2012

Tom-Kav has layers of how this land has been desecrated. First, the land was stolen away from the caretaking of the Luiseno people and sold to the highest bidder. The land has had foreign produce groves built upon it that suck up the water from the indigenous plants that need it the most. The business getting the fruit upon this sacred site is bought and sold while migrante farm workers with long migration journeys come here and are exploited for their labor. Now Palomar college decided to desecrated the land by bulldozing on the same day they knew the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians were filing a temporary restraining order in court. They bulldozed at 6:30 that morning with tribal citizens running in front of bulldozers to protect their ancestors. They called for supporters to come, and within 24 hours a delegation of 11 people came including myself came to support human rights.

This site was also very important to other tribes’ trade routes. When I spoke with PJ he gave me a run down of the trade history of this land sharing with me that possible stones from down south in Mexico could be here, and remnants have been found as far north from Bishop, CA. He went into the history of Interstate 15, and discussing how many Native Americans traveled this route before the stone cold concrete pavement. PJ has been a Native American Monitor for Sacred Sites and Cultural protection for over ten years.

Palomar College is knowingly desecrating a sacred site, while it feeds its lies of a road that must be built to “educate” this county. In the past two days, Tom-Kav has lived up to its name of being a gathering place. People are educating each other right here about Tom-Kav, Sogorea Te, relationships, life, and plants. This isn’t Palomar College; this is the Indigenous Peoples College, where I have had many teachers, with some of the teachers not even being visible.  Best part its Tuition free, no heavy books, and open enrollment. Feel free to step up to the sacred fire and pull up a chair to learn.

"Watch the rest of the Movie and find out..." At one point in Red Tails, a new movie on the racist-silenced histories and herstories of the Tuskegee Airmen who fought fearlessly and artfully in World War II, one of the airmen questioned the point of "fighting for the Man" in a society where white supremacy refuses to accept a "Negro war hero". The character of his superior officer, played by Cuba Gooding Jr, retorts, that we do live in this racist reality and that fighting well in this war won't change any of that, ending with the fact that we should keep watching the movie.

Red Tails is a shiny, Hollywood movie with an all-star cast of beautiful and strong African descendent men like Terrence Howard who delicately navigates the cake-walk of hegemony with frightening white men in power in the military industrial complex of the 1940's. There is a "lite" and yet real story of alcohol abuse and finally, a mixed race story of love between one of the air-men and an Italian woman he encounters.  All of these story-lines are squeezed into the middle of compelling air-fighting scenes with old-school planes in the air and one comical "gerry" (German) character who does battle with the airmen.

Red Tails opens with the brutality of white supremacy with a 1925 "report" by the U.S. Army War College which outlined why blacks should not be soldiers; claiming that they were not just inferior, but also incapable of operating complex machinery.

The brutality of this racist dis-respect and hate is all the more insane as we watch the calculated skill of the airmen in different flight scenes throughout the movie and find out that they were in fact all trained in complex aeronautical engineering at the Tuskegee Institute founded by Booker T Washington. This juxtaposition should shock us and yet for all conscious folks living within the plantation called United Snakkkes of Amerikkka we are all too familiar with it and instead we wait with trepidation to see more hate un-fold. And then something funny happens. Because of the Tuskegee airmen's  brilliant skill in "protecting" the white men who pilot the "bomber"  planes, they are thanked and respected when before they were beaten up and called the N word with impunity.

I can't completely discount this movie. Even if i want to, racism is too complicated and stereotypes and Hollywood are too powerful and pervasive. Instead i have to dissect it, recognizing the urgent need of African descendent peoples in diaspora and all peoples everywhere, to see a Black male hero depicted in film that isn't some derivative of a gangster or a pimp. That these well-educated, conscious young men had skill and leadership, but because it wasn't prudent to have a Black hero on the cover of the Hearst Corporation owned papers of the day, they were never appreciated, heard or seen and finally ask the question, have we as African peoples, peoples of color "arrived" because we are hero's in a war movie. Remember folks, we are in a allegedly post-racial society, where everyone can become a pimp or a president, so why not a war hero?. And the covert military industrial complex isn't even covert anymore with training movies for the Navy Seals coming to a theatre near you soon. I just have to wonder what Muhammad Ali circa 1967 who said, No Viet Cong ever called me a "nigger" might say to this new black army hero.

Remember, to truly "arrive" in our Afro-centrism, Indigenity and power, while moving to plantation and pimp-free living, it can't be through "the Man's" false borders, fake wars and empire -fueled land theft and drone-filled fights or like my African/Boricua mama used to say, "We aint ever reaching liberation on their dime." It must be through the creation of our own self-determined futures, villages, economies, realities and heroes.

I'm not even 40 years old, so to think of slaving for pennies until I'm in my 60's or older in amerikkka makes me ponder on a destiny other than being a slave-like zombie for the Sssystem. It is an insane insult to the value of eldership in this country, To even require a person work up until 6 months before being admitted into a nursing home. A lot of  elders that work way beyond their "Golden Years" don't live to reap the "benefits" of "retirement." Either that, or be forced to spend every dime saved on their hellthcare bills obtained by working yourself to death for these corruptporations and npic's in the first place.

About 5 minutes ago, About a dozen of these signs were hung up on Tom-Kav, Sacred Luiseño site... an anonymous Indian wrote this on the signs, the previous owner who sold the land off to developers is hanging up, but whats funny he doesnt even hold the "paper rights" anymore... but SILLY RABBITS... we know whos land it is... LUISENO LAND!!!

Shop Around is a convenient, low cost shuttle that makes it easier to go grocery shopping for seniors over 65 and people with disabilities.  The shuttle takes you and others directly to the store in San Francisco where you like to shop.  You'll have about an hour to shop, and the driver will help carry your groceries on and off the shuttle.  Each one-way trip costs $2.00.  There are certain eligibility requirements.  For more information, call 415-351-7052.

“Let me tell how the world works”, one of the opening lies (lines) of the new film Act of Valor (which I am re-naming Act of Propaganda), is said by a square jawed man who we are told is a “real” Navy Seal and therefore somehow should be revered and respected solely because he is in fact a “real” Navy Seal, which of course means to me and anybody slightly awake, that he is a “real” murderer who has perpetrated acts of genocide against innocent wombyn, children and elders across the globe in indigenous communities with impunity.

There are so many reasons why this movie is not only an insult to our collective intelligence but an act of violence to our logic, our spirits, our children and our minds.

From Top Gun to The Green Berets, the US military Industrial Complex has been pumping millions of dollars into the hands of “Hollywood” producers to ensure the depiction and/or inclusion  of military characters, scenes, story-lines, artillery, or plots for purely propaganda purposes. And similarly it has been common knowledge for years that if you show even a glimpse of some part of the military industrial complex in your film you will receive a phat pay-off to the tune of several hundred thousands of blood stained Amerikkkan dollaz.

What is truly frightening especially for conscious parents and teachers of young people is the blatant lie of this movie. This is a Navy Seals training film, complete with “black-ops” and other murderous tactics used by the hegemony filled soldiers known as Army, Navy and Marines. And we are led to believe that this narrative-less movie is an actual movie. So now I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that so many people are asleep and can be so easily duped by this flagrant act of propaganda or that thousands more young people will be sucked into the myth that Navy Seals are “courageous”  and exciting and relevant rather than dangerous murderers who are agents of the deadly empire known as Amerikkka!

Full disclosure, I did not pay one cent of my meager blood-stained amerikkkan dollaz to see this horrible movie. I will not. But that doesn’t mean I stay silent. Especially if you work with/be wit young peoples like I do everyday, they get commercials of this movie drilled to them on Xfinity, Cartoon Network and the internet through games, so tell them what you think about the lies of the military industrial complex and how it preys on poor peoples of color, how this “movie” is a tool of that machine and how they can resist it. And then if you feeling your ovaries, stand up as I did, in a corporate movie theatre which my ghetto self is prone to be found at, inhaling corporate and non-corporate movies as a form of relaxation whenever we can scrape together the over-priced ticket fee, and call out to all in attendance-something to the tune of, “this is a lie, this is racist propaganda, this should be called Act of Genocide!

PNN-TV #1

#2

Community Newsroom/Sala Comunitaria in January 2012- Featured Juliana "jewels" Smith, creator of (H)afro-centric: the comic and Frederick Douglas Cloy- author, teacher and mestizaje revolutionary

Making Herstory: Decolonizing Land One Piece of Concrete/Asphalt at a Time for HOMEFULNESS
By Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, Daughter of Dee

On February 26th in the gregorian calendar year of 2012, the landless, indigenous revolutionaries at POOR Magazine made Herstory.  In collaboration with our families and companeros at Decolonize Oakland, with medicine and prayer brought/shared  by indigenous leaders Corrina Gould and Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu and many more communities and folks herstory was made on a small piece of Ohlone land in the city known as East Oakland, CalifasAztlan, Turtle Island, by removing chunks of asphalt and concrete which covered the earth to build the Pachamama Community Garden @ Homefulness

Homefulness is a dream and a vision brought by the poverty, migrante, indigenous, elder and disability scholars at POOR Magazine, worked on for the last 15 years and guided by elders and ancestors and realized when we were blessed with a donation to purchase this humble space.

POOR Magazine believes, like most indigenous, decolonized peoples that no-one owns any land, and our sole intent is to liberate this land, to grow food for the community, create a school for our children guided by our elders and indigenous values and housing created on a sweat-equity model, not tied to how much blood-stained amerikkkan dollaz you have access to.

We faced heated and threatening opposition from the "landlord" next door who has claimed for the last year to have an implied easement to use our space as a parking lot, who we attempted for the last seven months to negotiate with to no avail, and who eventually called the Po'Lice on us to try to stop us from pulling up the asphalt. But we moved foreward as directed by our many spiritaul leaders and brought up the concrete and asphalt, clearing the land for healing and eventual planting of the garden, by Any Means Necessary!

It will take awhile for our colonized brothers and sisters to understand. We are moving with consciousness, prayer,humility, respect and revolution. The Story continues - stay tuned for the video.

(Editor's note--This article is reprinted from "Long Term Care News and Views", published by Planning for Elders in the Central City, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2012)

On June 22, 1999, the US Supreme Court affirmed the right of individuals with disabilities to live in the community in the historic Olmstead decision.  The court found that "the unjustified isolation of individuals with disabilities is properly regarded as discrimination based on disability".  The court further ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act may require states to provide community-based services rather than institutional placements for individuals with disabilities.

I moved out of a skilled nursing facility on October 2, 1982, so am coming up on my 30th anniversary of moving to Berkeley and living independently.  In this same year, my 18 year old niece is moving here to attend college and learn to live independently.

Jade and I share the same congenital disability and virtually the same threats to our independence.  We are dependent on lean government programs that require that we be poor in order to access them.  Any exceptions to these poverty requirements are few and convoluted.  I know this as a longtime disability benefits advocate.  Jade has seen more ready access to an equal and integrated education than I did, and she has more capable, aware, and attentive parents than my own who have advocated for her needs.  These factors have seated her well with an optimistic academic, social, and even vocational future despite ongoing disability-specific health concerns.

Still, Jade and I, members of two generations, plus Jade's grandparents are all currently in precarious situations facing the threat of institutionalization at the hands of state and local governments on which we depend for housing subsidies, healthcare and personal assistance services, accessible transportation, accommodations in school, and training to meet vocational goals.  It's a delicate network of services that are more often than not done to us and not by us.  We are the cash cows to multiple industries that rely on our dependency.  Our reward for compliance is our survival, but not necessarily independence.  We keep fighting for laws, asking for permission to live and possibly pursue happiness.  It feels more like a hamster wheel than a movement.  I am as worried about Jade now, after 30 years of work by people with disabilities, as i was and am for myself.  A lot and very little has changed.

These are the things on my mind when thinking about Olmstead.

If you're a senior or a person with a disability having trouble navigating the complex web of home and community-based support services you need to keep living at home, Consumer Rights for Community Living (CRCL) is her to help!  If you're not sure how to get the services you need, if you aren't sure what your rights are, or if you need help to resolve a grievance, call us at 415-703-0286

“You can bet your last money it’s all gonna be a stone gas honey” --Don Cornelius

The sooooooooooooouuuullllllll Train! I awaited the high pitched wail of those words every Saturday morning as did my grandma, a 67 year old Irish woman who was married to my grandfather, an African descended man from New Orleans who had dancing in blood from his years as a Vaudeville hoofer.

My grandma would stand in front of the TV and take in the “Hippest trip in America”, Soul Train, as presented by its host and creator Don Cornelius. I loved Soul Train, as well as my father, a Filipino man who grew up in San Francisco’s Western Addition—The Fillmore—also known as the Harlem of the West Coast.

Dad would watch groups on Soul Train such as the Spinners, the Whispers, the Temptations and Ojays. Dad was a frustrated singer. He dressed like the singers on Soul Train. He would get up and follow the moves of the performers, gliding and gyrating across the hardwood floor of our flat on California Street. This simultaneous gliding and stepping by my father would cause me to divide my attention between him and the TV (Which, I think contributed greatly to my lifelong case of attention deficit disorder). 

It was during Soul Train that my father sang back up on “Love Train, “Can’t help but love you”, “If you don’t know me by now” and “Side Show”—some of the biggest songs of all time. On Saturdays that my father would glide across the stage in his mind, taking in the sounds of black voices, black spirits, black movement, black soul that was in his blood—his Fillmore blood that was black and brown and brown and black. It was a respite from his janitorial job and his janitorial foreman and the floors that needed waxing. On Monday he was in his car, listening to a black radio station, on his way to work where the voices were black and the dreams were too.

I loved the way Don Cornelius introduced the performers on his show. “Put your hands together for the mighty…Temptations…Spinners…Ojays…Tower of Power…Aretha Franklin…and let’s not forget the Godfather of Soul…James Brown!" Don had that rich baritone that commanded reverence from even the most esteemed performers. Soul Train was Don’s house and the stars paid homage. There were other music shows on the air at the time. American Bandstand and Hee Haw come to mind. Compared to Don Cornelius, Dick Clark came off as a door to door Gideon Bible Salesman. And Roy Clark and Buck Owen’s “Pickin’ and a grinnin’” was no comparison to the soul train dance line and the scramble board.

And Don was clean, always decked out in the best threads. My dad put a lot of money down on lay-away to get threads like Don. In fact, one of my favorite Soul Train performances was the Isley Brothers singing their hit, “Layaway”.

As for my grandma, she was in love with Al Green. I can still see her watching him, swooning over “I’m so in love with you”. Grandma would shake her hips right along with the Soul Train dancers. Grandma was no slouch. She knew dancing. She admired greatly the Soul Train Dancers. She’d tell me that those dancers were highly accomplished. “They didn’t get those dancers off the street” she’d say, explaining the difficulty and skill it took to make it look so effortless. And my grandma would shake her hips and was every bit as worthy of moving them as the soul train dancers themselves. She loved Al Green, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett—a real soul woman she was. For me, one of the most memorable moments on soul train was a duet by Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson, tearing it up on "Ooooh, baby baby". The two sat at a piano and sang to each other. Aretha had such a commanding presence, but sitting next to Smokey, you could feel her melt. We all melted.

After a while the music began to change, as it always does. It took grandma a while to adapt to the techno sound. I remember she once remarked that Roger and Zapp sounded like "dishpans in a sink". But she still shook her hips those Saturday mornings no matter what, even while washing her own dishes. Thank you Don Corneilus for making those Saturday mornings come alive. 

We wish you love, peace…and soul

Co-Editors Note: Mama Dee and me met Johnny Otis and Carlos Zialcita in the beautiful History of Black Music class they taught through Laney College in Oakland. Each week Johnny and Carlos would "bring" the sounds, rythem and rockin love of Little Richard, Etta James, Smoky and the Miracles and so many more throughout herstory. My mama, jazz singer and R&B dancer who never sang in public, traumatized by racist hate in foster homes and orphanages she lived in Amerikkka, felt like she was finally home each week in the presence of cool-guy hair-having Carlos and beat-smooth-talking Johnny.

I first met Johnny Otis in the mid 1990’s when he was still doing a live broadcast of his weekly radio show on KPFA-FM at his cabaret/café in Sebastopol, California where he lived.  Johnny was performing live on the air in his downtown café, a featured segment of his show.  He invited me to sit in on a number.  I remember it well.  It was one of my favorites – “My Babe”, a tune that was a big hit for famed blues harmonica player and singer Little Walter.  I guess Johnny figured I must have known it.  He was right – and I immediately felt comfortable sitting in with this “larger than life” rhythm and blues legend.  We hit it off immediately, and he also got along great with my wife Myrna – immediately recognizing her African roots and engaged both of us in lively conversation and the trademark Johnny Otis humor and banter.  I was thrilled that my initial meeting with Johnny went so well.  He invited us to come back.  Myrna and I would return as often as we could, usually bringing some of Myrna’s cooking.  If fact, Johnny would often say “Don’t you come back without some of that adobo….”

One day, Myrna and I returned to the café and brought Afro-Filipina blues and soul diva Sugar Pie DeSanto and her brother Domingo Balinton.  It was quite a reunion for Johnny and Sugar Pie, who had not seen each other in years.  I was immediately struck by the fact that he called her “Palaya” – a nickname that Sugar sometimes called herself along with close friends and family members.  Sugar Pie’s real name is Umpeylia Balinton.  I was aware of the history between these two giants of rhythm and blues and was in awe as I watched them interact.  Johnny discovered Sugar Pie at a talent show in San Francisco in the early 1950s.  Sugar Pie recently shared with me that it was in 1954 that Johnny gave her the nickname “Sugar Pie”.

My friendship with Johnny grew quickly as we found many things in common that we enjoyed, in addition to music.  I had always been a fan of Johnny, his music and his politics.  I used to perform “Willie and the Hand Jive” with a band I had a in the mid-eighties called the California Cadillacs.  I had also performed with Big Mama Thornton several times, along with Charles Brown, Lowell Fulson, Percy Mayfield, and several other artists Johnny had worked with.  Johnny would often invite me to his house after the show for lunch.  There he would share with me his record and book collections and sometimes take me into the studio where he painted and showed me his artwork.  It was Johnny who introduced me to Dr. Fred Cordova’s book, “Forgotten Asian Americans” about the history of Filipino Americans in the United States.  He told me “this is a story that has to be told….”  He showed me his menagerie of different birds as well as the Koi fish he had in a pond.  I was very intrigued by the life-size sculptures on his property of three voluptuous naked women. There were paintings in the house also, against the wall in the living room, where he also had a grand piano.  Phyllis, Johnny’s lovely wife, who is Afro-Filipina, also became a very good friend to Myrna and me.

My visits to the café and to the Otis residence nurtured my friendships with different members of his band, which included his son Nicky Otis, a drummer, and grandson, Lucky Otis, who played bass.  Johnny’s band would eventually accompany me on my CD “Train Through Oakland”, with Johnny playing piano, vibes and even drums (on one cut).  That came about when I asked Johnny simply – would he produce a CD of me.  He graciously offered his band, his recording studio, an engineer, and his own musical contributions of several songs.  In addition, I became a house guest during the many weekends we spent recording, mixing and mastering the CD.  It was definitely more than I could have ever imagined.  Even now, after all these years and Johnny’s recent passing, I am still in awe of this enormous gift from someone who had already “done it all” and certainly didn’t need to produce one more album or one more artist.  I am indeed humbled by his generosity and gift as a friend.  Although I never felt that my playing and singing was anywhere near the level of artistry that Johnny had long been associated with, I nevertheless felt honored that he would work with me to record my first CD as a leader.  “Train Through Oakland” and the experiences surrounding the making of it, will always remain one of the most memorable milestones of my life.  It will stay with me forever.

It was also around this time that Johnny decided to teach a class on the history of Black Music in America.  He joined forced with Larry Douglas, one of the trumpet players in his band and a college professor to create a concept for the class and propose it to the Peralta Community College system.  The class was Music 15-B: Jazz, Blues, and Popular Music in American Culture, a 3-unit college class transferable to the UC system.  It also fulfilled lower division requirements for Ethnic Studies, Humanities, History and other Liberal Arts departments.  The class was an instant hit.  I remember Johnny calling me one day to ask if I would like to work with him in the class as its coordinator.  He knew I worked with computers and multimedia. He wanted me to help him with curriculum development, preparation of handouts, the showing of films, and the scheduling of speakers and live bands.  His concept for the class was revolutionary and drew large enrollments.  It holds the record for the most popular class ever in the history of the Peralta Community College system.  This intense collaboration between Johnny and me brought us closer together, as I would often consult with him on all the different aspects of his class.  He lent me his books, gave me numbers of different speakers and entertainers to contact.  I essentially became his “right hand man” as he would often refer to me.  I even did the payroll – telling his wife Phyllis who to make checks out to and disbursing those checks every Monday night.  The class was incredibly popular, with the help of Johnny’s radio show, and word of mouth amongst the students and the community SF Bay Area music and Johnny Otis fans.

At the end of every semester, Johnny would host a “Red Beans and Rice Night” with my wife Myrna preparing the meal that would feed approximately 150 people.  This became a ritual twice a year for over 10 years.  To no one’s surprise, Johnny loved Myrna’s cooking, and even put her recipe for Chicken Adobo in his “Rock and Roll Cookbook.”

Gradually, Johnny’s health deteriorated.  This inevitably meant the end of the class as we knew it.  I tried running the class without Johnny’s presence, bringing in Lucky Otis, his grandson.  Peralta Community College District decided to “franchise” the class and offer it at each campus.  At one point I was assisting the professors at both Berkeley City College and College of Alameda, going from one campus to the other on Monday nights.  The funding for the class also was also reduced dramatically, making it impossible to book the live entertainment and speakers like we previously had done.  This became for me – the “end of an era.”  It was like the end of Rock and Roll and early Rhythm and Blues itself – its time had come and gone.

Eventually, Johnny and Phyllis decided to sell their property in Sebastopol and move to Southern California where their two daughters and son Shuggie live.  This is where Johnny would spend his remaining years, close to his family and out of the public eye.  He had essentially “retired” and made the choice to no longer pursue all the different activities he was known for.

On December 28, 2012 Johnny reached the age on 90.  He died at 12:05AM on January 17, 2012.  He had lived a full life as head of his family, as a musician, producer, mentor, talent scout, owner of a record label, radio personality, politician, civil and human rights activist, poet, writer, painter, sculptor, cartoonist, chef, church minister, educator, and organic farmer.  It was a life of the inspirational and consummate “Renaissance Man” – a life for the ages.  There will never be another one like him.  Mabuhay ka Johnny Otis!        ©2012 Carlos Zialcita

Earlier this week the “decision to ban Chicano and Native American books follows the 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday by the Tucson Unified School District” and “then school administrators told Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any class units where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes.”

What was the ethnic diversity of the 5 people that made this huge monumental decision and mess? Do they represent the community of Tucson?  Arizona has a large population of 1st Nations people and also a large Indigenous population.  It appears that the Tucson Unified School District wants to“white wash” us away, erase the past, and leave books that perpetuate stereotypes, and are saturated in lies.  

Interestingly enough, dominant society forgets that we are not “a minority,” we are First Nations people.  We have rights under the #United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People.  Such as under Article 8:

2. States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and

redress for:

(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them

of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values

or ethnic identities;

(d) Any form of forced assimilation or integration;

(e) Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite

racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them.

Under this section, The Tucson Unified School District does  not have a right to ban books that might be “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” because that would be in violation of depriving First Nations people “of their integrity as distinct peoples and or ethnic identities.”

First Nations people have dual citizenship, our Nations have Sovereign rights and we have First Amendments rights like everyone else.  Public Schools have challenged First Amendment rights before with students that did not want to salute the flag for religious reasons.  The result of that case was #Justice Robert Jackson ruling that the Supreme Court must ensure

"scrupulous protection of constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes."

Justice Robert goes on to state-

#“If there is any fixed star in our Constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

It appears that Tucson Unified School District is not being “scrupulous in protection of constitutional freedoms” and are attempting to “strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles” such as freedom of the press.  Arizona is allowing the Tucson unified school district to “prescribe what shall be done in …nationalism…or other matters of opinion”  

There has always been a sort of “intellectual blackout” regarding Native Americans.  

Dominant culture, “White America” does not want to see us as intellectual, critical thinkers.  In order to be “Experts” in anything in this country, we have to be taught (more often than not) by non-Natives, read what THEY want us to, go to THEIR schools and get “THEIR degrees.   The American government holds no respect for our Tribal ways or tribal governmental structures.  We learn about America’s finest heroes, and compassionate leaders, but we don’t often hear about how almost of them authorized deliberate acts of ethnic cleansing against Indigenous people.  The ban of books by Native American and Mexican American authors will not change history, but it is still a chilling metaphor of another type of “ethnic cleansing”.  

The United States has spent billions of dollars to vilify and criminalize Indigenous people and most recently under the disguise of “political correctness”.  Arizona gets the prize for not giving a rat’s ass about being “politically correct.” Nope! they are straight up and honest about their dislike of anyone that is brown skinned.  In one swoop, Tucson has potentially challenged the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and First Amendment Rights of the United States Constitution.  As the rest of the nation watches, Tucson is now Arizona ’s shining allstar of racist bigotry, because the censorship of literature and critical thought is only the beginning of further inherit rights being violated.

LaDuke had this to say about Arizona: “I heard someone say that if the states are the laboratory for democracy in the U.S., then Arizona is a meth lab, “I think they may be right.”

“I am being evicted.” This is a phrase I have heard too often by some of the closest people to me in my life. When I was 21, I was heavily involved with stopping evictions and displacement that I changed my email address to begin with no evictions as the email address. I remember organizing a working class home on Shotwell street to stop the eviction of their home and I remember the beginnings of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition. I did all this while living in a youth transitional facility, and I thought to myself at 21 that if I could have any superpower it would be to stop evictions and keep people and families housed.

Then I heard about Cheri Honkala becoming sheriff in Philadelphia, PA and how she ran on a platform to stop all evictions in her city. When she got elected to office she kept that promise of no evictions in her city. She stopped evictions for a period of time until the courts got involved. I literally shed tears of happiness thinking of all the elders, poor folks, and families who were saved from the streets because of one decision Honkala made. Honkala herself came from a position of poverty just like my family. To me, she is my superhero.

I thought how amazing would it be to get all evictions to stop in San Francisco, so I voted like many others for Ross Mirkarimi, who was a progressive backed candidate. My vote was for the possibility of progressive change for poor and working class folks in San Francisco. I remember even working on his campaign when he first ran for SF Supervisor because I wanted a city for everyone of all income levels, not just the upper middle class and wealthy. So I called his office and spoke with Susan Fahey, Sheriff’s Department Spokeswoman, as Ross wasn’t available for comment. When I asked her the question, “As sheriff will u refuse to evict or move on foreclosure evictions?” She said, "Legally he cannot refuse to evict. We have to follow court orders."

There went my white fluffy clouds of hope for a San Francisco that would finally step up to development and unjust evictions. I was saddened to come back to a reality of how another politician just plays by the system instead of radically changing it. I am tired of seeing poor and working class families and elders get pushed out of San Francisco everyday simply because the rent is too high. I want all the families that got pushed out to come back from across the bridge or the South Bay and rebuild their roots here. I want my city to reflect the diversity it had when I was a child riding the 14 Mission MUNI bus with my Kuya Nemesio.

Why is another San Francisco not possible? Why are we as organizers, progressives, r activists backing and voting for a sheriff that does not run on a platform of no evictions? Aren’t we tired of seeing our friends and family move out of the city that they were born and raised in? We the people of this city get to demand no foreclosures or evictions from our sheriff and our future sheriffs as a way to ensure that San Francisco loses not one more person. I still remember what Karen Zapata, an SFUSD teacher I knew said about politics, “We know how change is made, it is made by the people pushing the politicians.”

Indigenous People In the Sex Trade – Our Life, Our Bodies, Our Realities

March 5, 2012

Blinking away the autumn sunlight after a week inside with the flu, I walked dazedly across Mission St, up 16th, and turned onto Valencia. My heart will never repeat the confused shock of what I was about to see.

Just a moment before I had been at the herstoric Redstone Building on Capp and 16th St, visiting the POOR Magazine offices. This was my first week living in California. With its dark, womb-like, echoey halls, its years of dirt built up in hard-to-reach places, its muted quiet soulful murals left over from another era of labor organizing, the lived-in homey feel of POOR's offices...I felt the deep contrast with what I saw on Valencia. Trends, and not an inch of forgiveness.

It was the gleaming white sidewalks and small, cutesy storefront banners of Valencia Street. What the...? The spick-and-span aura, the carefully displayed products inside the shop windows that seemed to be judging, sorting passersby from behind the polished veneer. (Can you afford me? If you can't afford me, if you can't attain the affluence and detachment from suffering necessary to enjoy my empty "ahistorical" aesthetic...then move along!) I stopped to put my bag down and write something in my notebook—drawing sidelong glances from everyone nearby on the street for this simple action. What is this place?

That is a question I keep asking myself, whenever I pass by a shop or cafe on what I now think of as the "Valencia Hipster Promenade." What is this place? What is the function? All around I see people who are a lot like me, white and wealthy, voraciously fetishizing the consumption of various kinds of objects—taxidermied animals, Japanese paper goods, $300 old lamps—and I wonder what's it all for. More importantly, who am I when I occupy this space and toward what purpose, surrounded by all this bedazzling commodity fetishism. I am a certain person when I am there, my position in society takes yet another of its daily turns, this turn being simultaneously comfortable and deeply unsettling. It feels imposingly easy for me as a class privileged white person, like I've gotten a lot of practice being in such places. On the other hand it feels...shallow, fleeting and unmoored from a sense of place and people, blank and cynical. Because actually, a lot of what's so novel and shiny about Valencia...is that it has a really goddamn violent history of colonization/gentrification that allows this airtight image of hipster perfection to emerge like a (mutant) phoenix from the ashes (of stolen land). It IS novel and shiny, truly, but not without a lot of human consequences.

With the handful of years I've devoted to educating myself about social justice—growing to more fully recognize the various effects of my queer, white, and class privileged expressions;  learning how to positively transform my relationships so they challenge constructions of privilege and enact the widespread repair I'd like to see—I'm STILL, as much as many would like to deny, in very close proximity with the people who surround me here on Valencia. We have many of the same effects on how this place came to be.

It's draining and sad for me when I find myself on Valencia Street, not only because of what the place feels like currently, but also because the possibility of a future like this for the rest of the Mission is really, really close, thanks to the Eastern Neighborhoods Rezoning and Area Plans, which passed in 2010 in the middle of the housing crisis.

"Residential Builders Association and other Devil-opers are GentriFUKing the Mission one street at a time", said Lisa "tiny" Garcia, co-editor of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE. POOR Magazine has been dealing with some scary business of gentrification right on our block, on 16th St between Capp and South Van Ness. A group called the Residential Builder's Association has been advocating for a massive redevelopment of the North Mission (our block included), putting up wire fences with plastic laced through the holes, requesting permits to take over more and more parking spots on the block. They are going to build a $15 million, 7-story, 84-unit condo, right next to the Redstone...that is, if they don't get the city to knock the Redstone over and build right over it. These apartments, like the other new housing that's been built, will not be affordable to any but the richest folks in the city. Property owners are falling prey to the increased height limits in the area, as these higher limits also increase taxes and property values.

The contrast between Valencia and Mission St (or the Redstone Building) is a demonstration of how violent gentrification is. It's about big developers moving in, and tacit (or not) agreements with the police about what kind of policing to do where. It's not "nice", it's not slow, because the removal of communities needs to happen swiftly and without compromise. There is little or no asking. It's runaway gentrification and people just get away with all the removal, policing, and culture-killing of entire neighborhoods without any community accountability. Money talks. Developers are sneaky and zoning laws are elusive. There is no accountability for "passive" participants in this process, either: shopowners, the people who move into apartments once the previous occupants have been successfully evicted. It's part of the natural truth and natural selection of our economic system, right? It's about new and exciting ideas, new and exciting businesses, new and exciting people encroaching and encroaching...wait, where did all the old stuff go? This feeling of forgetting, of disorientation, of passivity...these are privileged perspectives to hold. These are perspectives that I, as a class-privileged white person new to California, could easily slip into, and frankly sometimes do for lack of knowledge about this place. Cause with all this privilege folks like me have, we can get convinced that all this violence around us isn't effecting us, as we get our promotions, our nicer apartments, and our advanced degrees. However, I believe the violence of gentrification is effecting privileged people as well, even if they're not disabled, trans, queer, female, brown, black, or affiliated somehow with a historically criminalized and colonized community. At the very least, when I hear someone of similar privileges to myself saying gentrification's not effecting them AND they don't want to do anything to prevent it, I know at the very least that their humanity's been compromised by the lies of Capitalism. To lose a piece of one's humanity is a pretty serious violence indeed.

Identity is the crux of the question...What is this place? What is the function? When I am here on Valencia, by whom am I making choices; on whose behalf and with what in mind am I moving about this space; on whose terms am I learning about it; and upon what human sacrifice does my physical presence here on the street rely. Who do I become when I am here on Valencia in the Mission, and how do I treat community members and ways of life that were here before me, just a few years ago, or hundreds of years ago?

What are your relationships? When you have money and you're tourist-new to San Francisco (like me), it's particularly easy to just become another consumer demanding space with the Capitalist law of imminent domain. It's easy. Make way for capital to flow from me to other privileged communities, create yet another justification for policing and criminalizing poor people of color, just for being in the street, or on the sidewalk, or in an SRO, or anywhere (cause who wants to be reminded, by the sight of someone in "unsightly" struggle, that Capitalism is violent, right? Cause struggle is wrong and being Black and brown is shameful and wrong too, right? Cause it's important for our fair city to quash criminal behavior, right?).

To me, gentrification is disorientation from place and its herstory, whether it be a place of visible wealth or visible poverty. It means not knowing the back-story, speaking and not listening, carving your own path with contrived, ungrounded, bought desires, deferring to the consolidated power structures. Gentrification is the default for class-privileged white folks like me, cause we're getting by in this world as purchasing individuals, and apparently our money is worth something. I'm still brand-new to the Bay, just like that bright autumn day I walked from POOR Magazine to 16th St: I'm blinking back some of the truths I have yet to learn about this place, but I'm trying to get adjusted.

It's hard though, cause gentrification will happen in the blink of an eye: it's constant on the human scale. Cesar Chavez St is a seriously DIFFERENT place these past few months from how it was last year. And it's going to be different again when all the construction clears out and what we're left with is a green divider like the one they have on Dolores...What's to follow? And they're about to re-pave Mission St over the next year. What is that going to look like when it's done? What's going to happen to folks who sleep there in the meantime? What about all the businesses and people using underground economic strategies? Folks who rely on the bus traffic up and down Mission? Did they give permission about what's gonna happen there? And what also is going to happen to the Redstone Building, a really special place in the city with a rich history of organizing that now serves as a home to lots of amazing POC-led and poor-people-led organizations? How will the culture and people of the Mission be effected if orgs operating on small budgets, like POOR and CISPES and El La and the Idriss Stelley Foundation, get kicked out?

One place where I can ground myself and get some perspective on the Mission and on myself is at the Redstone Building. The Redstone is like a healing salve on all that burning glaring newness and ahistoricism and violence swept under the rug up on Valencia. With its cooling shady entryway, quiet echoey flights of stairs, stoically grounded on its corner, I understand why the Redstone is there. I talk about and witness others' relationship to the building, and through them develop my own love and set of spiritual connections with the place, by building relationships with people IN this place. Folks working on various project for social justice in the Redstone by and large care deeply about their place in community, have a sense of their OWN herstory that WE are making. In the Redstone I can begin to address the questions about on whose behalf am I moving about this space, on whose terms am I learning about it, and upon whose sacrifice does my presence here walking the streets of the Mission rely.

If the Redstone Building is knocked down in the process of gentrification, or if it is sold to become condos, a sense of myself will be wounded. A lot of peoples' sense of self and sense of place will be wounded more deeply than I can know. That sense that relies on others who live in the neighborhood, who keep this place going, who train each other toward a place of vision, balance, safety, and community. Folks in poverty are the carriers of some survival histories that must be honored for collective survival. The act itself, of resisting getrification, is a revolutionary act of community. Saving the Redstone Building would foster these histories, this practice of community, for various communities and for myself, a person trying to orient themself in this Mission landscape.

Click here to watch POOR Magazine's GentriFUKation Tours "R" US project

Dedicated to all warriors for Decolonization from this web of lies... thx for NEVER giving up the fight!

Living pimp –free

is not eas-y

because to be really, truly pimp-free

is to be without

the security

Of systems in place,

To secure and displace,

to create fakely named safe space,

With simple answers to hard questions

Like violence and hate,

Poverty and race

U see –

to live Pimp free

Is to deconstruct ALL the capitalist realities

Of Po’lice, Politricks,NPIC, and white supremacy

To recognize how so few peoples got all that stolen money, trading on false borders, prisons and

indigenous peoples liberty

And to live pimp free-

To really be truly free-

Is to redesign systems based on eldership, ancestors, Pachamama

And We

To deconstruct all the simple answers of why

we kill each other,

starve our mothers,

shoot and kill our black and brown brothers

incarcerate so many others

To walk through lyfe pimp-free

is to stop, look, listen and see-

Move off- the grid of control, share resources, with each other –

Teach ourselves and our children

Build our own pimp-free housing –

create our own work and jobs

Barter with each other

Launch reparations of blood-stained amerikkkan dollaz

Reach out and touch

Connect with, repair and love

All of us-

Without a step and fetch it hustle –

But with the decolonized truth-

even if it hurts, confuses, takes time

and means more “trouble” 

U see

to live pimp-free- IS the revolution

In a 21st century corporate %1-led Aristocracy

So here I am in my dreams

riding pimp-free

Slanging elders knowledge instead of what they charge u for in eugenecist kkkollege

Scolding, holding and caring for mamaz, babies and elders,

Marching, protesting and acting against devil-opers, sacred site desecrators, bank-pimps, corporate pimps and po’lice killers

Bartering food, starting our children good,

Listening to our ancestors, caring for our mama

Taking the lessons even when they are filled with drama-

Trying, not dying, to live, to give, to dream, to see- a life for all of us- that is truly

Pimp –free

 We aint there yet – but Creator knows –

It will someday be…

a life-

that is truly pimp-free..

Save the Date: Living Pimp-Free: The Revolutionary Change Session- Juneteenth 2012 -(June 15-18): Decolonizing, Healing and Preparing For Liberation From ALL Plantations and Pimpologies

Living Pimp-Free will be a three day intensive seminar to heal, decolonize and prepare for life beyond plantations, pimping, po'licing and profiteering to realize, vision and conceptualize sharing, caring and true inter-dependence as peoples....details upcoming