least two artists: Randy Sizemore and William Bacon, who openly criticized the program and its policies. Gernatt claimed in writing that the clients' request to view the public records "makes for an unsafe environment for everyone." She resigned soon after the artists repeatedly charged her with "fostering an environment that oppressed, devalued, disempowered and frustrated the clientele."

Demonstrations and lawsuits

In April, 1998, a group of donors and artists demonstrated at the annual fundraiser. Hospitality House staff were confronted - but without any positive result. In May, 1998, another group of clients wishing to express their grievances to the CCHH Board were denied entrance to the meeting room. Chair Khristine Bailey proceeded to misrepresent herself as "a volunteer that helps out with the [Central City Hospitality] house," while physically blocking the door. Bailey and fellow board members Elizabeth "Suzy" Cain, and John Thompson then began to remove the protesters from the building.

"I attend each board meeting and I have known that there are some issues to be worked on for the Arts Program. [We will] get back to you if we feel like we need to hear from you," Thompson said. They never did.

Also that May, then-CCHH Executive Director Gemmie Jones forced a group of clients to turn off a video camera in a Town Hall Meeting called for the express purpose of hearing their concerns. In the next Town Hall Meeting in June, Jones brought in the S.F.P.D. to intimidate clientele and witnesses. "I have received death threats on the phone," Jones told officers on the scene. The clients saw it as a pathetic attempt to save her job and to protect her fellow board members.

By the end of the summer of 1998, CCHH Chairperson Khristine Bailey, Elizabeth "Suzy" Cain, two additional board members, and several high-ranking employees resigned.

In March of 1999, a cascade of lawsuits were filed by the independent craftspeople to recover unpaid commissions withheld by Hospitality House's Arts Department. In accordance with the city's Sunshine Ordinance, nonprofits utilizing more than $250,000 of city funding are required to hold two board meetings per year that are open to the public. In February and March of 1999, the artists filed suit in small claims court and made formal complaints to the city, forcing Hospitality House into holding a mandatory public meeting. The artists, then and now, feel that the August, 1999, meeting was held in an "unusual location" - in direct violation of the ordinance. The "public" meeting was held at the Art Studio rather than at the usual location, the administrative offices at 290 Turk Street.

"If Hospitality House owes money to poor people from the Arts Program that they have not paid that money out to, those debts would go to the top of the list," Boden asserted. "My thing will be when Hospitality House can print its budget in the new Tenderloin TimesS and pass its budget out to volunteers and paid staff.

"And if you're running an organization and that makes you nervous, and you feel that you can't do that amongst your own people (or) the people the money is for, then you got a serious problem in your organization. And so I feel that Hospitality House went full circle and came back around when we can do thatS There's a lot of time and resources that go into lying, which Hospitality House has been doing for about seven yearsS That's an incredible thing to maintainS The lies change with each new personS You can't operate that way."

The peril of fast growth The years between 1987 and 1988 were the times that would decide if Hospitality House would survive. The little neighborhood center with the bad coffee and single cigarettes for sale was about to lose its soul. At this time, Executive Director Robert Tobin received a leadership award from the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way; meanwhile, the McKinney Act was passed by Congress in 1987 and that money started to flow into San Francisco in 1988.

Being the darlings in the eyes of the mayor's office and the United Way, suddenly CCHH's budget doubled in two years, from roughly $750,000 to $1.5 million. Boden said he believes that an explosive growth in a short time destroys the infrastructure of an organization. "People that were qualified to be a director when you were a funky little center now aren't even qualified to be the fucking janitor now because you are a big fancy center."

This cultural shift is directly related to the influx of McKinney money in 1988, and is reflected in the attempted purchase by CCHH of a building on the corner of Leavenworth and Golden Gate. Hospitality House wanted very much to be the big kid on the block, but after about a year they settled on the property at 290 Turk Street. Also around this time, Hospitality House's Mission Statement changed, from referring to themselves as a "Neighborhood Center" to a "Homeless Program."

" For any neighborhood center to change its mission statement is a really bad sign," Boden said. "Neighborhood centers tend to be incredibly effective when they're small and healthy and old and have been aroundS Hospitality House has that kind of history."

Robert Tobin left Hospitality House in 1994. "When Robert Tobin left," Boden recalls, "he didn't leave stuffin' his pockets with moneyS I know for a fact that he didn't steal the money; he fucked the money up." In 1995, Kate Durham was the new executive director of CCHH, the year that San Francisco assessor's records show that CCHH defaulted on the building at 290 Turk Street, the location of the main offices as well as the Youth Program.

CCHH then became the defendant in a lawsuit brought by American First Federal Inc. over the loan to buy the building. Meanwhile, taxpayers without knowledge of the financial difficulties involved kept bailing out a nonprofit that was using public money to defend itself in court. On July 6, 1999, the Public Health Commission requested a "financial restructuring within this [CCHH] contract agency," and recommended "the provision of technical assistance and a 3 month renewal on the current contractS" September of 1999 saw the closing of Orlando House shelter for youth and the Youth Program at 290 Turk Street.

An attempted sell-out

At this point in time, Hospitality House was trying to pull off a fast one, with the sale of Orlando House on the "open market," a move that would be lucrative enough to dig CCHH out of the hole it had been using public money to dig for years.

"So Orlando House I heard was being sold, and it was being sold as a way to bail out the organization and it was being sold on the 'open market,' and I thought, 'well okay, these guys just don't understand,'" said Boden. What CCHH did not appear to understand is that when you receive federal funding for a program or to serve a population, and then purchase and provide services, you must continue to do that for the population the money was earmarked for.

In response, Boden called up Supervisor Tom Ammiano's office and called a meeting to specifically address the laws affecting Hospitality House that were governed by the federal Housing and Urban Development. HUD, the Mayor's Office on Homelessness, the Mayor's Office on Children, Youth and Families, and Ammiano and his staff met with CCHH Board Chair Kelly Walsh and CCHH Executive Director Phil Clark.

Recalls Boden, "I was pretty pissed offS and said something like, 'You can't fucking sell it on the open market so you can bail yourself out like Orlando House is the goose that laid your golden egg.' And the room got real quiet."

Steve Saks from HUD agreed, saying "me and Paul often phrase things differently, but that's a pretty good description of the law, [and] of the situation you're in right now."

Boden's next move was to call Larkin Street Youth Services - the only youth program he believed that, with an infusion of city money, could pull Orlando House out of the fire so they could continue to serve the underrepresented street youth population in the future.

"It had to happen right away," he said. "It had to involve city money in order for them to be able to buy (Orlando House), and the only youth program set up to handle that kind of infusion of program and money and changing shit around and not going under was Larkin Street."

Larkin Street Youth Services offered a special loan without interest for $250,000 to bail out CCHH, and the City held special negotiations with HUD to sell Orlando House and get the funds needed to make up the CCHH debt. Escrow closed on the building at 290 Turk on March 17. The building is now owned and operated by Larkin Street, with Hospitality House receiving some $475,000 to offset their debts.

Larkin Street will continue to operate as a transitional housing program for youth. "At least 18-21-year-olds in the future will have 12 other units that they can play musical chairs in, because kids don't have fucking shit," said Boden.

In this new incarnation of Hospitality House, funding will come primarily from the City. The largest allocation will go to the Tenderloin Self-Help Center, which will receive $500,000 from the Department of Public Health; the men's shelter will receive $250,000 from the Department of Human Services; and the Employment Center will receive $90,000 in federal funds. Newly appointed CCHH Board Chair Boden's future vision of Hospitality House relates back to the times of a simple and honest organization founded and operated with integrity. When asked if he believed that Hospitality House could ever return to being what it once was, Boden's reply was guardedly optimistic.

"I think there's a chance it could go back to being a funky little place on Leavenworth Street and have an arts program and a neighborhood paper," he said. "I mean that's what it used to be. It used to be just a fucking place to hang out and get really basic necessitiesS It had very little, but what it had was coming from somebody that you would be hanging out with or you would run into on the corner.

"One of the great things about working there - I lived on Leavenworth Street and I worked at Hospitality House - you couldn't (verbally abuse) the clientsS You see shelter staff do that shit all the time. And you couldn't play that shit at Hospitality House and survive. To the extent that we can recreate that, that's what we're shooting for."

Researched and written by the Raising Our Voices Task Force: Trent Hayward, Max Nolan, and A. Clay Thompson. Raising Our Voices is a Media Alliance program, in collaboration with Street Spirit, Street Sheet and Poor magazine, that trains homeless and low-income people in investigative journalism.

“POOR Magazine has an open door for whoever wants to enter. I feel a deep admiration and respect and also an eternal gratitude to POOR Press. (POOR Magazine) I can only say thank you to everyone who helped to write my book.” Maria Molina, Migrant Scholar and debut POOR Press Author of her newly released book, “Humble Professional.”

In the world around us, we often tend to read about other people, their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. A question for this Race, Media, Poverty (and Legal) Scholar is how much of our own stories do we get in an opportunity to share to the world? Pens in our own hands, fingers focused on keyboards, lives seen and heard in our words, via voice.

Institutions that gate keep the publishing industry on philanthro-pimped dollars are irrelevant to our "I" voice.

Our stories owned only by us.

A deeply self-empowered woman with a vision of a dream-turned-reality, far and abroad for us to fight by write/right: "Tiny" Lisa Gray-Garcia, co-founder of POOR and daughter of Dee. In 2003, POOR gave birth to the project of "POOR Press Authors" as a revolution for all people in poverty to be self-published; as a community exempt from philanthro-pimped dollars and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.

The POOR Press Authors project would indeed proceed to partially penetrate the publishing industry which often prevents the voice of the poor to be told. A project for their voices to finally be foretold…....…from their own.

There is a common saying, "Its not what you know, its who you know." Whereas, we all got to know Tiny before we even got to know survival in the reality of "Writing is Fighting." In 2006, (and presently) I got a first hard look of such community concept sharing a collective vision.

Survival and a struggle from system abuse that institutionalizes ignorance of poverty and homeless by implementing laws against it. “Crimes of Poverty.”

(Tiny in her book, Criminal of Poverty) Racism with po-lice terror in Single Room Occupancy Hotels, Citizens & Civilians Over Corruption: Savagely Removed Occupant (me) Border fascism (Ingrid De Leon, El Viaje: The Journey, Angel Garcia, Gangs, Drugs, and Denial, and Muteado Silencio Untold Stories in AmeriKKKa) and the struggles in surviving lifetime addictions through poetry art. (Ruyata Akio Mc Glothin a.k.a. RAM, Not Even In Therapy)

Many more stories have surfaced since the year of 2003 of one's struggle, survival, and/or combination of both. In 2009, Los Viajes: The Journeys was successful. It was a collection of stories and cultural art of resistance to false borders from migrant scholars, who mainstream media here in AmeriKKKa often label as "illegal immigrants."

I had the honor of reviewing "Los Viajes" alongside of other POOR Press Publication releases from the authors.

http://www.poormagazine.org/node/3171

POOR Press Authors release is another triumphant victory for every single author (including myself) who no longer goes unheard. A voice increased into a community that has "Taken Back the Land….…Resisting Criminalization........One Story at a Time!"

THE FOREVER JOB: THE FINAL EVICTION

Race, Media, Poverty, and Elder Scholar, Bruce Allison has released his second book titled The Forever Job: The Final Eviction. The title says it all. A series debut of a science fiction novel of an uncompromising outlook into the future, which is strikingly similar to present every day events surrounding world politics.

A native of San Francisco and a forever frontline fighter for the rights of seniors and people with disabilities; Allison’s activism is heard in his brief description of The Forever Job: The Final Eviction.“It’s a fictional account of the future by using today’s standards if we continue on our same greedy road.”

The eyes and the mind of its reader travels the deeply-warped imaginary mind of Allison into a world ravaged with corporate/governmental global oppression, displacement, and enslavement via the “Dyson Sphere.” An uprising and resistance led by Allison, and his comrade (character ed as his wife) Gioioa von Disterlo, a.k.a. Lola Bean of literally a twelve year march that’s “Not a walk around the block.”

BONEYARD

Race, Media, Poverty Scholar, activist, and Revolutionary poet, Dee Allen has released his debut book. Boneyard is a gut-wrenching collection of revolutionary poetry that speaks on life, love, religion, politics, and death. “It’s a collection of poems, and song lyrics written mostly in the 1990s.” Allen explains. “Each poem gives a glimpse into situations that impact African Descent people in AmeriKKKa.”

Equally-explosive in each of his words, Allen expresses his emotions of the chaos in the world today. The reader’s mind comes to a halt when they read this excerpt from his poem (and book titled) Boneyard:

For another child

Embittered

Had shown him his most

Glorified toy from youth

His lifelong phobia

The receiving end of a pistol.

The known face of doom.

Locked. Loaded. Blown.

Boneyard as in breath and/or death of life, not to be taken lightly for any set of eyes.

THE LONG BLACK GATE: LA FRONTERA

Ruyata Akio McGlothin, a.k.a RAM is a Race, Media, and Poverty Scholar. He is also a poet and a “Super Baby Daddy” of his two daughters. He has released his fourth book, The Long Black Gate: La Frontera. A native of San Francisco, and survivor of po-lice brutality, RAM’s collection of poetry drafts the conscious (and/or unconscious) mind of the reader regarding “border patrols” and its fascism against undocumented (migrant scholars) immigrants here in AmeriKKKa.

RAM’s recent visit to the State of Texas and his observation of “borders” is poetically descriptive in graphic detail in this excerpt:

It’s a see through wall

It aint too far past you see those bombs

It’s a war I was told

The people, the cartels

And the border police are so cold

“My book is about borderism, walls, gates, rules, hates, insides and outs. Lands and waters……..and what goes on in between them.” RAM describes and explains of his book. The Long Black Gate: La Frontera is educationally-equipped of his experience to share and penetrate the walls of ignorance to one’s mind.

SELF-HELP FOR THE APOCALYPSE: POEMS FOR THE FREAKONOMICALLY CHALLENGED

Thornton Kimes is a Race, Media, and Poverty Scholar of POOR Magazine/PNN. He is also a staff and writer facilitator. Kimes has published his second book, Self-Help For The Apocalypse: Poems for The Freakonomically Challenged. Kimes's second book collectively, poetically exclaims everyday life's problems placed upon people via system, in oppression, locally and globally.

His poems present unique themes on each verse that range from numerous issues involving poverty, racism, war, politics, capitalism, etc, etc.

Kimes explains his enthusiasm and motivation for his book. “Self-Help For The Apocalypse was a sign in the window at Modern Times Books, in San Francisco the first time I went to a POOR Press reading, while I was starting to work on my first book------Non-Profit Industrial Complex: A Love Story And Other Poems. I thought the sign made a great title for a collection of poems."

He adds in Self-Help For The Apocalypse, "We're in the middle of an economic Apocalypse, a new crew of "adults" in charge trying to fix what's broken. Poor People already knows what's broken-------the whole system............"

A slice of self-confidence in struggle can possible be felt in the reader's heart, in an excerpt of his poem, "7 Plus 8."

Up the down staircase

soothe the savage beast

sooth say I say we all say

fall down, get up

HUMBLE PROFESSIONAL

Maria Molina is a Race, Media, and Migrant Scholar. Molina has released her debut book, Humble Professional. Her book is chronicled from her very voice. Born and raised in the Province of San Rafael, Chalatenango, in the country of El Salvador, Molina struggled through over-whelming obstacles to seemingly-impossible goals. Poverty of working hourly wages by cents, not dollars at age 14.

Studying courageously for higher education behind her employer’s policy that prohibited it. Volunteering her time vigorously for an employment opportunity to teach children. The ignorance of poverty, and the discouragement from prosperity told to her at youth: “The reason of why the rich had so much was because God wanted it that way and that the poor had nothing because God wanted it that way also.”

Humble Professional, not just a book where Molina outlines her very life written before the reader’s eyes. Page-by-page, pictures are painted into the reader’s mind: Images of struggles and sacrifices, for seeds of stability.

“Throughout the book, I have manifested the way to recognize and give light to what it cost for a person of low-income to be able to complete a professional career.” Molina says of Humble Professional. She would later add in her book, “It’s HARD to be a PROFESSIONAL.”

Publications Pending Release by POOR Press Authors

MY CHILDHOOD, MY YOUTH, AND MY PRESENT.

“It deals with family violence and violence. I felt liberated because I was able to write things inside of me.”

Race, Media, Poverty, and Migrant Scholar, Ingrid De Leon of her second book.

INDIGENOUS COLORING BOOK

“Basically, we as indigenous and people of color are never portrayed in kid’s coloring books, in a positive way. The idea of my book was after seeing my niece’s coloring books from Cinderella, Snow White, Peter Pan, and has never seen a coloring book of people that look like her or me.”

Race, Media, Poverty, and Migrant Scholar, Muteado Silencio explaining the details of his second book.

POOR Press Authors: Published from self in poverty, prosperous in their words…....….presented with the “I” voice.

Friday, July 16, 2010;

Part 1:  It Ain’t Easy Carryin’ Green

Diane Campbell, an African American woman living in Palo Alto, CA (south of San Francisco), carefully saved $600 hard-earned dollars to buy an iPAD, only to be denied service. Apple may have combined poor training of some employees with class indifference to the grim economic reality of life for many poor people all the time, and most certainly the uncertainties of life for many people of all ethnicities for the past several years; their employee’s stated reasoning was that the no-cash-accepted policy was to prevent participants in the world-wide underground economy from buying too many iPADs and selling them on the international black market.

The basic lack of access, for people of color in Amerikkka, to a good education, health care, home ownership, housing, jobs, legal representation and justice, and nutrition, extends to access to computer education, skills and (affordable) equipment.  Apple Computers found itself extremely visibly on the wrong side of the Digital Divide when Campbell called ABC News consumer watchdog Michael Finney (“7 On Your Side”) to see if he could help her.

Apple was forced, by high demand for the iPAD in this country, to halt marketing and shipping of it to Europe.  Customers here are officially allowed to buy only two for that stated reason.  The ease and speed of using credit and debit cards to restrict the number of iPADs any one person could buy was the best solution Apple could come up with, according to the company’s Senior Vice President, Ron Johnson. 

Johnson looked and sounded like a deer in the headlights talking to Finney on the Tuesday, May 18, 2010 news broadcast.  His explanation sounded weak, though there are elements of it that also sounded reasonable.  How hard can it be for someone with access to a great deal of money to create multiple identities so they could buy more than 2 iPADS with credit cards?

Apple was, at first, unmoved by Finney’s inquiry into their apparent policy—until the story hit the air (two POOR writers, Vivian Hain and I, saw the initial broadcast) and pissed a lot of people off.  Campbell charmed many with her on-air request to Steve Jobs to “…give a sister a break.”  She got one.  A free iPAD.

As far as I can tell the closest Michael Finney and “7 On Your Side” gets to helping poor people is when they are limited income elders or folks getting some form of disability assistance, middle to upper middle class folks seem to be his favorite victims to help.  Diane Campbell’s dilemma may have cracked that wall, but Channel 7 was very careful to not get into the Digital Divide aspect of her story.

Part 2:  Apple, Tip O’ The Iceberg

Amazon has no stores, E-Bay and Craigslist are virtually the same, forcing anyone buying something from those sites to use credit, debit or gift cards—or break a sweat to make arrangements for a face-to-face meeting (Craigslist) that isn’t a set-up for a car-jacking or worse.

The book publishing and selling industry (the magazines and newspapers industries too) is under attack and siege from amazon, its peers and competitors, its Kindle e-book, the iPAD’s e-book function and all the other e-books competing for customers.  There is an apparently endless supply of new cool gadgets (iPAd, iPhone, digital tv, 3-D tv, blah blah blah…) tempting us and changing how we do things.

This is a 25-years-old chapter, beginning with the Apple Computer personal computer, of an old story, technology offering whomever was on top of the economic heap whenever it came to their attention the opportunity to change the lives of everyone else in the world—whether they wanted that change or not.  The Industrial Revolution was Chapter One.

Did Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and others know what they were doing when they began their campaigns to create new products nobody knew they wanted, to change the world through the back door? 

The Digital Divide is expanding in lock-step with the vast wealth gap between rich and poor.  Virtually everyone in this country who isn’t homeless has a television, and virtually everyone who isn’t homeless has a phone, if not a cellphone (and homeless folks can own cellphones if they can come up with the money), but the new cool gadgets require knowledge, skill, and commitment to pay attention to the need to upgrade to something better and faster and more capable than the last generation of the same thing or the next thing that can do all that the other things can do--like the iPAD--with a calm gosh-wow smoothness we all want in our pockets or on our laps.

We can vote yes or no for things we want/don’t want politicians, et al, to do, but sometimes it seems like we can only vote with withheld dollars to say no to social change by means of technology, and poor folks don’t have enough of those votes unless we unite to make a lot of noise about it.

He is a big man. He kills for a living. The more he kills, it seems, the bigger he get - and he has killed in over 40 states. He is Doug Ferrari, stand-up comic.

At six foot five, Ferrari is an imposing monolith of mirth with a track record in the volatile comedy industry that reads like the guestbook at Spago. He has performed with the best - from Robin Williams and Rodney Dangerfield to Elvis Costello and Sun Ra.

"It's [CCHH] been in trouble for so long," he said. "I think losing the Tenderloin Times was the beginning of the endS when they lost their spirit."

He has trashed microphone stands in at least four time zones and headlined over 150 venues internationally.

But today we smoke roll-your-owns in the stifling smoking room of the Episcopal Sanctuary, a homeless shelter in downtown San Francisco. In the sweltering din of the shelter, I quickly learn that interviewing Doug is out of the question. His dry, flat monotone flows as steadily and unbroken as a stretch of desert asphalt. Having a couple of questions, I search for an off-ramp.

"I'm from San Francisco, and no, I'm not," Ferrari deadpans. Born on Christmas day, 1956, to an Italian father from Brazil and an Irish mother from Canada, Ferrari got his road legs early on. While his father worked in the space program for Lockheed, the family moved numerous times before settling in San Jose. "He wasn't that high up," said Ferrari. "He was one of the five hundred guys who worked on the paint." His mom was a certified public accountant for the federal government for 30 years.

Ferrari's stage career began when he was four years old in productions of "The Sound of Music" and "The Music Man." At the age of seven, young Doug was forced to see a psychiatrist "because I didn't get along well with others," and was kicked out of the third grade for fighting. "I was a bad influence because kids wanted to beat me up."

A self-confessed television and cartoon nut, Ferrari credits as his earliest influences the films of the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields. However, his biggest comedic influence at the time was the Dick Van Dyke Show's "Alan Brady" character, played by Carl Reiner. At the time, the young Ferrari was not attracted to stand-up comedy at all, reflecting, "I didn't want to be Buddy Hackett."

As a teenager Doug performed at hundreds of children's parties. "I did bad mime, bad ventriloquism, bad puppetry and bad magic," he says.

In 1972, at the age of 16, he decided to make it official by performing at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, and was duly initiated into the craft. "I bombed in front of five people," he recalls. "They put me on at 1:45 a.m. and were sweeping the stage behind me and 'dusting the keys' of the piano while I did my act."

Around the same time, Ferrari received a full scholarship to Stanford University but turned it down to follow his dream. A dream his parents weren't so keen on. "Sometimes we can get through a whole dinner without that coming up."

A year later he founded "The High Wire Radio Choir" comedy group with fellow smart-asses Kevin Aspell, Larry Hansen and Ray Hannah who, after three months, Ferrari says, tried to kick him out of his own group for "being an obnoxious little punk." It didn't work.

Meanwhile in New York City, the Not Ready For Prime Time Players were carving out a piece of history for themselves on Saturday Night Live. "If I had been in L.A., I would have auditioned for SNL, but I've never thought that far ahead. Besides, our group was more like the S.L.A. of comedy." Introduced as "Living Proof the Andrew Sisters Slept with the Three Stooges," the group found a huge cult following in the Bay area, appearing on Dr. Demento and opening for well over 50 rock and roll acts at the Keystone in Palo Alto on a live radio broadcast. Every week they would drag a member of the headlining band into the skits. "We were like the Tubes without the musicianship... We didn't try to have musical value. It was all for comedy's sake."

The High Wire Radio Choir recorded an eight-song cassette and a four-song EP that featured a song about the group's legendary crash pad, "The Highwire Hotel." "There were about 25 people in and out of the group and 50 people in and out of the house - actors, actresses and musicians. Everybody was sleeping with everybody else. All kinds of crazy shit went on there." Like the time John Belushi puked all over the driveway.

"We saved his life. We could have rolled him and left him in the woods, but we took him back to his hotel room and made sure he caught his flight. He thanked us on the air."

Belushi had just shot "Animal House" and didn't think it would amount to anything. "He was very young and insecure," Ferrari remembers. "He was talking about doing [Hunter S. Thompson's] Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie, but said to me, 'You know, [Dan] Aykroyd's been playing me these blues records lately...'"

Ferrari's influential group finally disbanded when the individual members began to do more gigs as solo comedians than as a team. "I was dragged kicking and screaming into stand-up," laughs Doug.

Stand-up comedy crawled up out of the bawdy miasma of Vaudeville, a stalling tactic used frequently when the dancing girls were late. It is a discipline born out of steaming, sweaty swamps of desperation, where it later evolved with the guidance of comedic muses like Milton Berle and Bob Hope. For Ferrari, the transition was made easier by the creation of "Jackie Shecky," an obnoxious, eight-foot-tall banana who told dirty jokes with a cigarette in one hand and a highball in the other, thrusting his hips pornographically with a loud "A-WAKA!" as his rimshot. "Jackie was just a joke, a prank that worked for nine months. Shecky was the clown prince of the dirty joke."

sing the experience of the High Wire Radio Choir, Ferrari performed parodies of driver safety films and commercials. He did imitations of inanimate objects using every inch of the stage. His frantic, bludgeoning stage antics combined with his size left spectators breathless.

"I have the energy of any two Krokuses and Quiet Riots put together in one guy," he told Bam magazine reporter Robin Tolleson in 1985. "I ran around and did a lot of silly stuff as if I was the size of Joe Pesci. I didn't realize just how silly it looked. I never took more than a sip of beer onstage because I didn't want to stop. I wanted them to be out of breath. I wanted peoples' mouths to hurt, women going into labor, shit like that. I wanted a body count."

Some criticized his methods, mostly myopic dinosaurs of the old school. "It's supposed to be this pure form," explains Ferrari. "If you have a puppet or a guitar and you're doing some wacky character, you're not a stand-up; you're a clown. Whoever invented that was obviously someone who had a limited range."

His critics were proven wrong in 1984 when Ferrari won the ninth annual San Francisco Comedy Competition, a launch pad for great comics before him, namely Robin Williams and Dana Carvey. Ferrari was the obvious winner that year at the Kabuki Theatre, facing off against industry-savvy headliners. He was the least known comic to ever win the award, causing an uproar in the local comedy scene. "They couldn't believe that an obviously broke, poor comedian who wasn't already [an established] comedian won," he recalls.

"I attend each board meeting and I have known that there are some issues to be worked on for the Arts Program. [We will] get back to you if we feel like we need to hear from you," Thompson said. They never did.

Immediately after the competition, Ferrari headlined every venue he played, because no one wanted to follow him. The energy and momentum of his performance left audiences sapped and some of his fellow comedians intimidated. Some were openly hostile. If Ferrari liked the act that was to follow him, he would "give him the crowd on a silver platter. If he were an asshole, it would be like 'follow that, fucker.'"

One trademark bit Dougzilla was renowned for was born out of a routine night doing his shtick. While leading an audience in an a cappella version of the classic American folk tune, "Meet the Flinstones," a particularly soused individual in the front row kept screaming "Bonanza!" which, incidentally, currently has no words. Tiring of the two-fisted tirade, Dougzilla reaches over and plucks a one-dollar bill off his table, and sets it aflame while fulfilling the sot's request. The crowd loved it, and it became part of the act.

"It's funny with a one, really funny with a five, but not so funny with a ten," says Ferrari. Soon he was autographing charred currency and reimbursing waitresses across the country whenever the blackened souvenirs were left for tips.

The audience is the prime motivating force in Ferrari's act, embracing the crowd with an "us-against-them" philosophy, as opposed to the standard "me-against-you" approach popular with many of his contemporaries. "When I was finished with a show and if I said 'All right we're all gonna go out right now and trash a fucking Starbucks,' I could have got them to go with me. The crowd is almost always right. Sometimes they're wrong; there are bad crowds - and they deserve to be punished."

So far, Ferrari has resisted the sleaze and mirrors of Los Angeles, where the concept of doing stand-up is less like comedy and more like an audition.

"I'm at the Improv on Melrose. I was a regular there so they had me up every night when I was in town. It was late so there were only about twenty people there. So a guy in the front row gets up and starts to head for the door, so I go, 'um, hold on a second. Before you go, are you in show business?' He goes, 'Yeah.' So I ask him, 'What are you, a producer or something like that?' And he goes, 'No, I'm an actor.' I said, 'Get the fuck out of here; you can't do anything for me. You probably have to dig through a dumpster for a sandwich. Get lost!'"

Ferrari laughs. "I want to get in the door in LA through writing, not stand-up." Despite his talent and acclaim as a comedian, it seems Ferrari has been belly flopping in a Bermuda Triangle of comedic bad luck. Having shot a one-hour comedy/drama show for NBC in 1985, the network was forced to cancel the fledgling series after only four shows - it ran opposite "The Cosby Show." "And besides," grins Doug, "the episode I debuted in was only aired in Europe."

Then there was the "Carson" debacle in 1990. In his act, Dougzilla would say to the crowd, "You want to see me on Carson in two weeks?" The audience would cheer and he would then say, "Then write to Johnny now."

After many people asked him if they should really write to Johnny, Ferrari's good friend and fellow funny guy Paul Provenza had the idea to produce 1,000 blank, pre-stamped postcards with Johnny's producer's address on them. "Pick 'em up off your table, write what you want to write and mail them yourself if you think I'm good enough."

Soon thereafter Ferrari's manager in LA called Carson's office. She discovered that they had received bag after bag of the postcards - and threw them all away. As it turned out, Johnny had a stalker. His people didn't want him to see the mail because it might alarm him. Two weeks later, they arrested a man outside of Johnny's house trying to break in. Later it was discovered that the man was responsible for over 350 letters with swastikas and skull-and-crossbones on them, the contents of which stated, more or less, "I'm going to kill you."

"I waited too long," Doug laments. "I never thought Johnny would retire... That's showbiz."

Showbiz finally caught up with Ferrari in 1994.

The constant partying combined with his overwhelming schedule was a one-two punch that landed on Valentine's Day in Chicago. Booked for a three-show stint at Zany's, Doug failed to show up at the club for his scheduled act. The club's management went over to his hotel room and found him passed out in his boxer shorts with a bottle of Jack Daniel's beside him. They promptly canceled his appearance.

"I was addicted to coke and pot. It wasn't just alcohol," he confesses. "I drank to come down off of all the other shit. If I had partied that Friday night and not drank, it would have been like any other night in the last twenty years: shit, shower, shave and do the gig. But no, I'm up 'till the next afternoon and I'm drinking trying to come down.

"I was afraid to leave my room, so I ordered a bottle through room service for about seventy-five bucks. It had occurred to me for many years, 'yeah I'm addicted to this, I'm addicted to that,' but it never occurred to me with the drinking. I didn't like it. How could I be an alcoholic? I don't even like to drink."

Returning home, he sought out the aid of a therapist who had written seven books on addiction and who charged $125 per hour. Eventually, he was diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety disorder. "It was all a surprise to me," he says. He was prescribed Prozac, Buspar and Klonopin. "Y'know, on the warning labels: 'Don't operate heavy machinery?' Shit, I am heavy machinery." 'Zilla laughs.

However, Ferrari really credits his recovery to his very dear and close friend, Beth. Having known each other through high school and college, they parted ways in 1974, when Beth got married and Doug was following his dream. In September, 1993, 20 years later, a now divorced Beth saw Doug performing at the Punchline and invited him to come to Albany for lunch. "I've hit rock bottom," he says. "I can't let an old friend see me like this. I was cleaning up my act so I could go to lunch with an old friend. I literally knew that she would be scared shitless if she saw how far I'd fallen. I couldn't go until I cleaned up and had some meds and shit like that."

Doug went to lunch in May, 1994. Five days later he still had not returned home. They were married on Memorial Day.

Ferrari's battle with sobriety was a juggling act. Between medications, therapy, recovery groups and halfway houses, and now a new marriage, he dropped the ball many times.

The first six months of the marriage were fine. However, there were still issues below the surface, which eventually needed to be addressed. Beth had inherited a problem with drinking and, in her extremely emotional tirades over seemingly insignificant matters, would often trigger Doug into over-reacting.

They often fought hard and loud into the night, and between the two of them the police were never very far away. Soon the couple was evicted from their condominium. "To get evicted for noise on Haight and Ashbury is really saying something," says Doug, illustrating the intensity of the relationship.

This time he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and two-and-a-half years later began receiving SSI benefits. Beth moved in with her parents, and Doug moved into a North Beach hotel, where Beth would visit him often.

"I was eligible for disability because I couldn't work a day job and I couldn't perform and I couldn't write. I wasn't able to do much of anything. I was told I had post-traumatic stress disorder like someone that had been to Vietnam, only it was a marriage. I was a wreck, but the marriage was never better."

hen, on their fifth anniversary in 1999, the couple had a blowout that resulted in Beth walking out, and Doug finally had to make a hard but healthy decision. "After about a million fights this was the first time I've said, 'I gotta pull the plug. We can't be together.' If you break up on your anniversary, what more of a sign do you need?"

Soon after that, an altercation with the owner forced Doug to move out of the North Beach hotel.

"I basically thought my life was over. Now I don't have a career, a wife, and a marriage. Now I don't have my dog. I've never been close to my family. I've dropped all my 25 friends when I cleaned up and then I lost the other 150 friends of mine when I stopped working in the business. I'm ashamed to be recognized on the street - 'Hey wat'cha doin', where ya' workin'?' 'Uh, nowhere.' And now I just talked my way out of a hotel." Since June of 1999, Doug has done the SRO shuffle, staying in roughly 20 hotels in the Tenderloin and Mission districts in a three-month period. Finally, after a stay in the Elm Hotel [recently voted one of the city's ten worst], he realized his sanity was at stake as well as not being able to afford it any longer on his SSI stipend.

He resigned himself to trying the shelters. He is currently staying at the Sanctuary, on 8th Street. "I've lost so much shit [being homeless] that if I got a gig tonight I'd have to run around and buy a fucking shirt." Ferrari is using his time well, and is currently exploring some of his options. In my discussions with him, he was eager to tighten up the three excellent book manuscripts he has written, and to begin marketing his exceptional skills as a comedy writer on the Internet.

"I could do three shows a night starting tonight," he tells me. "It's getting the gigs. It's the eight hours a day of 'no' on the phone. It's 'can you book me?' and then 'send my demo package back to the shelter.' So that's the great sabbatical. So now talking to you and working on the book, I now have a way to ease back in."

We wrap up the conversation at Wild Awakenings, a priceless oasis of a cafe tucked away on McAllister Street. After about five cups of their stellar house blend, the coffee begins to feel like nail polish remover in my guts. Dougzilla and I decide on a light, no-cost lunch at St. Anthony's Dining Room on Golden Gate Ave. Between mouthfuls of Mongolian Beef, Doug expresses feelings about holiday depression. Our fellow diners begin to chime in agreement - being away from loved ones takes its toll on all of us, we agree. The table is quiet.

The solemn, reflective moment is broken when a patron asks Ferrari if he is going to eat his slab of chocolate cake. "Look at me!" Dougzilla roars, "Do I look like I ever turn down cake?"

The table busts up. Ferrari can add St. Anthony's to his list of kills.

Thursday, July 15, 2010;

I depend on BART to get to my job in San Francisco twice a week. My job does not pay me in money but gives me knowledge of a whole new side of media production and education and a whole different perspective of life. Although getting paid in knowledge is priceless and a gift deserving of the masses, it does not help pay the rising costs of public transportation in San Francisco. Unfortunately I am not the only person who will suffer when the public transit fare increases and the service line decreases.

“As a senior, they doubled my fare in one year. This affects me because after paying rent I only have $200 to pay bills and fast pass,” said Bruce Allison, elderly transit user. “This is a hardship.”

On June 29, 2010 community members, public transit users, public transit workers, environmentalists and poor people gathered at the doors of the Federal Building in San Francisco to protest rising costs, decreasing service lines, and decreasing employment opportunities for transit workers. The goal of the protest was to urge Senator Boxer and Congresswoman Pelosi to support two pieces of legislation (HR-2746 and S-3189) that would avoid further budget/service cutbacks and provide long-term flexibility in transit funding to give local communities the ability to meet their needs.

“I think MUNI is either oblivious or pretty much insensitive toward economic times. People can barely afford to get a ride as it is,” Marlon Crump said.

This fare increase and service line decrease is a double-edged sword for poor people across the Bay Area. Not only will we no longer be able to afford to ride public transportation or have to resort to stealing public transportation but even when we can afford it MUNI’s service lines will be cut so we will end up getting stranded on our way to our jobs, on our way home to feed our families, or on our way to pick up our children from school. In the end, this cut will leave us stranded.

“With the service cut, anytime you get on a bus you can almost guarantee feeling like you’re in a sardine can,” said Thornton Kimes, public transit user.

At the protest rally, the air filled with different chants and cries. “Stop trying to balance the budget on the backs of the workers!” “Fix our transit! Fix it now! Fund our transit! Fund it now!” “We have money for wars but can’t transport the poor!” The rally was filled with solidarity between workers, union members and the people that need it the most, poor public transit riders.

“At a time when the economy is down we need public transportation most,” said SF Labor Council Director, Tim Paulson. “Who’s affected most? Working people. Poor people. Homeless people. Students.”

As I sit at Macarthur Station and wait for my transfer to Richmond I wonder what effect the service cuts will have on people. Will the late night service line be cut entirely, leaving me stranded in Oakland for the evening? I reach in my pocket and count the last of my dollars from the day. $5 exactly. I had to worry about not spending any money that day to be sure I would be able to pay the increased toll at the Benicia bridge that night. And all I could think is would I be able to afford to make it to work the next time?

Right on! Right on! Ride on! Ride on! Save our ride!

On Friday, July 30 at around 7:45 am a long-time homeless resident of the Haight St. area was beaten by a private security guard at the McDonald's restaurant at Haight and Stanyan. His crime was asking for a receipt for a breakfast he purchased, in order to comply with the company's beverage refill policy.

Brother Nicky had just spent about $4 on breakfast and a coffee, and had asked the employee who had served him for his receipt, in order to enjoy his coffee refill on a chilly morning. He was told "I can't give you a receipt right now." Nicky sat down, finished his breakfast sandwich, and went to refill his cup. The employee refused him. As he was leaving a heavy-set security guard pushed him from behind, sending him careening down a flight of stairs, injuring his back in the assault.

Fearing another attack, and with gravity as his only witness, Nicky defended himself by liberating the contents of his now lukewarm coffee cup into his assailant's face. The bull-headed security guard responded by punching him in the face four times.

On his way to the park police station a well-to-do patron who had witnessed the brutality offered Nicky his own breakfast and coffee. "What I just saw sickened me," he offered to our bruised but grateful hero.

Brother Nicky made it to the police station at around 8:10 and described the incident to the desk sergeant who told him he would send an officer right out. After waiting a half hour for the cruiser, Nicky returned to the cop shop only to be told the same thing, with the obvious result.

When Nicky came up to the Coalition on Homelessness office, I found him to be a bright, gentle guy; the kind of guy I could not see being thrashed by anyone for anything, least of all for making an obvious request that any patron has a right to make when spending his hard-earned cash. He still seemed kind of shocked and even a little hurt and bewildered at the abuse he had suffered as he related his story to me.

Brother Nicky only wished to hold McDonald's accountable, because, as he told me, "That woman who spilled coffee in her lap got $2 million for her suffering. What kinda money do you think I could get for getting beat up?"

I told Nicky that what is right is not always policy, and that I would help him any way that I could. I set up an interview with Policewatch for him and asked him to call me when he had heard their assessment. He called me the next day to tell me excitedly that Policewatch thought it would be hard to prosecute, due to a lack of witnesses (Nicky didn't ask the gentleman in the SUV for his name). Then he told me that one of his friends went back to that same McDonald's, and that the security guard that threw his civil rights down the stairs and pounded his face had been fired. I asked him if he felt vindicated and he said he did, but he wanted to send a letter to McDonald's about the incident.

What a nasty bastard, huh?

Harpo Corleone

--

Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco 468 Turk St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
vox: (415) 346.3740
Fax: (415) 775.5639
coh@sfo.com|
http://www.sfo.com/~coh

The Metaphor Exercise is one of many creative writing exercises we use in the multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-generational Revolutionary Journalism Class at PeopleSkool.

These are the beautiful pieces of prose and poetry that came from the 2^nd class of the 2011 winter session.

La Alfombra

By Julio Chavez

 La Alfombra Azul como el agua del oceano.

Y las paredes a; rededor.

Decoradas con imagines de heroes que seguramente

Los libros de historia no van a mejorar.

Pero que nostros no debemos y no tenemos olvidar.

En un futuro sercano. NUestras fotographias pueden

Colgar y contra la verdada y hacer la historia  con poder.

Shoes swathing-  By Michael

Shoes swathing across an aged petroleum carpet, insulating the office with painted incensed oil-spill. Landfill bound attaching it’s decay to yet another thirsty forest, from painted panels encasing writers to the county debris pile, choking the dirt itself from it’s seeds.

La Metafora De alfombra

By Ingrid DeLeon

Soy un techo como este cuarto

Pues asie siento pero si no tubiera

Pero si  yo no tubiera bacea me cairia

Y dejaria de ser un techo

Seria un piso donde todos caminaran sin berme

Pero tengo 4 bases que me sostienen y no me dejan caer

Como esas 4 paredes que sostienen este techo

Asi son mis simientos o mis bases que no me dejan caer

Estas bases son mis  4 hijos

Que son tan fuertes como un hierro

 Juntos somos fuertes como un roble y nadie no bensera

The Rug Became Water

By Libah Sheppard

    THE RUG BECAME WATER AND WALLS BECAME MOUNTAINS

    THE WATER FLOWED THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS, THE  AIR OF CITRUS FRUIT SURROUNDED MY NOSTRILS, AS THE CLOUDS RAINED OF COINS THAT FLOWED DOWN THE RIVER SURROUNDED BY MOUNTAINS, AND THEIR I STOOD AT THE OTHER END OF THE RIVER RECEIVING ALL THE BLESSINGS FLOWING INTO MY SOUL.

World with No Borders

        By Muteado

        World with no borders where I sit with my brothers and sisters,

        Blue sky surrounds us,

        Holding us

        In her hands

        Surrounded by Glyrophics

        Of who we are

        On top of green grass

The Room is like a Field

By Toby Kramer

`The room is like a field with papers and chairs growing out of it like shrubs and tufts of grass. The walls are huge trees and the ceiling is  the canopy of the forest. Books and boxes perch on the branches of the trees like forest animals in their burrows.

POOR Magazine poverty skolaz, Po Poets and welfareQUEEN's travel to Detroit for the Allied Media conference and US Social Forum and to xchange skolarship with Detroit families and folks!

Monday, June 7, 2010;

Allied Media Conference:

Saturday, June 19th

4-5:30

(Incite) Mamaz Truth-telling

Sunday, June 20th

10:00am

Challenging Media, Akkkademia and Research PeopleSkool workshop

11:50am

Makeshift Reclamation -

US Social Forum

Wed, 06/23/2010

10am

Childcare(Familycare & the left) (with POWER & child care collective)

Wayne County Community College: 340

3pm

Poets in poverty ReSist- welfareQUEENs and poetas POBREs perform

Amphitheater

TBA

welfareQUEENS @ World Court on Poverty

Friday, 6/25/2010

10am

Peoples Forum on Language Theft, Language Occupation, Linguistic Domination, Resistance & Reclamation

Description:

Throughout the history and herstory of oppression of indigenous peoples and peoples of color in poverty, the worlds of academia, research and media have successfully dominated, silenced and colonized indigenous voices, voices in poverty and voices of color, resulting in the loss of our native languages and an accepted and fixed notion of literacy and scholarship,i.e, who should be heard, who is a scholar and what is considered a valid form of data collection, media production and research. In this forum/workshop, the poverty, race, disability, youth, migrant and indigenous scholars of POOR Magazine's PeopleSkool will challenge the racist and classist concept of literacy, and how some languages have functioned as active tools of oppression and enabled the intentional exclusion, separation and silencing of voices in poverty, indigenous voices, youth voices, elder voices and voices of color to be heard, recognized, integrated and powered.

Detroit Community-wide:

4) WeSearch Camp @POOR - poor people led media and research outside the USSF and in street corners and neighborhoods across Detroit - please invite us to your community or struggle for a truth Voice

5) Homefulness POOR Magazine knowledge xchange posse- poor people led/indigneous people led sweat -equity co-housing project to give landless indigenous families access to permanent housing, arts and multi-generational education, localized food production, micro-business and equity not based on how much is our pockets- read the Manifesto for Change to understand the whole project- Please suggest/invite us to communities in detroit we should see /speak with

The Coalition on Homelessness and four kick- ass local bands linked claws on a Saturday night in August at the Hotel Utah in a joint effort to buy shopping carts for homeless folks.

If you have never had the pleasure of seeing the sun gleaming off the black, chitinoid armor of a Free Kart rolling down past the tourists in U.N. Plaza, you have not yet truly lived. If you can for a moment imagine a cross between the Stealth bomber, an angry dung-beetle and the Batmobile, you'd be getting close.

The "FREE KARTS" program was originally conceived and birthed in April of this year as an art/activist collaboration between POOR magazine and the C.O.H.

Willy, an artist out of Oakland affiliated with POOR magazine was in large part responsible for the savage, heart wrenching beauty of the flagship five carts given out at the April 27th press conference at City Hall. A large part of the predatory beauty was due to him spot welding two steel fins to the frame of the Kart itself.

The original concept was to supply our homeless friends, brothers and sisters who use carts for either their property or for doing recycling work "street-legal," privately owned carts that the cops can't legally touch.

All of this was and is in response to Supervisor Amos Brown's "Cart Anti-Removal Program," a proposal as silly and uninspired as its name would suggest. The real impetus behind this is to continue terrorizing homeless people through the confiscation of their personal property, via making local supermarkets responsible for their carts under the threat of imposed fines. This would result in even more instances of freelance cart Gestapos being paid on a cart-by-cart basis to physically threaten and harass our poorest citizens.

In case you don't already know, Amos (shit, not again!) Brown has tried on more than one occasion to treat people like they were bi-pedal cattle by herding them up, branding them with stigma and nasty misinformation, and corralling 'em up to stockyards with names like Mission Rock and 850 Bryant.

If you've never heard this self affirming "man of god" (yes, he's a reverend!) bleat out his hate sermons before, he comes off sounding crazy and not just a little bit scary. Amos spits hate with the authoritarian delivery of a righteous preacher, and we are not talking about a great man like Dr. King here by a long shot, folks.

After telling loads homeless folks that they could probably get in for free and to park their carts in a diagonal fashion on the sidewalk outside of the Utah, and that hey, if you show up I'll buy you a beer, The door guy said to me, "As long as you're 21 and not hygienically offensive, you're in!" I thought that was pretty cool of him, since he was backing up my big mouth.

The bands were really good. Slow Poisoners were a kind of space-rock-psych outfit that I thought were as hilarious as they were talented. I especially dug the guitar/keyboardist's chops. M. Headphone were great as well, I felt myself floating away a coupla times with them but maybe that was in part due to a large quantity of cheap beer. Heavy Pebble, with Erika their stellar presence on the bass and vox started to make me more than a little homesick in that they reminded me a lot of the circa '86 Pixies.

I cannot say enough about not only how cool these guys all were in their respective musical soups, but also individually in talking to them. In my experience playing in a bunch of bands back east, it's more of a you-gotta-pay-to-play-kinda deal, you do pretty good when you can get some beers after the show and maybe tip the sound guy something decent, so to have these guys donating not only the door but t-shirt and CD cash to keep the concept and acquisition of Free Karts alive through their sweat was really freakin' cool. Kinda like finding a diamond in a turd. After all was said and done, KA$H FOR KART$ raised roughly $700.

Keep your eyes trained on the streets. Free Karts are comin'!

Harpo Corleone

--

Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco 468 Turk St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
vox: (415) 346.3740
Fax: (415) 775.5639
coh@sfo.com
http://www.sfo.com/~coh

It happened under their noses, noses of different angles and dispositions; noses shaped and molded by uncalloused fingers leaving imprints of corporate logos, collegiate acronyms and other indentations.  One such nose belonged to my supervisor, the blonde, who took more than her share of oxygen whenever close by.  I would hyperventilate, overriding my breathing’s natural cadence, gasping for something I couldn’t see.  She would breathe—inflating herself with the vigor of a fitness instructor and lung capacity of a bullfrog—training me on policies and procedures she’d written—reviewing each item (100 in all)—breathe in…breathe out.  Our training “get-togethers” would sometimes last more than 2 hours.  I’d look at the round-faced clock on the wall.  It said, “You should have been out of here a half hour ago”. 

The blonde would eventually leave me to breathe on my own.  I’d sneak to the bathroom and look at my nose. I’d look at the bridge, the cartilage that sloped in a downward angle.  I wanted to find the Filipino or African parts of my nose, the parts that took in air and blew them out—on toilet paper, handkerchiefs and, occasionally, into an imaginary indigenous nose flute that was, in reality, my snoring--on those nights I was able to sleep. 

I am a door attendant, or doorman, or—as some folks would say—concierge.  Prior to this I worked as a security guard for three years, employed by 2 different companies with nearly identical uniforms but different arm patches—one showing a raccoon, the other a bear.  The security company dispatched me to a newly built high-end apartment complex in the city’s Richmond District.  I sat and greeted high end people in my guard uniform.  In several days I observed that some ends were higher than others, for even in the high end world, ends come in varying degrees, like a good steak—low high end, high low end, medium high end, high high end, and no-end-in-sight high end.  I greet these souls with a “Good morning” or an occasional “Buenos dias” for flair, and other requisite pleasantries one must use when encountering people whose monetary worth, when compared to your own, puts you into the status of a dwarf.  All this takes place from the vantage point of my “New York style hotel front desk work station”.

The property management somehow liked me and, it so happened, had an available position for a door attendant.  I applied and got the job. I turned in my security guard jacket with the raccoon patch and told my father in Hawaii the good news via text message:  Hey dad, I got a house Negro job paying me 3 dollars an hour more than I was getting as a security guard.  Ten minutes later I got my father’s response via text message that seemed to have drifted across the pacific on a gentle Hawaiian breeze: You ain’t got no house Negro job…you got an uncle tom job…congratulations. I was given a new uniform--a pair of tan dockers, a baby blue long sleeve shirt, a blue jacket, tan shoes and a sweater vest.  The sweater vest bothered me, but i was happy it did'nt have an argyle design.  Sweater vests make you look paunchy and soft--giving the impression that you have basically surrendered your manhood, dignity and residual bits of revolutionary spirit.  I hate sweater vests.

As the front desk Uncle Tom, I am becoming acquainted with my duties, not the least of which is cleaning my work area.  As part of a long lineage of custodial artists (janitors)—namely my father and uncles—I am aware of the need for cleanliness.  I greet bottles of assorted cleaning products and grab a rag.  The place is spotless and I would assume, free of any virulent microbes that could invade this temple of the high end.  I spray and wipe constantly.  The countertops, windows, windowsills, doorknobs, marble walls—even the chandelier--all cry out “Please, no more…it hurts!”  But I ignore the pleas, the screams, scrubbing and buffing, getting it cleaner than clean—so clean that I begin to cry from the stinging in my eyes.  I prop and re-prop the pillows on the couches next to the fireplace, I neaten the stack of newspapers—of the proper variety—the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and SF Chronicle (One morning I placed copies of the Bayview and Street Sheet on the table which were promptly whisked away, by whom, I have no idea for I was too busy cleaning to notice) and I begin to think of Mr. Rogers and how he loved his (high end?) neighbor.  “Hey Uncle Tom” a voice calls out.  I look and all I see are pillows upon a couch devoid of people, a window without reflection and a variety of surfaces cleaned to extinction.  Then a whisper: “You are on sacred Ohlone land…this building was once a hospital where people endured many sufferings”.  I looked at the fire place and pillows and lobby area.  There was no one.  Then another whisper: “Take back your life”.  I stop scrubbing and go back to the front desk. 

One by one they pass me on their way out, the hedge funders, the marketing consultants, the CEO’s, the medical professionals—most, if not all, newly arrived to the city.  I open the door and they whisk by, leaving a bit of high end air for me.  I go to the kitchen area and make coffee, making sure the pots are gleaming and that the proper amount of sugar packets, creamer and wooden stirring sticks are displayed. 

The environment is a strange one, corporate and detached, yet in the pores of everyone within it. All is contrived and controlled; laughter and anger—the emotions that make us human—are only accepted in forms that are sanctioned by the corporation.  I look out the window.  I see the neighborhood I grew up in, the street where I delivered papers, the street where I was hit by a car while delivering papers, the street where grandma and grandpa could not rent an apartment because Grandpa was black and Grandma was white.  I see the street where my Filipino Grandparents walked on after being evicted from the Fillmore to make way for redevelopment.  I am jolted out of my dream when a resident drops their dry cleaning off at the desk.

While I’m opening doors and calling cabs and scheduling dry cleaning deliveries, there is this guy who works at the residence, the janitor, Marco.  We hadn’t exchanged a word for about a month into my employ yet I noticed him; something real, something familiar about him.  He pushed his mop bucket, its wheels rumbling across the cold floor—the sounds coming from some deep place that can only be felt.  He walked over that floor that had been scrubbed until blue and he told me he had worked at the residence for a few months; before that he had worked as a janitor at an Indian casino up north. One day he told me he was Filipino—on his mother’s side.  I was half Filipino too.  Slowly we began to talk like Filipinos, laugh like Filipinos, and our bellies grew with Filipino hunger.  Soon that sterile floor, that sterile environment seemed different.  The microbes that were banished returned and laughed along with us. 

Marco told me that he’d been to the Philippines and had met his mother’s relatives.  I told him that my grandparents had come to America in the 20’s and that I’d never visited the motherland.  He spoke in measured tones.  I sensed that this was a side of him that he had somehow been made to feel ashamed of.  But slowly I felt that shame die as he swept and mopped.  He spoke about his favorite Filipino foods.  I got hungry.  I told him I’d make pork adobo for our lunch one day in the week.  He mopped with more vigor. 

The smell of adobo filled the break room that following Friday, breaking through with a spirit of community, breaking whatever was designed to break us; permeating the walls and sterilized floors, swirling and rising through every inch of that former hospital until the spirits rose and came to life, sharing their stories, songs, tears, fire; the pork and vinegar and chili peppers spread like fire on our lips as we spoke of our families, sharing brown people words and brown people thoughts—the rice sticking to our fingers and corners of our mouths like memories that refuse to die.

I just got my first probationary job performance review.  As usual, I got average/below average scores in all categories except for attendance and punctuality.  I sat while my supervisor spoke with corporate sanctioned words and sanctioned emotions.  You have to be more of a team player and orient yourself with more high-end businesses in the neighborhood to recommend to our residents, she said.  As she spoke, I heard nothing.  I took a deep breath and smelled the fragrance of my community—of the adobo that Marco and I shared—that was now in the floors and walls and ceiling and could not be scrubbed off or erased. 

My supervisor finished my review, signing and dating the review under her eyes.  But she had no idea that while she was doing that, Marco and I had taken back our lives, its sweet fragrance undetected under her nose.

Friday, October 23, 2009;

Ingles sigue

I’m not currently homeless, but with the fickle stoner landlady that my partner and I have, that could change at any moment. We don’t want to be homeless again. If we lose our place here, we can’t afford another one here in Austin.

I’ve been homeless on and off since 1992, when I left home because my mom just refused to get along with me. At first I lived off my savings, but when that ended, I started crashing with friends and occasionally sleeping with guys to have a place to stay for the night. I smoked pot and dropped acid, so I don’t really remember much from 1992 to 1995. .

At the drop of a hat, if I ended up with some money from a little job, friends, or church, I’d decide to go off to Austin, Nashville, Dallas, or some other town. I’d work there for a while, but never could save enough to find a place. .

I met a guy with a lot of privilege and we dated all summer. I guess he liked having a little street girl to fool around with for a while, until his rich psychiatrist daddy freaked out after I got pregnant (I found out later that Daddy-O paid for my abortion.) Then my boyfriend literally dropped me off in front of a teen homeless shelter. Two months of depression and drug use ensued. .

I met a British space physicist and had a semester-long affair with him, once again ending up pregnant. This time, I was not going to terminate my pregnancy. I was able to find a supportive midwife who moved me to North Texas, where I gave birth to Maya in 1996.

I returned to college in 1997,but it only lasted a year. My parents and I had reconciled by that point, so I ended up moving in with them in El Paso. I was able to find a good job as a telephone operator, but once again, depression reared its ugly head, and I got fired. .

My parents told the State that I was not fit to care for my daughter because of my mental illness, so they took her from me, promising me that they would give her back when I was more stable. Then the State charged me with child endangerment because some anonymous asshole reported that I had left my child alone and didn’t feed her. I got probation, but pissed it away after my mom told me not to see my daughter. I ran off to Houston in 1999 after CPS refused to assist me in obtaining mental health services. .

I got pregnant again the next year after a fling with an eighteen year old. I went off to San Francisco, but returned to Austin after six weeks. I moved in with some friends from the LGBT community, and gave birth to Ethan in 2001. .

I had odd jobs and help from friends, and that’s how I survived with Ethan then. We traveled around the country, but the grass was not greener on the other side. We always returned to Houston. .

In 2004, we were living in a mentally ill group home in Houston when I met Todd, a fellow resident. We quickly fell in love and got our own place, but that didn’t last long, because I was so afraid of CPS and the State coming to get me. I left for Austin that summer, and Todd followed me a few months later. .

I became pregnant and we moved to Albuquerque, where we stayed until Zen was born in early 2005. We returned to Austin, where we stayed at the Salvation Army for six months until we qualified for a housing program. We moved into our own apartment in a nice area and Ethan began school. Almost immediately after moving, I once again got pregnant with Serenity, born in 2006. We spent that year moving from one apartment’s “$99 move in special” to another. .

Todd got a part-time job in 2007 and we moved into a house. Unfortunately, he became physically disabled in addition to his mental illness, so we lost the house. We spent most of 2007 going around the country trying to find him better health care for his neurological disorder, caused by the negligence of his psychiatrist. .

In September of 2007, we moved back to Austin and briefly stayed in the Catholic Worker house. Unfortunately, the woman there didn’t like Todd and threw him out, so the kids and I left the next day. Unbeknownst to us, she called CPS on us. .

We got help from the School District to move into an cramped apartment in a bad area of town. To help pay the rent, I started stripping, but fell back into drug abuse, so I just wasn’t able to take care of the kids like I should have. Todd was basically bedridden at that point. CPS came, but they saw nothing wrong, so they closed the case. .

March 2008 was when the shit hit the fan. Our apartment complex was sick of fixing our windows broken by the neighbors playing soccer, so they threatened to evict us. The next day, I received a call at work from CPS saying they were removing my children because of neglect. My house was a total pigsty because I was too depressed to care, and the police were called. They discovered my warrant for probation violation, arrested me, and sent me back to El Paso. They sent Todd to the mental hospital. .

After I was sentenced in El Paso, I was arrested for child endangerment again in Austin, and was transported back. The whole time I was incarcerated, I only got one visit from friends. I ended up serving my sentences concurrently, and was released from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in December of last year. .

Todd and I went to court and had our parental rights terminated and so our children went to foster care, then adoption. It is still very hard on us ten months later. .

I finally was able to access mental health services and chemical dependency treatment, and now I am receiving Supplemental Security Income as well as Todd’s. Unfortunately, it is hard to locate affordable housing in Austin nowadays, so we rent an RV month to month. We don’t know when our college student landlady is going to flake out on us and want us to move. I don’t know what is going to happen then, but I am a survivor, so I know I’ll make it through.