2012

“We have no more rooms available!” The motel clerk’s voice was steel-like, hitting a crescendo of disgust with the “n” of her “no.” My stomach muscles contracted, holding a breath that had nowhere to go as I stood with now houseless, disabled African descendent elder and foreclosure victim Kathy Galves, 67.

Fellow foreclosure and eviction fighters rallied with Kathryn Galves outside the home she lost to foreclosure on Oct. 23.

Countless moments of my own terror and loss from the 10 years of living as a houseless child with my disabled mama flooded my mind with fear. “And,” the clerk added, “no pets are allowed.” The clerk concluded with a glance in the direction of Ms. Galves’ service dog who cowered at her leg, alternatively trembling and panting.

The story of the violent crime of foreclosure and its roots in capitalist greed has been covered, albeit rarely, in mainstream and independent media. But the never heard voices are those of the thousands of families and disabled elders – majority people of color, like Ms. Galves – who have been literally thrown into the streets post-foreclosure and are now homeless. These elders and families divorced from their home-owner status have become like so many of us already struggling houseless and poor peoples, subject to, and at the mercy of, criminalizing, discriminatory anti-poor people laws and societal hate.

When I applied for and was blessed to receive the Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellowship Award, I was clear that the focus of this series, which I dubbed “Voices in Poverty Resist,” would be to connect the dots between all of us poor people caught in a system which alternatively values a person based on how much material wealth and capital you have access to versus how large your heart or your spirit, your love and care-giving of land or elders or children is.

From this indigenous mama and daughter’s perspective, that meant focusing on the relationship between our shared struggles locally, statewide and nationally. It also meant honoring, speaking with, being with and sharing with our generations of folk in struggle. So we could all speak for ourselves to a self-determined resistance.

The first eviction

Kathryn Galves, a humble and strong woman with a smile that carries hope into every room she enters, who throughout her ordeal always appears draped in clothes the color of the sun, earth and its many flowers, had always lived by the subtle “rules” demanded by the so-called American Dream. A couple of years ago a health crisis set her back financially and she became prey to financial “bottom feeders,” as she called them, which eventually led her to the edge of foreclosure.

On April 12, notwithstanding all of her and her now deceased postal worker husband’s hard work, she and her sister were thrown out of their home of 40 years by the gangsters dressed in suits working for the “mob” known as Wells Fargo.

Once homeless – or houseless as I call it – she began a stay in a series of people’s spare rooms until she ended up in a motel plagued by bedbugs, on a varying nightly motel rate, suffering constant harassment from the hotel management. On Oct. 15, after over three months of residing at one motel, Ms. Galves was threatened with immediate eviction for no reason other than because it was tourist season.

At this point POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE, a grassroots, poor people-led arts, media and education organization me and my mama started out of our own homelessness and poverty, got busy fighting for Ms. Galves’ “tenant’s rights” which she had based on California Civil Code Section 1940.1, which states that if you have resided over 28 days in one location, you are protected by California rent control codes. Once we were able to establish her tenant’s rights, Ms. Galves was stabilized, sort of.

In collaboration with the Bay View newspaper, the Idriss Stelly Foundation and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, we held an emergency press conference entitled From Foreclosure to Homelessness to shed light on this tragic position that so many of our families and elders face, focusing on three disabled elders of color we were advocating for who are in the same position due to foreclosure.

Two weeks later, the owner of the motel offered Ms. Galves a “lower rate” and a bedbug-free room. Because she is tired and poor, trusting and not used to the onslaught of deceit and abuse faced daily by poor people who are seen as “unprotected” in this cut-throat society, and therefore seen as an easy target, she took the offer and within a week he evicted her, bringing us to last week.

No homeless elders allowed

After her eviction from the second motel, Ms. Galves and I walked into another motel in the Manilatown section of San Francisco that advertised a weekly rate. This small piece of downtown used to be inhabited by low-income Filipino and Chinese workers and is infamous for the well-known eviction resistance of elder workers against a wealthy developer from the famous International Hotel across the street, but now it’s home to young, mostly white people who have just arrived in the Bay Area to work in the rapidly expanding tech industry.

These young people, like most in the U.S., have been born and bred on what I call “the cult of independence,” a crucial part of the U.S. culture of separation and individualism. They are living away from their family homes, their elders, their ancestors and their communities of origin and therefore have no reference for eldership, humility or respect and instead view elders like Ms. Galves, holding 26 paper bags containing all of their worldly belongings, as nothing more than a “homeless woman” and therefore undeserving of a room in their trying-to-be-upscale motel.

We were finally able to secure one night with the hate-filled clerk after reminding her that Ms. Galves’ dog is a “service dog” with legal rights to accompany her. But the next day, they began to report that the dog was a “nuisance” and were trying to kick her out again from this hotel.

Meanwhile, Ms. Galves, viewed now merely as a “problem,” nuisance or at best to be pitied by motel management, service providers and bank-gangsters, refuses to give up. Like all us poor folks in pursuit of just a little peace and quiet that comes with being housed, she gets up every day, struggling with a breathing machine and a limp, and travels by bus all over town proactively in pursuit of an ever decreasing affordable housing stock, dutifully getting her name on every single three-five year long waitlist, her number in every single housing lottery pool and all along, still wearing and sharing that beautiful bright smile of hope with all of us weary survivors.

The following story was one of several written for the Voices of Poverty Resist series in workshops led by Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia. The workshops were held at LA CAN and CADRE in LA, HOMEFULNESS in Oakland and POOR Magazine in San Francisco. The series was launched by Lisa when she received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellowship Award focused on the criminalization of families and communities in poverty. Because Lisa leads with her indigenous values of inter-dependence and collaboration and has struggled with poverty and houselessness for most of her childhood with her disabled single mother of color and the grant allowed for looking at the way that language, culture and race influence public attitudes about peoples in poverty, she created this collective journalism process where all of our voices in poverty are speaking for ourselves to achieve a collective and truly inclusive challenge to the “otherizing” that usually happens by corporate and independent media producers when “covering” poverty issues or speaking for all of us poor peoples of color.

Moving to Skid Row: Voices of Poverty Resist!

by Karl Scott, 57

Moving to California caused me to really face the reality of the “social” aspect of life. After losing my job, home, furniture and car, I came to the LA area knowing I could get unemployment until I found a job. Well, unemployment made me fight to get in, and jobs were hard to find.

With no money and no place to go, I was forced to deal with a system that I knew nothing about. But the people assigned to help me had attitudes like everyone “stinks.” I refused to give in and let my spirit be wiped away by mere humans. This caused me to reevaluate my thoughts by asking and being honest with myself. Was I like that? Did I think like that? Do I react like that?

With determination, I found housing in “America’s most homeless capital” area. This helped me to deal with and understand what people go through in life by being stereotyped in the “Skid Row” group. I was introduced to LA CAN and became impressed by an organization in Skid Row that was friendly, honest and willing to help people without funding. So now my life is full of new meaning and much deeper respect for every human.

Her UGG boots rested delicately against her matching leggings while her $800 dog sniffed a man who was sitting on the sidewalk near a planter in the skid row area of Los Angeles. He was accompanied by a shopping cart which contained several neatly layered black hefty bags piled on top of each other.

It had been over 20 years since me and my mama were houseless on the streets of LA, sleeping in our car and facing police harassment for the sole act of being poor and without a roof in the U.S. The only place we could go to get a break was skid row because it was the one place the police seemed to leave us alone.

Now I was back, with my fellow Po’ Poets/Poetas POBRE’s of POOR Magazine to speak with, be with and share with sisters and brothers at LA Community Action Network for the Voices in Poverty Resist Series. But something was bizarrely wrong.

Now the streets of skid row, where so many of us poor people go because we can’t go anywhere else, were filled with high-end stores called Pussy Pooch and Bark Park, selling personalized dog portraits and hand-made cat sweaters, rich people restaurants, ladies with designer dogs living in elevated gated communities and “artist lofts” built on the top of single room occupancy hotels (aka poor people hotels) and the final irony, street after street colonized by movie industry companies for movie sets, using this poor people enclave because it leant “authenticity” to their “crime dramas.”

“We are constantly police harassed down here,” said Mary X, an African descendent mother of three who lives in a single room occupancy hotel off of Sixth Street in Skid Row. “The cops ride up on you for no reason and ask you where you are going or what you are doing. I no longer stay in a shelter because every time I did they would threaten to take my children away.” Mary’s voice trailed off as she spoke the last sentence.

She was right: It is not only illegal to be houseless in the U.S.; it is illegal to be houseless and a parent. In New York the mere mention of the “h” word, i.e., homeless, would be enough to get a CPS (child protective services) referral.

“I am a good parent. My children go to school on time and are fed, clothed and loved. Isn’t that enough?” Mary concluded our conversation because she had to pick up her 6-year-old son from his after-school program.

Mary and her little family were just a few of many people we spoke with living in the now deeply gentrified skid row area of Los Angeles, struggling with poverty, meager welfare or Social Security payments, overpriced rent or, like Mary, holding down two or three low-paying jobs just to survive. But notwithstanding all of those challenges, one of their biggest foes was the increasing gentrification, subsequent displacement and never-ending police harassment of skid row, which is similar to so many of our poor peoples of color neighborhoods across California and the nation.

The position of poor families, houseless families, elders, adults and youth is always under attack – mostly to perpetrate the myth that so-called “real poverty” doesn’t exist in the U.S. – and so if we appear on the streets with our belongings, in shelters with our children, in our cars with our blankets, or in doorways or empty lots with the jacket on our backs, we are constantly under scrutiny, police supervision and/or forced to be engaged in social work provision whether we want it or not. The intensity of this scrutiny seems to rise and fall and be at the mercy of where rich people want to dwell.

In this way our stories as poor people in urban areas across the nation and arguably the world are tragically connected. And for our rural brothers and sisters in poverty, our stability hangs in the balance depending on if we happen to be living on or near a natural resource like water, precious metals, natural gas or a potential waste dump location.

According to the mainstream society, there is no “space” for us. Real estate and so-called “market forces” take priority over human beings, especially those of us poor human beings who don’t fit into the myth of the bootstraps used by media and legislators to rationalize the hate and criminalization we constantly face.

No, it doesn’t matter about institutional racism, classism, white supremacy or corporate theft of land and lives, how hard our lives are, how many times we have tried to make it like me or my mama, or how hard we work like Mary X – we are still “lazy,” stupid or “the homeless people” who only deserve to be sniffed by dogs. This is why it is urgent for us to be writing, investigating and documenting our own self-determined stories in our own voices, asserting our own solutions and actively fighting for our civil and human rights.

Write them like folks are doing with the Equal Voice Project, like we do at Prensa POBRE/POOR Magazine and the Bay View newspaper, and fight for them like our brothers and sisters at LA Community Action Network. They have been fighting the business improvement districts and the private security forces and the police harassment by launching their own “security force,” which they call CommunityWatch, as an alternative private security presence in the community as well as working in tandem with Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) to fight for a much needed Homeless Bill of Rights.

To create this important document, WRAP members created a Without Housing Organizers Toolkit, which connects the dots of the deep and violent cuts in housing budgets, the police enforcement of streets for business interests and the ways in which poor and houseless people end up being targeted as criminals for the sole act of being poor.

Later that day we drove out of the now oddly bourgeois skid row, which in addition to all the designer pet stores and gated condos was covered in police patrols. I saw the man who’d been subjected to the dog sniffing earlier. This time the police were issuing him a citation and throwing his belongings in a dump truck.

The following story was one of several written for the Voices of Poverty Resist series in workshops led by Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia. The workshops were held at LA CAN and CADRE in LA, HOMEFULNESS in Oakland and POOR Magazine in San Francisco. The series was launched by Lisa when she received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellowship Award focused on the criminalization of families and communities in poverty. Because Lisa leads with her indigenous values of inter-dependence and collaboration and has struggled with poverty and houselessness for most of her childhood with her disabled single mother of color and the grant allowed for looking at the way that language, culture and race influence public attitudes about peoples in poverty, she created this collective journalism process where all of our voices in poverty are speaking for ourselves to achieve a collective and truly inclusive challenge to the “otherizing” that usually happens by corporate and independent media producers when “covering” poverty issues or speaking for all of us poor peoples of color.

Gentrifying skid row

by Steve Richardson aka General Dogon

Voices in Poverty Resist Series, Los Angeles

My name is General D, and I was born and raised on skid row, got into my addiction on skid row, was arrested for bank robbery (feeding my serious addiction) and sentenced to 18 years in state prison. I entered state prison as a brain-dead Christian and leader of Denver Lanes Blood gang in South Central. I was sent to Corcoran SHU program where I did five years in the hole.

There I met George Jackson’s comrade who had been in the hole since 1972. He re-educated me about who I am as a Black Hue-man, about God, and the principles of revolution. Basically I did the Malcolm X transformation: came into prison a mis-educated gang member and paroled as a member of the Black Guerilla Family in 2004.

After 11 years I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to fight for social justice. I came to LA because I had a complaint about the police and private security guards. I was told by Bilal Ali, a Black Panther, “We don’t talk about it; we be about it.”

He gave me a camera and clipboard and said go get some evidence and come back. I went, got evidence of police and private security guards racial profiling and targeting low-income Blacks during gentrification. I came back to LA CAN. Bilal, Pete White, the director of LA CAN, and I talked. We decided to create a community watch program to monitor LAPD and private security to ensure no biased policing was going on.

In 2006, LA Mayor Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bratton released a Safer Cities Initiative on skid row which brought 110 extra pigs to skid row, making it the most policed community in America. Their goal was to gentrify skid row.

They had a six-month plan to wipe out poor folks so that the yuppies can walk their $5,000 French poodles down Main Street without seeing Ed the wino and Ted the panhandler. For the last six years since then we’ve been at war fighting for the land, and LA CAN has led the charge.

I’m the point man on our community watch team. I was sitting in meetings with Mayor Villaraigosa, meeting with Chiefs Blatter and Beck. I’ve been to the LAPD training camps giving them information on how not to participate in racial profiling. I’ve been to LAPD 4K trainings on policing people with mental disabilities. I’ve helped ACLU bring lawsuits against the city for violating rights of homeless people. I’ve worked with UCLA to document police brutality. I’ve been in many newspapers, books and movies.

I’ve been arrested for felony and facing 25 years to life twice for doing this work. The United Nations has requested information about me because of a report they got saying the government is targeting me.

And the story goes on because I’m still fighting daily. As a three-striker my biggest fear is being struck out with 25 to life before I can finish my mission. Can’t stop, won’t stop. All power to the people.

“I have no job and need to care for my 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. I’m really depressed ‘cause as an immigrant I really can’t get a good job, but I wish for my dream to become a massage therapist and provide for my kids. But for now I have to deal with my own demons, which I call my problems. Because I don’t have a job, I’m thinking of giving my unborn son up for adoption.” – Jacqueline M., incest victim and migrante warrior mama of two children, CADRE LA

Throughout my childhood, my mama used to tell me stories of the violent abuse done to her poor body as a child of color living without a parent, unprotected, in foster homes, orphanages and shelters – stories that were so horrific I could barely listen without crying. This pain and multiple layers of so much trauma that was never healed was what eventually disabled her so she could not “compete” in the non-stop hustle-hamster wheel of capitalist life and eventually led to our homelessness.

These unseen scars are what so many of our single parents in poverty are struggling with, living with, pushing through. Add the requisite criminalization of poor parents through welfare systems, child protective services, landlords and school systems and, for immigrant parents, the anti-immigrant hate and racism; it is a constant battlefield.

In my case my mama went underground when we became houseless because she was constantly being threatened by CPS and not allowed to enroll me in school because we didn’t have an address. In the case of parents of color with children enrolled in the public schools, which are informed by white supremacy, it is a constant struggle to make sure our children get educated, rather than pushed out, criminalized and/or mis-educated.

“The struggle with my children’s school is the risk of being kicked out of school. And not knowing how to help, I am devastated. And right now I’m fighting with my 17-year-old for being a graffiti vandal. And I’m struggling with my 22-year-old with drugs. God is giving me the strength to keep on fighting. – Maria X, a rape victim and migrante mother of three children, CADRE LA

Mamas and daddies, like Ingrid de Leon from San Francisco, Eddie X, Jacqueline M and Teresa V from Los Angeles and all of the powerful African-American and migrante mamaz I was blessed to be with and speak with at the Voices in Poverty Resist workshop series we did at POOR Magazine in San Francisco and at CADRE (Community Assets Development–Redefining Education) in South-Central Los Angeles, spoke on their struggles to not only care for their children in lives that were constantly under pressure from landlords and employers and poor people health care providers, but also school systems that were rife with racist policies, high stakes testing and tracking of their children. At CADRE, the Black and Brown families in resistance work diligently to fight for their children’s education justice through multiple campaigns, speakouts, leadership trainings and community based surveys and direct outreach efforts.

“I left Guatemala to go north to Mexico and emigrate to the United States. To no longer be abused. No more abuse!” – Sarbella X, migrante warrior mama and incest survivor, CADRE LA

When I first met mi hermana en la lucha (my sister in the struggle) Ingrid De Leon, warrior mama of four children who crossed three borders just to support her family in Guatemala by any means necessary, she was fighting for the rights of immigrant mothers with her stories on POOR magazine’s Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia (Voices of Immigrants in Resistance) column.

She had struggled with the sorrow of being separated from her beloved children due to these criminalizing borders, the constant struggle to stay employed and not deported, scars of domestic abuse back in her country and multiple forms of abuse, including the rape that led to the birth of her last child in the U.S. “Writing is fighting; it is one of the things that keeps me able to stay alive through so much pain,” she told me.

In our visit to CADRE, a non-profit organization that works to redefine the role of parenting in South Los Angeles schools, we met with several powerful mothers who are fighting a racist and classist school system that criminalizes, tracks and tests poor youth of color in an attempt to raise their schoolwide test scores and reach the insane “standards” that are put on the increasingly budget strapped public schools in the U.S.

These mamaz and daddies work hard beyond their own struggles with poverty, abuse, racism and a pervasive anti-immigrant society to ensure that their children are not “pushed out” of school into the school to prison pipeline.

“My son was profiled and accused of doing something based on the fact that his last name was the same as another child who committed an alleged crime,” said one of the migrante warrior mamaz in the group, and then she began to cry, “The injustice was so deep that he eventually dropped out of school and to this day has no idea what he will do in his life.”

But these mama and daddy warriors put their own struggles deep down into their own already wounded hearts and continue to struggle for their children’s safety, justice and education – or as my mama used to say, keep on keeping on no matta what!

The following story was one of several written for the Voices of Poverty Resist series in workshops led by Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia. The workshops were held at LA CAN and CADRE in LA, HOMEFULNESS in Oakland and POOR Magazine in San Francisco. The series was launched by Lisa when she received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellowship Award focused on the criminalization of families and communities in poverty. Because Lisa leads with her indigenous values of inter-dependence and collaboration and has struggled with poverty and houselessness for most of her childhood with her disabled single mother of color and the grant allowed for looking at the way that language, culture and race influence public attitudes about peoples in poverty, she created this collective journalism process where all of our voices in poverty are speaking for ourselves to achieve a collective and truly inclusive challenge to the “otherizing” that usually happens by corporate and independent media producers when “covering” poverty issues or speaking for all of us poor peoples of color.

It made us feel like criminals

by Eddie, CADRE LA

In 2002 my wife and I both lost our jobs. We were homeless with three children under 10 years old. We were forced to share a house with another family.

We lived in one room, all five of us. We slept and watched TV and everything in this room. We had to share the bathroom and the other parts of the house with 10-13 other people.

We were not allowed to use the backyard. It stayed locked like we would steal something. It made us feel like criminals. But through this experience we have come closer to God and each other. It made us trust and believe in God, trust and believe in each other as a family.

On November 14, 2012, I spoke before the Berkeley Unified School District on behalf our contingent McKinney-Vento. Families and students at BUSD demanding that services at BUSD not be cut. My daughter and a BUSD employee asked me why I spoke with so much anger, as poor and an African-American parent, the District see us as invisible. They make plans for us, about us with consulting us.  Many times this plans are ineffective, inefficient and to quote my daughter “stupid”.  Power concedes nothing without a demand, and this demand better be load and unequivocal or they will pat you on the head like a poodle and send you on your way.

         On September 19, 2012, I spoke at a BUSD Board Meeting in the public comment portion of the meeting about the continuing decrease in McKinney-Vento Act funding over the past three years from $45,000 to $17,000. The Board requested that the District explain this at the next meeting on October 24, 2012. The District Staff postponed their presentation until November 14, 2012. However, me, my daughter Iris Stegman, Don Kwon (a McKinney-Vento Parent), and Irma Parker (the Parent Liaison at BHS) spoke on the inadequacy of the services provided by BHS.  The Co-Interim Superintendents in their informed the Board that assistance was not being cut. Even though the funding for McKinney-Vento position at the District Office Central Enrollment was reduced by more that 50 percent.
 
        The Staff at BUSD has performed that classic bureaucratic disingenuousness manner. First they act as if they don't know what you are talking about, then they lie and they try to confuse the rules and regulations, and then they put this veneer of expertise while violate our right to free and quality education.

        Before the November 14, 2012, Board Meeting the District Staff presented a proposal that  no longer spouted that lie they weren't cutting funds. Now the District was “decentralizing services’.  They proposed to hire a new full-time counselor at BHS to assist 394 the McKinney-Vento Students and Families at BHS and the 130 students at BHS that were at identified as disruptive students.  According to Western Association School and College (WASC) BHS Self Study 130 students accounted for 40 percent of the all-incident reports at BHS.   

        This would create not just unrealistic but also an unsustainable caseload for that position. If this were truly a half time position, individual performing these duties would be only able to meet with each of these student a half an hour per month.

        In addition, the Counselor would be assigned to provide McKinney-Vento eligible 394 students and families. The position was created to satisfy (WASC) because the BHS is in danger of losing their accreditation for its failure to serve it most needy students. The creation of the large caseload with students with diverse needs is unrealistic to expect our children receive the assistance they are entitled to under the McKinney-Vento Act.

        The BUSD’s proposal is unlawful. The McKinney-Vento Act specifically prohibits the segregation services at any school site.  The combining of services with this one position stigmatizes McKinney-Vento families and students which is also unlawful.   More than 10 percent of students at BHS are eligible for assistance under the McKinney-Vento. Many of our kids are just like other students. Some are high performing, other low performing and other in the middle.  So why are they sending our kids to the Counselor for the disruptive students?   

        As a low-income, African-American parent sometimes I wish I could tell when bureaucracies were just plain negligent or incompetent, or whether the actions are because of their white supremacy and/or discrimination against poor folks.  As it pertains to its obligations under the McKinney-Vento the BUSD Staff proposal is lacking.  The Act states that School Districts can’t stand idly by wait for McKinney-Families to walk into the District Offices for enrollment. Districts must conduct outreach. The BUSD proposal has no plan for outreach.

        In addition, District Staff proposes Family Engagement Coordinators dispenses McKInney-Vento services at the elementary school. Yet, they fail to mention that out of the 11 elementary school only 6 are assigned a Family Engagement Coordinator who works part-time at each school site; and that the Family Engagement is currently a two-year pilot program and just began two months ago. The BUSD wants to shift many of the McKinney-Vento Act responsibilities to already overworked Middle Counselors after a brief training. This proposed decentralization by the BUSD is a lessening of the services. Again, the Act mandates that School District enroll students immediately. One more aspect of the Act is that they are to educate parent of rights under the Act, and give them immediate services.  Without trained staff at the District Office this is impossible.

        The proposal is full is unlawful propositions and inadequate services to the McKinney-Vento students and families. The issue of the Achievement Gap and disparity performance BHS is an injustice. Yet, Berkeley High School is not just the teacher, principals or counselors, nor is it the just the BUSD Staff, or the students and parents.  It is all of us, and we all of play a part.

        However, do you think if sons of middle class white families were performing at a level in any academic quantitative metric, someone at the school would get terminated?  An emergency session would call and plan and would construct with input from the parents, because middle folks know what is the best interest of the kids but not us because we are poor.  The plan by the BHS is a top down. If WASC had not called BHS to task for lack of services to those disruptive students would the BHS Staff and District Staff come with any plan to service those students? We can only guess what is the racial and ethnic make-up of those disruptive students, I am assuming that many of these students are low-income and/or students.  I referred to the District’s Plan as doubling down on mediocrity, because Black, Brown and low-income students are receive mediocre service. Until, District and School views the parents of equals and stakeholder in their solutions, and look what policies and procedure have negative impact on low-income students and students of colors  

        As poor people we used to having service that are inadequate and having are rights violated.  The BUSD District plan does this it violates our families and us right to privacy, and stigmatizes our children. We know that this Counselor position will not have the necessary time to serve our community.  As the old saying goes “you a put lipstick and wig on a pig, but its still and pig”.

        Most Board Members have been respective to our message and in its wisdom that ordered that the District Staff meet with McKinney-Vento families and students and discuss how this McKinney-Vento Act families and students. We are organizing groups of parents and students to inform the District Staff what are our needs.  In additionally, we have made contact several law firms and nonprofits have informed us that they District proposal is unlawful and will assist in our fight.   

        It has been said that the American Educational system is serving a pipeline to the penal system for our children.  It has also been said that one can look at a student’s zip code to predict their academic achievement.   This has created a Caste System in the BUSD, in which we can look at a student’s race an effective predictor of a student’s academic achievement. Like America, the City of Berkeley has too much and many resource to continually under serve it low-income students, but do we have commitment.   On December 12, 2012, at 7:30pm at 2134 Martin Luther King Way, Berkeley, here will be a school board meet to discuss this issue.

       

       



      

“My 17-year-old son was murdered by the LAPD because he was Black and poor,” said Lucy, a very young looking 30-something mama who spoke with me about her son but cautioned that she doesn’t want to reveal his name because her distraught and confused family is working with a lawyer to try to get a lawsuit launched. She told me that her son was doing nothing except standing on a corner with other Black and Brown young men in a low-income neighborhood of Los Angeles. As her voice trailed off into a river of tears, my mind flashed onto the many police-murdered young men and women I have reported on and supported, documented and wept over throughout my years as a revolutionary journalist.

From 15-year-old Derrick Louis Gaines, killed for walking while young and Black in Daly City, to Alan Blueford, murdered for “running” while young and Black in Oakland; from Kenneth Harding Jr., killed for not having a $2 bus transfer, to Mario Ramiro, 23, of Vallejo to Raheim Brown Jr., murdered by Oakland school police, or the recent tragic case of young, hard-working father and immigrant, Jose de la Trinidad, shot by police in Southern California as he was leaving a family birthday party, and young warrior Idriss Stelley, shot multiple times in a movie theatre by San Francisco police because they were not trained in how to handle a mental health emergency.

All of these men of color and so many more share one thing: They live in a society informed by white supremacist values that automatically assumes and places criminal intent on people of color, on young people of color, and on people who look “homeless.” When I launched the Voices in Poverty Resist series focusing on the criminalization of families in poverty, I knew I needed to include the tragic stories of these young men and their families.

The irony is that with a few exceptions many of these young men weren’t poor, in many cases they were from families who would be considered middle class. So how does this fit into a series on poverty? Because poverty and race are conflated in this society, because racism informs every aspect of our lives and especially the myths and beliefs held about our so-called community safety and security.

Because many of our communities of color are considered ghettos, “barrios,” “bad neighborhoods” and/or dangerous areas based on a systematic blighting that goes on from city government and real estate snakes (yes, I did say snakes) who intentionally blight thriving communities of color by making liquor licenses easily available and seeding the destruction through zoning and building laws and then watching the neighborhood fail so real estate prices fall and eventually the neighborhoods can be bought up by speculators and banks only to be inhabited by non-indigenous communities who call in police forces and private security forces to make it “safe” for them, using terms like “cleaning up” about the poor people of color who lived there all along.

This insidious process is fueled by the speed at which a neighborhood is being gentrified – i.e., a neighborhood’s property is being sold, built, demolished, refurbished, rehabilitated, swallowed up – and includes gang task forces, gang injunctions and private security forces. All that then results in the over-patrolling and criminalizing of the very people who were always there.

From the Mission District in San Francisco, to West, North and now East Oakland, several neighborhoods in LA, young Black and Brown men, convening, talking, laughing, being young, are viewed as “dangerous,” “suspect” or criminal. Laws like the gang injunction are instituted and applied, and eventually we are completely wiped away like we were never there.

The racism and criminalization extends to laws like sit-lie and stop and frisk, which have blown across the U.S. at a clip and are intended to make it even more illegal than it already is for im/migrant day laborers who happen to be soliciting work on corners and sidewalks and face constant nimbyistic (not in my backyard) attacks. Houseless people who sit in parks and on public benches are seen as criminal because somehow they are unclean, so these parks and public streets are only slightly public for some of the public.

In the case of Derrick Louis Gaines, he was a slight, skinny young man, who was disabled, walking from McDonald’s past a gas station, immediately viewed as “suspect” because he was walking while young and Black in a part of the Bay Area known for its racial profiling and police harassment and brutality against people of color.

In the case of Alan Blueford Jr., he was standing together with other young men of color in East Oakland, a neighborhood seen as “dangerous,” covered in police patrols. And with Kenneth Harding Jr., he was on a public bus in San Francisco at a stop in Bayview Hunters Point, a majority people of color neighborhood, which was covered in police and transit police patrols, waiting, stalking any young person who couldn’t prove he’d paid the fare by showing a transfer.

In the case of Idriss Stelley, shot by police responding to a 911 call to a theatre, his tragic story launched a resistance movement and organization, the Idriss Stelly Foundation by his powerful warrior mama, Mesha Irizarry, to ensure that police forces are trained in mental health protocol but also to tirelessly advocate and resist with and for other mothers and families who have lost their babies to this senseless violence.

In addition to the powerful resistance work of Mesha, which most recently includes working to stop the use of tasers in San Francisco, we must work internally and externally to resist this notion that we need military-like police armed with guns and other deadly weapons to provide us with “security.” There are groups like POOR Magazine, a grassroots, non-profit organization that practices a “no police calls ever” policy, relying on our indigenous circle to address accountability and community safety. As well, groups like the Peoples Community Medics in East Oakland train people to help each other in the case of emergencies rather than rely on police and paramedics, who rarely arrive in time to save lives of victims of murder or other violence in our communities.

“He was just standing there. They (the police) claimed he looked like a suspect,” Lucy said between silent tears. Stories like that of Lucy’s son are the norm rather than the exception. And if the police aren’t killing us, we are killing ourselves. “My son died from gun violence last year. He was 15. He was a good boy, never got into nothing wrong,” another mother standing near us entered the conversation. She said a fight broke out at a birthday party he was attending, and he was an innocent bystander caught in the fray.

Questions such as strangely easy access to deadly weapons, the constant media images and portrayals of violent images pumped into our children’s young, unformed brains, budget cuts to our community centers, school and athletic programs so there is nothing else for our young folks to be active in, all come up.

There is no one or simple answer. But one thing is clear: As African peoples, Indigenous peoples, Raza peoples, we have been given lessons on how to “raise” our children to bring them up in “a good way.” If we leave it up to politricksters, the criminal injustice system, prison industrial complex or the police, they will just come up with more stop and frisk laws, gang injunctions and sit-lie laws to criminalize, incarcerate or just plain murder us.

We must go back to our ancient ways, our deep structures, as they say in Black psychology. Our elders must be supported, listened to and included. Our mamas and fathers must be supported to raise our children in a good way – in the ways we know and were instructed by our ancestors, upon whose mighty shoulders we are always standing. We must bring it back to call it forward.

In the case of Lucy’s son and all of these mamas’ sons, I continue to weep, to walk, to act, to pray, to educate and to write to end this racism, criminalization and murder. The struggle continues, the tears keep coming and the hope is alive.

The following story was one of several written for the Voices of Poverty Resist series in workshops led by Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia. The workshops were held at LA CAN and CADRE in LA, HOMEFULNESS in Oakland and POOR Magazine in San Francisco. The series was launched by Lisa when she received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellowship Award focused on the criminalization of families and communities in poverty. Because Lisa leads with her indigenous values of inter-dependence and collaboration and has struggled with poverty and houselessness for most of her childhood with her disabled single mother of color and the grant allowed for looking at the way that language, culture and race influence public attitudes about peoples in poverty, she created this collective journalism process where all of our voices in poverty are speaking for ourselves to achieve a collective and truly inclusive challenge to the “otherizing” that usually happens by corporate and independent media producers when “covering” poverty issues or speaking for all of us poor peoples of color.

Hope for young Black men: Voices of poverty resist!

by Jose Vanderburg, 24

When a child loses hope, I feel a whole lot of things are wrong. Young Black men start off in this America with a disadvantage. Dreams are not only deferred; they are often stolen or seem unobtainable. I often struggle to find hope. But I usually do through my fellow brothers and sisters in the struggle.

I just lost my job because of some injustice. I was struggling yesterday to find hope, to believe in my dream of becoming an executive director, when Kevin Winn, a three striker, told me his story that inspired me to dream again. Kevin Winn started his own company off the bottom called Nini’s House of Fragrance. It’s a line with body and house products. Kevin told me about all he went through to start his business, where he came from, and how I too could win.

His first job growing up in the ghetto of St. Louis was on an ice cream truck. He, like me, had grown up in a struggling home. At 20, with an AA in Economics he found himself working as a swimming coach, leading a Hispanic kid out of Watts to win a Junior Olympic gold medal at the expo park where I used to work.

At 26 he had his first child. I explained to him my desire for a child. He encouraged me to stay focused because once he had his daughter, he got into drugs and alcohol and was in prison three and a half years. Kevin and I tried to figure out why Blacks with degrees end up in jail. It’s because we can’t figure out how to – or have no way to – apply our education skills to the streets we go back to. I expressed my frustration in finding a job and how I have to hustle too.

He told me he thought that way too. He was sober his second time out of jail, so he sold but didn’t use no more. But then after voluntary manslaughter he got 15 years in state prison.

At this point I could see my life just like Kevin’s. How easily I could be cycled onto the conveyer belt to becoming another prison statistic. Kevin and I both agree that young Blacks go into jail with no love or support. Even out of jail, we get little support. But we do run into change. The transformation of our minds comes from meeting a good role model.

Mine is Pete White at LA CAN and Kevin’s is Magic Johnson. Kevin said in prison he read about a brother who got out of jail and took acting classes and got a show on Fox. Young Black dreams can revive themselves with the story of another brother’s struggles.

In jail he wrote a business plan and got out and started a business with the last $175 of GR. He named the business after his daughter Shanika and called it Nini House. After hearing Kevin’s story I had hope. I got hope through my brother’s struggles and victories. Who’s got a story to tell?

Twas the mic before Kripmas and all through the spot

Every Krip Hopper was rapping the mic they had rocked

The chrome was shining on every wheelchair

In hopes that Krip Nations all over would soon be there

The crowed was just watching their necks bombing heads

While visions of Krip Vixens danced making them sweat

With mirages of Nicki I turned my cap to the back

I rolled up to her and she fell on my lap

When out of the crowd I heard a big scream

KRIP NATION FOREVER AND EVER WE DREAM

Closer to the yelling I rolled to the fans

Tore off my chest strap and dived in their hands

The moon on my face as the passed me like Dro

Once back on the stage I sat lit up with a glow

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

Back comes Nikki Minaj with 8 Halley Berrys around my chair

With me as the driver I hit my joy-stick

Dropped the mic and watched it smoke up the air type thick

More rapid than eagles my verses they came,

As I hollered and shouted calling my Krip Nation by name

Now Jahid, now Pete-Ski, now Skandoe, now Harris

Come Malcolm, call OUTTHERE we meet Leroy in Paris

To the front of the plane, first class we booked

We wrote rhymes, and verses , the chorus and hook

The Stewardess spiked my drink before I sipped it down

The pilot both vixens dressed in all white gowns

Flight took 12 hours and some minutes

6 hours with 1 then 2 before the landing was finished

But then on the runways the tires heard screeching

Masked out the sound of the pilots both screaming

When the bus pulled us in I came through the door

I never let the flight go off course any more

I was dressed in fatigues from my head to foot

Jet lag set in from all that time we took

Mic cord plugged into my battery pack

Over the airport's speakers I started to rap

My voice heard throughout to the baggage check

I nominated Leroy our President

As he came in the spot limousines outside

His Lex, min Cadillac chromed riding side by side

We rode to the tower taking up the streets

Oui Oui ladies yelled c'est la vie

We got  out the limos awaits a red carpet and confetti

Happy New Years they cheered heard all over the city

Leroy plugged in the mic to the tower's intercom

Paris was amazed by this legend phenomenon

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know hip hop wasn't dead

A poet he is and spoke for a while

Had the ladies sitting down Indian style

Pulling out his back pocket a long stem rose

Brought smiles on their face tears dripping of nose

Back to the limos, to the team gave a halla,

Watch the towers light up from night til tomorra

I heard Leroy exclaim, ere we drove out of sight,

Krip Hip Hop to all, and to all a Krip Night

Professir X  of New Jersey USA

“The police have issued over 12 citations to us in this month alone, just for parking on this empty Bayview street overnight. We are not sure where else to go,” explained Janize El, a slight, weary-eyed mother of three who lives in her van with her children and parks in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood close to where she used to be housed.

“I lived in the same apartment for years and then they converted it to a condo and kicked us out. I tried to find another affordable place in the Bayview, but every landlord said my credit wasn’t good enough or charged so much I could never afford to pay the rent on my meager income,” Janize concluded in a tired voice. Janize is a hard-working mama, holding down two low-wage jobs, taking care of her children and now also caregiving for an elder parent while navigating the endlessly criminalizing world of houselessness. To be specific, vehicular houselessness, aka living in yo’ car.

Reporting and supporting as a revolutionary poverty journalist, I have done multiple stories on the increasing criminalization suffered by houseless peoples in the U.S. As a daughter raised in a houseless family, I was personally cited, arrested and eventually incarcerated for the act of being houseless and living in the car with my mama.

One of the main points of my book, “Criminal of Poverty; Growing Up Homeless in America,” was to raise awareness about the fact that it is illegal to be houseless in the U.S. – and that this criminality of poverty is very much race- and class-based. Cities and police forces treat new and shiny recreation vehicles – RVs – driven by elder Caucasion people markedly differently than people of color or poor whites driving older campers, vans, station wagons or straight-up broke-down hoopties like me and my mama used to sleep in.

Across the U.S., families and elders have been suffering a rise in foreclosures and evictions due to poverty and gentrification, as I reported in “From foreclosure to homelessness” in this series. Concurrently, 21st century pauper laws like sit-lie and stop and frisk have been created and just plain police harassment has been stepped up to criminalize our poor bodies of color with even greater velocity.

In Los Angeles the worst onslaught of police harassment of houseless peoples occurs in the Santa Monica-Venice Beach neighborhood, which up to the 1990s used to be a place that poor people could dwell, undisturbed, in their cars. Now with the insane rise in home prices due out of control gentrification, anyone caught sleeping or parking overnight faces fines and their vehicles, aka their homes, are being towed.

In the case of San Francisco, there has been a herstory of laws and harassment against poor people living in their cars. One last bastion of safety where poor people could park without being harassed was the Sunset District near Golden Gate Park. But recently a member of the Board of Supervisors, responding to nimbyistic residents of a neighborhood near the park crafted an ordinance specifically targeting the houseless homeowners, aka people who are sleeping in their campers, making it more illegal than it already is to sleep or park there.

“They have been citing us, ticketing us and continually harassing us for months. The intensity of their harassment rises and falls depending on what’s going on that week in the city,” Janeze told me through tears. She went on to explain that when the Giants won their second World Series, their exciting win wasn’t so exciting for houseless families trying to live under the radar in struggle. “They (police) began circling the area citing multiple times and telling us we were a blight and had to ‘move on.’”

“We used to park down near the Giants stadium until the pressure was too much,” Janize concluded. “We don’t want to live like this. It’s just that there are no places we can get into.” Janize is right. The already insane affordable housing shortage in San Francisco and the whole Bay Area has actually gotten worse. And families, children and elders are the ones who suffer the most.

The Coalition on Homelessness, Housing Rights Committee, Homeless Action Center and Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, to name a few, have been tirelessly fighting to decrease the criminalization and to increase the availability of affordable housing for poor families. As well, an affordable housing measure was passed in the recent election, which is promising, but will it really make a dent in the housing lockout of very poor families? Meanwhile the harassment continues if we are caught “homeless” in America.

“The funny thing to me is the police say they are there to ensure our safety, but since I became homeless, every time I see the police I am overcome with fear. If they tow our van, we will have nowhere to be at all,” Janize said, then paused and added, “except on the sidewalk.”

The following stories were two of several written for the Voices of Poverty Resist series in workshops led by Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia. The workshops were held at LA CAN and CADRE in LA, HOMEFULNESS in Oakland and POOR Magazine in San Francisco. The series was launched by Lisa when she received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellowship Award focused on the criminalization of families and communities in poverty. Because Lisa leads with her indigenous values of inter-dependence and collaboration and has struggled with poverty and houselessness for most of her childhood with her disabled single mother of color and the grant allowed for looking at the way that language, culture and race influence public attitudes about peoples in poverty, she created this collective journalism process where all of our voices in poverty are speaking for ourselves to achieve a collective and truly inclusive challenge to the “otherizing” that usually happens by corporate and independent media producers when “covering” poverty issues or speaking for all of us poor peoples of color.

Quicksands

by Carina, 45

Struggles are categorized by suffering, ignoring the self,
an ignoring, a drowning.
Shifting soil beneath life’s constructs
deconstruct and I was left floating.
Feet beneath me couldn’t sustain me.
Quicksands when all you know is obliterated.
But you hold on. Reach out for the elusive vines that remain of a
structure you emerged from triumphant? Or at least with honors.
But something changed.
May have been the greed factor
outside of self in a social structure or
a delusional paradigm I no longer knew.

The day I entered a shelter I had little clue how I got there. It was a series of mishaps and false hopes as I look at it now. I worked freelance, and people stopped paying on time after my jobs were completed, until this little circus took a toll.

Coupled with bad relationships, I can’t say what event caused me to become homeless, other than a series of shady employers who took advantage of the delusions of a person who believed in principles. I still give freely and receive little in the way of financial recompense.

I have a head full of ideas that have little to do with this economic monster set up to consume everything and everyone. Ultimately whom or what can I blame but my own poor choices? What was it that I really wanted? And when did I stop believing?

Yes, we live in a white world and I’m brown. My mixed heritage café con leche would color me, but I couldn’t begin to state the many moments when my goals and dreams were hindered by external forces I felt stopped my breath when I tried to reach higher. So where do I begin?

Civil rights, Vietnam War

by Joseph Thomas, 62

To be homeless is a state of mind and physical being to endure the greatest violation of all human rights. Sleeping on pavements, doorways and benches are all violations of city ordinances, yet this is all that is left to you and me. To be homeless is to be a pawn for greed, as corporations gentrify whole communities from the houses of our extended community, near and far. City politicians, police and businesses have all written a ticket to pursue and to grasp power off the backs of the poor and homeless: we, the Black and Brown.

Everyone deserves a roof, a pot to pee in and a bed to sleep in. The city and state’s answer is incarceration: Labor for the state in exchange for tenancy through tax dollars. By now, everyone knows that like anything else, homelessness is a business constructed for the rich.

Living in the streets, I know that resources don’t exist because 52 percent of our budget goes to those who incarcerate and violate us to no end. I know that missions do not house, and transitional housing means a temporary stay and a return to the streets. Because of who I am, there is no employment, and they humiliate us in their justifiable way of issuing us $221 per month for six months: “a solution to all our problems.”

Because of city, county and state we now have insurmountable health issues. We have no nutrients, clothing and in other cases no care for the children. Through homelessness, we now have become soldiers on the war on poverty.

Service procedures, mentors, stats and so-called self-help programs do not at any time challenge the prevalence of homelessness. I am homeless, so I can say how to provide for those who currently find no alternative but to sleep in our parks and streets.

Increasing inequality is a driving force for homelessness. In California the disconnected seek and need aid. Deteriorating incomes coupled with rapidly rising rent forces low income families into the streets!

What do people of color have? Do we have more opportunities for housing, education, employment, finance, scholarship or even respect from what you say your programs offer? Your programs do not give us hope but only despair.

One of your peers just one week ago said that the poor can handle themselves because they will always have a safety net! Is this what you think of me? You who represent the state, the nation, are blowing smoke because the structure that you and this nation planted never intended us to survive in the first place.

Years ago a life in the struggle was the draft and a ticket to Vietnam. Now I come to realize, from where we sit or stand, that was just a futuristic preface of things to come as we live lives of homelessness right now.

So in conclusion, our so-called city writes our ticket, but we choose our destiny. Which is it? Homes not jails – or “not,” to say the least! Stand up and fight! And city and greed, get back!

A Suicide Bomber takes over the streets in the Middle East none knew his identity all they know is he left a note saying this..

Am just a young man who life was taking away,

standing in the middle of crater trying to understand the sadness and hate that brings tears of pain,...just yesterday i praying to my god..given thanks for letting me and my family survive...and now am standing in the middle of crater picking up rocks full of blood knowing nothing can go back...praying to my god to give me the strength to go and fight back..

 knowing am helpless, i fell on my knees as let my tears fall off...

knowing that theres nothing in the world to make me survive,

knowing i lost blood my only reason to be alive, and knowing the tomorrow none will call me son because my mother and father are gone..

and i wish, i was with them so i wouldn't be feeling this pain...what am really saying is that i wish i was dead...

but i know as i wrote this note the revenge will hit them hard and showing two grenades inside my pants thinking to my self i wont pull back, i will get really close to the checkpoint or the end of my life..

i hope my hands don't get sweaty inside my pants as i hold the rings the hold my life...and thinking about my family knowing they are gone..and knowing the revenge will unite us one more time as i get to the checkpoint i will pull the rings out my pants and four seconds will be the distance of seen my mom and my dad...

Collateral Damage..Bombs that fall from the Sky...

Not sure what to feel

So lost in this maze of kolonizer-created traditions

Consumer lies, pain & exploitation

Of the real

For so many years I can hardly stand it

Stood in free food lines, blanket giveaways, begging for housing crumbs, bread crumbs, and other scarcity Amerikkka lies with mama

Her desperation to be cared for, housed, safe and loved coulda killed most people

And did

And yet here I am

In this short time on earth

Feelin so sad

So scared for me, my son,

all my sistas and brothers without roofs, enuf food

Imperialist lies

and nothing good

Yet I know people have been built to honor this day

And there is something beautiful about the pure love of  Jesus’

On this fabricated-birthday

Spiritual inspiration, gift giving and family love

And so it is not for me to say

It means nothing and there is nothing to this day

It is only for me to question who is being loved and who is not

How can we care and share with all and never leave people

Shot, exploited –

Out in the cold & wet

Struggling with racist lies, border hate and imperialist thieves

always on the take

From Oakland to Palestine

From Haiti to the Haight

Someone’s deep rancor is always around to fuel disgust and deep

Wrong-headed hate

So please help me family

Dream of multi-colored holidaze with multi-lingual songs

And no kkkolonizer fake dates

Or capitalist inspired wrongs

No displacement or eviction – violence or

Poverty and race inspired convictions

With all gods honored and ancestors too

With all dreams realized

And all children loved too

With healthy meals for all

Our elders and our small

–

Humility for things u don’t understand

Ability to respect cultures that shouldn’t be

in anyone’s hands

Following Our indigenous principals

And the purest love for pacha mama/the land

This is the PeoplesMass

Its Everyones Birthday filled with Love n justice –

And it has nothing to do with

Cash

More Krip Mas Poems here

Silent Night

like every night

lonesome halls

empty walls

no one to talk to

that would really care

to know the sadness

that breathes in the air.
There's no heavenly peace.

There

is no

heavenly peace.
Silent Night

Lonesome Night

Nursing Homes

are not homes

Let us remember

the ones we forget

Let us remember the ones who were left.
There's no heavenly peace.

There is

no

heavenly

peace.
(Maria R. Palacios -Christmas 2009)

Here comes Santa Krip

Here comes Santa Krip

Here comes Santa Krip

Rolling down Santa Krip lane

Delivering all his gear,

Braking on the wheels

ABs scatter, crutches clatter

All is lame in the night

He yells what ABs don't care to hear,

The Krips will keep up the fight.

Here comes Santa Krip

Here comes Santa Krip

Rolling down Santa Krip lane

With his bag of accessible toys,

With fist in air showing power

To all the gimpy boys & girls

Hear his wheels squeak & rattle

Oh what a Kripple sight

He'll always show the world

The Krips will keep up the fight!

Have Yourself A Mighty Little Kripmas

Have Yourself A Mighty Little Kripmas

Let your Krip pride show

Like always

Our struggles will grow

Have Yourself A Mighty Little Kripmas

Ignorant views we must resist

Like always

Our troubles will persist

Here we are in troubled days,

Trying to change them forever more.

Future generations of Krips

They won't fight like us before.

Through our history

If stars align somehow

 By Karyn Laura

Dec 8th 2012

There are many reasons why these wite children and adults are killing each other. My Black Indian Mama Dee used to say, wite supremacy and capitalism isn't good for any human, even wite people. People have talked about the proliferation and glorification of guns to all young people through mass media, as well as the deep wounds of the cult of independence on a human's psyche, not to mention the gutting by republicrats of the mental health system. But  one of the deepest ones that I see is the factory schools themselves, the separation of youth from elders wisdom and the ways that our children no longer even vaguely understand the respecting, honoring and necessary reverence of their elders. How in this society we are taught the opposite. We are taught how to ghetto-ize and separate our elders from our children in as many ways as possible. this separation and lack of reverence is valued in capitalism as it sets up more products and capital to trade on.

This mama prays and send so much love and strength to all of these families who have lost their babies and now to these Connecticut families and little ancestors to help their still living families decolonize from this myth of separation and capital-inspired death so their may be healing for them.

From this moment and so many more like it, I am drawn to believe that when people like me and my mixed race family in poverty die, we deserve to. My hope and vision is that with this moment of so much sorrow for the families in Connecticut, perhaps the resources and power of these middle-class wite people will make a difference in the ridiculous proliferation of deadly weapons in all of our communities and perhaps the oddly democratizing impact of death will free us all from the unspoken but clearly existent concept that some of us deserve to die and awaken us all to the real-ness that none of us do.

--

Krip-Hop Nation (KHN) color:black"> – Lachi, wow, just found your music and story and I love it!  Lets go back to your roots in Nigeria, Africa.  Tell us, what is it like for women and Blind people/musicians in Nigeria and why your family moved to the US?  Have you gone back?

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Lachi:  My parents came to the U.S. in the late seventies for educational opportunities.  I was born here in Maryland, though my older sisters were born in Nigeria.  I have gone back on several occasions allowing me to see just how much I take for granted every time.  Women and people with disability are not given nearly the same opportunities as they are here in the U.S, but there is a sense of contented happiness and zest for life back in the home land that we who continue to want more and more can only dream to have.

KHN:  Anybody in your family into music and if no how did they support your talents?

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Lachi: I along with my mother participated in the church choir, my two brothers explored the drums and guitar, and my four sisters had a small dance troop when they were much younger.  I, however, was the only one who took it not only to an academic level at UNC and NYU, but also to full-fledged performance and recording.  My family has always been supportive and has done a great job at keeping me grounded.

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KHN:  Now you’re living in New York.  Tell us your experiences in NY as a woman/a blind woman from a different country striving with your music.

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Lachi:  The driving force of the Faits brought me to NYC, and upon moving here from North Carolina, it’s been a crazy, intense, but overall great decision to come to the big city.  There is a constant life-pulse, a moving wave of the type of genuine authenticity many people are not and may never be ready to delve into.   A place where you move to in order to experience the struggle, as success in NYC lies within the struggle and the constant push.  Being a blind female that was not coddled growing up and encouraged to be independent, NYC is perfect for me.  A place where a place where a cop, a Crazy, a businessman and the governor can sit next to each other on the subway….all just trying to get home from a hard days work.

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KHN:  Throughout my years of researching disabled/blind musicians from Blues to Hip-Hop I always come across a lack of disabled/blind musicians who are women.  Tell us about your group and your work with Visionary Media.

Lachi:  Being a blind female isn’t easy…but I’m sure that everyone has their “thing” that makes life difficult in some ways for them.  Part of the problem for blind female musicians is the self-motivation and drive needed in todays (non record label coddling / DIY) market.  Today you have to be a business woman, tour manager, booking agent, producer, songwriter, publicist, social media guru, and investor for your own project.  That’s hard enough for someone with no odds against him or her.  But with set backs such as, not being able to drive, not being able to read physical social cues, it being hard for females, blacks and disabled people in general to land a job, let alone someone with all three…it makes for not the easiest of winding roads.  However, again the struggle is always worth it.  When I get off the stage of a big successful show we put together, and someone in the audience says to me, “wow what a great show!”  It makes the entire struggle worth it, and makes for a much greater personal reward, knowing the odds I had that were stacked against me.

KHN:  I LOVE your storytelling that your songs provide.  I’ve been waiting for a storytelling song about the hidden history of blind women in music.  Hint hint but how do you write your lyrics?  Is it a story first then a song or other way around?

Lachi:  The way I write songs differ per song.  I’ve heard two Asians speaking in their melodic language on the subway, and borrowed a melody from them.  Or I’ll hear a series of car horns go off in a barrage of interesting intervals and turn that into a repeating guitar riff.   In terms of lyrics, sometimes I will borrow from my existential musings on life and personal experiences or unanswered questions.  For example, I’d recently wondered…Why is it that we laugh? Is it just because something is funny?  Upon my quest to find a true resonating solution, I wrote a song to help me shape the question and find the answer called, “Sweet Agony,” because after all, laughter is a good-natured defense mechanism.  When going through hardships, I often find myself confiding in my piano or gossiping to my guitar….and voila!  Another song is born.

KHN:  It seems from your albums you straddle various types of music.  What was the inspiration behind the Jazzy song, Jazz Trip,?

Lachi: Jazz Trip is just that…a trip down Jazzy lane ripe with full paragraphs of idioms in the language of scat, and fun jazz chord progressions.  My girls Lady Day, Ella, Eta, Nina and my boy Louis, have always influenced me.  Part of me secretly wants to keep jazz (especially the awesome element of scatting) alive, so more often than not, you will find small slivers of scats even in my rock and pop songs, i.e. in the introduces of my rock tunes “Dear Happiness” and “Ugly Beautiful.”

KHN:  What flavor is the new CD?

Lachi:  The new CD is an accessible mix of Rock and Pop with elements of Urban and Dance.  For me it’s always about the melody and lyrics and being able to make music that moves on a subconscious level…that celebrates truth and realness….positivity and inner strength regardless of genre.

KHN:  Your band is off the hook.  Tell us about the members and how you all meet and explain the name of the band.

Lachi:  Lachi is my middle name, short for Ulachi.  Ulachi in Igbo (one of many Nigerian languages) means Ring of God.  My mom named me that as my second middle name, since because I was legally blind, she had to carry me everywhere with her when I was a baby, like a ring.  But I feel, we are all rings of God since all being, and everything in existence far beyond what we can see in this universe combines to form It that is God.  And because we are all just infinitely small rings of God, we should celebrate who and what we truly are inside, and try our best to be real, honest with ourselves and those around us, and to encourage others to do the same.  The best way I can do that is through music.  I currently play with a group of guys that are super talented and amazing!  We’re great friends along with being band mates.  Even long hours of rehearsal are a great time!

KHN:   I saw on YouTube that you did a song for President Obama.  Tell us why you did that song and do you like writing political songs and if so can you share a chorus?

Lachi:  During Obama’s first run for presidency, I was very active in trying to get the word out for people to vote for O!  This included the fun little song I’d put together.  I am, however, not into writing political songs, at least not for the sake of politics.  I am more into sociopolitical songs…songs that don’t necessarily sing to how the government needs to change, but to how we as individuals need to be the change we want to see…need to stop pointing out others flaws and start changing people by living better and having others see that and want to change.  There is one universal issue that all humans relate to (not break ups, not problems with the government, not longing), and it’s dealing with insecurity.  That’s what I tend to write about.  Here’s a verse from a song “Make Who You Are” that will be coming out on the new album, “Make Some Noise,” in early 2013

“See we all have big big dreams to be astronauts and use big machines

But we fall off track torn at the seams with responsibility.

And then we get all grown up, and we’ve had enough

And it gets real hard to trust, and it gets real hard to love, and easy to give up.

But you are the only one with your face

And no one in the world can take…..your place.”

KHN:  Can you explain the song, Ugly Beautiful,?

Lachi: Sometimes it is the things we (or society) feels is the most ugly thing about us that makes us beautiful.  I often would wonder what life would be like if I were not legally bling, if I were this or if I were that.  Would I have embraced and honed my musical talents?  Would I have moved to the city? Would I find so much internal pride in my successes?  I don’t believe so.  I have also often found that people who go through very difficult hardships, or bullies who learn there errs of their ways  in a grand fashion, or someone who’s experienced deep loss, they end up being some of the most beautiful people you will ever meet, despite the past ugliness…in fact, because of the past ugliness.

KHN:  I saw a YouTube video that you were doing a song with somebody who was rapping.  Would you ever collaborate or do your own Hip-Hop song?

Lachi:  YES!  Stay tuned for the upcoming album.  There are some awesome hip-hop collabs that I won’t give away yet.  But the short answer is a resounding yes.  I’ve always been a fan of the marriage of angst rock and hip hop i.e. Linkin Park / Jay Z or even pop and urban like BOB and Haley Williams.

KHN:  What do you think about all of these music contest television shows like the Voice & the X Factor etc.?

Lachi:  I think they are entertaining for those who like reality contest shows, and I also feel they can be a good stepping stone for artists who do not have the faculty to be their own machine since it is very difficult these days.  I don’t believe in the concept of corporate sell out, as selling out is something that happens inside your heart.  You can still be true to yourself and your goals even if you perform on those shows, so more power to ‘em.

KHN:  What is in your future?

Lachi:  No matter what happens, I plan to continue to write, produce and perform music.  I do have a good ol’ fallback day gig, but I am a musician and always will be, no matter what.

KHN:  As a poet, some of your songs fit into like an open mic.  Have you ever worked with poets?

Lachi:  I have not yet, but it’s not something I’m opposed to…could be an interesting foray.

KHN:  As we all know there are so much isms in the music industry, as a blind woman of color what can you say about that and advice to other disabled/blind women of color who wants to break in music?

Lachi:  Try your best to know how to do everything on your own, this way it’s hard for you to get cheated.  Music is a business, so be the CEO!  Be confident, alert and knowledgeable, and always continue to hone your craft.  But most importantly…be good to people.  If someone hurts you, even if on purpose, be the bigger person…it will get you a very long way.

KHN:  Will you and your band do a tour anytime soon?

Lachi: We are working on putting together 2013 dates now.  Stay tuned to www.lachimusic.com, twitter and Facebook to see upcoming dates!

KHN:  Is it hard to be the front person in a band as a woman and will you ever do a solo album?

Lachi: Maintaining a band has its ups and downs, but the energy is always great, especially when you play with a group of people you love and respect.  I have been throwing around the idea of a solo album…though it wouldn’t be solo at all…it would be a duet between me and a piano.  It will happen.

KHN:  Any last words and how can people reach you and your band?

Lachi:  People can find out more about all things Lachi at www.lachimusic.com, where you can join the mailing list and receive a free track! Twitter.com/ulachi and facebook.com/lachimusic, as well as YouTube, soundcloud, iTunes…all the usual online portals.  Stay tuned for the upcoming album in first quarter 2013!  And, of course, thanks much to Krip-Hop Nation for such an insightful and fun discussion.

(Scroll down for english)

El humo subió, los danzantes oraron con sus pies, y el tambor trajo su medicina de sanación, “Yo tengo un mensaje para todos,” le dijo Don Pasqual Aq’iij, un guía espiritual maya de la región de Kaqchikel de Guatemala suavemente pero con claridad al círculo de más de 50 personas reunidas en San Francisco para unirse en una gran ceremonia maya el 15 de diciembre, una de las últimas ceremonias en una procesión de ceremonias celebradas durante casi todo el año para prepararse para el nuevo B'aqtum del almanaque maya.

Siguió, “ A lo largo del último año ha habido una gran explotación del calendario maya, supuestos de que viene "el fin del mundo" por personas que no entienden para nada nuestras tradiciones.

El 21 de diciembre es el final de un calendario maya (tenemos muchos) y es el solsticio, pero para los mayas el solsticio es un día de sanación. Un día para orar y para honrar al Creador, a los ancestros y al Espíritu.” Siguió explicando que las personas en todo el mundo están orando en este día y en los muchos días que nos llevan a este día. Que aquéllos que están enfermos vienen a orar y se sanan. Que cada uno de nosotros tiene energía y que esa energía es la energía de la vida y del cambio y de la sanación y que todos tenemos lo nuevo de este calendario y de esta vida nueva en nosotros.

En este día no importa donde se encuentren traten de orar tres veces en la dirección del sol, por la mañana por la tarde y por la noche. Oren por la paz y por la sanación para ustedes, sus familias, sus comunidades y sus ancestros, el Creador y la madre tierra.

Dirijan el cambio en ustedes y en los demás mediante sus acciones. Tráiganle buena energía a sus hijos y a sus comunidades con movimientos positivos. Sean líderes para traer ideas nuevas y comienzos nuevos.

Por favor entiendan que el cambio y la energía del cambio de este solsticio nuevo está dentro de nosotros y dentro los espíritus de nuestra madre tierra, las plantas, el viento, los animales, las flores, los árboles, la lluvia…

(English Follows)

The smoke rose, Danzantes prayed with their feet and the drum brought its healing medicine,  “Yo tengo un mensaje para todos,” (I have a message for everyone), Don Pasqual Aq’iij, a Mayan spiritual guide from the Kaqchikel region of Guatemala spoke softly yet clearly to the circle of over 50 people gathered in San Francisco to join him in a Gran Ceremonia Maya- Grand Mayan Ceremony on December 15th .one of the last ceremonies in  a year long procession of ceremonies held in preparation for the New B'aqtum of the Mayan Calendar. 

He continued, “ Over the last year there has a lot of exploitation of the Mayan calendar, claims of the “end of the world” by people who have no understanding of our traditions.

December 21st is the end of one Mayan calendar (we have many) and it is the solstice, but for Mayan people the solstice is a day of healing. A day of praying and honoring Creator, Ancestors and Spirit.” He continued to explain that people all over the world are praying on this day and the many days leading up to this day. That people who are sick come to pray and become healed. That each of us has energy in us and that energy is the energy of life and change and healing and that we all have the new-ness of this new calendar of this new life in us.

On this day, no matter where you are, try to pray three times in the direction of the sun, in the morning, afternoon and evening. Pray for peace and for healing for you, your family, your community, ancestors, Creator and Madre Tierra/Mother Earth.

Lead the change in yourself and others with your actions. Bring good energy to your children and your communities with positive movements. Be a leader to bring new ideas and new beginnings. Work with community to bring healing and necessary change.

Please understand that the change and the energy of the change of this new solstice is within us and within the spirits of our Mother Earth, the plants, the wind, the animals, flowers, trees, the rain…

Ceremonia/Ceremony 21 de deciembre:

Ceremonia Maya para el Nuevo B'aqtum

Hora: 7:00am a 12:00pm

Lugar: 15th calle San Francisco CA

Entre Valencia y Mission. ( Edificio del Buen Samaritano)

Tambor indigena-

por favor traer su ofrendas: insiencio de copal, tabaco, candelas (amarillas, Blancas, Rojas, or azules)- para mayor informacion llamar al 415-283-8768

Maya Ceremony- for the New B'aqtun

Deep East TV edition #8 featured the tragic story of Po'Lice murder of Ernesto Duenez Jr narrated by brother Al Osorio from Decolonize Oakland

Street Newsroom on Deep East TV is filmed every Thursday 1-3pm @ Homefulness- in Deep East Oakland -media served up with harm reduction hot dogs and healthy vegan food. 

Deep East TV will be taking a short break til January 10th- So on January 10th come out and join the poor people-led media revolution being made in real time on the streets where the real media is at!

Twas The Night Before Capitalismas...

Capitalismas Def: Holiday created by capitalists who appropriated multiple pagan and indigenous celebrations and "changed" the birthdate of a revolutionary who cared for gente pobre (Jesus Christ) all in pursuit of consumer-based profits
Twas' the night before capitalistmas

And all thru the house

not a product was stirring

not a PC nor its mouse
The children were nestled

all snug in their beds –

while visions of corporate-fueled gang violence
covert army videos and fetishized
females

danced in their head
Mama slathered

in the newest skin rejuvenation
cream to be competitive in the gender wars

and Papa dreaming of the an on-line date

he just might score
When out on the lawn

there arose such a clatter –

the family sprung from the bed to see what was
the matter –

it was the marshal to deliver a summons to take
back their title and render them homeless cause
since dad had lost his job - they couldn't keep up
the payments
As the marshal gave the family one last kick and
a push they were secure in knowing it was all
cause of Citigroup, BofA, AIG and their rich
corporate friends

Warm and cosy all tucked in their beds
dreaming of the rich getting richer, the poor left
for dead….

I ran into a brother the other day at the bus stop.  I’d just gotten off work and was heading home.  I heard a voice call out, Hey Tony!  I flinched, thinking I’d been recognized by someone I didn’t want to talk to.  It is part of what my dad calls the duck and dodge, a strategy whose main purpose is to avoid getting into other people’s shit.  I didn’t want to get into a useless conversation that would strain not only my nerves but my ears.  I looked to see who called out my name.  It was a brother in a baseball cap and dark shades.  I looked for a moment and recognized the brother as a cat named Terry.  Terry used to be part of a work training program at a non-profit organization that I had worked at a couple years ago.  Hey, what’s happening brother, I said, shaking his hand.  The cool air seemed to warm as we talked—catching up:  how you doin’ man…how’s your mother?  We were glad to see the story in other’s faces.

Seeing his face was refreshing given the faces I have to endure on the busses, coffee shops and worse—on TV.  All those stale, sterile faces walking along Market, Valencia and Divisadero Streets—minds stuffed with self-satisfaction from years of being told how wonderful they are—their thoughts, their poses—as hipsters, parading around as if they were real San Franciscans.  Can smell ‘em a mile away.  Terry was born and raised in San Francisco, the real deal straight outta Fillmore.  Real nice guy and there’s something royal about that velvet jogging suit he wears.  It’s for lounging, not jogging.  I am in the presence of real class, a guy just being himself without the need to cover insecurities with tattoos or gimmicks—physical, verbal or otherwise.

In short, Terry is a beautiful brother. I always thought he was too good for that job program.  His job was piecing and assembling mosaic tile kits for an organization that serves people with developmental disabilities.  The tiles were made into kits that were later sold at retail outlets.  I’d sit and watch Terry count and weigh those little tiles that looked like crackers.  You were paid according to how much you assembled, bagged and sealed.  All that fun for so little pay; all those folks in the program, some dropping off only to return to that stack of heat sensitive, see-thru bags.  The welcome mat was always nice and tidy.

One thing I remember vividly about Terry was his love for music.  He'd devote his spare time to producing mixtapes at home—on cassettes.  He’d sell ‘em for 5 dollars a pop.  I bought one although I didn’t own a cassette player anymore.  I asked him what kind of music he had on it and his face lit up as he ran off names of musical groups I’d grown up with, had love, whose lyrics held meaning for me.

Sideshow by Blue Magic

Mind Blowing Decisions by Heatwave

People Make the World Go round by The Stylistics

Fire and Desire by Rick James and Teena Marie

I remember Terry performing during the job program's Christmas party.  He came decked out in a powder blue suit with wide lapels.  He got on the mic and sang an old song by the Manhattans. 

There's no me...without you

He was smooth, gliding across the floor, his bad leg no longer bad but providing him a leg up on whatever barriers he had to face, now or in the future.  It was poetry, beautiful to watch—a brother doing what he was intended to do without shame, without apology…just free to do it.

I bought one of his mix tapes but couldn’t listen to it. I then found an old tape player at a garage sale and no sooner did I put the tape in the deck than the player chewed and mangled the tape.  The tape spilled to the floor like an out of control tapeworm.  But I thought about those songs.  They were in my mind and couldn’t be erased.

The bus headed towards Fillmore while we talked.  Terry spoke slowly. He told me that a long time ago he had gotten into a car accident that had affected his mobility and speech--that he had to attend a special school.  Then he stops and there is a pause.  What fills the pause is life, the sound of birds, wind, laughter, gunshots, cries, birth and…

Terry told me he was now making music CD’s, that he was selling them for 5 bucks a piece.  He said his girlfriend was helping him produce the tapes since she has a computer.  Girlfriend? I said, you didn't say nothing about no girlfriend.  "Shit man...i can't tell you everything, now" he replied, laughing.  He told me he didn’t have one of his CD's on hand but that, if I wanted one, to meet him tomorrow night at 10 at the doughnut shop on 7^th and Market.  Ok, I’ll meet you there” I said. We shook hands and he got off the bus.

The next day came, busy at work.  I went home.  945 pm rolled around.  Then I remembered…the doughnut shop!  It was too late…I fell asleep.  The next night I went to the doughnut shop.  I looked around.  Every kind of doughnut you can imagine was looking back at me.  Terry wasn’t there.  I looked outside thinking he might be out front.  My eyes met the night and its eyes melted into mine.  I saw Terry everywhere.  His music was in the street and it pulled me closer to the city that we were both raised in, the city that knocked us down and raised us up over and over again.

Terry, if you’re reading this, I'm sorry we didn’t connect. It was good seeing you, talking to you, my beautiful brother.  The music of your voice is in my ears.