2011

  • CREDITOR PREDATOR (from the battle Po' Student In-Debt Mama Vs Creditor Predator-2nd place 2011)

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    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!
     

    Tags
  • Poem for the Temple Dynasty, Talking All That Jive ( Calling out Jive Records)

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Leroy
    Original Body

     

    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

    Tags
  • Obama: Return the Uncompahgre lands to the Ute Indian Tribe

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    mari
    Original Body

     

    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 4th 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

    Tags
  • The Sins Invalid's Artists In Residence Show SF Jan 28th & 29th SF (2ND NIGHT WITH ASL Interpreters ) Come Out!!

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Leroy
    Original Body

     

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

     

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

     

    Resident Alien

     

    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 29th***

    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 28th and Saturday, January 29th, 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 29th

     

    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.

     

     

     

    Tags
  • CALIFORNIA CHILD CARE CHA-CHA-CHA 2010-11: Stage 3 Child Care Cuts, Fights, The Future

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Redbeardedguy
    Original Body

    "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.  

     

    Tags
  • The Landless Poor

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    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 1st, 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



     

    Tags
  • I'm The First, Please!

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Leroy
    Original Body

    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

    Tags
  • In My Country is In My Heart

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    “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.

    Tags
  • Krip-Hop Nation Wants Your 1 Page Story About Being A Disabled Hip-Hop Artist UPCOMING BOOK

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Leroy
    Original Body

    As many of you know, I've been writing a book about Hip-Hop artists with disabilities for some time now.  Well at this time I'm about to go onto Chapter 3, Artists' Statements. This is a call to all Hip-Hop artists with disabilities!! Leroy Moore Founder of Krip-Hop Nation & Professor/Author Terry Rowden has teamed up to write a book about disabled Hip-Hop artists & the Krip-Hop Nation.  Many sections of the book will use artist’s personal accounts of their lives, and the artists' views about the Hip-Hop industry in their countries and communities, in the music industry mainstream or underground. We are looking for original stories in your own words with a SMALL bio and your website links all of this in a 1-2 page limit.

     

    If you do and want to send in your story then you have agreed to let Krip-Hop Nation have full control on the publishing of your story.  Krip-Hop Nation has always been a labor of trust, love and activism so this book venture is no different.  Krip-Hop Nation wants to put our stories, history, politics and experiences in one book from Africa to America. The working title of the book is Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge.

     

    Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge will bring the words, rhythm, voices and politics of disabled Hip-Hop artists from around the world into one easily accessible space.  This book is the continuation of the Krip-Hop Mixtape Series that started in 2006.  

     

    Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge will be centered around interviews that I have conducted with Hip-Hop artists from all over the world. It will include the history and teaching of Krip-Hop Nation, personal accounts of their lives, and the artists' views about the industry.  The book will also contain a collection of essays on the Hip-Hop industry and on the struggles and successes of Hip-Hop artists with disabilities.  At the end of the book there will be resource section featuring websites, contact information, and other resources related to disabled Hip-Hop artists.  Adding a crucial dimension to Hip-Hop journalism, Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge will fill a much needed space in our ideas about African-American and global popular music.

     

    There is no guarantee that we will use every submission but we will email you if we do use your write up.  So if u are interested in writing up a one - two page story (not a bio but a story) for our upcoming book please email me the story with a high resolution picture, all your web links and a short bio at kriphopproject@yahoo.com.  In your bio please tell us what you are working on and your current email address for the resource section if the book.  Also if you liked to be interviewed by Krip-Hop Nation for the book drop me an email too.

     

    Thank you,

    Leroy F Moore Jr.

    Founder of Krip-Hop Nation

    kriphopproject@yahoo.com

    Leroy Moore & Krip-Hop Nation is on Facebook too

    Tags
  • Plain Cone

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    PNNscholar1
    Original Body

     

     Plain Cone

    By Tony Robles

     

    Grandpa had this way

    Of whistling and when I heard

    It I thought of caramel corn

    And ice cream

     

    Grandpa was black, from

    New Orleans and his wife

    Was San Francisco Irish

    But to me they were Grandpa

    And Grandma

     

    To landlords they were

    Not the kind of people

    You rented to

     

    They had a child, my mother,

    And they would get into their

    Big post-war American made

    Car and travel the landscape

     

    And grandpa would drive

    To the amusement park or

    Some fun place and grandma

    And my mom would get out

    Of the car

     

    Grandpa would stay inside

    The car looking at the panoramic

    View from the car window with

    A hint of blue when the sun was

    At a certain angle

     

    And he’d whistle inside

    His car while the birds

    Outside whistled back

     

    And he stayed inside the car

    When his wife and daughter

    Went to the ice cream parlor

     

    “Get me a scoop

    Of burgundy cherry”

    He’d say

     

    And inside the parlor there’d

    Be a man who’d sample all

    The flavors with a little plastic

    Spoon

     

    Grandma and mom would wait

    10 minutes while the man pondered

    His options, dropping stained plastic

    Spoons in the trash

     

    Then he’d casually

    Proclaim to the

    Man behind the counter

     

    I think I’ll have a scoop of vanilla

     

    Vanilla, my grandmother would

    Snicker, rolling her

    Eyes

     

    And the birds outside would

    Whistle at my grandfather

    Sitting behind the wheel

     

    And he’d whistle

    back

     

     

     

     

     

    © 2011 Tony Robles

    Tags
  • Meeting my Balance…

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    mari
    Original Body

    Like cracks within the dry, humid, red dirt, scratches cover your hands... callouses are like the rough, dry patches of red dirt... yet when I touch your earthly hands it is like the softest cloud and the silver lining is in our soulful eyes... that brings us overflowing joy as the constant gushing river that is the bloodstream of Mother Earth. It is not everyday I meet a person and feel that I’ve known their soul forever. A person whose spirit and heart is the opposite of what people assume that they are. A person who had everything I did not. A person who has suffered horrendous grief, hurt, and pain but, like Tupac’s rose that grew from the concrete this person is the Ute rose sprung rezcrete. Meet the rose named Louis C. I met Louis in a Ute beardance ceremony, and he was one of the beardance singers. Right when I saw him, I looked at him as if I knew him. When I danced with him it was as if I knew his soul without saying a word. We did not have any conversations, and yet had a deep spiritual connection. While I was stunned with what had just happened, he left. A week later, I met Louis again at a different Ute beardance, and I picked him again to dance. After the beardance, I decided to find out more about Louis. We talked about two-spirited people, energy and how it heals people, and sang traditional songs. We found out we were even both semi deaf in the same ear. That night, I found out about some of the breakdowns in his life. I couldn’t believe that he had those breakdowns in his life and I saw him in his greatness of who he truly is. I have never lost that vision of Louis living out his greatest potential. While growing up, Louis ended up going to different boarding schools, and decided to drop out of high school and went back to his reservation in Utah. There he went through many ups and downs in his life, but one thing always secretly sustained him, his art. As a survivor of rape, abuse, and torture, I knew how important literary art was to me. I would keep a journal that no one else knew existed and write out my hearts desire. There I let out my pain on paper instead of cutting myself again and again. One day, I showed a teacher at the reform school I attended a poem that I wrote. They told me how good it was and so for the first time I let someone keep my poem. The teacher ended putting it in the yearbook. For the first time ever I felt validation as an artist. Just like how I was in high school, I came to find out he is an artist who kept his art to himself. Many people draw what they see but these drawings came from inside his heart and third eye. He would always say this about his artwork, “I just look at the paper and it shows me what to draw and the colors just pop out.” His artwork reminds me of pop art mixed with traditional arts. I am wowed by every time I see his art, it is as if I am looking at his art for the first time and I learn something new about myself. I started to see a transformation in Louis based on experiences and trainings he was going through. I saw a young man who was heartbroken, hurt, and feeling alone turn into a courageous, loving, intimate man who was as vulnerable as a ballerina. He told me his vision was to go heal and help all the people he had hurt in his lifetime. That is the most courageous act a person can do is face themselves and the hurt they have caused and transform into being the source of healing for the same people. Louis’s spirituality speaks through the energy he creates and sends out to nature. I remember one time him sitting outside on a cloudy day and he told me “I just kept thinking for the sun to shine through the that cloud.” Then a hole appeared in the clouds and the sunshine through. That day became sunny and brought happiness to all the creatures in nature. One night I was with Louis and my stomach started to cramp. I was in a great deal of pain and tearing from my eyes. Louis saw me in pain and all of the sudden he put his hands on my stomach and just within a few seconds the pain was gone. Louis’s art was affected and popped off the paper, canvas, or walls even more while he was going through his transformation. He came down to the reservation I live on and supported a youth mural project. This mural project was part of my vision for about 1 year. It is the only youth graffiti tobacco abuse-free mural in this county. He painted the Uintah and Ouray Mountains and animal tracks from his reservation after the kids would leave for the day. It was his first time ever on a public mural project and stated, “I am just so lucky to even have this opportunity to work for the youth to have some of my art on this wall.” Louis taught me the value of silence and being in it. Just to be silent with nature and to listen to what it is saying. He told me, “Too many people are so busy talking and forget to listen to the silence. Why can’t they listen to the silence?” He would take me on road trips where for hours we would sit in silence and he would every now and then point to an eagle, hawk, deer, elk, or another animal. He taught me to be comfortable with the silence that surrounds my life and to let it heal me. While I am writing this article I am evoking Louis’s silent spirit by being surrounded by silence and for the first time in a long time finding pleasure in the silence and not having fear associated with it. So many times we honor people after they died and they never know the impact they make on our lives. We thank them in their death for what they have done for us. I choose to honor a young man named Louis for all the things he taught me about his journey, art, and spirituality. I honor him for the greatest potential he is and his commitment to standing as the source of positive energy. Life is too precious for me not to honor an indigenous scholar such as Louis, and to honor his mother from whom he came from. As my friend Tiny says, “Without her (Mom) there would be no me”, this is true of Louis and his Mama. She raised a loving, spiritual, lucky young man. Thank you Debbie, for raising Louis to teach me lessons as he gives his gift of art to the world.

    Tags
  • The People-Led Revolution has Come!

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    Ben Ali, Tunisian fascist dictator, is gone!

    Egypt’s 30-year fascist dictator (and U.S. puppet) Hosni Mubarak is about to go!

    We are seeing with our own eyes – at last – real people’s power in action. We are seeing the working class joining hands, the police and security forces included. It’s so exciting, exhilarating!

    Nevertheless, the world’s peoples must register their support and make this a world revolution so that the imperialists won’t be able to fuck it up – i.e., reverse the revolution with their guns and butter.

    This could very possibly be the beginning of a global revolution that would free the people of the world from the tyranny of the 1 percent who own 80 percent of the world’s resources – and initiate real democratic self-determination.

    We – the children, women, men of the world who comprise the overwhelming majority of the global population – WE must demand our human rights NOW. Our right to live. Our right to land, bread, housing, health care, child care for working parents, education, justice and peace.

    As Frederick Douglass noted: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” We must collectively and globally demand our human rights, human equality.

    All power to the people! People of the world, unite!

    Long live the Egyptian revolution!

    Tags
  • Hung, Shot & Assaulted

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Leroy
    Original Body

    (The above pics are Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigates men sexually assulting disabled women)

    Hate hate hate
    It seems like every day
    State to state

    I was profiled in New York
    Fredrick hung in Mississippi
    Disabled women assaulted in LA

    Hung, Shot & Assaulted
    Protect & Serve
    Black & Blue shot shot shot

    Wheelchair user with a knife
    He was a threat to public safety
    As a Black man I never feel safe

    Getting hot in December
    Nothing new in a new year
    Brothers & sisters

    Hung, Shot & Assaulted
    Life halted
    Break out your cell phones

    Get everything on video
    Sell it to ABC, NBC, and CBS
    Doesn’t spell justice for the victims

    Budget cuts
    Lead to hate
    So we all bleed

    Dig deep to the seed
    Pull out the roots
    Changing our attitudes

    Things don’t change
    Until it happens to you
    But that is way too late

    Politician was shot today
    Rich & poor are getting hot
    Time for radical change

    Hung, Shot & Assaulted
    Can’t see the bigger picture
    When the media’s frame is crocked

    Don’t need a band-aide
    Beyond reform
    We are all in this storm

    Will we reach out for that hand?
    After all of this still can’t understand
    Why disabled people are still
    Hung, Shot & Assaulted

    By Leroy Moore Jr.
    1/9/11

    Note: according to US statistics a person with a disability is 4 to 10 times more likely to be a victim of a crime than a person without a disability. 60% of women with hearing impairments, 59% of women with visual impairments, 57% of women with learning disabilities, and 47% of women with mobility impairments will be physically abused in their lifetimes. 81% of people with psychiatric disabilities have been physically or sexually assaulted. Research consistently finds that people with substantial disabilities suffer from violent and other major crime at rates four to ten times higher than that of the general population. Estimates are that around 5 million disabled people are victims of serious crime annually in the United States. There is no figures of national rate of police brutality against people with disabilities but October 22nd Stolen Lives Project put out a book including people with disabilities.

    Tags
  • Survival Radio

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    “Mama, will I ever see you again? Whispered by a child in the hills of San Marcos, Guatemala

     

    “Without child care we won’t be able to keep our jobs,” spoken by a mama of three struggling to support her children in Oakland

     

    “We don’t work with Indians,” yelled at an indigenous elder in San Francisco by San Francisco Housing Authority worker

    These are the voices of survival radio-keep our media access or we will die radio – keep us on the air or we won’t stay alive radio- Up from the streets, shelters, jails, borders, hip hop beats, youth and elders teach, indigenous-people-led thrival radio. These are the voices of PoorNewsNetwork/PNN radio & PNN- TV – a revolution of media access by any means necessary. Radio, video and stories written, produced and edited by migrante workers in poverty, indigenous elders struggling to keep their land and homes, young folks of color being criminalized for the sole act of being young and of color, African peoples resisting profiling and po’lice murder,  mamas and daddy’s struggling with the myths of the budget cuts and the edges of false borders. Radio, video and written journalism launched by a houseless/landless indigenous disabled single mama of color and her daughter, me.

     

    Taking Back Our Voices

     

    “You and your mother are trash,” Without looking at us, our West Oakland landlord of two years mumbled his opinion of me and my mama, while throwing an eviction notice in our face.. After he dropped the papers he walked down the narrow pathway from our ex-home  to the street. At least he didn’t throw me up against the wall like the two previous landlords had done.

     

    After living through three illegal Oakland evictions in a row, I had written a story about our struggle to get and stay housed in dot-com era Oakland, I sent the story to two east bay media outlets and two “independent radio broadcasts”. All of them said different variations on, “This isn’t news, this happens everyday in the US”

     

    “How long have you and your mother lived in your vehicle,?” A strange amplified voice  seeped into the tape covered rear view window of our car, it was followed by a threatening, glass shattering knock on the remaining glass of our window. It was a knock that always meant police. And yet the voice didn’t fit the knock. I looked up from my crouched frozen position on the frayed vinyl seats of our old Ford Fairmont, only to find a small framed white woman with a large padded microphone in front of her. She was standing next to a tall po’lice officer who glared down at me, while she maintained a seemingly harmless smile. After multiple gentrification and poverty inspired evictions my mama and I ended up living in and out of our broke-down hooptie for the duration of my childhood and teenage years in the Bay Area facing criminalization and profiling and eventual incarceration for the act of being homeless in Amerikkka.

     

    “ Tell them to get the F** out of here,” my mother slapped the back of my head to get me to move, it was barely light on a cold Saturday morning in Oakland. I quickly brushed myself off and came out of the car, still wearing two blankets on top of my clothes.

     

    When I got outside the car  I found out the seemingly nice lady was a reporter doing a story on families  living in their cars. To do this report she felt it necessary to travel with the Oakland Police department. The first thing I  told her was that my mother and I were not ok with being recorded or having our pictures used for a story. After I spoke to her the police officer reminded me that it was illegal to park overnite in the city Of Oakland, but that he was letting me off “this time”.

     

    The following week we were one of five families pictured in an “expose” on  people sleeping in their cars, billed as Crimes of the Underground. 

     

    Since the inception of media production and academic research, people with race, class or economic privilege have received thousands of dollars from places like The Ford Foundation, a philanthropic organization one of many that exist in the US, with roots in the genocide and slavery and stolen wealth of poor and indigenous peoples as well as pure race science like eugenics, to create elaborate filters through which the voices of poor people of color can be “heard”.

     

    From research fellow-ships and ethnographic documentaries to anthropological surveys and studies, our voices are fetishized, deconstructed, studied and discussed; we are spoken to and talked about- and we only “have a voice” if our documentors deem them important to the goals and outcomes of their projects or our voices inclusion is required by the grant guidelines.

     

    We don’t need to be “given a voice”

     

    To be perfectly clear, we don’t need to be “given”, a voice, we have a voice, millions of multi-lingual, multi-generational, beautiful, complex, loud, expressive, angry, intelligent, powerful, amazing, voices, speaking in thousands of unrecognized dialects, unheard poems, un-recorded songs and street-based beats. What we don’t; have is our own radio transmitters, television and radio broadcasts, TV stations, dominant languages, libraries, publishing companies, digital access, and servers. Or like my sister in revolutionary media partnership at the Bay View, Mary Ratcliff so eloquently put it, “ People know of some censored stories through the powerful Project Censored out of Sonoma State university, but PNN is the voices of people that are Never Heard,” Her comment spurred me on to create a new ironic re-mix for the voices of us poor folks: Project Silenced

     

     

    Media equity sharing

     

    So how are the voices of poor mamas, migrante workers, youth of color in poverty, incarcerated peoples, disabled peoples truly heard, with our own stories, our own author-ship, within a dominant society that actively works to silence us. This is the revolution that is PoorNewsNetwork, The Bay View Newspaper,  the Block Report and other truly revolutionary, community located, poor people-run media and art projects.

     

    It is accomplished at POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PNN through a complex web of poor people-led education, organizing, consciousness growing,  and decolonizing about the myths of linguistic dominance (deconstructing literacy, etc)  in  media, education and art. As well it includes the sharing of media and resource access which are quantifiable forms of equity, by people  with institutional access, such as the web designers who volunteered to help POOR Magazine lost in digital apartheid for 13 years into our new 2.0 digital home at www.poormagazine.org, with skills and tools that are inherent in the lives of people not worrying about when and where their next meal is coming from.

     

    PNN Revolutionary Radio

     

    Since 1999 when my mother and I walked tentatively into the KPFA radio building to begin a broadcast that was originally slated for once a week, forged from the KPFA protests of 1999, with the goal of being inserted into the very clean, very NPR-ish Morning Show at KPFA

     

    From that first day in the station we began pushing the limits of media inclusion and resisting media exclusion with stories written, produced and reported by folks living in shelters, working in low-wage or no-wage day labor, incarcerated and profiled African peoples, peoples with disabilities, poor mothers and fathers on welfare, youth of color in poverty and resistance and on and on. We honored our removed and displaced ancestors and elders, our houseless and poverty scholars and consistenty re-ported and sup-ported on our comrades in struggle. We were constantly told we were including. “too much Spanish” from our Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia reporters. “Your reporters don’t speak right, or were too inexperienced.” Because they struggled with “literacy problems”,  learning disabilities or differently-abled speech patterns.

     

    Me and my Mama Dee, Joseph Bolden, Ingrid Deleon, Ken M, Leroy Moore & the Krip Hop Nation, Silencio Muteado, Queenandi, Bruce Allison, Ruyata Akio McGlothlin, Vivian Hain, Jewnbug, Tony Robles and many more poverty, disability, race and indigenous scholars continued walking into that building remembering it wasn’t about how bad they made us feel, but rather that this one channel of media access must remain open, by any means necessary.

     

    “With the widening gap of the haves and have-nots- digital apartheid is an everyday reality that PNN is struggling against- it is media at its purest- and the closest representation of what media is supposed to be, “ said Tony Robles, Revolutuionary Worker Scholar and co-editor of POOR Magazine

     

    For Mama Radio

    In 2006, my African-Boricua indigenous, ghetto fabulous mama passed on her spirit journey. Two hours before she left this plain, she was writing a short commentary about a small homeless puppy who had happily been living with a houseless guy in his shopping cart in Oakland until he was adopted (read: taken) by a “kind” yuppie who took pity on the homeless dog, but then eventually became annoyed by the puppy and gave him up to the SPCA “I know they are going to try to edit this part out,” My mama chuckled with her hilarious sense of irony that got us through all of the bad times we lived through together, was certain that the  revelation of the myths  of the well-intentioned is sometimes to hard to hear by well-intentioned academic researchers and middle-class producers of radio and media, “so let’s get ready for a fight…” she concluded.

     

    In 2011, our voices are in more struggle than ever, for housing, hellthcare, non-existent jobs, against racism, profiling po’lice terror and criminalization in Amerikkka., for unseen art, unheard music, constant resistance and a poor people revolution created by the poor people who experience it first-hand Tune in to PoorNewsNetwork radio & PNN-TV for the truth voices, the peoples voices- published weekly , experienced daily to stay alive voices-

     

    The Fight continues mama….


    Tags
  • TALK TO THE HAND: SPORTS (MUSIC, ETC) IN AMERIKKKA

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Redbeardedguy
    Original Body

    1. Madness, Metaphors, and Mud In Yer Eyes, Oh My!

    In 2010 we were "treated" to the stunningly obvious and madly maddening, information that there is a failure-to-graduate-from-high-school rate of 40%+ for Black youth in Amerikkka.  We also heard, just as the college/university basketball championship tournament known as March Madness was getting underway, that many prominent colleges and universities have an equally (or worse) record when it comes to graduating Black basketball athletes; some schools of higher larnin' have problems graduating many athletes period.

    Black hole.  Padded room.  Pick your metaphoric image.  The news went "thud!" and the response was a muffled silence, or the cheering of crowds that wanted to see their fave team just win, baby!  2011 is upon us and March Madness looms large again in the minds of sports fans.

    2.  A Little (Personal) History, part 1

    I guess everyone thinks they live in a place where sports seems like the true religion practiced.  I like to joke that Texas, where I grew up, is definitely one of those places.  I didn't become a fanatic, but I did get socialized into enjoying (watching, mostly) sports.  I loved the 1970's Dallas Cowboys, and several other teams.  My baseball addiction developed the same way--I (usually) follow the teams of the cities I've lived in, though that has been tough to do in places like San Francisco and Seattle--places where it has often seemed that good players get trained to go somewhere else (like the New York Yankees...) to get paid ever more outrageous sums of money.

    September 11th, 2001, did more than change some of the ways we live in Amerikkka now.  When the interrupted professional baseball season got back in gear, and the playoffs began, it was clear that the national (news) media had decided The New York Yankees were "America's Team", they "deserved" to win because of what happened to New York City. 

    The televised playoffs included many tv camera close-ups of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, which was incredibly annoying since many people seemed to want to forget his Po'Lice-friendly policies and his very public hatred of any art that wasn't safely innocuous and easy to love.  The camera close-ups ended, I think, because the network covering the play-offs got complaints.  They certainly got mine.

    Results?  I'm a mild-mannered Boston Redsocks fan.  Never thought I'd say that.  I sort of pay attention to the NFL, the end of the Michael Jordan Era led to a deflation in most of my interest in NBA basketball.  It's hard to ignore local (and other) college sports when something big happens--but there's so many more college/university teams I've never been able to wrap my tiny little mind around following THAT mess.  I loved pro tennis and golf for years, but, even though he has been the Mr. Big of golf, the only way I can get excited about golf again is if Mr. Woods returns to being Dr. Doom on the links.

    3. A Little History, part 2

    "Back in the day" (aka "back in MY day", not entirely true in my case since i'm not a Greatest Generation elder...) professional athletes had to work other jobs in their off seasons.  Their sports paychecks weren't big.  The pipeline for new guys coming up to replace the older stars was both the college/university-track athletes, semi-pro leagues, baseball's minor league network of teams, etc. 

    How things have changed.  For Amerikkkan football you've got the Pop Warner young kids football leagues that train the kids that have potential to play well in high school and beyond.  That system has become a major cog in the machine of sports in this country, spitting out kids and spitting out kids that can go all the way to the NFL if they can ignore all the usual distractions, plus the ones that children in poor neighborhoods deal with daily. 

    Basketball has the Nike Camps.  I met a teenager going to a Nike Camp when I was a laundromat attendant in Seattle.  My clue was the sheer massiveness of the amount of sports clothing, and socks.  My ghod, the socks.  The Nike Camps, sponsored by your friendly seller of gazillion dollar designer basketball shoes, are where potential NBA stars go to become better basketball players. 

    If you're a kid from a middle class or higher family, the pipeline includes your own family's connections.  For poor young athletes, having potential and being good is about the only thing they've got, despite all the ranting and raving going on all around them about the importance of a good education.  Lip service on steroids. 

    As has been said by someone, education ain't a Race To The Top, it's more like the steady tortoise beating the flashy wabbit, but what do "they" know?

    4.  Why are Haiti and the Dominican Republic In This Article?

    Haiti is in this article because The Dominican Republic is right next door on the island.  There wasn't much news from the DR after the earthquake, mostly stuff about how this or that person or organization that wanted to help could only get into Haiti via the DR.  Why relative silence from the DR?

    Silence usually means the government is doing a good job of keeping the disgruntled, the dissenters, from being heard.  The Dominican Republic might as well be called The Baseball Republic.  It is where MLB (Major League Baseball) players from the DR, as well as some homegrown Amerikkkan players go to play "Winter Ball" between the end of one MLB season and the start of Spring Training and the next season.

    Another pipeline for MLB is the DR, and other Caribbean nations, where children play street ball, get enrolled in the belly of the beast of the national/international obsession for the game (not to forget the intense desire not to be po' no mo'.  Those big paychecks the stars make are...magnetic); some of those children get exposed to fame early, traveling to Amerikkka for the Little League World Series. 

    The drive to get out of poverty leads to doing whatever it takes, By Whatever Means Necessary.  Disputes over the age of young players are common.  Scandals over the age of older players happen too.  One of the relief pitchers for a team that got into the 2010 MLB Play-offs was unable to go pro for several years because his visa was suspended in a scandal over a real or imagined plot to get players married to Amerikkkan women, get green carded-up, etc.

    5.  Whazzup, Doc? part 1

    If there's more "there" there for young poor athletes, how did we get to this 40%+ national non-graduation rate state of affairs for Black Amerikkkan youth?  How do we fix (I have some ideas on that, which require another article.) what's broke? 

    When I was a teenager in the 70's I hated hearing talking heads talk about education being about "training young people to be good workers".  I guess the old chestnut about "well-rounded educations" "well-rounded individuals" (or citizens) has been tossed on the bonfire of the buzzwords.  Capitalism needs workers, so all I hear is a-good-education-is-necessary-so-we'll-have-good-workers!  Yay. 

    Several of my facebook friends post oldie and new songs on their pages.  I listened to one particular hip-hop/rap song I liked, posted it to my page, then deleted it--I liked the beat, but the lyrics drove me nuts.  Still, one of the other major paths to some sort of success that has been walked by many young Black men and women in Amerikkka is still spitting out new artists and songs, much to the on-again, off-again chagrin of Conservative White Amerikkka.

    More of this might slowly, or quickly, fix some of the broke stuff.  At least one POOR Magazine person wants to produce a music CD, and the recent Mercado de Cambio saw the welfareQueens struttin' their stuff and rappin' hard and very conscious.  Vivian Hain is, as always, an amazing, intense performer, but all of the Queens spat some good stuff and I very much hope the welfareQeens make some beautiful music soon. 

    Hey, POOR has POOR Press.  Why not a POOR Records label?  The Mercado was also host to various friends, allies, and extended POOR Magazine family rapping, blowing my mind, having fun.  "Charles Pitts and the welfareQueens" (or any reasonable alternate name you want...) anybody?

    6. Whazzup Doc? Big money Capitalist sports must shrink!

    I once had dreams of being a professional bowler, but quit competing when the competition got more interested in getting part-time jobs so they could afford to date girls.  The competition kept me focused on something I enjoyed.  Somehow, I managed not to think about joining an adult league for, well, competition to keep me rolling.  My bad.

    There are many people in this country who play in amateur sports leagues.  Minor league baseball is popular because it's affordable entertainment.  You don't have to get a bank loan to take the family to a game! 

    Making sports more community oriented, more indigenous to neighborhoods, smaller rather than larger, makes sense.  Especially when you have Tea Baggers and others ranting and raving about red ink, among other things. 

    I'd much rather see more people playing baseball in the Summer--at the field (in San Francisco) on Turk Street between Gough and Laguna, near where I live--see more money spent on that sort of activity than what gets spent on the Bay-To-Breakers foot-race marathon and other "Bigger Is Better" entertainment events.

    Maybe that should be part of the debate over what money should or shouldn't be spent in the coming "here we go again" Budget Brawl In City Hall.

     

     

    Tags
  • I Grew Up Here

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body


    I never realized how bad it was until now.  I grew up here and have seen this place transform over the years.  My best friend used to live behind me.  We would tap on the wall to communicate with each other.  I have seen the good bad and the ugly in this neighborhood.  Freedom West Homes sits in the Western Addition, a very expensive piece of property as it sits firmly near City Hall , the Opera House, a school , fire department, transportation, Japantown.  Three hundred units holding people of different religions, ethnicities, economic, and educational backgrounds. 

    Every Family has a history.  I can tell you the history of almost every hardworking family that has lived on my block and outside my block.  Europeans, Africans, African Americans, Asians, Latinos all live in this co –op; some feeling victimized and hopeless with limited English skills and a lack of housing advocacy and resources.

    Hundreds of shareholders of Freedom West Homes Homes (Bethel Housing Corporation) are going to have their homes taken away from them.  Freedom West Homes is a 300 unit shareholder complex, likely one of the biggest housing projects that still exists.  The piggy bank is up for grabs and this cooperation has been purposely mismanaged by Alton Management. 

    About a month ago all shareholders were sent an “Amendment to Occupancy Agreement Carrying Charge  Increase”  The rate increase was not the main issue, however, the amendment itself used wording that suggested that we were residents and not shareholders.  The Amendment also suggested that we paid rent and not a rate.  As a result a meeting amongst only 20 – 30 residents out of the 300 units attended.  So we all crossed out the amendment  and made minor adjustments. We went to the office to turn them in with our checks and discovered that the offices decided to close down early.  We left our payment and “Re Amendment” inside the payment box and  a couple of days later our amendments and checks were returned to us.  The amendments were VOIDED and we were given ten days eviction notice by Alton Management of Oakland to pay the rent  without re-amending the amendment.  David Tse , who spearheaded the movement to save Freedom West Homes helped arrange a meeting with  San Francisco Board of Supervisors Ross Mirikarimi, as well as Supervisor Board President David Chiu. Ross Mirikarimi and David Chu.

    David Tse (470 board director of freedom west
    you are hereby required, on or before January 20, 2011, to pay said rent in full, or to deliver up possession of said premises to the undersigned or legal proceedings will be commenced against you to recover possession of said premises, to declare said agreement for possession forfeited, and to recover court costs and attorneys’ fees for the unlawful detention of said premises.  The undersigned elects to and does declare a forfeiture of the lease, rental agreement or tenancy under which you occupy the above premises if the rent is not paid in full on or before the above specified date.  You have ten (10) days within which to meet and discuss with the Administrator this Notice and the proposed termination of your tenancy.  Please be advised that you may only be evicted as a result of a judicial proceeding and if a judicial preceding for eviction is instituted you may present a defense at the trial.

    As for those who were intimidated and excepted the amendment we don’t know what the legal ramifications will hold for them in terms of their shareholder status. Signed without  proper legal counsel and fear of eviction and  kept it.  Then Billy Hutton from Alton Management tried to charge everyone a  $20 late fee.  The same guy that held up all the checks. 

    In addition to this, word is out that by 2012 this federal funded coop is supposed to be fully paid or the the co – op will shut down it s doors to its residence.  Alta management is going to be audited to see if they have been compliant with the federal funding of Freedom West Homes.  There has been so much mismanagement who knows what is going to happen after the audit? who are coming from Washington D.C.?  The Federal Funds we are trying to pay back  This is why the federal government is involved. 

    Over the past years Freedomwest Homes has been unstructured and unmanaged and has failed HUD inspections.  Several units are falling apart--plumbing, mold, worn down cabinets, bad carpets, etc.  Everything is coming to a termination point where the federal bond is ending meaning HUD pulls the plug on us allowing a developer to come through and buy up the property.  We don’t even know if we will be compensated as shareholders.  If Freedom West is bankrupt who will pay us?  People are going to be homeless or the developer  will have to pay us for our share.  We are one of the biggest federal funded complexes in San Francisco, if not the biggest.  So by putting pressure both on federal and local levels. The biggest issue is to get Alta management out due to mis-management.
     
    So far San Francisco Board of Supervisors David Chu and Ross Mirikarimi have been approached by residents of Freedom West and have agreed to look at the situation.  Nancy Pelosi’s office has also been advised.

    For updated information please see David Tse's blog at freedomwestdave@blogspot.com

    Another excellent Freedom West story in the Bay View
     

    Tags
  • GEORGE (GASCONE) AND THE SIX FORTY-SEVENS: ILLEGAL LODGING IN SAN FRANCISCO

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Bad News Bruce
    Original Body

    Will George Gascone, the new District Attorney of San Francisco, increase the number of arrests for 647E (the Illegal Lodging statute)?  This law goes back to Gold-Rush times, originally intended to stop people from claim-jumping someone elses gold mine.   

    The law, as written, can hurt people--especially poor or completely destitute people.  They can be charged and serve up to three months in jail for a first offense, for the crime of sleeping in public.  A sleeping bag (with cardboard beneath for insulation from the cold) is being considered "lodging".   

    Taxpayers get to give $600 a day, per person, to house anyone found guilty of 647E--or any other infraction that gets them "three hots and a cot" in the city/county jail.  When cities and states talk bankruptcy, they must be more creative options for housing.  Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms are $60 a night--doing the math, that's $600 in one month instead of $18,000 a month per person!

    This also cycles the money back into the community that is coughing it up. 

    Dear District Attorney Gascone:  This poverty scholar doesn't like wasting money any more than you do.  It's about time you got out of the fascist mentality that has been bankrupting San Francisco.  This idea isn't new, Dianne Feinstein did it when she was Mayor (1980)--giving vouchers to people to get into SRO's.  I hope you like this idea instead of believing 647E will magically solve all your problems. 

    This is the Loyal Opposition, a.k.a. Bad News Bruce Allison.  You could have more allies than you would believe if you did this.  Hospitals and psychiatric units are being overwhelmed, realtors are leaving 30,000 units vacant.  Where do you expect people to sleep?   

    If you want to respond, this poverty scholar is willing to talk--at the poormagazine office.

    Tags
  • Uncle Eddy

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    RIP to my uncle Eddy
    he always kept it steady
    and nobody s ever ready
    he had a woman named Betty
    she was never ever shady
    he was a boss who paid the cost
    even when he was homeless he'd floss
    he was a man with kids across the land
    from his homeland Mississippi
    to out here's bay of San Fran
    another man in my life who helped me know I can
    he left behind my cousins Edward and Evany
    they running businesses and selling things
    in colleges graduating
    everyone loved him at his office on Fillmore n Haight st
    my fathers best friend, they both had Ford Granada's matching
    he was loved and had alot to give
    Nobody wants to die but he taught us how to live
    RAM 

    Tags
  • Feb 18th @ Modern Times Bookstore Krip-Hop Nation Presents: Black Disabled Artists, Authors, Activists & Friends

    09/24/2021 - 09:12 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Leroy
    Original Body

     

    Press Release Berkeley, CA. SF Bay View Newspaper & Poor Magazine in conjunction with Krip-Hop Nation Presents: Black Disabled Artists, Authors, Activists & Friends for Black History Month 2011. San Francisco, CA February/2011 Krip-Hop Nation celebrates Black Disabled Artists/Authors/Activists & Friends for a weekend (February 18-20) of readings, music, discussions and panels all highlighting the artistic contributions of Black disabled artists/authors/activists and those who support them of yesterday and today focusing on music and literary.

    On February 18th at Modern Times Bookstore 7pm Krip-Hop Nation will have an Author panel of new books by Black disabled writers & friends including - Toni Hickman of TX Adarro Minton of New York, Allen Jones of San Francisco and friends of Krip-Hop Nation, DC Curtis & Bones Kendall of LA. All of the above authors have recently published their books from poetry, fiction, to non-fiction.

    Hip-Hop artist, Toni Hickman publish her own book, Chemical Suicide, Death by Association , professor, poet/fiction writer, Adarro Minton of New York no b.s. book, Gay, Black, Crippled will leave your mouth wide open; author Allen Jones of CASE GAME, is philosophical, bringing people into the 21st century in the areas of race, sexuality and ability with true stories on how he believes God has assisted him in challenging out dated thinking. Friends of Krip-Hop Nation DC Curtis & Bones Kendal of LA has wrote a dream of all Krip-Hop youth and that is to be on stage, on MTV with a record deal but in their fiction book, Truth & Pain starring the Gangsters & Retards in... The Mystique-cal Person-a of MC Cripple Crip that follows a group of disabled youth has a twist that will make you laugh, think, cry and sing. This group of authors coming from Texas, New York, LA and San Francisco will krip your mind and limp your stride as they spread their words and love.

    Where: Modern Times Bookstore 888 Valencia St. San Francisco

    When February 18th

    Time: 7pm but get there early and buy books and look around

    Sponsors: Modern Times Bookstore, Krip-Hop Nation, San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, Poor Magazine & I.D.E.A.L. Magazine

    Tags

Latest

test