June 2000

Like many writers, some of Trent's best stuff wound up being edited. This was edited out of an article the STREET SHEET ran last summer titled "Hate McMuffin," describing an incident where a McDonald's security guard beat up a homeless customer for demanding the same coffee refill that other, non-homeless customers were enjoying without problems. It describes the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots in SF, and anyone who's ever been shit on 'cause they're homeless knows exactly where Trent was coming from. c.m.

If the cause and circumstances leading up to this violent incident are not readily available to the reader at this point, I would like to offer my humble take on all of this. Brother Nicky is homeless. He is treated as a public menace and a general scourge in this fucked up society, but obviously not menacing enough not to take his money from him. He is however, enough of an "eyesore" that his right to a "free" refill of coffee is denied, so he doesn't "hang around" and offend the high standards of your average fast-food glommer.

I also find it infuriating that the "public" these self -appointed guardians are trying to protect from the sad realities of San Francisco 1999 can occasionally step up and prove themselves human beings capable of being sickened and hurt by the way we treat each other sometimes. But who of them speaks for me? Who speaks for Nicky, and who speaks for that man in the suit you think you are trying not to inconvenience? Fuck you and your flimsy, ragged sense of duty. Fuck you and your twisted self- important idiocy.

And how dare you assume you can speak for me, or anyone else. Better yet; just fuck you.

I am.
I am enough.
It's enough that I am.

I see.
I see enough.
It's enough that I see.

I believe.
I believe enough.
It's enough that I believe.

I am.
I see.
I believe.

by C.M.Condeff, age 54
now, age 15 then.

Monday, June 7, 2010;

To close a gap we pull together

hold it tight lash it glue it weld it

chain it nail it screw it kiss it

to close a deal we shake it sign it

pay it cash on the barrel take it

make sure you don't break it

to close a job we check it fix it

pack it sweep it detail it play it

invoice it then haul out and bless it

to close a heart we hit it slash it

stab it in the back till we lose trust

so openly given then we regret it

to close a wound we open it clean it

cover it tender bind it not too tight

hold it safe take good care of it

too close this love outside the comfort

zone we kicked it tried to forget it

but it keeps on coming no way to stop it

to close this gap we learn to love

to give up the power over another

to take power over fear and anger

to close this poem we say thank you

we pick up the pieces glue them together

parts get mixed as hearts heal to surrender

June 2000

We had a routine. I'd be five minutes late. A black coffee with two heaping teaspoons of brown sugar and one orange juice would be the order.

Sometimes Jack and Tommy would be with us; sometimes it would just be me and Trent. We'd be at what he once described in an article as "an oasis," the Wild Awakenings coffee shop. We had a lot to cover-- the diatribes of P.J. O'Rourke, old movies (of which he knew so much more about), the latest SF politics, stories about Boston, stories about our families. Inevitably, I'd admit that our talks made me wish I could be more adventurous. He would laugh in a way that I knew he agreed. After one of his comforting hugs, weíd be off to start our days. These mornings filled with the stories that he so easily penned are what I came to cherish. The loving friendship that sprung from them will forever be with me. Thank you, Trent, for sharing yourself and your oasis.
 

Patty MacDonell and POOR Magazine writer Thornton Kimes worked together, in the 1980's  in the Washington, DC homelessness and poverty activism and action organization, The Community For Creative Non-Violence, and in Des Moines, Iowa in a Catholic Worker-ish intentional community called The Kindred Community--doing the same stuff on a smaller scale.  Thornton's raising hell with POOR Magazine, Patty MacDonell is still making trouble on the east coast.  Patty's article is about something POOR Magazine's poverty skolah superbaby mamaz know well, the never-ending attack on women in America.

"They tried to pass a law like that here in Virginia where any woman who miscarried would be required to contact the police. I emailed the legislator who wrote the law and asked, 'Would I be required to call the police when the bleeding began at the stage where I wasn't sure that I miscarried, while on bed rest? Or would I get to wait to contact the police after I got the devastating news?' He responded angrily indicating that all us angry women who had miscarried and were emailing him misunderstood what he was trying to do."
--Patty MacDonell, commenting on her note in a facebook conversation

When I was 11 or 12 I got obsessed with Henry VIII and his six wives. Henry rejected his first two wives because they kept having miscarriages, still births, and their only living births were daughters and Henry wanted a son. I remember a show on PBS where Henry's first wife had a stillbirth and Henry had a temper tantrum and put all the blame on her. After the stillbirth she understood that her life was in danger. At that age I understood how terrible it was to blame a woman for losing her baby. 

Currently, lawmakers in Georgia want to turn abortion into legal murder and want to ensure that all miscarriages are subject to police investigation.  What this means is that all women who suffer the trauma of miscarriages will then be subject to criminal, murder investigations. 

As abortion is legal in the United states, the purpose of the creation of state laws like this is to go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Women who lose the babies they want should be comforted rather than prosecuted. This law and others that involve the right of hospital workers to refuse to give an abortion that would save a woman's life, as well as the attempt to defund Planned Parenthood life-saving and abortion prevention services, are proof that the so called "pro-life" movement is indeed a misogynistic, anti-woman movement. It's a throwback to the 16th century, similar to Henry VIII's use of women as decorative, disposable birth machines.   

I have a daughter. This anti-woman, forced-birth movement could endanger her well-being and her life. There isn't a lot I wouldn't do to stop this from happening. Compassionate people, particularly those with daughters, should not ignore this hateful, hypocritical, anti-life movement.

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.

I dance to the beat of the drummers.

I hear the heartbeat, I follow stepping to the beat side to side.

I hold hands with old friends, forever friends, lost friends, found friends, and new friends.

I round dance.

I round dance, the sun has set, I dance deep in to the start lit night.

I round dance.

I listen to the singers voices, the ancient voices and new.

I hear the heartbeat of the singers hand drums.

I round dance.

Last song, last dance, last chance to hold a hand, last chance to sing a song, last chance to dance.

I round dance.

The stars are bright we have ended for the night. Time to rest round dancer.

Give the hugs of love and the handshakes of respect, go home happy and thankful for the great round dance.

Come Again.

Go now and shine as bright as the stars on this winter night.

Don’t call it a come-back……I’m under attack y’all……
Creditor – Predator…..for da’ edumaKKKation…
Creditor – Predator…..for da’ edumaKKKation…
Da’ aUpgrade to Flash Player 10 for improved playback performance. Upgrade Now or More Info.
answer machines re-playin’/over n’ over again/ creditor haterz sayin’/”aw’ hell nah’/we ain’t playin’…”
Y’ see, da’-gats-I-stow-on-da’-down-low-/I ain’t stayin

Keepin’ perpetrators layin’…no supa’ sayin…
So get this one-son…mutha’fo-fo’…I ain’t payin’
Givin’ me pain/make me insane/freakin’ twistin’ my brain/ straight dumpin’ on my name/ya’ perpetratin’ my shame/while I’m caught up in da’ grind, jobless now losin’ my mind/…jus’ tryin’ to earn my chedda’/…to get my game on betta’/keepin' my flow on the go/undercover well you know…
In the midst of this wickedness…it’s capitalist…/internet money invisible/click the box/it’s dat’ simple/kickin’ down on da’ cash flow/mechanism-capitalism-insto-automated-bank-roll/dat’ makes the world holla’/wanna’ get tha’ paper?/then I gotta’ pay dat’ phat dolla’

Creditor-Predator yeah-ya’s wastin all yo energy/houndin’ up on my ass fo’ da’ cash/from here to eternity/jankin’ my income tax/I’m still livin’ in poverty/student loan shark mutha’fo-foz’….always huntin’ me
Creditor – Predator…..for da’ edumaKKKation…..
Creditor – Predator…..for da’ edumaKKKation…..
Creditor – Predator…..for da’ edumaKKKation…..
 
Don’t call it a come-back……I’m under attack y’all……
Don’t call it a come-back……I’m under attack……
From dat’ Creditor – Predator…..for da’ edumaKKKation…..
Don’t call it a come-back……We’re under attack now!
 

You jive time turkey

Talking all that jive

Pay out your royalties

Put the needle on the record

Like a broken record

Pay out your royalties, Pay out your royalties, Pay out your royalties

Talking all that jive

Jive Records

Pay out your old IOUs

Tried to take down the Temple Dynasty

Krip-Hop Nation is in the Temple family

Revealing this story

From country to country

Jive Records talking all that jive

Discriminating against a musician with a disability

Conway & Temple made top ten hits

Didn’t receive a cent

Blackmailed name taken off the list

Talking all that jive

But talk is cheap

We’ll attack like pit bulls on raw meat

Jive Records

Judge will review your records

Play it backwards & forwards

Jury getting down

To Temple’s music

Then came back with a verdict

Talking all that jive

“Silence in the court room!”

The heart of Jive Records going boom boom boom boom

After all these years

Judgment day will soon be here

Get you where it hurts, your pocket

Ching chang

Sounds of registers

Is music to our ears

So what do you

Want to do

Do we have to walk down this avenue

Or can we settle this

Behind close doors

Where u can keep talking all that jive

We don’t care cause it’ll be on your dime

Spinning Jive Records

By DJ Rob Da’ Noize Temple

Jive Records

Talking all that jive

“Rob, mix it!”

Jjjj jive jive jjj jive

Rec rec rec Records

Talk talk talk talking all that that that  jjj jive jive

Don’t make  us get physical

Going up against your temple

With Krip-Hop Nation with Rob Da’ Noize Temple

We will get justice believe me

Talking all that Jive

What goes around comes around

Temple Dynasty

Singing the melody

Leroy break it down with poetry

We don’t need a label

Cause we have already been labeled

The table has been flipped

Record labels playing dirty tricks under the table

No wonder they are going out of business

Listen to the music

Krip-Hop Nation, Sugar Hill Gang, Temple Dynasty

Serving justice through lyrics

We own our own & u can’t stop it

So go on talk that jive

You jive time turkey

Jive Recorders roast you for our dinner

By Leroy Moore Jr. for the Temple Dynasty

Over one hundred years has passed from the time that ten infantry and cavalry companies with 200 rounds of ammunition each, and three days of cooked rations, under the command of Mackenzie, were standing ready. To the Uncompahgre Nation he said “If you have not moved by nine o’clock tomorrow morning I will be at your camp and make you move”

     Captain James Parker reports, “The next morning, shortly after sunrise, we saw a thrilling and pitiful sight, the whole Ute nation on horseback and on foot streaming by. As they passed our camps their gait broke into a run. Sheep were abandoned, blankets and personal possessions strewn along the road, woman and children were loudly wailing. And so we marched behind the Indians, pushing them out, he (Mackenzie) sent word to all the surrounding whites, who hurried after us taking up the land...” “As we pushed the Indians onward we permitted the whites to follow and in three days the rich lands of the Uncompahgre were all occupied...”

     Moved by force onto the Uncompahgre Reservation a vast waste land of 2.9 million acres in Eastern Utah, driven out at the point of a rifle, by an Extermination Order issued by Governor Pitkin “ ...It is impossible for the Indians and whites to live in peace… unless removed by the government they must necessarily be exterminated...”

      Leave Colorado or die was life for Utes in 1881. Moved in September onto the Uncompahgre Reservation a severe winter followed, killing almost half of the Uncompahgre, The other half bitterly set out to defend this place. Never forgetting the lies told to Ouray, the promises of the Brunot Agreement broken, forgotten, all of the lies, and then the theft of all their land, finally exiled into the desert of Utah.

      They determined to defend it against the encroachment that began almost immediately, when mining interests, cattle and sheep owners, began a process of trying to take what the Government had given to the Utes, by Executive Order signed into law by Chester A. Arthur on 4^th of March 1882.                                         

    This began a series of events that all American citizens should hang their head in disgust with. The theft, deceit, fraud, dishonest reports and testimony, and cold blooded murder are all a part of a story whose time has come and is well worth telling and listening to. There is truth and finally it is becoming known to us all.

      So many of the gilsonite and oil deals were done under the shroud of secrecy. The systematic removal of the majority of Uncompahgre to the Uintah Reservation occurred.  Government sanctioned theft, taking of millions of tons of minerals, billions of barrels of oil and scars left that crisscross the land. The State of Utah is reaping the financial benefits, without any regard for the Utes.  This is a fragile land with a delicate balance of water, heat and drought, deep snows, and torrential rains.

     Now, one hundred years later we carry the scars of our families torn apart by the trails of disaster left in the wake of this wanton destruction and near annihilation of our people. We have weathered the long winters of our defeat. We have suffered, we have survived. Now it is time to find the truth and regain what has been lost, what has been stolen that is still ours.

     We see the past in the light of day, looking at all of the incidents, uncovering all of the lies and deceit that has not only lain on the land but on our hearts and minds as well.

      We take these steps, hesitant at first and stronger with every step to regain not only the control of the lands and the right to use that land in a way that we see fit, but also to remember ourselves one hundred years ago We look to the future and see ourselves able to hold our own and take care of our land. We are the greatest Environmentalists the ones that know that within the folds of earth on the Uncompahgre Reservation lay not just oil and gas and the means to secure to us our economic future, but also our loved ones.

     We come together as a people with wounds to heal and strength to gather to bind us up and build a nation.

      We come together carrying the wounds that are handed down by those that lost their lives unnecessarily.

       We come together to ask the one man that can make a difference, the one man that can return our land to us, the one man that can listen to our request. We ask him simply to use all of his power, and all of his great mind and will, to rid our land of the lies that bind it from us, to make things right to end the theft and to return the land to us for our use and control. That man is President Obama. We ask that he return a land that is scared, as are we. To return our land that has been taken by theft and deception and lies and then to lie no more.

     We are not asking for a second chance or a hand out we are asking for what is ours by birthright, the land that is in our blood that is rightfully ours.

     All of us can sign this petition, every one, whether we live here or not.

To sign the online petition go to:

http://www.petitiononline.com/UNO12345/petition.html

***please put this exciting event on your calendar!***

tickets are now on sale at:

http://missionculturalcenter.org/MCCLA_New/events.html#sins_invalid  

or call 415-643-2785 or visit the box office to pay the low income/disabled rate.  

PLEASE TELL YOUR DEAF FRIENDS - THERE IS ASL INTERPRETATION ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 29.  READ ON FOR MORE INFO!

Sins Invalid’s new Artists in Residence (AIR) Program, in conjunction with the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, presents:

Resident Alien

A collaborative theater piece by emerging artists with

disabilities, using music, spoken word, film, photography and wearable

sculpture to explore imagination, hospitalization, our bodies,

and the land we live on.

2010 AIR Artists: Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi, Colleen Nagle, Fayza Bundalli, Lateef McLeod, Matthew Blanchard, Redwolf Painter, Tee,

and Nomy Lamm (Program Director of AIR)

WHAT:  Resident Alien:  The Sins Invalid Artists In Residence Show

WHEN: January 28, 29, 2011 ***ASL interpretation on the 29^th***

TIME: 8:00 PM

WHERE: Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts  (2868 Mission Street, SF, 94110)

TICKETS: $15/$10* (*low-income/disabled)

PUBLIC INFORMATION: (415) 643-2785, or info@sinsinvalid.org

BUY TICKETS NOW: http://missionculturalcenter.org/MCCLA_New/events.html#sins_invalid

*For low income/disabled rate, call the box office at 415-643-2785, or buy tickets in person during box office hours.

Sins Invalid is a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists who have been historically marginalized within society.  Our performance work shows that all bodies are beautiful, exploring themes of embodiment and sexuality that challenge normative understandings of disabilities, so as to instead offer a vision of inclusivity and liberation for all communities.  Co-founded by Patty Berne and Leroy Moore in 2006, Sins Invalid offers work unlike any other in the United States.  Our work challenges, destabilizes, and reorients common definitions of the body, beauty, and sexuality, drawing the audience into new conversations through the visceral experience of the performance. 

In order to expand upon our poignant, seductive, visually stimulating and politically informed performance work, Sins Invalid has launched our new Artists In Residence (AIR) Program, with the intent of fostering the skills of emerging artists with disabilities.  Program Director Nomy Lamm, a well-known Bay Area performer, writer and vocal coach, has worked with the AIR participants for the past nine months to develop and produce this performance.  Participation in skill building and visioning workshops, artistic collaboration, and one-on-one mentoring has allowed these artists’ visions to coalesce and translate into a stage-ready performance.  The participants embody a variety of disabilities and artistic disciplines, and they are all LGBTQ and/or people of color, providing a breadth of experience that is evident within the wide assortment of performance.

Colleen Nagle has scored original music for the show, and performs as Pathces the Girl Pirate, a “crazy” girl plotting her magical escape from a mental institution.  Fayza Bundalli and Redwolf Painter have created an interwoven piece exploring familial history and the ways in which experiences of colonization are embodied and passed down through generations.  Through the perspective of their travels through health, illness and pain, they explore the nuanced paths through which healing arrives.  Lateef McLeod has adapted his poem “Not of This World” into a collaborative piece that reclaims disabled bodies from the stereotypes of being monstrous, alien, freaks, to being beautiful, whole, loved and loving human beings.  Matthew Blanchard makes his cinematic debut with “Construct,” an experimental documentary directed by Daniel Cardone as part of the HIV Story Project’s compilation of short films honoring the individual lives of People With AIDS (PWAs), entitled “Still Around.”

On Friday, January 28^th and Saturday, January 29^th, Sins Invalid and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco, California will host the debut performance of “Resident Alien.”  The show will begin at 8 PM, with tickets being sold at $15/$10* (*low-income/disabled) and ASL interpretation on the 29^th. 

About the Featured Artists:

Chun-shan (Sandie) Yi makes body adornments for the disabled bodies with metals, fabrics and found objects. Her work examines the potential of art to address the relationship between the body and social standards pertaining to beauty and disability. She has a BFA and MA in art therapy from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She had worked as an art therapist for four years in Chicago and Taiwan before she began pursuing a MFA degree at UC Berkeley in 2009. She has exhibited in Chicago, Ann Arbor, San Francisco, Berkeley, Prague and Hong Kong. She was featured in PISTIL magazine, Fall 2005 and was the recipient of 2006 Disability Arts and Culture Honor. She recently published an article in an edited book in art therapy.

Colleen Nagle lives in San Francisco where she writes and creates music about the intersection of hope, hardship, and mental health. Colleen's creativity also extends onto the web, where she has been building web sites for nonprofits, small businesses, and community driven projects for a living for the past 13 years. During her artist in residency with Sins Invalid, she has worked collaboratively to create music and words to incorporate into the performance.

Fayza Bundalli is a poet, femme, a healer in a long line of medicine womyn.  Vancouver-grown and San Francisco-based, her poetry connects her South Asian roots to her queer identity.  Fayza has been published in numerous undergraduate student journals, from philosophy to gender studies, and is currently completing her Masters of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, where she co-chaired the Diversity Task Force.  She interns at the AIDS Health Project in San Francisco.

Lateef McLeod is a phenomenal black poet with cerebral palsy who just published his first poetry book entitled A Declaration Of A Body Of Love this year. He is also in process of writing a novel tentatively called The Third Eye Is Crying. He was also a cast member of the 2007 Sins Invalid performance. He works at United Cerebral Palsy of the Golden Gate as a grant writer and blogger and for the World Institute of Disability as an intern. He has earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and a MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. You can gain more information about Lateef from his blog at teefdabiggafigga.blogspot.com.

Matthew D. Blanchard was born and bred a white trash, Euro-mutt, slut, queer American kid, and escaped the double-locked, triple-chained closets of conservative Southeastern Virginia, only to be embraced by the welcoming arms of GAY MECCA’s chaotically corrupt, Crystal-lined, “Tina-torn, AIDS-quilted” community of wanton, woebegone whores & hustlers.  The life Matthew has led since arriving in the Bay Area in 2003 contrasts with his former life as a thespian erudite.  However, with drug dependency, disease, disfigurement and depression has come the recovery, rehabilitation, reconstruction and resilience of his “last-stitch, last-chance life.”  Today, above all else, Matthew is grateful for God’s boundless love of and faith in his own purely imperfect and human desire “for elaborate beautification and solemn self-betterment.”Matthew has studied performance arts in Paris, France, Florence, Italy, and at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

Redwolf Painter is a two-spirit, mixed blood, heyoka, ex-punk storyteller from Alaska.

Tee is a visual artist living and working in San Francisco. As a person of color, Tee is a fierce social justice activist and likes to facilitate workshops breaking down the systems of oppression. Different topics such as disability, sexuality, gender, and social class are frequently explored in both the arts and during workshops.

Nomy Lamm is a writer, performer, and voice teacher living in San Francisco.  Her band, nomy lamm & THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, is a flexible platform for collaboration with everyone and everything.  She performs with Sins Invalid, writes an advice column for Make/Shift Magazine, and is currently working on an MFA in Creative Writing at SF State.

"We child care advocates are celebrating, but some parents may not know what is happening, they fell through the cracks in November and they've fallen through them again.  Some of them gave up after hearing their childcare ended in November or December.  We cannot find some of these parents."
--Maria Luz Torre, Organizer for Parent Voices

1.  A little herstory

Welfare in Amerikkka is a big pain in the you-know-what.  It's the same thing in California.  Child Care is a small part of that big pain, but, for poor and just-barely-making-it single and married parents with children--it's as big a pain as the Big W.  Don’t get me wrong, child care was probably the best thing that happened after welfare reform because legislators realized as an afterthought ,duh, that 70% of the participants are young children.  Parents were required to work but they forgot about the children! Grudgingly, they added child care but parent advocates almost have to fight for it every budget cycle.. However, President Clinton made Welfare in America tougher, shortening the time poor parents could be on it to five years.  Period. Even more reason why child care support was important beyond the five years.

Child Care is, at the Federal level, a two headed beast.  Stage 1 and 2 Childcare, funded through a.k.a. TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families--a 1996 Clinton creation), is available in most states; Stage 1 is for unemployed parents receiving cash assistance, Stage 2 is for parents who have gotten jobs, a training program, or are going to school/college.  California is the only state that has Stage 3 child care.  And the last 3 Governors have been trying to abolish it – the crown jewel of a program that tries to move parents from welfare to work because this is the only thing that realistically helps children to learn while their parents earn.

Getting into Stage 3 is as much a Catch-22 as what happens if you still need help after your generic and very personal five years have run out on getting welfare assistance. You can only get on Stage 3 if you have used Stage 2 child care. You can't sign up for Stage Three until the very last of the 24 months of Stage 2. If you sign up just a little bit too late, too bad, you don't get it (and this often happens if a family has not been in an approved work-activity and thus skipped their Stage 2).

2.  Out With The Governator, In With Jerry The Gentrifier of Oakland, CA

The Reign of the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is over, but the memories of his constant failed and successful attempts to cut this and that desperately needed benefit for poor parents, and for their children, will last a long time. 

Stage three child care served 81,000 children (in 60,000 families) in California until the fall of 2010.  Governator Schwarzenegger vetoed that part of the state budget in October.  Twelve hundred and nine children in San Francisco lost Stage Three child care before Parent Voices and other organizations began fighting to get cuts restored.

California Legislature Assembly Speaker John A. Perez also got involved, pledging some of the 15% cut in the Assembly's budget ($6 million) as a bridge fund.  He also asked the First Five Commissions (FFC) all over CA for help until Stage 3 child care could be restored.  The Legislature (slowly, so very slowly...) passed a budget, but couldn't muster enough votes to overcome the governor's veto of child care funds.

November 2010 was full of more activity from activists, Speaker Perez, an Alameda County District Judge (who extended Stage 3 coverage until December 31st for Bay Area families), and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.  The court order was an end-run around Schwarzenegger.  It's nice to have something like that available, not so nice to actually have to fight to get a judge to enforce it.

Perez announced $40 million more in bridge funds. San Francisco's Proposition 10, a.k.a. prop 28, which funds the local First Five Commission's childcare program for children ages 0-5, got some love, a supportive resolution, from the Board of Supervisors (BOS).  Supervisor Eric Mar is on San Francisco's FFC.

Families were sent notices that their child care would end in November, more notices went out about an end to coverage New Year's Eve.

Things began to look up a little in December, 2010, but, as Maria Luz Torre of Parent Voices said, some parents panicked and disappeared before child care activists could contact them about what else was going on.  One hundred families, about 10% of the total concerned in Alameda County (across the Bay from San Francisco), vanished.  

Speaker Perez introduced Assembly Bill 1 (AB 1) to reverse the veto and restore Stage Three Child Care in early December.  Jerry Brown officially became Governor of California January 3rd, 2011; January 10th he included Stage Three Child Care funding in his 2011-2012 state budget proposal.  January 14th, Speaker Perez announced that AB 1 was effective retroactive to January 1st, 2011, good news for poor families that need it.

Good news, bad news.  The bad news is that Jerry Brown wants to make it harder for parents to get into the Stage Three Child Care program.  His budget reduces eligibility from 75% of the State Median Income to 60%, which means that a familiy of three must gross no more than $3000 a month. 

There's a powerful, and funny video on YouTube, of a candidate for political office running on the "The Rent Is Too Damned High" political party ticket.  Well, yup, the rent IS too damned high, and other necessities of life (like food) are more expensive. 

What's a family to do if they make too much money to get Stage Three Child Care services, but they're still barely making ends meet because the Bay Area is one of the most expensive places to live in Amerikkka?

Jerry Brown isn't Governor Moonbeam any more, he became Jerry the Gentrifier of Oakland (he loved it when the U.S. Supreme Court said it was okay to condemn private property if a developer wanted it for a mega-bucks project, even if that project had nothing to do with "improving" a city or town). California stopped being the Moonbeam state years ago too.

Parent Voices is across the street from a school on Church Street in San Francisco.  I spent a bit of a Saturday with organizer Maria Luz Torre and my POOR Magazine family member Jewnbug (the poormagazine Parent Voices skolah) a while back for an outdoor sidewalk sail to raise money for the organization. 

The comments from Maria at the beginning of this article are not the last word.  Maria also repeated how important it is for poor parents to "stay connected to Parent Voices, POOR Magazine, or other groups in the fight--if they don't they miss out" on what they deserve.  It isn't easy, but fighting back gets results.  

Rivers of icy wind swirled at my feet. The wet night snuck in through unseen crevasses of our old car and circled up my body, each gust, a laugh of hate against me and my mama who’d been living in and out of our car since I was 11. Those memories flooded  through my mind as the soft voice of Myron Standing Bear, a member of the Oglala Sioux Nation explained how he, a hard-working advocate in the community for 17 years, suffering with congestive heart failure was living in his car with his two teenage sons.

Through a story told by Myron, riddled with racial discrimination and un-justice by the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) that lasted several hours into that night, our revolutionary crew of legal and poverty scholar journalists began the lengthy process of documenting his case to transform into our special blend of change–making media and in your face advocacy.

“We don’t work with Indians,” Myron had begun his story with the first in a series of discriminatory and unlawful sentences said to him by SFHA when they rescinded his place on the Section 8 wait list. The injustice began in August of 2009, when the family was informed of their approved Section 8 Voucher, a list they had been on for 11 years. Upon finding a home, however, they were told by their SFHA worker that they were immediately being taken off of the Section 8 housing list where they had reached rank #1 and being put on the Public Housing list where they were placed at number 564. Following this horrible beginning there was an onslaught of discriminatory statements said to the Standing Bear family while they tried to get housing justice.

After our first meeting with Myron at POOR Magazine’s indigenous news-making circle in September, we wrote an article detailing Myron’s plight which was published in POOR/PNN and the Bay View Newspaper. POOR Magazine’s Revolutionary Legal Advocacy Project (RLAP) began a correspondence with officials at Housing and Urban Development (HUD), who were embarrassed by the light shed on this situation which eventually resulted in HUD re-opening an investigation about the wrong-ness with SFHA in October of 2010.

“Myron and his family are outside, in the winter, in a car, with a fatal heart condition,” Lisa Gray-Garcia and Marlon Crump from POOR said to HUD agents many times via phone and email correspondence following a meeting with HUD to re-launch the investigation. Several documents were demanded by HUD and produced, most of which were already in possession by a case started by Myron and his family several months prior.

Weeks turned into months. Myron’s condition worsened, he and his boys were still in their car and we realized we had no choice but to give HUD an ultimatum, “If Myron doesn’t get his Section 8 voucher by December 1^st, we will have no choice but to seek legal action.

On November 23rd we got the email, Myron would get his rightful section 8 voucher. Myron, Mark Anquoe, a friend of Myron’s and tireless advocate from American Indian Movement West (AIM-WEST) and Marlon from RLAP at POOR all went to HUD on a beautiful day in the first week of December. The bright sun shone on their backs as they entered the lifeless building. Hope was alive for the Standing Bear family.

Which brings me to back to mama. There were so many uncanny similarities between Myron’s family and my own. My mama, an indigenous Taino Boricua elder, had congestive heart failure.  She was a tireless advocate for the community.  We spent most of my teenage years living in our broke-down hooptie.  When we finally got on the SFHA wait list for a section 8 voucher for years and almost gave up hope, my ghetto scholar mama fought the stagnant injustices of HUD and won, resulting in us finally getting a Section 8 certificate.

Which is also why I am scared for Myron and his family.  We couldn’t get a landlord to rent us an apartment to save our lives. Landlords often don’t want to touch section 8 certificates with a ten foot pole, between the racist and classist stereotypes about “those kinds of tenants” said more than once to me about section 8, to the paperwork required of landlords, it was impossible for us to get a place in the 90 day window they gave us to find a place.

We looked every day, petitioned for a 90 day extension for the voucher, but still nothing.   After our years together through endless poverty and houselessness this was just another little murder of the soul, as my mama used to call it and we gave up, remaining in increasingly unstable market rate housing, in and out of eviction until the day my mama passed on her spirit journey in March of 2006.

Sadly, Myron’s family is not the exception, but rather, the far too common norm for countless poor families caught up in the struggle to get affordable housing from a broken and dismantled system built on an Amerikkkka scarcity model that is not meant to house everyone and barely meant to house some. Families like me and my mama and Vivian and jewnbug and Laure and Ingrid at POOR Magazine and so many other poor families in the US is the reason POOR is launching the revolutionary Homefulness project – a sweat equity co-housing model for landless poor families in the US and beyond.

In the mean-time Myron and his family must be housed, which is where readers and conscious landlords come in. You can make a difference. If you have a 3 bedroom apartment or house available in San Francisco preferably or the greater Bay Area please email POOR Magazine  @ deeandtiny@poormagazine.org or call us and leave a message at (415) 863-6306.

Those wet, cold winter winds currently remain Myron's family reality as it was for my po mama and me. Let's act as a community to change this piece of devastating herstory before it kills another landless poor family

Now I understand
Don’t want to crush your dreams
But its time to wake up

The media blows your head up
Stars in the sky you looking up
Back down now sit down & shut up

You are not the first
And won’t be the last
Don’t know your history that’s sad

The gimmick you pimp
Goes deeper then what you think
Open up a book & read the Black ink

I’m the first, please
You better believe
Many came before you

Don’t mean to pop your balloon
Truth will come out soon
Looking & sounding like a fool

Your lyrics make me sick
Lily-pop sucking the flavor out of Hip-Hop
Don’t want to be down with Krip-Hop

It’s ok because you suck
Cussing every other word
Quack quack quack u Mc Duck

Flip-Flopping out of water
We don’t attack our own
Trying to make you better

So we can work together
But you get up
To continue to climb that ladder

News stories screams
“The First Disabled Rapper!”
Both don’t want to go deeper

Spotlight on one
While many are shun
Used as the flavor of the month

Living in the closet
Dirty laundry is pilling up
Your identity wants to come out
Fighting with yourself
Chains are off
But your brain is still locked up

Falling from up above
People moving out of the way
So you can face your stuff

You have no choice
To see you are one of many
Will u comprehend that u stand on history

Providing steps to today
Realizing u has a duty
To your community

Now u r older
From youth to elder
Want to share with your son & daughter

Turned to conscious Hip-Hop from gangster
Doors that were open are now shut
Must feed your family now you are stuck

Pushing back on what u helped create
But is it too late is this the end
Can Hip-Hop be born again

By Leroy Moore
1/23/11

“In My Country” is a country that knows no borders; it’s a country of the heart”.  Tony Robles, revolutionary poet, nephew and son of many diasporas spoke about his inspiration for the beautiful short story, “In My Country” published in Mythium magazine (www.mythiumlitmag.com) and nominated by Mythium editor Crystal Wilkinson (www.crystalwilkinson.com) for the esteemed literary honor known as the Pushcart Prize--a well deserved honor for Tony, a deeply rooted community story-teller and poet of the people, who follows in the footsteps of his uncle, the late Manilatown poet and historian Al Robles.  The Pushcart Prize winners are to be announced in May 2011. 

From being a tenant organizer for elders in poverty in the Tenderloin, Mission and Manilatown districts of San Francisco to being the co-editor and contributor of one of the most revolutionary media organizations in the nation, POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE, Tony has never compromised his values, his community or the voices of his multi-racial family of Filipino and African descendent resistance fighters based in the increasingly gentrified San Francisco Bay Area.

This dedication to community, ethics and resistance began as a young child with the teaching he received from his family of brilliant, conscious artists  and organic revolutionaries who, like Tony, supported their families with work in the janitorial or service industry. Through-out his life of work and in the last two years, Tony has worked as a security guard. Through his own lens this “revolutionary worker scholar” as is the title of his POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork column, he has penned a series of brilliant narrative essays and short stories about workers, workplace injustices and peoples struggling with poverty, houselessness and racism in the US.

“In my country was inspired by poverty and migrant scholar Jose Sermeno of the Apollo hotel located in San Francisco’s Mission’s District,,” Tony said as he described his connection to the protagonist from In My Country, Tony went on to point out that Jose was a tenant representative and worked with other migrants in poverty like himself who were working as day laborers.

In addition to working as a tenant advocate and community journalist, Tony authored two bilingual (English and Tagalog) children’s books, published on Children’s Book Press: Lakas and the Manilatown Fish and Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel. As well, Tony is a teacher and playwright who authored a play, Hotel Voices, which he co-produced with, Lisa “tiny” Gray-Garcia, co-founder and co-editor of POOR Magazine. Hotel Voices is an innovative theatre production which took place in the Single Room Occupancy Hotels of San Francisco and included a 20 week script-writing and performance workshop and was performed to sold out audiences across the Bay Area in 2009.

The phrase “In my country”, according to Tony, means in my heart, and with his heart, the protagonist of the story, like Tony himself, brings his country, his heart and his humanity into the struggle for place, home, memory and justice into the increasingly cold and bereft land where all of us poor workers, migrants, elders and families struggle to dwell.