2014

  • L's Up- Guns Down-Mamaz Resist Gun Violence From Oakland to Frisco

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    PNNscholar1
    Original Body

    13 year old Lee Weathersby was the first homicide victim in the city of Oakland of 2014.

    He was shot and killed on his way home from visiting a friend's home. Three weeks later, his older brother, Lamar Broussard and his best friend were also shot and killed, making the two young brothers homicides 4th and 5th.

    A temporary light was shone by mainstream media on a heartbroken mother who lost both of her sons to gun violence. No matter if the gun violence is perpetrated by po'lice, or the so-called “Gangsta Homie”, these murders destroy our families and communities (mostly of color) in every aspect.

    As a young, misplaced diaspora African living in Amerikkka I have bore witness to stolen Africans being treated as if we were not human beings at all. In the world of wite supremacy and capitalism black lives do not matter, unless there was a profit to be made.

    The po'lice kills us with impunity and receives medals of honor so how safe are our children when we have these cold-hearted, child-killers roaming amongst us? How can we rely on the police to do their sworn duty to protect the citizens when there are po'lice who shoot down kids themselves?

    With so much against us people who are darker than blue it makes no sense for us to continue to intoxicate ourselves with the poisonous cocktail of cultural interception, land theft, the Willie Lynch Syndrome and the Turf War Syndrome resulting in us killing each other and our communities.

    Determined to keep the legacy alive of her two sons, Lee and Lamar- who were not troublemakers and lived their lives straight, Strong Mama Dinyal, who we had the blessing to meet when she came thru to POOR Magazine's poor -people -led newsroom in Deep East Oakland at Homefulness, created the platform “L's Up, Guns Down!” followed by a peaceful march that was held on December 6th, calling on a peace truce for the young people to end violence towards one another. There is another peace march scheduled to take place in San Francisco in the coming weeks in honor of all the victims of violence there, including the recent murder of Paris Jr., who was gunned down in the Western Addition neighborhood, the same neighborhood his father and I grew up in.

    I remember saying to Paris Sr. how tragic it was to see our children die on the same streets that raised us. My younger brother, Marcus Nellon was murdered in the Alemany Housing complex in February of 2006, with his death first being ruled “suspicious” to a suicide. The suspected ex-girlfriend and her family viciously attacked my family with mockery and confidence that they will not be held responsible because of the ties that the ex-girlfriend allegedly had with then District Attorney Kamala Harris.

    The final blow that came from the family was the audacity of the ex and her mother taking me to “Judge Judy” to sue me for my brother's urn, and the ex-girlfriend's mother with the sinister laugh saying to me, “You know we can be snakes, right?”

    Marcus never had suicide on his mind, 2 days before his death he said that he was surprised that our mother, Carol X, who had transitioned on 9 weeks prior, had so many friends. His plans were to move on from the heartache and enlist into the military service. Since Marcus was a young black man from the hood, his life didn't matter. The system has already destroyed young black men's lives like my brother with tricknology and false conviction, even starting the cycle when they are still babies. Some folks of color have the gall to glorify Black-on-Black AND Brown-on-Brown, cruising the neighborhoods terrorizing your own villages, killing children, elders and parents without a care in the world, allowing for the po'lice to roll up and create problems between you and another brother of color living on another plantation (hood, set) Taunt and disrespect the families of the victims with this false sense of power and in reality, lost folks of color who perpetrate these crimes,

    in my opinion are "Klansmen of Kolor". Politicians recently have began visiting the neighborhoods, vowing to come together with the communities to "find a solution" to the rash of violence that plague our youth. I thought we were coming together with serious suggestions and a serious plan to move forward to help our children. Folks were over-talking and interrupting each other and when I spoke up on real solutions that can help, including holding community accountability, of course it got quiet. I left the meeting feeling like I should go buy a shovel and start digging graves because when one of us Warrior Mamas or Papas speak up on what the people REALLY needs, It sometimes can sound like a foreign language, even amongst my own brethren. I felt like "fuck it- I will find a way, with the help of God and Mother Nature to reach our babies- EVEN IF I HAVE TO DO THIS BY MYSELF!!" While we are having these "meetings" blowing smoke up the peoples' behinds our children are dying!

    The blood that flows on the pavement is real- SMELL IT!! There is a solution to every problem, so long as the village is willing to the mandatory footwork that is needed for the sake of our children, and that is real!

    Tags
  • Who is POOR - An Open Statement of Facts from a Landless Peoples Movement in Amerikkka in 2015

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    Who We Are

    We are Po’ folks from all four corners of Mama Earth: African, Guatemalteco, Mayan,, Purapecha, Mexica/Mexican Filipino. Puerto Rican, Taino, Apache, Lakota,, Tongan, Samoan, Hawaiian, Ohlone,  Japanese, Chinese, Irish, Roma and many more. We are elders, disabled, children, mamaz, daddy,z aunties, uncles, abuelas, abuelos, daughters and suns. We are queer, straight, gender neutral and trans. We are artists, poets, revolutionaries, and survivors.

    What We do?
    Media:
    PNN Radio,
    PNN-TV, PNN On-line magazine
    POOR Press/Prensa POBRE
    Street Newsroom on Deep East TV /Community Newsroom
    Voces De inmigrantes en Resistencia
    Indigenous Peoples Media Project
    Krip Hop Nation Channel on POOR
    Youth in Media

    Education:
    PeopleSkoo for folks with race, class or formal education privilege
    PeopleSkool for Poverty Skolaz
    Family Project- Decolonizing Education for children and families in poverty - (the roots of Decolonize Academy)
    Decolonize Academy (Launched with two other organizations)

    Art/Theatre/Performance:
    Po Poets, welfareQUEENs,
    GentriFUation Tours R US,
    Uncle Al Robles Living Library
    Not Silent Art Auction,
    Hotel Voices,
    Theatre of the POOR, 
    Los Viajes

    Revolutionary Healing/ Health work-
    HEALZ- Healing from Addictions thru Art, Education and Liberation group
    Healing the Neighbor-HOOD - once a year to celebrate Inter-Dependence Day Multi-nationed Ceremonies from Indigenous Peoples, African Peoples, and ALL four Corners
    Poor Peoples Free Farm Stand-Organic , Free, produce for all community
    Poor peoples community Clinic- (eventually on the land at Hopefulness)

    Landless Peoples Liberation-
    Homefulness- a poor people-led solution to Homelessness-
    MamaHouse- a poor mama -led home for poor single parents with children- 
    Pachamama/Madre Tierra/Mama Earth Garden- a poor people-led garden on the land at Homefulness which is open to all community who want/need food- at any time- (eventually will launch Po’ Peoples Farmers Market)

    Poor People-led Revolutionary Advocacy:
    Revolutionary Social Work- Whatever folks need - By Any Means Necessary
    Sliding Scale Cafe Harm reduction Hot Dogs and street based advocacy
    Revolutionary Legal Advocacy Project (ReLap)- Jailhouse lawyers outside of jail without a degree- providing legal advice from poverty skola to poverty skola 

    Homefulness Values we Walk and Talk
    First and foremost we identify as a landless peoples movement in these stolen indigenous lands known as the United Snakes of AMerikkka-. We pay respectful homage to landless peoples movements across Mama Earth, such as MOVE 9, MST, Zapatistas in Chiapas, and the ShackDwellers Union in South Africa.

    We “bought" back this small piece of land at 8032 BlackArthur in hope of being stewards; we seek to care for and protect this small part of Mama Earth we have been blessed to embrace and to change the roots of gentrification. When we got here in Deep East Ohlone Land on blackArthur we immediately re-distributed stolen and hoarded wealth back to the intentionally blighted beautiful BlackArthur neighborhood by sharing healthy food and making street based media every thursday. We asked permission and guidance from 1st nations peoples of this land before we proceeded and brought ceremony from all four corners. As soon as we raised a little more blood-stained dollar we built phase 1 with our hands and were called crack - hoes by colonized landlords who only understood colonized building and devil-opment.

    We launched Mama Earth garden which as a poor people-led and run garden belongs to no-One but actually Every-one. We housed two families (the families of two of the Decolonize Academy ’s teachers)  one was tiny’s family who was living in serious substandard, post-houseless, mold-filled housing which caused them to be hospitalized and another low-income single parent family with no Blood-stained dollar coming from the single parent family. We launched a school for low-income, houseless and working poor children from all across the bay.

    At the same time we continued to re-distribute thousands of dollars of reparations caring for our families and elders who were being gentriFUKed and displaced out of different parts of the Bay Area by offering a stipend to all participants in need

    It is our goal with Homefulness to become completely self-sustaining//off-grid within the next ten years so we can move off the oppression of blood-stained, colonizer-born ekkkonomies and help other poor people-led /indigenous peoples-led movements launch equity campaigns as a model for community reparations and revolutionary self-determination.

    Decision-Making at POOR and Homefulness
    Community Newsroom
    Revolutionary Building Circle
    Elephant Mtg,
    Inter-Generational Council
    Family Council
    Family Elders of Elephant Council

    We reject the poverty industry corporate Non-profit model which profits off the backs and stories and lives and problems of poor people.We do, however, use the 501(c) 3 non-profit paper and the roles of Board and Executive Directors as a tool of legitimacy  because otherwise if POOR folks ask for money we are called bums, riffraff and hustlers.  Although we see it as a matter of necessity that we use the 501c 3 as a mere tool to operate within the colorized , blood-stained dollar hoarding banking economy, we make all POOR Magazine decisions in circles.

    There are a several different circles depending on the issue.
    Community Building Circle (Open to ALL)
    For issues regarding the building of Homefulness, we launched the Revolutionary Building Circle which attempts to break down the hierarchal position of unfairly academikly /institutionally trained builders, designers versus indigenous builders who have been building and designing and architecting for centuries as well as the VERY male dominated, One Boss style of contracting and building that intentionally enables slave-/master roles to be reproduced in the building trades. This is Very hard to do but it is how we have built Phase 1-

    Community Newsroom-Indigenous News-making Circle (Open to ALL)
     No-one owns our media- but POOR peoples decided together what our media is. This is accomplished in monthly and weekly circle of poor peoples who refuse to be lied about and spoken for and spoken about but all have voices and demand to be heard. The Community Newsroom is where fellow poor, disabled, criminalized, migrants, indigenous peoples come in to propose stories and ask for media support from POOR or write /them themselves.

    Inter-Generational Council at Homefulness (Open to ALL in community)
    This is an open meeting to ALL community members to make core decisions and deal with problems on the sacred indigenous land we call Homefulness. This is an outgrowth of our Family Councils which are necessary so we don’t have to ever engage with the state to deal with issues that come up. All Commuity members have been invited to come into this meeting and we actively outreach to both community elders and POOR family elders and youth. We spend resources and ask for support in transporting peoples from all across the bay to ensure this meeting is a full discussion

    Elephant Meetings-(Open to POOR Family who have gone to PeopleSkool or been in POOR family for over a year)
    Elephants are matriarchal-led and their babies alone cannot survive in colonized captivity and each of them rely on family to survive and thrive. Because we at POOR are matriarchal led and cannot survive without our family members in this colonized captivity called amerikkka we bring the spirit of the elephants into our core decision making meeting. This meeting is open to all POOR family who has gone thru one semester of PeopleSkool    different meetings that have always been open to all peoples. the first one is called Elephant Council Meetings and deal with problems and large decisions in Inter-generational councils at Homefulness.This is because we refuse to ever call the Po’Lice which is easy to say but a very hard thing to do cuz all us po peoples have issues and baggage and trauma and carry all of that on our broken backs.

    Family Councils (Facilitated by Community Elders and involving the peoples involved in the problem)
    Called in the most serious situations open to peoples involved in an egregious act against another POOR or Homefulness family member- This is a Community accountability circle that requires people involved to own their part in the problem and agree to ways to remedy the issues, If one of the people in the circle who was involved in the problem does not take ownership for their role in the problem, or follow the agreements decided on in the circle, they are respectfully asked to step away from POOR.

    Family Elders-Open  to elders from the community who support POOR and long-time POOR family who have been involved over 6 years. (this is analagous to our board) This meeting is only called twice a year or when we have the most complicated issues challenging our Manifesto for Change or Declaration of Independence

    Blood-Stained dollaz/Money at POOR

    As poor peoples we Make NO Bones about the fact that writing and journalism by poor peoples must be financially supported Poverty Scholarship is No Joke, and its one of the POWER-FUl things about poor peoples creating media for us and by us.  This is why even though POOR is in fact Po’ we continue to collect reparations to support other poor peoples to write and produce media.

    After Peoples with Race, Class or formal Education prrivilege go through our PeopleSkool session and learn our values we ask them to become Revolutionary Donors to POOR or other poor people-led movements. They are invited to be on our Solidarity family. Our Solidarity family has one role only, which they are very clear about; this is to organize other folks with race, class or formal education privilege to become Revolutionary Donors and to help us with access to the spaces and places we poor and indigenous peoples are intentionally kept out of. This is a very deep and powerful move of consciousness and requires a high level of decolonization. All of the Revolutionary Donors DO NOT just support POOR but rather provide an emergency reparations network to support other poor peoples in need. Reparations have supported Peoples Community Medics, Birth Justice Movements, Alex Nieto, Kenny Harding Jr Foundation, as well as assisting poverty skolars in struggle in paying everyday extortions like PG& E bills, in getting family members across false borders, in fronting for emergency healthcare costs.

    This entire idea of Community Reparations and Revolutionary Donations comes from the POOR Declaration of Inter-Dependence, the Manifesto for Change, and the 10 point plan for Poor people-led, indigenous people-led  movements, which we have openly shared with other poor people-led, African people-led movements.


    Our money and administration is open for all to know. Everyone who is poor gets reimbursed for transportation expenses and writing. but no-one gets a salary. Most of us are volunteers who receive stipends for journalism or transportation and within 10 years we hope to move completely off-grid of blood-stained dollars, by producing our own food , housing each other and helping the community around us do the same

    There is no-one leader at POOR but rather a circle process for all decisions, Mama Dee and Tiny started POOR with a circle of other poverty skolaz in 1996 and have continued this process. Fron the beginning, POOR has remained clear about the fact that the space for working with language and expression is a set up as a privilege for poor peoples who have been silenced for generations by the economic violence of colonization. POOR takes to heart the reality that communities must be supported with money, food, child care, rides and revolutionary advocacy for poor peoples to make media, so we provide stipends  to writers and workers, and free transportation to our children (who come from all parts of the bay) to ensure that they are able to receive a revolutionary and transformative education.   

    We have no budget for administration so admin roles are done by volunteers or one of POOR family. Database and Bills are paid by whoever is volunteering that week. We are trying to raise money to pay an independent contractor to help us with admin because this is VERY hard and a lot of main stuff is not gettiing done right now,  We have no credit card, We have an ATM card which is used by who ever has to buy building supplies or food or supplies. Our only source of monthly support is our monthly sustainers who send money each month for transportation or writing stipends. This is why we could not afford to keep the SF office because they raised the rent. Along with all the other insane work we did this year we moved 15 years of archive out of SF office and into a container on Homefulness, POOR’s official office is now the mini loft above Tiny, Tony and Tibu’s bedroom. 

    Our entire core budget at POOR is now approx $900. per month. Because we are trying to build Hopefulness our entire End of Year ask is focused on raising money to build phase 2 of Homefulness which includes the straw bale homes, The Sliding Scale Cafe and the other Four 1 br units of poor people housing. This means POOR Magazine is in fact Poor-er.  In this last month with the launching of Decolonize Academy we ended up eating away at our saved blood-stained dollar to build the foundations of Hopefulness. This necessitated an emergency ask to our Solidarity Family, who eventually made a donation that enabled us to get thru the month of December.

    Other fund-raising include our events, the monies raised from which are minimal - Mercado de Cambio and Healing the Hood, and our sessions of PEopelSkool where us Po folks teach folks with race and class oppresion how to become Revolutionary Donors and Community Reparators. The tuition from PEopleSkool enables us to provide full scholarships to poor peoples to attend PEopelSkool for poverty skolaz. 

    Tags
  • #FreeOakland- Youth Skolaz March, Re-port & Die-in Against Po'Lice Terror

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    High School Students March Against Police Brutality

    By Ana Lapota/PoorNewsNetwork RYME Youth Skola at Deecolonize Academy

     

     

    On August 15, 2014 in Oakland, California there was a protest led, held, and planned by students on the issues of police brutality. It was held at the Fruitvale Bart Station where Oscar Grant had unfortunately lost his life at the hands of Bart police officers. There were over 200 students that had gathered to have their voices heard and they would not take no for an answer.

     

    There were various hardcore and inspiring speeches given by youths who were angry with what was happening. One speech was given about the Oakland Unified School District bringing military tanks to schools and making it seem like it's the students who are the savages and criminals. Another speech was given talking about how they are tired of seeing people of color die on the news.

     

    We also had the privilege to hear from Francisco, who was a victim of police brutality. He was a disabled young man from Oakland High School that was hit repeatedly by one of the security guards at his school. As he spoke I can feel everyone's energy and spirit begin to rise like warriors that are ready for battle.

     

    However, the funny thing is that the government spends millions of dollars for police officers yet when it comes to students education they only spend around thousands of dollars. And they turned a school, that had the best restorative justice program in the state, into a police station after the government was so called “low on funding.” This probably explains why my school can”t afford air conditioning, quality cafeteria food, or even new textbooks.

     

    Overall, it was really an inspiring movement held by students who care more about their community than officers. They then had their die-in for 4 minutes and 28 seconds to represent how long Michael Brown lay on the ground exposed to his community.

     

    After that, they marched from Fruitvale to Lake Merritt chanting as loud as they possibly can, “Michael Brown was 18. Do you know what racist means?” or “No justice, no peace, we're taking over our streets.” banging on bus windows and some people even got out of their cars and walked with us.

     

    At Lake Merritt they then had a candlelight to honor all the victims of police brutality.

     

    It was truly a #Free Oakland movement and with everything that happened on this day we were one step closer to freeing everyone of oppression, incarceration, inequality, but most of all police brutality.

    Tags
  • You Are My Brother- Why Would You Hit Me? /RYME Youth Skolaz MArch & Re-port Against PoLice Terror

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    “What is it about your uniform that you find more value in a barricade, which is a piece of iron then you do in my life?” Tyrese a young student that was protesting in Berkeley said.

    Tyrese got hit with a baton by an African American officer when he supposedly touched the barricade. Tyrese defended himself saying that he did not touch it because he was holding up a sign.


    “You are my brother, why would you hit me? I’m not armed. I’m a young activist who got knowledge of self and i’m trying to make things better-why would you hit me.. I’m the only Black guy out here and you’re a Black cop out here.. Why would you hit me like that.” Concluded Tyrese.

    The crowd, after seeing what happened wanted  to lash out at the police but many people in the crowd wanted the protest to stay peaceful.

    It’s been two weeks now of the ongoing protests in Berkeley. In one protest police officers tear gassed the crowd even though there were students in the crowd.

    The protests are for the cause of police brutality. Thousands of protesters for over two weeks have been there to fight for the cause to stop police brutally because all lives matter and they don’t deserve to die by the hand of some cop.

    It’s very powerful what people are doing in Berkeley, and I’m very proud of my school and my friend Ana for joining in the movement and walking out of the school. My school was one of the high schools that walked out and protested and I’m shocked that the protest went so well and we are getting more awareness for police brutality and why it should be stopped.
     
       

    Tags
  • PEOPLE NOT POSTCARDS: A MODERN EVICTION STORY

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    PNNscholar1
    Original Body

    “The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him—six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”—Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories

     
    Decades before explicit penury recast Detroit as a gothic, deindustrialized curiosity, 5-year-old Patty Kerman was out for a Sunday drive with her family in their blue Kaiser-Frazer sedan. No pastime could be more emblematic of the 1950s. Gas was cheap, cars were roomy. And for dwellers of the Motor City, then at its frenzied zenith as auto production capital, a pleasant spin around town was the perfect pride of place exemplar.
     
    Along for the ride was a friend of Patty’s parents, Mae. Her presence, too, lent an unsurprising, familiar air—until the car slowed and stopped. Two men in actual white coats materialized at the side of the road. Patty gaped in stunned alarm. “It was those hands of hers,” Patricia recalls over beers at the Uptown as she describes Mae’s struggle, “those white, clawing hands—clawing and gripping inside the open door as they tried pulling her from the car. The tension in those bloodless hands.” And then the men in white simply plucked the woman away.
     
    Patricia’s seemingly complicit parents never discussed the event, and its immediacy paled with the years. But even now it reruns vividly through Patricia’s eyes in the dim light of the bar. The hands, the white coats, the violence—glimpsed through a caul of shameful memory. As though she too were guilty with her parents in the perhaps misguided committal of a mentally ill friend. Or that she too knows the vagaries of malevolent force.
     
    No one ever knew what happened to Mae. Patricia honors her memory by testifying to what was perhaps the woman’s most ignominious moment. In so doing, she may also have inadvertently identified a vanished, spiritual soulmate. But unlike Mae, Patricia’s faculties aren’t in question. She also had warning of her own precarious destiny. And she too has been struggling to resist it—only in slow motion. To be wrested from one’s home is to be the recipient of a violent act, whether the instrument of removal is a document or the Sheriff. In this case, the violence has played out for well over a year now—its collective manifestations serving as both a primer on predatory greed and a blueprint for its subversion. 
     
    In August of 2013 Patricia’s landlord evoked the infamous Ellis Act to “go out of the rental business.” As has been widely reported, landlords and real estate speculators citywide, spurred by the tech boom, have exploited this state law to relieve countless folks of their homes, either through direct eviction or threat. These combined actions amount to a sort of neutron bomb attack, which leaves buildings unscathed but liquidates people. The resulting stories are now so commonplace in the City, they may have induced a new-normal ennui—the unintended but alarming consequence of telling them. But Patricia believes they must still be diligently told. They should still have the ability to touch us, anger us, and stir us to action.
     
    As scores of San Franciscans have been touched and angered, the City suffers no shortage of action these days. The aggressively Darwinian approach favored by speculators and developers to economically power hose every last urban quarter, maximizing profits before boom goes bust again, has led to the most spirited tenant pushback in years. Lobbyist-besieged legislators in Sacramento rejected Ellis Act reform earlier this year, and local and national real estate interests funneled nearly $2 million toward defeating ballot measure Prop. G—an anti-speculator tax proposal—tossing added tinder on the fire. From all appearances, the American Dream dyad—that home is sacred, and property, sacrosanct—have ironically gone to war with each other, no more evident than in the current polemical climate of San Francisco. Revived tenant militancy, whose guiding principle is the belief in the right to self-determination, to one’s home and community, has thrown in bold relief the antique dichotomy between property as investment vs. home, landlord vs. tenant—a dynamic with roots in feudal Europe.
     
    While this historical tension fuels current conflicts, it’s also used as an obfuscating tool in a white-hot housing market. Real estate speculators are speciously selective about how they apply definition to “home”—especially if it gives any authority to an existing tenant in a marketable property who they see as simply hogging a unit of wealth-generating square footage. But for a tenant, a home is not purely a physical space to inhabit, easily switched out for another—especially if you’re a senior, disabled, or are deeply woven into the fabric of your community. Contrary to what speculators might wish to insinuate, these folks are not squatters merely keeping the spot warm until a rich person wants it.
     
    Yet the tenant’s movement is also fed by a base pragmatism. Many just can’t afford to move. San Francisco rents have gone so famously stratospheric that the ability of long-termers with rent control to relocate within an even remotely level playing field has long ago been turfed. In other words, if your back is against the wall, you come out swinging. As such, Patricia Kerman has become one of a growing roster of media poster folks for the displacement epidemic, where legality and morality layer like oil and vinegar. If the law is being abused in order to force you from your home, you have no choice but to elasticize the rules, owing no fealty to your “overlords.” And sometimes, your efforts might even pay off with a surprising twist. It is one such twist that sharpens the apex of this story. But first, there lies a road on which no Sunday drive will be taken.
     
    Patricia’s walnut-colored hair is tied in back, feathered bangs in front. She wears a blazer, but just as easily might don an Iggy Pop T-Shirt, or a San Francisco Giants cap. Her blue eyes amplify kindly through a pair of large glasses. I’ve joined her at the Uptown, a dolefully ironic meeting place. Her friend and the former owner of the bar, Scott Ellsworth, suffered a fatal heart attack several months ago while he too was clawing to hold on. The same reason for both struggles is embodied in one Kaushik “Ken” Mulji Dattani, a small business owner from the UK. His modest-looking Mission district accounting office belies the fact that Mr. Dattani doubles as a multi-millionaire real estate speculator. His record of harassment and eviction is so egregious, he’s been named by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project as one of the “Dirty Dozen” worst serial evictors in San Francisco (repeated attempts to contact Mr. Dattani for the purposes of this story have failed).
     
    Scott Ellsworth, a beloved Capp Street fixture for thirty years, became swiftly embroiled in a legal battle when Dattani bought the building housing the Uptown. Though Ellsworth’s lease protected him from unreasonable rent hikes, Dattani wasn’t deterred from unleashing litigious hounds in attempts to harass Scott into paying triple the allowable amount. The last social media post by Ellsworth before he died called Dattani an “avaricious asshole.” According to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, residential tenants in the same building as the Uptown, some apparently undocumented workers, were informed that new entrance locks were being installed. Keys would be remitted—only after identification and a social security card were provided. The building has now suffered at least two evictions.
     
    This is just one property. Dattani’s holdings may tally out to more than twenty in San Francisco and the Bay Area, including Patricia’s home for twenty-eight of her sixty-five years. Housemate Tom Rapp has shared the flat with her for sixteen of those years. In 2012 their relationship with Dattani, which until then had been cordial enough, began to rapidly deteriorate, culminating in their Ellis eviction the following year. The epic battle that ensued might well be taken as a bellwether for current tenant apoplexy in San Francisco. As Patricia says in contextualizing the fight, “Better not mess with me, I’m from Detroit.”
     
    Daughter of a former Golden Glove boxer, “Kid Zuckie,” and a devout Ukrainian Catholic mother, Patricia and her six siblings were raised strictly Christian, despite their father’s Jewish heritage. “To have her marriage blessed,” says Patricia, “my mother had to promise the Church that the unborn children would be raised Catholic.” Patricia’s father, she remembers wistfully, turned down a full scholarship to MIT in order to provide for the family, operating Bob’s Bicycles and Hobbies, a humble but popular store. “He was never regretful,” says Patricia. “This was the era when you did the responsible thing. But then, he also had no desire to be wealthy.”
     
    As Detroit began experiencing rapid job loss from shifts in the auto industry, crime came to define the city more than cars. In 1967, simmering tension sparked one of the worst race riots in American history. Patricia recalls a National Guard armored vehicle aiming a machine gun at her. Her crime? Violating curfew. Her takeaway from the incident was telling. “If I’d been black, I might not be here today.”
     
    The following year, the offer of a way out was met with hair-trigger acceptance. “What awed me most about California was the terrain—all up and down.” Directly behind Patricia was the roadtrip west in a carful of friends, a stint at Wayne State University, and all her possessions. Los Angeles was a vast bowl of adventure, and having freshly dusted Detroit, Watts looked to her like a nice neighborhood, Topanga Canyon, an oasis of counterculture. Where else could you glimpse Jim Morrison stumbling drunkenly in the street, or get an invitation from a skinny English lad named Graham to a gig by his new band, Crosby, Stills & Nash?
     
    Patricia eventually dated a record shop owner named Ted who was responsible for bringing the first notable Bob Dylan bootleg tape, “Great White Wonder,” into the hands of producers. His underground cred preceding him, Ted was once asked to dinner by some potential clients. The gathering was strange, recollects Patricia, who accompanied him. Young hippie dudes snapped fingers and waifish girls instantly produced joints, while the guests listened politely to some recordings. If only the world actually heard Charlie’s songs, the group argued, referring to their by-then jailed guru, they too would see how really enlightened he was. A song about food procurement made Patricia joke with her hosts during dinner, “Is this spaghetti from a dumpster?” The group was not amused. But as few may be able to claim, Patricia survived insulting the Manson Family without winding up a butchered carcass.
     
    She admits of those times that her choices were often informed by a conscious effort to transmogrify early indoctrination. Her Catholic schooling had impressed on her that tampons led girls out of virginity, angel blouses suggested maternity, and patent leather shoes were sinful, as someone might catch a prurient glimpse up a girl’s skirt in the reflective surfaces.
     
    She was in motion, hitchhiking up and down the state, pursuing experience. Then in 1970 Patricia scored a ride into San Francisco. The casual introduction to the City would mark the quelling of her restlessness, or at least its scope, though she was as yet unaware of the moment’s full profundity. She kept thumbing into the City every day from a friend’s down the Peninsula, and each time, “it was just more intense. I mean, there were people on the street strumming guitars. In Detroit, you’d get jumped on by a cop.”
     
    While hitchhiking, she met a long-haired boy who brought her to live in an apartment building on 16th Street near Noe, when the corner was a used car lot that would later become Café Flore. Her new home turf operated as a stack of interpersonal flats, and she was asked to choose between being addressed, “Patty, Patsy, or Patricia,” as there were two other Patricias in residence. Some of her neighbors were junkies, though it wasn’t immediately apparent. She began experimenting with filmmaking, writing and photography. As did everyone in the neighborhood, she took her film to be developed at Harvey Milk’s camera store on Castro Street, often sharing toke with the man while reclining in his famous barber chair.
     
    She sampled a variety of survival jobs—food service worker, housekeeper, and “camera girl” at two hotels downtown. Folding her life to fit a square 9-to-5 schedule did not appeal to her, as the zeitgeist of San Francisco was all about the expression of freedom. She moved among all types of people, never identifying with any one group, except a generalized coterie of beguiling oddballs.
     
    Artists and writers, seeming as abundant in San Francisco then as techies are now, bulked out her milieu. She knew painter and poet Jack Micheline (“came off as a toughie, but was a sweetheart”), Beat icon Gregory Corso (“a womanizing asshole”), and filmmaker David Brown (“an absolute gentleman”). When the ‘89 earthquake toppled and broke the work of artist friend James Redo, he happily reported to her, “The sculpture revealed to me it was actually two pieces.”
     
    She lived for a time in North Beach on the same block where Allen Ginsberg wrote Howl, and had an affair with a flamenco guitarist. She discovered the candlelit stairway at Spec’s leading to a stage of writhing, naked bodies, tripped on acid in the VIP lounge at Mabuhay Gardens to the Dead Kennedys, and attended wild costume parties at Bimbos. As a life drawing model at the SF Art Institute, she once motioned over an election canvasser and registered to vote in the middle of class. “I was naked, he was embarrassed, I registered Republican.” (She later regretted only the Republican part).
     
    Spanning the City’s 7X7 square miles, she landed in a series of pads, from the Excelsior to Cow Hollow, and once, called a pink garage on Guerrero Street home. She thought nothing of walking home alone from clubs and bars through shadowy after-hour streets. But when the news story broke about teenaged Mary Vincent, who was picked up in Berkeley, raped, mutilated with a hatchet and thrown over a cliff, Patricia finally curtailed at least the hitchhiking (Ms. Vincent survived the assault, later appearing at her attacker’s trial).
     
    Long before fussiness had its way with Capp Street, Patricia came to live in a scruffy Edwardian apartment building at nearby 20th and Folsom. She had no quarrel with the street hookers, just didn’t care much for their suburban johns. Drug deals went down on the sidewalk with efficacious regularity, horizontal drunks off-gassed their latest fifths in the doorway, and the block fell on the line of bifurcated Mission gang turf. “They’re happy to take our rent for living in a sketchy neighborhood,” she now says generally of slumlords, “but once things start changing, we become instantly disposable.”
     
    And things did begin to change. As Ernest Hemingway lamented in A Moveable Feast, “Then you have the rich, and nothing is ever as it was again.” But since this was San Francisco and not Europe, Hemmingway’s “pilot fish”—emissaries sent ahead of the wealthy to scout a location’s cultural viability—would be the unwitting dot-commers. “That was the first bump,” recalls Patricia about the late-90s boom. Before then, one would not have found the Mission on a big-money speculator’s short-list. But even once that boom tanked, it didn’t matter. The Mission wasn’t only on the map, it was the pink Google marker at its center.
     
    On the heels of Mayor Ed Lee’s mollycoddling Twitter tax break, tech boom 2.0 arrived with a clap of jejune predictability, and San Francisco got recolonized—only this time by what seemed like a perma-plutocracy of geeks. The Mission’s traditional soft grime began giving way to glaring glass and aluminum, the very sidewalks condemned and replaced in front of shiny new starchitecture. Stroller-choked Valencia Street rewrote the neighborhood as a simulacrum of the suburbs, and more recently, Latino kids got kicked off a soccer field by entitled white dudes in Dropbox T-shirts.
     
    It is perhaps no coincidence that Kaushik Dattani relocated his office from the Marina to the Mission, which had become his favorite Godzilla-like stomping ground. As early as 2000, he had begun tossing tenants out of his buildings, including an 82-year-old Latina who swept the sidewalk each morning.
     
    Meanwhile, he bought the building at 20th & Folsom. A laundromat on the premises morphed into a Yoga studio. But the first to go was the mom-and-pop market on the corner. “If all you needed was one egg, they’d sell you one egg,” Patricia sighs in remembrance of the Latino family who owned the store. When their rent galloped out of reach, they were forced to close. The space was reworked into an upscale German eatery.
     
    The restaurant’s kitchen exhaust system in the airwell often ran up to twenty hours a day and was so loud it shook the building. When Patricia contacted Dattani, he sent workers over to “remedy” the issue. “They cut my clotheslines and threw out my plants,” recounts Patricia. And it was from this relatively modest event she divined a terrible glimpse into her future. “Because that’s when I knew—we were in for it.”
     
    Since 2006, when restrictions tightened condo-conversions of properties with histories of no-fault evictions, real estate speculators’ highly incentivized method to empty a building is to offer buy-outs. These are often couched in sunny win-win terms, and if that doesn’t work, either/or threats i.e. take a wad of cash and get lost, or stay and you’ll be evicted anyway. Right on time, Patricia and Tom began receiving theirs from Dattani. A resounding “hell-no” response from the pair echoed increasingly that of many tenants who knowingly construed a buy-out as a one-way ticket on the pain train out of town.
     
    But Patricia and Tom saw their neighbors bend to pressure, leaving them as sole occupants of the building. And that’s when things got rough. Contractors arrived and began to gut the other three empty units, stripping them down to 100-year-old studs. Coupled with the operation of the restaurant, the noise was often unbearable. And on three occasions, workers actually broke through the housemates’ ceiling.
     
    But nothing would equal the day that a stunned Patricia gazed at the naked, indifferent print of the Ellis document that had arrived in the mail. When a Detroit native says, “I felt like I’d just been shot,” you’d best listen up. “We’d been bracing for it, but nothing will ever prepare you for that moment.” Instantaneously, her future had downsized to 120 days. Beyond that was no horizon for someone living on a small disability income—at least in San Francisco. Tom felt he could find alternatives, though it would probably mean leaving town.
     
    Over a year later, Tom is now weary of being misquoted in the media. I meet him at Mission Creek Café and sweat the hope not to misquote him. But with a self-effacing grin, he puts things in perspective. “No one wants to hear about a 48-year-old white guy.” The comment dovetails with an evident and respectful deference he shows for Patricia, who he knows is the more vulnerable of the two. A senior living on little more than $900 a month, and who doesn’t drive a car, is not one with options for relocating just anywhere.  
     
    Tom moved to the Bay Area with a friend in 1988 to start a hardcore band. Fresh from Bakersfield, a town populated by “a lot of angry people suffering PTSD from having to live there,” he landed for a time in “The Ashtray,” a punk rock squat in Oakland. Residential hotels were his introduction to San Francisco, and he eventually found work as a maintenance technician. Observing the scene now, he finds a lot less of everything that made the City attractive to him then.
     
    But while Tom doesn’t vilify the current newcomers, he nevertheless admonishes, “The libertarian tech bros need to understand that the people they are replacing are the very ones who made this city what it is.” He is frustrated by the blatant collusion of city government with big tech. Google busses, for instance, “have no place on our streets.” A public transit infrastructure already exists to ferry workers to suburban campuses. Besides, he believes, “you should have to work a little to be here.” In a vote against douchy lifestyle choices, he proposes, “(Techies) should pledge not to rent or buy an apartment where’s there’s been a no-fault eviction.”
     
    Until Tom got the Ellis notice, he thought the only “just cause” for eviction was an owner move-in. He immediately parsed the Ellis Act as a flagrant end-run around San Francisco rent control law. As a result, he told Dattani, whom he characterizes as perpetually hat-switching between slumlord and speculator, “We’re not leaving, and you need to get your head around that.” Patricia puts it in a historical context. “It was the people of San Francisco who demanded rent control. This wasn’t something that was given to us by the goodness of City Hall.”
     
    An anti-eviction themed Dia de los Muertos procession in the Mission that year became for Patricia an unintended nexus with activism, turning her onto Eviction Free San Francisco, a direct action, mutual aid tenant group. She and Tom began attending meetings. The group took on their case, as did ace attorney Steve Collier of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. Patricia had already gotten the eviction delayed for a year because of her senior and disabled status. With the alarm now reset, the clock still beat like something out of Poe. But Patricia had finally landed in a ring where she knew how to fight.
     
    “After all,” she says, brightening, “my generation took it to the streets.” Her lengthy history of social protest goes back to the 1967 Expo in Montreal, where she demonstrated against Canada’s complicity in the Vietnam War. She wore out shoe leather marching at nearly every protest flashpoint, from Roe v. Wade to Iraq. In later years, however, she became disheartened seeing only the same white-haired activists at every event, wondering if the all the kids had gotten sucked up by the corporate machine, or were too busy thumbing smartphones to care.
     
    It wasn’t until Patricia got involved with tenant activism that she truly found her community, or rediscovered it in a different guise. As she crisply sums up her relationship with Eviction Free San Francisco, “They got my back.” The cross-pollination of familiar older activists and impassioned young ones thrilled her, as everyone huddled over how to fight the evictions of those who came to the group.
     
    “I invoked every spirit I could think of,” Patricia relates with a wry laugh about the first time someone handed her a bullhorn. She’d always been adept at blending into a crowd of demonstrators, never imagining herself a focal point for one. But she quickly became an eloquent orator at rallies, having absorbed the strength of those who’d told their stories before her.
     
    “There were so many people, we shut down 22nd Street,” says Tom about the first organized protest against Dattani, which included a march through the Mission, followed by a rally in front of his office. The housemates and others mounted the office stairs to present their landlord a letter demanding he rescind the eviction. They were met by Dattani’s adult sons, one of whom stood with his hand resting atop a baseball bat. “I mean, I’ve known these guys since they were boys,” says Patricia. The letter was not accepted.
     
    Throughout a contentious but invigorating year, and galvanized by Patricia and Tom, EFSF orchestrated further actions on their behalf—more marches and rallies, leafleting campaigns in front of Dattani’s office, and on one occasion, a carpool to Marin brought an assemblage to the man’s street where flyers were spread to educate residents about their ignoble neighbor. Owing to Dattani’s occupation as a tax consultant, April 15th was dubbed “Tax Day Fax Day,” when dozens of the housemates’ supporters jammed his fax and phone lines with repeated demands to cease the eviction.
     
    But tension redoubled in August 2014 as the clock chimed on the housemates’ eviction extension. This meant that their building’s definition as a rental property was now legally obsolete—in effect, instantly making Patricia and Tom trespassers in their own home. As expected, Dattani immediately slapped them with an Unlawful Detainer—the actual eviction notice—designed to fast-track their forcible removal from the property. Ready to play his hand, Steve Collier responded by filing a motion to quash, and a court date was set.
     
    For Patricia, the year’s quota of sleepless nights had long ago been surpassed. The anodyne of her newfound community helped soften the edges, but when it was quiet and dark, and she was alone, the dread of her future became paralyzing, coupled with a sensation of extreme gravity. “Sometimes it was enough for me consider saving sleeping pills,” she reflects.
     
    The bright September day of the hearing found Patricia and Tom on the front steps of the courthouse, joined by supporters and media members. Squinting and sweating were all anyone could do. In the courtroom, Steve Collier presented to the judge five technical and procedural irregularities in Dattani’s notices to the tenants and their filings with various agencies, including the Rent Board. The judge accepted three, effectively throwing out the eviction. Outside, cheers and thumbs went up as two lives were instantly snatched back from an unceremonious tumble to the street.
     
    Dattani was scarce that day, though irony involving his actions abounds. The moment he filed the Unlawful Detainer complaint against Patricia and Tom, he also lit the fuse of its own destruction as a legal cudgel. The Ellis Act, while used as a Me-Tarzan terrorist tactic by speculators against tenants, can also be highly prone to misfiling errors in the race to bum-rush renters from their homes.
     
    One might argue that even if Patricia and Tom hadn’t mouthed off against being displaced, their eviction still would’ve been thrown out on technicalities just the same. Yet acting up does not exist in a vacuum, especially in a small city of tiny villages like San Francisco. Making noise exalts the meme that the seemingly powerless many, when pushed, will refuse to cooperate with the privileged few who expect from them collusion in their lives’ destruction, enabling the greedy furtherance of power.
     
    Tom is plain-spoken about eviction threats. “Don’t take a buy-out.” Compared to the obscene profit to be made by your removal, it’s chump change, anyway. The best alternative is to dig in and fight. At the very least, whether you’re victorious or not, you’re buying time, if not piling on disincentives for the landlord. The cumulative effect results in the narrative changing from one of vulnerability to that of empowerment. All tenants ultimately benefit from your actions.
     
    Perhaps as evidence, a growing number of tenant victories aren’t reliant upon improperly crossed ‘t’s’ or undotted ‘i’s.’ A building of residents in North Beach had their evictions rescinded after they organized, rejected divisive buy-outs, and stayed in their homes. San Francisco native Benito Santiago, a Unified School District teacher of special needs kids, had his eviction withdrawn after a months-long direct action campaign forced speculator Michael Harrison, co-founder of Vanguard Realty, to throw up his hands and shed Benito’s building from his portfolio.
     
    For his part, Dattani is free to file another Ellis notice against Tom and Patricia, though the process would kick-start the allowable year for senior/disabled tenancy all over again. The man also now knows exactly with whom he’s dealing. For whatever it’s worth, he is currently appealing the judge’s decision.
     
    “Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little.” Greek philosopher Epicurus authored these words more than 2,000 years ago, presciently nailing a feature intrinsic to speculators like Kaushik Dattani. Patricia believes that a virulent rapacity is creating a horribly desensitized world, especially in which to grow old. She tsks at the last three mayors, who she sees as responsible for putting the city she loves on the auction block, affecting a systemic greed. “Everyone’s on the express train to the bank, and we’re out here walking the rails,” she says as a member of a generation who felt experience and community as true currency and the accretion of wealth, a prosaic goal.
     
    In San Francisco, the demolition of a city’s memory, held within the experience of its traditional occupants, has reached critical mass, contributing to a sea change in the definition of what it means to be urban. For many, it is unconscionable to consider that a minute population of speculators, landlords and foreign investors, has the potential to hold a two-thirds renting majority in a tremulous state of anxiety about their futures as residents here.
     
    Patricia still believes this is a unique place, despite a hegemony that is “eviscerating the population.” Her folks are sometimes, somehow holding on out there, often beyond the reach of a bullhorn. But as she navigates the community, she urgently offers her seasoned wisdom. “Educate yourselves, know your rights as a tenant!” Then munificently adds, “Use us! We’ve been through this now. Look, we have the battle scars.”
     
    The recent subject of a French television piece, Patricia was taken to the Golden Gate Bridge for a filmed interview. Once there, the producer wrinkled up his nose at the backdrop. “Too much like a postcard.” This assessment could well sum up Patricia’s feelings about her adopted town. Forget the scenery, it’s about the people.
     
     
     
    I am deeply grateful to Patricia Kerman and Tom Rapp for inviting me into their lives, and am humbled by their generosity and trust. I feel honored to have born witness to their many acts of courage in the battle to save their home over the past year. This story, written with their approval, has been the result of their unflagging good will.
     
    Ron Winter has been a San Francisco Mission resident for 23 years and is a member of Eviction Free San Francisco. He is most often a writer of fiction. The above story contains no fiction.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     

    Tags
  • A Good Daughter Defeats Displacement - The Gonzalez Family Story

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    “You are a good daughter, so of course we will rent to you “ I was houseless with my mama at the time, we were living in our car and had been turned down for every apartment we tried to get. This moment came back to me when i had the honor of meeting good daughter, granddaughter and mama, Lisa Gonzales, whose entire family was facing eviction from their mission district home of several generations..

    In July of 2014 Lisa Gonzales came to POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE's Community Newsroom to tell her story of deceit by real estate snakkkes, who were attempting to deny her mother and grandmother their rightful life-time lease in the apartment they had lived in for generations.

    “No More Evictions, Keep Our Families Housed, “  The herstoric day us Po Folks and community advocates walked into the extra quiet, White West Portal streets and into the offices of Barbegelata Real Estate to address the snakkkes that were trying to take the Gonzales home right out from under 5 generations of mission district Raza our voices rang out for justice of this family.

    “You will have to go, “ said the angry gate-keeper aka secretary to our crowd of over 30 folks. We were a contingent of POOR Magazine family, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and Tenants Union advocates who were determined to stay in that office until we found someone who would take responsibility for this elder abuse of Lisa’s 94 year grandmother and 66 year old mother who were all about to be houseless if they continued with their plans.

    Eventually Paul Barbegelata himself appeared from the back of the office. “I am a human, he replied to a request i shouted out in the office, “ Are there any human beings here?”

    To shut us up and get us out of his pristine office he agreed to meet with us at another time.

    Later that week he began talking with Lisa and immediately tried to convince her not to pursue the life-time lease, But Lisa and POOR Family were not so easily swayed. We all knew that Lisa needed to get an attorney and try as hard as we did we couldn’t get a pro-bono attorney for the family, because like all of us poor peoples know there are no pro-bono attornies available for low-income tenants.

    So like the good daughter she is, Lisa went into debt to hire an attorney, because no matter what she would not let her mama and grandmama down.  

    In September of this very hard year, Lisa’s beloved grandmother passed away, before she could see her fierce granddaughter acquire their families life-time lease which they finally did after over $2,000 of legal fees were racked up.

    I remembered that Mrs Woo realized that no matter how poor we were, how bad our credit was, I was caring for my mama, honoring my elder, by any means necessary and for that she gave us a home.Lisa is another good daughter who cared for her family by any means necessary and then fought and won her right to her elders having their home, Please support this beautiful human, this humble, good daughter.

    Please consider donating to the GoFUndMe page set up to help the family pay the insane legal fees they still owe- here is the link

    Jason Chan Evicting 4 Generations Under 1 Roof from Peter Menchini on Vimeo.

    Tags
  • They are going to murder an innocent man!

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    PNNscholar1
    Original Body

    “They Are Going to Murder An INNOCENT Man! Does Anyone Care,?” When revolutionary organizer Gerald Smith reported to POOR Magazine’s Community Newsroom on the scheduled state sponsored murder of Rodney Reed in Texas I was brought back to another day of state sponsored murder in 2011. I was standing in a welfare line to get my food stamp re-evaluation on September 21st when the amerkkklan state of Georgia was about to murder, Troy Davis, another African descended man who, like Rodney Reed, received no justice in the kkkourts and a death penalty state was going ahead with his murder. I screamed in vain to the peoples waiting in live and no-one even looked up from their phones or paperwork.

    “Rodney Reed had ineffective council - (in other words) he had a no good lawyer, “ Gerald stated to the circle of community news-makers at POOR. As Gerald was speaking I was brought back again into the same wite-supremacist vortex that denied any possible justice to Troy Davis, which included a bloody trail of public pretenders and judges asleep at the kkkourt bench, among other things.

    In the case of Rodney Reed, it was a clear case of In-Justice being served to a black man in a klan town. Like life, murder and death is very complicated. The road to Rodney Reed’s conviction of murder was super-Unjust because it involved a white Po’Lice officer who was clearly the real murderer.

    His court-appointed lawyers had repeatedly told the trial judge that they were not ready for trial by the time jury selection began in late March 1998. Indeed, billing records reflect that neither of Reed’s attorneys spent more than 40 hours working on the case until roughly a week before jury selection began. Nonetheless, the judge denied their requests for continuance.
    After a two-week trial, the jury, which included no black members, convicted Reed. excerpt from the Intercept (full article accessible here)
    After what ultimately appeared to be a rigged trial a punishment hearing followed with multiple witnesses testifying to other violations against Reed which had no business being presented to a jury deciding on adjudication of his “punishment” for a crime he didn’t commit.

    On May of 1998 Reed was sentenced to death.

    Since his un-just sentencing Reed and his family have maintained his innocence. Notwithstanding multiple witnesses and evidence to counter this overtly unjust ruling that have been brought forward by a lawyer with the Innocence project who is working on his case, On November 3rd the high court still rejected his petition without comment.

    “Pressure helps,” Gerald cried out to us in the newsroom, explaining how a movie has been made about Rodney’s case which he has shown to multiple audiences across the country.

    “He recently was in court asking for the district attorney in Bastrop Texas to test all the DNA in his case and was denied.  This denial will be appealed.  He has been given an execution date of March 5th, 2015.” said Pat Foley, with “The Campaign to End the Death Penalty”, who also joined us at Newsroom to speak on this state sponsored murder

    “Please make phone calls to the District Attorney and sign the petition, pressure from the community is all we have until we get justice,” Gerald concluded.

    You can find the online petition at change.org. Download a paper petition here. An informational fact sheet can be downloaded here.Follow Justice for Rodney Reed on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram and learn about upcoming events in the campaign to stop the execution.

    Tags
  • Boycott the US Military!

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    October 2014

    This may seem like an odd statement coming from a proud US military veteran who earned a life long skill that has benefitted him greatly.

    The first thing you need to understand is, why would I say this?

    We as people of color have made as many contributions to the US becoming the powerful nation that it has become, but have paid the ultimate price here and abroad, sometimes more than our white counterparts.

    First, one must understand the rich history that people of color have added to the US military.

    The first casualty of the so-called Boston Massacre, the catalyst to the Revolutionary War, was Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native American descent.

    When the war began, blacks in the north were promised by the colonists that they would be freed from slavery if they helped fight the British.

    In the south, blacks were promised by the British that if they helped fight the colonists they would be freed.

    As history would have it the colonists won and for the most part kept their bargain by outlawing slavery in the north.

    The famous Dred Scott case involved a slave named Dred Scott whose master moved to the north. Scott asserted that since slavery was not legal in the north he was therefore free.

    His “master“ thought otherwise, a civil trial ensued and the final outcome was that since slavery was the law of the land he was still indeed a piece of property.

    Free men who fought in the revolutionary war were assumed to have the very same property rights as whites but were not allowed to marry whites.

    The fugitive slave act of 1854 changed all of this when congress penned a law that allowed any white man the right to claim any black person as his runaway slave with no recourse, even if it had been documented for generations that he and his family were free. {This of course excluded slaves that were already “property” of another white man.}

    Even in the conflict that allegedly ended slavery {and it has not really ended- now it is known as the prison industry}, free blacks who enlisted in the Union Army were not treated as equals to their white counterparts, and many of them did not get the wages they were promised.

    Ironically even the Confederacy kept its promise, and awarded a black soldier in the early 20th century, who fought for the Confederacy during the civil war.

    Blacks fought in every major war or conflict that the US was involved in, and even during WWII while black soldiers helped liberate Europe from the tyranny of Nazi occupation, blacks themselves were being maimed tortured and murdered by whites while the government turned a blind eye. Indeed the so-called civil rights act was not signed into a bill until nearly 100 years later.

    Even with the signing of the civil rights bill, racists have just found slick ways around the law, and even the law itself demands such strictness that even the most ignorant can find a way around it.

    Segregation in the military wasn't lifted until the Korean War in the 50's.

    In spite of our dedication and trust in change we still continue to be treated like second-class citizens.

    Having the first “black” President really hasn't changed much for us at all.

    The response in Ferguson should be reason enough, but just remember this: the government is the only entity that can change an agreement anytime they want without any penalty.

    The GI bill has changed at least 3 times since WWII.

    In answering why we should boycott the military, we first need to ask why do we join?

    The number one reason is because military recruiters are very slick and good at what they do.

    Secondly, what they offer can be very appealing to people who want to further their education but aren't eligible for scholarships or grants, often because they weren't given the proper tools in high school to get the kinds of grades that qualify. Also the prospect of achieving the so called “American Dream” of home ownership or owning a small business someday can be quite appealing to young people who are disenfranchised.

    In order to buy that home you have to have the income to justify it and the credit report. In order to get the small business loan you have to have matching funds and credit report.

    The vast majority of HUD homes are VA loans that have been foreclosed.

    Often people come back from the military traumatized by events like war. For females, rape is often more of a reality than in the civilian world. All that glitters is not gold, especially when offered by the government!
     

    Tags
  • Ferguson and the 7 "F's

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    1) As we chant to F#@*k the Po'Lice can we also commit to NOT (F)phoning the Po'Lice

    2) As we begin "Filming the Po'Lice can we also work on Firing the Po'Lice.

    3) As we Fight the Police for their killing of our Black and Brown babies - can we also fight just as hard to stop criminalizing, illegalizing peoples for the sole act of working in amerikkka without the Man's paper

    4) As we resist the Po'Lice can we also connect the dots to the kkkourts where peoples are incarcerated for crimes of poverty, racism, homelessness and parenting while poor in amerikkka-

    5) As we get ready to march against more state sanctioned Po'Lice Terror in Ferguson and beyond, can we also carry these values to family, home and origin community and stop calling the Po'Lice when you have an "emergency".  If you think this is the only "agency" to call- include in your resistance movements the creation of family councils and elder councils like we have at POOR Magazine and Homefulness. ( A very hard thing to do- No Doubt!- but a necessary one if we want change to happen) When revolutionaries realize you have to walk the talk and enact at home what you fight for in the streets then they will be ready to do the hardest work of all, deal with each other and hold each other accountable for each others actions.

    6) Stop equating safety and security with po'lice and gated communities - stop believing the empire's lies about what and who is safe and who and where is secure.

    7) And perhaps most importantly, the one "F" that relates to all of the aforementioned "F's"- Stop Funding the Po'Lice - This will only happen if we enact the above list so that cities across amerikkka can no longer justify giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to these occupying colonizer armies to "ensure our safety" They will try anyway, but the argument will get weaker and weaker if we truly decolonize our actions and re-actions.

    Tags
  • How to (Maybe) Survive and Encouter With Law Enforcement Even If You're Black Brown or Disabled!

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    October 2014

    Since September 11, 2001, there have been numerous incidents involving law enforcement severely injuring or killing civilians. The vast majority of these victims have been black, brown or disabled.

    The majority of the officers have been white.

    Most recently the incident that has made national headlines regarding this sort of incident involved unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

    According to eye witnesses Brown had his hands up in an attempt to surrender to police when he was shot to death. Rather than rehashing that story here these are a few simple guidelines that if adhered to could save some lives and some families some heartache.

    We all can agree that police have too much power and often literally get away with murder.

    That is the first thing to keep in mind.

    The first thing you should do when stopped by the police is ask if you are being arrested or detained if the answer is no don't say another word and leave immediately.

    Second you should come to terms with the fact that you may go to jail whether or not you broke a law eventually they will have to let you out unless you cant bail out bail is always based on flight risk so if you attempt to run when first encountered that makes you a high flight risk don't do it!

    Don't get angry or at least don't show signs of it.

    Don't accuse them of being racist or picking on you for any reason there is a good chance that that is true but there is no point in antagonizing somebody who is picking on you and has the ability to beat you, take away your freedom or kill you.
    Be as co-operative as possible by giving them your real name and social security. You are not required to tell them anything else and don't. The only other thing you should tell them is “I choose to exercise my right to remain silent at this time.” If you start talking again, even if they offer you something like a chair, or about the ballgame last night, you have to tell them again that you choose to exercise your right to remain silent.

    Please keep in mind the moment the police approach you, you are technically under arrest. Anything you do like run, pull away from them, or even argue with them can be considered resisting arrest.

    As unfair as it may seem the police can arrest you and hold you up to 72 hours {3days} without filing any charges so don't resist arrest!

    If you feel like they do anything inappropriate you can report it later. Check what the rules are where you are at the time, but just try to maintain your cool at all times.

    Most importantly don't do anything that would draw their attention to you to begin with if you can help it.

    If you do survive Thank God or whoever or whatever you believe in!

    If you don't believe in something maybe you should reconsider!

    Tags
  • Sidewalk Grannies Marketplace

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    October 2014

    Along with many things that are ever-changing in San Francisco is the crackdowns on the sidewalk grannies marketplace.

    The sidewalk grannie market is generally elder female Chinese immigrants presumably selling odds and ends that they get for free.

    They generally have fewer than 20 items at a time that range in price from 1-3 dollars.

    The fact that most of them are elderly and barely speak any English if at all is a tribute to how desperate they are for this added income and a shame on the city that has its first Chinese /Asian American mayor in history, who apparently has no love or respect for the struggle of his forbearers, who made it possible for him to be where he is today.

    Where is the humanity, love and compassion that was once the hallmark of San Francisco, a city that could once truly brag about its diversity, inclusion, and care for all of its citizens?

    In a city like San Francisco, the mayor's office should be instrumental in forming some sort of entity that will help these elders utilize their life experience or make their language barrier a strength, rather than a liability that criminalizes their survival skills.

    We can and should do better for our elders who have born so many burdens for us, yet in their time of need there are those that would send police to ticket or arrest them rather than lend a helping hand or guide them to the goods and services they need to not only survive but thrive as well.

    These people could be trained to seek out others who speak their language during emergencies or other disasters.

    When will the people who have come to our city, and use their privilege of wealth as if it's a right, and push around the people who made this city the great metropolis it once was, go away and return it to its greatness?

    The incidents of these grannies being cited or run off is extremely disheartening, being that rules and laws are being bent for workers in the tech industry, for example sharing Muni bus stops with the Tech shuttle buses.

    Hipsters and yuppies spread all over sidewalks while waiting in line to eat in trendy food places or bars without a single word being uttered by the police.

    There is no such thing as elders living to an age of no longer being useful.

    A purpose should be found for these folks, as elders are jewels of any society for their history experience as well as wisdom that they can pass along.

    Tags
  • The Worst Ambulance Trip Ever

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Phillip Standing Bear
    Original Body

    I asked my wife Kathy Galves, “What happened when King Ambulance took me away?” This is her response:

    "When the ambulance attendant asked Bruce what hospital did he want to go to, he said "Saint Francis."

    Before they took Bruce away, they asked me, "Were you coming with him?"

    I said, "No, but I'll meet you at Saint Francis." As I was getting ready I looked out the window several times. The ambulance was still sitting there. I released my service dog Betty from the bathroom, where I had put her for the attendants’ safety. She is very protective toward her tribe.

    I looked out the window again, and they had been sitting there for at least 45 minutes. I was done getting ready, so I was looking to catch a ride to Saint Francis with the ambulance. But then they left.

    I called a Green Cab. It arrived in about 10 minutes. We went to Saint Francis. From the time I called the cab to when we arrived at Saint Francis it took about 30 minutes.

    I went to Emergency, and they said that they had not been contacted nor had they seen any ambulance from King American Ambulance Company. That's when I got pissed.

    "Where the hell did they take my husband?" I thought I was in the middle of a real live Science Fiction Horror movie. Except it wasn't a movie. I went out and found a San Francisco Fire Department Rescue Ambulance that was sitting out front.

    "Excuse me, can you help me?" I said.

    “King Ambulance?” they said, "Oh no! King Ambulance is a private company and the City has no control over them."

    As stated above, King Ambulance had never appeared.

    I said, "King Ambulance took my husband away, supposedly to Saint Francis Hospital, but he never arrived. Where would they have taken him when they were directed to take him to Saint Francis Hospital? I was never notified that they were taking him someplace else."

    They said, "The only reason he would have been taken someplace else is if the patient was suffering a heart attack in route." They told me to call King Ambulance. I did, and King Ambulance said he was taken to a UC Hospital, and they didn't know which UC Hospital campus.

    A good Samaritan recommended I go talk to CVS Pharmacy-- they would be able to direct me to the correct location they took Bruce. I did, and they did. Bruce was taken to UC Parnassus Campus.

    When I located Bruce he was laying on a gurney in an inner hallway in the Emergency wing at UC. I arrived at about 5:00 pm.

    Jazzie Collins was the First Community Reparation Chairperson and also Co-chairperson of LGBT Elder Taskforce. As an AIDS patient she had to be very careful about her health. One day she was very sick. So she picked up the phone to call an ambulance to go to Kaiser Hospital.

    The late Ms. Collins was very proud of her Transgender situation. King Ambulance was very homophobic and Transphobic. When Jazzie asked to be taken to Kaiser Hospital they told her it was psychosomatic.

    Jazzie said, "If you don't take me to Kaiser Hospital I will sue you.” She knew they were in violation of a law, which she quoted instinctively from the State Hospital Code.

    Bruce's version of what happened that day.

    As I was at home, I was in pain and I felt like an alien was going to be born out of my stomach, like the Mel Brooks movie Spaceballs. I asked my wife to call Saint Francis immediately. She did, and this is what she told me they said.

    We called 911, and that’s when the fun begins. The ambulance asked me what day it was, and I gave them April 28, 1951. This was my birthday. I was off from the real date by 63 years. I told them about my pain. They checked my vitals, and found out that my blood pressure was 180 over 90. My usual blood pressure is 110 over 60. I was in so much pain.

    An attendant said I was a wimp and that was why I wanted to go to the hospital. That's when I bit his head off. On the way, they said there was no room at Saint Francis.

    They asked, “Do you want me to tell your girlfriend?" She is my African Descendent Wife and I am Caucasian.

    Arrived at UCSF Parnassus at 4:00 pm. Placed on a gurney at 4:00 and was placed in a room on a hospital bed. I waited until midnight to be seen by a doctor. Then they took me in my hospital bed down the hallway for a CAT scan. Then the doctor diagnosed Pancreatitis, so they got my bed ready.

    In comes this Black woman (about 300 lbs.). She said, "I am looking for this dead man by the name of Bruce Allison.”

    I said, "I'm Bruce Allison, and rumors of my death have been widely exaggerated."  The same woman broke up in a laugh. It looked like that laugh was the biggest laugh she had in her entire life. She took me to the 5th floor. I will write more about my experience in other articles.

    This is a recommendation to the powers that be: Federal, State or City. An ad hoc committee should be established to investigate ambulances. Not only professionals should be on the committee, but laymen that have used these services, better known as consumers. Licensing requirements should be tightened and given teeth. Fines should be applied so that these companies cannot use barbaric practices for capitalistic gains. I will start with my own Supervisor, Jane Kim, and my own Assemblyman, Tom Ammiano, or his replacement.

    This is Bad News Bruce Signing Out.

    Tags
  • Lurking GMOs

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    Do you frequent the farmer's market or shop organic produce thinking you are GMO-free?

    You could be dead wrong. GMO's could be lurking where you least expect them!

    My personal experience at the farmer's market recently made me suspect just this!

    I bought an avocado and a bag of tomatoes thinking I was getting a good deal and fresh produce.

    But what can you say about tomatoes that sit in a plastic bag in one spot for a week and show no signs of decay?

    How about the fact that there was no juice when it was cut open?

    The avocado was even worse!

    It was not soft as a ripe avocado should be so I set it in a sunny spot in my window for several days, hoping it would ripen. Instead it got dark on the inside near the peel and was firm and crunchy near the pit.

    Food that doesn't decay has very little nutritional value and is suspect of being GMO!

    Don't be a victim. Look for labels or packaging that states that there are no GMO's!

    Tags
  • Grand Jury WUT- Did Someone Say Grand Dragon of amerikkk? - a Po Poets Project Statement With Ferguson

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body
    (Image by Lara Kiswani of 580 Freeway Shut Down for Mike Brown)
     
    Grand Jury WUT? Did Someone Say Grand Dragon of the ameriKKK?
     
    Once again- the wite- supremacist nation who teaches our children colonizer historical lies  missing 525 years of genocide - who trades our cultures for blood-stained dollaz -has served up  a steaming plate of amerikkkan In-Justice in Ferguson
     

    Mike Brown, Idriss Stelley, Andy Lopez, Kenny Harding Jr, Oscar Grant and Alex Nieto shot by agents of the state walking with hate into neighborhoods filled with gates- built on lies of about owning pachamama and sealing our fate into razor wires plantation walls and walmart sales of guns fueling kkkapitalist rage
     

    How much kkkapitalist destruction will it take before the lie of IN-JUSTICE will be changed. How many walmart windows need to Break by young warriors of truth who say NO MORE Po'Lice terror- no more pain?

    Wite Amerikkka conscious or NOT  this is the moment to STOP- start reparations,  stop being quiet, profiting,enabling, stop buying and selling, stop taking part in amerikkka lies of safety and security- stop being a part of amerikkka- stand up for your/our black and brown future, harass your poltrickster until Darren Wilson is CHARGED-

    Stop enabling these amerikkkan lies - start calling out the klan roots in our everyDAY lives

    Grand JURY WHAT? Did someone Say Grand Dragon of the amerikkk!

    STAND WITH FERGUSON:

    Today, Tuesday, November 25th: Oakland Po'lice Dept -5pm all african peoples party calling a national demonstration at police departments.

    Wednesday: Anti police terror project calling an action at the wallmart in east oakland 5pm (wallmart sell toy guns that promotes &desensitizes violence/terror; wallmart has armed security that kills customers

    Thursday: prayer vigil for all our people murdered by amerikkkan Po'Lice

    Tags
  • Like a Beautiful Star and Other Poems From Behind the Razor Wires

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Phillip Standing Bear
    Original Body

    Phoenix

    Like a beautiful star viewed from a distance, obscured by the light years that separate the world from her brilliance and her from their ignorance Beautifully encrypted with a celestial image all eyes at attention yet no one gets it, it's a lonesome existence so she bottles her light inside. White zinfandel bottles that provide a place for her  pain to hide. More than once in a while opening her "wine" eagle spread on any bed she finds rest from the rocky hills she climbs. Climatiz  cries tears from her "I" not mere tears but spirit drops that metamorph into bright embers warm enough to spark life but too hot to sustain the enigma of her aspirations not mere tears but latent promises that evaporated on hotel pillow cases leaving traces of her yearning soul remnants of her internal erosion seeping through as the bottle she hid in bursts open leaving exposed what she fought so hard to keep closed she implodes and from the ashes of implosion she's born brand new. Like A Phoenix.

    Impervious

    God Blessed this skin of mine it wasn't made for cameos on commercials for oil of olay this skins rough the Bastard child of tempered steel and alligator hide the canvas where suffering chose to sketch its greatest mural its life time achievement colored with blood dabbed from lacerations.

    God tests this skin of mine skin blanketed in leopard printed bruises that blossom on my epidermis like violet and blue pansies witnesses to their attempt to hex what God Blessed. So, God touched this skin of mines endowing every cell with strength, beauty, and resilience to endure each strike, every blow and when the darts pierced too deep God healed this skin of mine from black and blue speckled symbols of rejection and hate rolling off the tips of unbridled fire threatening to destroy what God gave. Beautiful, Bronze, Brilliance this skin that God made.

    Impervious!

    Cause God Loves this skin of mine.

    Virtue

    If beauty had a first name, it would have to be Nneka for what could be more beautiful than a mother whose love is so supreme it destroys all elements that threaten the growth of her child? If purity had a face, it would be like one of a new born for what could be more pure than new life sent to awaken slumbering dreams and aspirations while endowing us with the audacity to hope in a despondent world? If power had a pair of feet one would certainly be connected to the ankle of the strong-willed sista who juggles two jobs, school, and motherhood, all the while never stopping to complain about having to fill a void that shouldn't be there while the other foot would undoubtedly be caught up in the stride of a determined brother who denying any association with the proverbial "Box" they try to limit him to, cuts through circumstance like the light of a lone star through an impenetrable dark. If patience had limbs they'd be attached to torsos that envelope hearts that reach through hands that heal but will just as soon slap the stupid out of you when need be and if love could be born anywhere at all, the flirtatious grin shared between life - long companions would be its MECCA. Sprouting life nurtured within a pair of new eyes, discovering new hands that grasp not for the wind but for Gods promise open arms that embrace, not hate but the love that molded them and an emboldened tongue that speaks, not to curse, but to impart Gods Blessing.

    Tags
  • From EBT to EBOLA - Amerikkkan Scarcity Models Kill

    09/24/2021 - 08:44 by Anonymous (not verified)
    Original Author
    Tiny
    Original Body

    From racist stereotypes to doctor errors, wite science/big pharma "cures", a so-called Homeless man on the loose in Dallas who "might" have Ebola and now the revelation of poor immigrants of color HELLthcare being one of the factors in Thomas Eric Duncan's death, I am reminded, as i often am, that Amerikkkan scarcity models kill. .

    The Ebola virus is very serious, Ase and love to the children, elders, mamas and papaz who have transitioned because of it and prayers to all peoples who are sick right now, and to be perfectly clear I'm not making light of this deadly disease at all. Actually what i am trying to do is plead for a moment in time when this colonizer created empire stops operating under the killer scarcity models that continue to criminalize, profile, maim, destroy and incarcerate all of us Po folks everyday in amerikkka.

    As poor peoples of color we are constantly subjected to scarcity models that rule over our food distribution by giving us only enough in food stamps to feed our families through the 15th or 20th of the month, welfare cash grants that are barely enough to afford to buy our homes toilet paper, school districts which continually profile and segregate our children based on their ability to pass wite-people created tests that aren't even relevant or comprehensible to their life experiences, indigenous languages or deep structures so our children can be shuttled into the school to prison pipeline. And equally deadly is the hater nation mentality that us poor peoples are lazy, stupid and/or crazy -dangerous and therefore should not recieve the food, healthcare or housing we need, but rather we should all be kept on a tight noose of hateful subsistance that barely keeps us alive, much-less able to thrive. And god forbid one of us houseless folks actually contracts "ebola" because thats all it would take for the hate to flow into a river of our blood in the streets.

    Think what you will about the Ebola virus itself- i personally believe it was created by Big Pharma so they could earn billions of dollars on the eventual "vaccine" they have already created, not to mention the side benefit of killing off thousands of people so there can be a more colonizer land -grabs of fertile Mama Africa continent land for corporate agribusiness, etc.

    The history of scarcity model hellthcare for Mr Duncan
    In the case of Mr Duncan, we now know that not only was he a big-hearted hero who was practicing  inter-dependence by helping a pregnant young woman who was sick, which is how he got the virus in the first place, but he was rejected from the hospital when he first sought treatment because in classic scarcity model style, he had no health insurance.

    I can't tell you how many time this poverty skola throughout my poor people life has sought treatment for myself and my mama when we were deathly ill only to be told, sorry no healthcare for you cause you have no insurance and no money. One of my favorite (not) moments was when i was barely able to breathe with serious asthma and told that i needed to pay "something" on an old bill or not get treatment or medicine at all . Add the fact that Mr Duncan was an African immigrant to deck stacked against him and you have a recipe for scarcity model murder.

    Mr Duncan didn't get an experimental drug immediately
    Mr Duncan received the so-called "experimental" medicine on October 4th -- six days after his second request for help, and two weeks after he originally received the misdiagnosis that he was ok and spit back out to society.

    Mr. Duncan's admission to the hospital was a far longer wait than four other Ebola patients treated in the United States. Those patients -- two each at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital and the University of Nebraska Medical Center -- got experimental medicine immediately. They're all U.S. citizens; Duncan was a Liberian.

    Many truths, un-listened to and under-appreciated have been told about Malaria, Small Pox, Polio and all the other diseases the colonizers scattered to and fro as part and parcel of their genocidal theft of Mama Earth and its earth peoples, but the genocide didn't end with the diseases themselves, but rather with the racism and classism that rule over their so-called cures

    But now this deadly virus is here and for all of us peoples who subscribe, if even by default to the scarcity models that rule over this stolen, indigenous land- now more than ever we as a society, not just revolutionaries, but all peoples, must move off the lie of independence, i-got-mines- scarcity models and move into the light of inter-dependence.

    We must as a society learn back our indigenous medicines, traditions, ceremonies, eldership and care-giving ways which we po, indigenous mamaz, uncles and aunties from Healthy Hoodz, POOR Magazine and Hekau Divine Youth Academy are actively teaching our young leaders in a school we call Deecolonize Academy. Equally important we must teach, speak and practice sharing, caring and inter-dependence. In even the smallest of ways this can make a difference. We must grow our own medicine even if its in a tiny box in our tiny SRO kitchens and then share that with our fellow poor and working class neighbors.

    For those of you reading this in the health care industry - stop practicing your own forms of scarcity models, realize the opening of your hearts and the changing of protocols begins with all of you.

    Mr. Duncan didn't need to be turned away , some caring hospital intake worker could have checked another box on that original intake form and like one unusually loving doctor told me once when i went to see him in a county clinic - the mandate of this clinic states that i should not give you free samples because you don't have insurance, but i know that's not right so i will give you them anyway.

    Inter-dependence means our lives and thrival is threaded together. Rather than send out a hate bulletin for the houseless guy who might have Ebola and hasmat suits for Mr. Duncan's innocent family and neighbors, how about admitting him for care before he got too sick to save. That move would have saved him and all of us.

    Tags

Latest

test