The rubber sides of the boat were like arms- thick - round - hard. “These are the boats refugees have to travel through, men sit on the side, the women, children and elders in the middle, sometimes getting splashed and sick with the leaking gasoline from the engine because they are covering miles of ocean to go from one country to another,”

Each of the tour guide’s words from Medices Sin Fronter MSF (Doctors Without Borders) rolled out of her mouth like water, narrating the “Forced From Home” traveling exhibit of removal, government/empire wars and NGO/Govt abuse of indigenous bodies across the global south. As she spoke she cut lines into my already broken heart, breaking it into even more pieces. Our liberation school Deecolonize Academy was on a field trip to this exhibit, sitting together in a dull gray rubber raft which was sitting on the black asphalt parking lot behind the kaiser auditorium in downtown Oakland. We were surrounded by everything that was allegedly modern and clean and part of this stolen Lisjan/Ohlone territory known as Oakland, California, United States.

As the guide took us through the literal experience of “refugees” across mama earth destroyed, dismantled and exploited from the empire fueled wars and kkkorporate land grabs in  Iraq, Lebanon, Mexico, Tanzania and South Sudan and more, directing us to “pick five things we could take with us with only a 10 second warning, I stood there deciding between a laminated card with a water bottle, passport or money icons on it. I began to get a pit in the deepest part of my stomach. I had been here before, so many times. the minutes to second warnings varied from situation to situation. This was my life as a houseless child.

Beginning at age 11 when i had to decide whether to take my favorite stuffed rabbit, my 6th grade class photo or one other pair of jeans in the hefty bag we were about to throw out of the 3rd floor apartment window me and mama were being evicted from, the 5-10 second warnings began. This was the first eviction we were faced with, our first in a long line of poverty and disability fueled displacements. Then there were the cars that we were living in that were towed, giving me and my mama 2-5 seconds to grab “everything” before they were hitched onto the tow trucks and driven away, never to be seen again. We were towed over and over because we  were parked overnight in neighborhoods that didn’t want “homeless” people and their hoopties (broke-down cars)  on their streets, so we would accumulate “illegal lodging” tickets, which we could never pay until they would tow our home away for good.

And then there were the 5 minute warnings of poLice and Department of public works before all of our belongings were going to be thrown in the trash when we were sleeping in doorways, on benches and in parks, but by this time the deciding got easier, there was hardly anything left to decide on. This was when the numbness of loss set in, this is when the poverty eats you up and you just become the move, the trash, the loss, the end. When the privilege of “belongings” is no longer yours to even consider. When the loss and trauma becomes normalized.

Our poor mama and uncle led liberation school Deecolonize Academy located on the liberated Ohlone Lisjan land us landless peoples at POOR Magazine call Homefulness went on a field trip to report and support for POOR Magazine’s revolutionary journalism class. All of us formerly houseless, currently houseless poverty mama and youth skolaz , whose Black, Brown, unhoused and disabled lives endlessly struggle with eviction, poverty, racism and different forms of Amerikkklan oppression, false borders and poLice terror and community violence, were sadly really natural for us to make this series of horrible crisis decisions, as we rolled through each mock station.  

“Imagine you are stateless,” the tour guide called out as she directed us to different sides of a tall erected fence in the installation. “You are an IDP,.. an international displaced person,” no nation will claim you, no nation will protect you,”

“You mean like me, like Afro-indigenous peoples here,” sis-star warrior, co-teacher at Decolonize Academy and co-founder of Kiss My Black Arts Tracey Bell-Borden, said to me under her breath. “Our Black and Brown bodies always under attack by the state, never protected, never respected..” her voice trailed off and we both got quiet.

International displaced person or IDP’s…as i stood behind that fake fence I thought wouldn’t this be a logical title for Black, Brown and indigenous folks endlessly predated on by the poLice and the politricksters, peoples like Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat and Amilcar Perez Lopez and Jessica Nelson Williams.  And unhoused, criminalized, displaced folks in this stolen indigenous territory ruled over by the land-stealers, banksters and real estate snakes, who thanks to the buying, selling and profiting off of mother earth have made it impossible to afford the basic human right of safe, affordable housing in most urban cities in the United Snakes Families like me and my mama who were permanently outside for over 10 years of my childhood and later when i was a single mama with my infant sun.  

“Now you can only bring two things, and you have 2 seconds to decide,” as she spoke we all numbly dropped our cards, leaving things we would have needed to live, eat and survive. Not because it made sense or was a good decision, but like so many of our brother and sister international refugees, were being told, we had to leave. Cards with food, coins, tools, and ID’s were dropped numbly by all of us into a barrell and we all shuffled off to the next to last installations.

“This is one of the most important parts of what MSF provides in refugee camps, it’s the clean water and sanitation tent,” our guide proceeded to show us an extremely simple shower and water station cobbled together with plastic water bottles and canvas that all derived from a large box of imported clean water that MSF brought to all the camps they supported. Again this was exactly what unhoused folks here need. At every unhoused encampment, folks are criminalized for the sole act of relieving their bodily fluids. Every time a poverty skola is asked directly what they need, we always ask for a porta pottie.

“Where can we pee?” as she spoke about the urgent need for the sanitation to keep everyone in the camps healthy, my mind jumped to the endless attacks on unhoused, disabled Black elders of Aunti Frances Self-Help Hunger Program just to have and keep one porta pottie in a North Oakland “public” park in a neighborhood they were all from and now were displaced from, due to high-speed land-grabs of all of Oakland and now reside in what my mama Dee used to call the card-board motels. The installation of working and maintained porta potties is one of the things that made the self-determined Here/There encampment in Berkeley so beautiful and logical and insane for the Berkeley politricksters to remove.

And then we were directed to the last “station” which was actually a tent. My heart heavy with me and mama’s own street housing and the extreme and non-stop police harassment and DPW removals (called “sweeps”) of tent encampments from Frisco to Berkeley to Oakland, i walked slowly into this station. All of us sat quietly in front of this, the last story as the tour guide spoke.

“This is the story of a young girl, a teenager, who was an IDP in Rohinga, she showed up at the gate of a refugee camp after having five minutes to flee her village out her uncles back window because she would have been killed after her parents had been killed. When she arrived at the refugee camp which she ran and walked all the way to with just the clothes on her back, they wouldn’t let her in, so she, having Nowhere else to GO…Nowhere Else to Goooo, Nowhere Else to Go ( my mind stuck here, as that is what we houseless, displaced, evicted elders and families always say, feel, face,) slept outside the gate, unsheltered in the mud and rain. For weeks. Until she became seriously ill with cholera and almost died. Then they let her in. Then they let her in… Then they let her in..

“After getting treatment and healing several weeks later, she woke up one morning and decided to try to get her  life back together. She had been going to culinary school in her village before her family was murdered and she was forced to flee. So one morning, after getting all her books and things ready, she got dressed, got her hair fixed, her shoes and socks on and walked toward the door of the tent, and then stopped, paralyzed by fear and trauma and turned around. She could not leave…. paralyzed by fear and trauma, she could not leave. At this point, my chest tensed up, my head started to pound, my heart started to race and i couldnt breathe. tears streamed down my face. I began violently shaking. I couldnt move in my metal chair. my sun and the other youth skolaz at our small school surrounded me, holding my hand and repeating, “its going to be ok Mama tiny,”

My mama, a torture survivor, whose own teenage immigrant, abused mama had tried to kill her, and who barely survived extreme abuse in foster homes and orphanages, could not leave the house, even when we had no house. I was her sole caregiver, i held her through that torture, that terror, everyday as her daughter, until the day she transitioned. It was why she could no longer work after being laid off, “one more little murder of the soul, Lisa,” she would whisper, and then grip my arm and then just sit down. She tried so hard, just like this young warrior, she tried so many times. And yet she could never overcome that terror. She could never leave the car, the doorway, the tent, and then eventually the apartment once we were finally re-housed.

“The MSF offers mental health treatment to folks in the camps as well, we are still working with this young woman, and she is still trying,”

As the tour guide wound down, the stories of 100 year old evicted elder Iris Canada who died within two days of being forced from her home, of Elaine Turner, Ron Likkers and so many more elders whose lives are destroyed, whose bodies and lives are abused by the violence of Ellis Act evictions that plagues the land-grabs of the Bay Area and causes so many of us poor and working class families, elders and folks to become unhoused.

“Have you ever considered the “refugees” right here, right around your installation?,” we asked the tour guide at the end of the tour pointing to several tents across the street near the state building.

She didn’t really have anything to say. she nodded her head as we explained the situation of so many people in poverty right here.

As we all walked away slowly, in a daze, I  pondered our own state of being IDP’s. The connections between the original peoples colonization and genocide. The way that those same settler colonizer laws inform poLice culture that terrorizes Black and Brown peoples, that endlessly removes and displaces and criminalizes poor and houseless elders and families from their communities of origin and legislates the so-called public land so its never for the public good. And how this same empire and stolen state supports wealth hoarders and starts and funds wars all across Mama Earth so peoples from Yemen to Palestine, Sudan to San Francisco we are always “forced to move” and all becoming IDP's

Since 1951, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has been working to provide free healthcare for refugees and internally displaced people. I had just learned this today when myself, along with my class, went to a workshop created by MSF to inform the city and community of Oakland what they do around the world.

They had us go through a mock simulation of what it would be like to go on these journeys that these refugees go through having to discard certain items and make hard decisions. Toward the end of the tour, MSF showed more of what they provided to help along the way. 

One of the stops was explaining what it was like, crossing the Mediterranean into Greece on a boat made for fifteen and holding one hundred and fifty.  Another station told us what it was like for people to have to be forced out of their house and have to choose five things to bring in a matter of seconds. I could relate to that one because I was n that experience many times in my life when my mother and I were forcefully evicted from apartments and houses.

In the beginning of the workshop, they gave us a passport type of thing that told us where we-we came from. I was from Honduras. The main reason why most people are migrating from Honduras is that of the high murder and homicide rate from the cartels and gangs.

I have been thinking of you.  There’s an emptiness since you left us.  I do not speak merely of your physical presence--the presence of an elder whose mere gestures and silence spoke of the community that was built by hands such as yours—a community that is being taken away from us;  but a presence that was as real as any tourist landmark—more real, in fact, because you spoke to us, to our core of what it means to be an elder, a black woman in San Francisco. You refused to be silenced.  Postcard images are flat and tailored made for the whimsy of those who are just passing through.  Perhaps the words, “Since you left us” is inappropriate, for it betrays the truth of what you were burdened with in the last years—last moments of your life.  You were taken from us, your memories and your life—the years that wrote itself in the creases of your face, the aroma of your kitchen, the colors that surrounded and bloomed in your living room—minimized and disrespected in the ugliest way in an attempt to erase your presence from our landscape in the name of making money at any cost.  To those who bought your building, you were the “furniture that came with the place”—an old lady that “needed to go”--because there were units that needed condo-converting and you were old--there wasn't space for you and what you represented.  We know better.  I needn’t repeat how ugly the city was in your eviction struggle, allowing a 100 year old woman to be evicted; sheriff’s locking you out of your home while you were away at a community senior program.  This is San Francisco?  San Francisco is a city of facelifts and buzzwords—beautify, renew—words that get tossed around a whole lot.  But this beauty is surface beauty only.  The fault lines are hidden, invisible to many but they break through just as sure as the fog eventually breaks.  As rich as this city is, it is evident that its infrastructure is falling apart—that of civility, decorum, community—those things that connect us as human beings. Iris, I am ashamed of this city and I am ashamed of how it treated you and the legacy that was you, that was your community—without so much as a thank you.  This city lives with a poverty of human connectedness. We needn’t intellectualize this—it is abound.  Iris, we miss you.  The roots you left are still strong.  We still feel your presence—we have not forgotten you—those of us who love this city, those of us who don’t forget the connectedness the city has to our lives in real ways that can be breathed and tasted and felt and touched, beyond commercial exchanges mediated by the digital parade that gives the illusion of connectedness.  Iris, you lived 100 years and every day I walk in this city and see 100 lifetimes in the faces living in the cold--broken but still here.  Iris, we want to push onward but how do we?  How do we throw off the blanket of indifference that smothers this city?  Iris, the broken bodies, minds and spirits are piling up under a full moon fit for a postcard addressed to no one.  Iris, we miss you, we haven’t forgotten you or the city that forgot you.  How can we forget?  How can we forget your face?  How can we forget your voice?  How can we forget what the city allowed to happen to you?  How can we forget your so-called neighbors and landlord who wanted you out?  How can we forget such abuse of an elder?  We are hungry for your words, your wisdom, your heart.  Speak to us, Iris.  We need you.

On September 29, 2017 the Appellant Division of San Francisco Superior Court heard the housing case filed by Appellant Gavin against Parkmerced Investors Properties, LLC.

Appellant Gavin alleged in Appellant's brief that Judge Donald Sullivan did not have jurisdiction of the subject matter to hear her case and his decision is void under the law.

Appellant Gavin discovered in the copy of the court's record that Appellant Gavin received for preparation of  the appeal there were very important items missing such as: the original contract for Appellant Gavin's apartment, the Housing Assistance Payment contract required for subsidized housing signed by landlord  Parkmerced and San Francisco Housing Authority and there was no disclosure that Appellant Gavin was a recipient of subsidized housing from the U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development.  In other words fraud was perpetrated upon the court.

Parkmerced's attorney David Wasserman states that he followed the state law for evictions in the pleadings.  Attorney Wasserman also signed an declaration stating that Parkmerced looked really hard but could not find the original contract for Appellant Gavin's apartment.  This is also a breach of Appellant Gavin's substantive procedural due process rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.  Parkmerced did not follow HUD's termination requirements that mandatory in their pleadings.

Appellant Gavin alleged several breaches by Parkmerced in the court documents and eviction.  Appellant Gavin stated that under California law for delayed discovery there is no statute of limitation of an err made by a judge that can be proven to be void.  Due to further pending litigation in the case,  Appellant Gavin will not discuss other reasons stated at the hearing.

Appellant Gavin also stated that the actions of Judge Ronald Quidachay were unprofessional and violates Appellant Gavin's family civil rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.

On October 24, 2016 according to Appellant Gavin Judge Ronald Quidachay who is the head of the Housing Court in Dept. 501 at San Francisco Superior Court (SFSC) said to Appellant Gavin, "shut up!" "Get out of his courtroom and take the matter to federal court!"  "He has heard an appeal on this case once before and no matter what new evidence Appellant Gavin had he did not care and will not hear anything about this case again."

Appellant Gavin found these statements to be so egregious and shocking that Appellant Gavin had nightmares about being denied access to the courtroom which is a constitutional right. 

Appellant Gavin was so distraught by Judge Quidachay's appalling behavior that Appellant Gavin filed an appeal on the last day to hear this new evidence.

Appellant Gavin alleges the judicial system has an innate bias against low-income people whom they consider poor litigants.  Low-income litigants are treated with disdain, judged on how they look, the clothes they wear and their language skills.  The SFSC  also dismisses the courtroom reporter and there are unprofessional comments made to these litigants.

The courtroom clerk does not type the unprofessional remarks made by judges because they are suppose to be made off record.  Low-income people should always have at least five people in the courtroom with them or a courtroom reporter if they can afford it.

On July 02, 2012 the day of the court hearing from Appellant Gavin's wrongful eviction case, Appellant Gavin was at SFSC for two hours in arbitration.  In a conflict of interest Appellant Gavin fired her attorney who was insufficient.  Due to heart palpitations Appellant Gavin left the court.  Judge Katherine Feinstein sent the case to be heard by Judge Donald Sullivan.

Judge Donald Sullivan dismissed the jury trial aspect of the case that Appellant Gavin had filed and proceeded with a bench hearing.   Despite not having authenticated evidence, a competent witness, a signature of Appellant Gavin on any document and no jurisdiction over the subject matter, Judge Donald Sullivan ruled in Parkmerced's favor, granting an eviction and issued a writ of possession for the apartment.  All of these actions committed by the judge are a deprivation of Appellant Gavin Family's civil rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. 

Parkmerced discarded Appellant Gavin's Family property without notice in violation of Appellant Gavin's Family substantive procedural due process. This action is also a violation of Appellant Gavin's Family civil rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

The appellant division of San Francisco Superior Court has 90 days to make a decision in Appellant Gavin's case.

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied.

A report of an aggressive sea lion at the city’s Aquatic Cove made the news recently. According to officials, 3 swimmers were attacked in a span of 5 days by what was described as “aggressive marine mammals”. Aquatic Park Cove is frequented by triathletes and members of the South End Rowing Club—among others—for the chilly waters that can get the heart pumping during an early morning swim. Many professionals, including Doctors and lawyers—the kind that Richard Pryor described as “old white men that be lappin’ yo’ ass while you tryin’ to jog in the park”--no doubt frequent Aquatic Park Cove to maintain both physical and mental prowess that can, ultimately, be applied to the corporate board room or spa. I was intrigued to learn of the attacks because during my visits to North Beach, I have witnessed sea lions on wooden planks lying in the sun, the planks undulating to the rhythms and currents of the emerald waters, still and serene, except for a sudden eruption of barks emanating from their bewhiskered mouths.

Good natured, almost regal they appear, in the presence of tourists from around the globe who gawk at them while stuffing their faces with local fare—bread bowls overflowing with clam chowder, ice cream cones and any number of concoctions featuring the vast array of crustaceans that inhabit the bay and beyond. The sea lions themselves appear to be satisfied—as if lying after a big meal, waiting for someone to toss a cigar, jump in the water, swim over and perform the duty of lighting it.

Having grown up in North Beach, I remember the sound of conga drums, bongos, timbales, tin cans—all coming together at Aquatic Park. With fond memories I embarked on a search for the sea lion deemed the “aggressive marine mammal.” I gazed at the wide expanse of water along Aquatic Cove for 3 days and for three days all I saw were seagulls and ripples in the water. I was ready to give up until I encountered the sight of a sea lion navigating effortlessly the brisk emerald waters it calls home. There was nobody in the vicinity, just the sea lion and I. I got its attention. It swam to the shore.

TR: Hey!
Sea Lion: What’s up? Where do I know you from?
TR: I don’t know
Sea Lion: Didn’t you used to hang out at Aquatic Park? You used to drum with those guys on the weekends.
TR: I remember that. I never played the drums but I listened
Sea lion: It was cool, but everything damn thing they played sounded the same…it was like listening to Santana…Jingo Bop for 10 hours straight
TR: Can I ask you something?
Sea Lion: Shoot
TR: Did you do it?
Sea Lion: What are you referring to?
TR: Did you attack 3 swimmers in 5 days?
Sea Lion: It wasn’t me. But I know who it was. Not all sea lions look alike you know.
TR: Who was it?
Sea Lion: Hey, I ain’t no sea snitch but he’s been around for a long time. He’s scared.
TR: Scared? Why?
Sea Lion: We got internet access down below. We know what’s going on. North Beach is plagued with short term rentals and evictions. There’s a real fear that we’ll get evicted from our planks. Someone will want to use them for a short term rental or condo. We don’t want to live in no condo-submarine, you know?
TR: So, you’re scared?
Sea Lion: Wouldn’t you be? Nobody’s safe. Look, we’re a tourist attraction…people come around snapping our pictures all the time. Taking our best poses and sticking them on postcards. And the verbal abuse we take to boot. And everybody takes a selfie with us. But did they ever ask us if we wanted to be in their little pictures?
TR: But that doesn’t justify attacking someone
Sea Lion: I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t in the vicinity. But I asked him about it.
TR: What did he say?
Sea Lion: He said it was a nip, a love bite. Said he was trying to get their attention.
TR: The guy who got bit had a tourniquet applied to his arm.
Sea Lion: I heard about it. The one who bit him felt bad about it.
TR: Remorse
Sea Lion: I suppose. He did say that those old guys don’t have much meat on their bones. But he regretted it.
TR: What are you going to do now?
Sea Lion: Try to keep out of trouble. But the places we can swim and breathe seem to be getting smaller. We have to share but it seems that sharing has taken a different meaning. A coyote friend of mine told me that there was a mountain lion seen up on Diamond Heights. I’d heard that the mountain lion had gotten wind of the evictions and that the people were vanishing so he thought there’d be space for him. What he didn’t know was that people were being replaced with more people. So they shot his ass with a tranquilizer gun. But we got to share this planet, this space. But it seems that sharing has taken a different meaning. This is a problem on both land and sea.
TR: Any final words or thoughts?
Sea Lion: Yeah, you want a love bite?

The sea lion gave me a fist bump with his flipper. He trudged along the shore and into the cool waters of Aquatic Cove. I watched as his figure became one with the ocean, among the thousands of ripples taking shape along the current. I headed towards the sound of drums, timbales, congas and tin cans…Jingooooo Bop!

© 2017 Tony Robles

“I was anticipating a breakthrough -- hoping that the protest would not be instantly dispersed by riot police, like so many previous marches. On that day I thought that if everybody does their part, we will have tens of thousands. What happened was a shock to me. Instead of tens of thousands, there were hundreds of thousands”.

-Ahmed Salah, speaking to Washington Post reporter Jackson Diehl

Oddly, people who speak to me about revolution quote theorists of the 19^th Century or their favorite heroes, now dead, from the 20^th. Certainly, there are lessons to be learned there. Yet here in San Francisco, California, we have the key designer of the successful revolution in the most important country in the 21^st Century Arab world. And far from being mobbed with inquiries from admirers, he instead lives in obscurity and near poverty.

How could Americans let Nikola Tesla, the genius who invented the modern era, die alone and in obscurity? Why do we ignore such people, but only revere them in death? Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone?

In 1991, Ahmed Salah was a translator and teacher of Arabic to tourists and journalists. Within 20 years he would become a key player in the Arab Spring and a central designer of the revolution in Egypt itself. His memoir (co-written with Alex Mayyasi), You Are Under Arrest for Masterminding the Egyptian Revolution is a textbook for what makes mass social movements succeed and fail, and what makes revolutions triumph against all odds.

They’d tried everything in Egypt before. They’d held marches and demonstrations. They’d taken Tahrir Square before the revolution, only have the police violently take it back. They tried using social media, but that only gave the police their plans in advance. (Yes, “The Twitter Revolution” is an outright lie.) Nothing they tried gained any ground against the security forces until they took their organization and did actual market research, among the population of Cairo. Not that they used that term, but as “journalists”, they took to the streets and asked people if they heard of the upcoming demonstrations. Promising to use no names, they then asked if they planned to attend. Receiving the almost universal answer of “no”, they asked why, and listened. And they took the time to ask each person what their most important concerns about life were.

 “It sounds simple for a group of idealists to express noble sentiments like ‘Bread, freedom, and dignity’—as Arabs articulated their demands during the Arab Spring. Yet as I learned from Youth for Change and April 6th, it is incredibly difficult. Activists and dissidents are humans who argue and make mistakes and let ego lead them astray. “

-You Are Under Arrest for Masterminding the Egyptian Revolution, p291

Salah’s memoir gives key insights into issues, not only in Egypt, but in the Middle East as a whole. He grew up in the most secular, educated and modern country in the entire region.

If you think what’s happening Syria is big, notice how central to the Middle East Egypt is on a map. Now note that, while Syria has a population of about 17 million people, Egypt has a population of 96 million. And in spite of all the oppression financed with U.S. tax dollars, parts of Egypt remain outside of government control to this day. There are parts of Egypt the government simply bombs a few times a month, unable to take control, but only fighting to keep rebellions from spreading. The country will fall apart, and when it does, what’s been happening in the Middle East up until now could look like a picnic by comparison. The instability, coupled with the increasing aggressions of Israeli and Saudi forces could lead to anything. Only an education on the realities, not the propaganda, of the region can save it.

 “No one could wait for Mubarak to get out of power. Egyptians filled Tahrir Square, the surrounding blocks, and even the bridges over the Nile so thickly that it took hours to move a few hundred yards. When I managed to call activists over the overburdened cell phone network, I learned that protesters remained at the presidential palace and that worker strikes had ended train service, blocked roadways, “

-IBID p242

The revolutions, of course, were betrayed. Neither George W. Bush, nor Barack Obama had more then rhetoric for the Arab World’s yearning for freedom. Backing a strongman just feels safer to them, since an educated electorate will act in their own best interests, but dictators can be swayed with money and threats. But despite the bluster and out of control aggression of the Trump administration (or perhaps because of it), the empire is faltering. Future rebellions may not be so easy to reverse and threats may be harder to carry out.

Ahmed Salah lives with medical conditions resulting from torture paid for with U.S. tax dollars. He gets by from money earned from speaking engagements and from selling copies of his memoir. You can buy it at amazon.com or by contacting him personally at asea1009@yahoo.com.

“We are stopping you because some of the residents feel like they were targeted because you didn’t go to their doors, so they called the police,” The Connecticut poLice officers flanked our rental van at a stoplight in the wealth-hoarding neighborhood known as West Hartford, Ct, filled with acre-long lawns and plantation-like mansions and more stolen land than the wealth-hoarders even knew what to do with . As the kkkops circled the van all of us Black, Brown, unhoused, formerly unhoused and always criminalized youth and elders seized up in an admixture of terror and anger. Visions of Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin filled our traumatized brains. We tried to stay cool. It was the last of an extremely hard, long and powerful Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Tour Through Eastern Turtle Island. “You mean we should have knocked on more rich peoples doors?” we all said incredulously. This was a new one. The poor little rich people felt targeted. Wow, we’re sorry. LOL.

Tiny at one of the lucky mansions included in the tour

Originally launched last year on (Mama) Earth Day 2016 in the stolen village of Yelamu, Ohlone Land aka the Pacific Heights and Nob Hill areas of San Francisco, two neighborhoods with a concentration of extreme wealth hoarders (millionaires and billionaires) each tour consists of a group of us Black, Brown indigenous, disabled and homeless youth and adults from POOR Magazine, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Krip Hop Nation and Deecolonize Academy knocking on doors in “rich” neighborhoods to share the medicine of redistribution and Community reparations with the residents who live there.

At every door we knock on we present the Proposal for Healing Reparations and Redistribution which includes beginning a dialogue on redistribution of stolen and hoarded wealth and/or attending a Decolonization/DegentriFUkation seminar at PeopleSkool,and/or manifesting redistribution and reparations to the launching of more Homefulness and Sogorea Te Land Trusts, two poor and indigenous peoples models of self-determined solutions to land use, homelessness, poverty and gentrification made possible because of redistributed wealth and resources.

Aunti Frances Moore launching the Stolen Land Tour in Pequot Mohegan Territory - Leroy & Melissa Moore and her family look on

“Hello, we are representing Black, Brown, 1st Nations and Homeless peoples on a Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour to share the medicine of redistribution and Community reparations,” Aunti Frances Moore, Black Panther, founder of the Self-help Hunger Program of North Oakland and poverty, houseless scholar with POOR Magazine and Homefulness spoke into the security intercom on 745 Park Ave- the first tour stop of the first tour in Lenape Lands of Eastern turtle Island aka Manhattan.

“I’m sorry you can’t come in, you need to step away from the front of the building,” was the response. Cloaked in old school butler gear replete with white gloves, little hat and gold buttons, the gate-keepers of the extreme wealth-hoarders stopped us at every door to the billion dollar condominium high-rises that line the Upper East side of Manhattan aka stolen Lenape Territory. One after the other, some of them literally ran from the front door and hid behind the grating or locked the internal locks or just boldly came out with attitude and told us, No, you won’t be able to distribute your Proposal for Healing Reparations and Redistribution  to my “residents” and no we couldn’t come in the building. Our only highlights on this gut-wrenching 1st tour was our encountering the occasional door-person of color, or domestic worker who would answer the door and smile at the concept and promise to distribute our material to their bosses, supervisors or residents.

“This kind of wealth hoarding was and is only possible because they stole our indigenous peoples territory, in this case the Lenape peoples to name one of the nations,” said Corrina Gould to one of the videographers who were filming our tour. Ohlone 1st Nations land liberator with the Sogorea Te Land Trust, Corrina joined us on the 1st leg of the tour in NYC.

“I can’t go on, its too much,” Aunti Frances stopped an hour and half in and began to break down. It was too much hate, disdain, disrespect and triggers for those of us who are already racially profiled, hated, walked by,silenced, whose bodies are already criminalized, whose struggles, already used and abused for profit, to be studied, incarcerated, tested and arrested but never compensated, never reparated. Whose ancestors bodies were used, chained, beaten and discarded so this project called amerikkklan could be built. This was a journey into our internal and external oppression which we walked into eyes wide open and yet we had landed smack dab into the pit of our ancestral trauma.

Stolen Land Tour in Manhattan - From left, Aunti Frances, Queena, Queenandi, Leroy Moore, Laure McElroy, Corrina Gould

At then, thanks to Creator, there is always Halal beef hot dogs.

As us broken, unhoused and criminalized peoples stood, huddled together in front of Central Park, munching our comfort street food,trying to shake off the multiple triggers, we watched fellow poverty, migrant and colonized border scholars rush around walking the children, animals and elders of the neighborhoods extreme wealth hoarders. One by one Caribbean, Puerta Rican, Columbian, Bangldeshi Mexican,  and African women and men led leashes and strollers and walkers, so that the parents, adult children and pet owners didn’t have to. Yet year after year our housing, our wages and our lives remain unimportant, un-important except in terms of how much work, profit or rent we provide to the wealth -hoarders or land-stealers. This is why we tour.

Community Reparations Are real. Homefulness in Philadelphia!!!

Stolen Land Tour - POOR Magazine & Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campain in North Philly

As poor, unhoused, bordered, colonized and disabled people we have all dealt personally with the lie of hellfare(welfare) crumbs, not really affordable housing, houselessness, eviction and incarceration. Everything we teach is what we live, lived through, or barely survived. It is why we conceived, launched and are slowly manifesting Homefulness in Deep East Huchuin (Oakland). It is also why we launched the tours. The concept of Community Reparations, not be confused with African peoples or Japanese peoples reparations, is rooted in interdependence, the very thing they teach out of humans in Amerikkklan. And it is what we have taught some conscious young folks who then acted to redistribute their stolen, hoarded and/or inherited wealth to us poor folks to manifest a homeless peoples solution to homelessness.  This is not a pipe dream or a good idea - we are currently doing it and so as poverty skolaz from the struggle we are also dedicated to sharing this medicine, this idea and this manifestation with as many poor folks as we can. In almost every city we visit we have a young person read their own statement of reparations. It is why we Tour.

POOR & PPHRC on Stolen Land Tour in Philly. From left, Cheri Honkala, Queenandi Xsheba, Pablo and Gaylan

Stolen Land/Hoardes Resources Tour sharing Medicine with Wealth Hoarders in the Main Line - Philly

“Making reparations as a white, class-privileged person was scary, but it was not hard. Once I was on the phone with Fidelity Mutual getting that $50,000 out of the bank, it was easy, and it never got hard. As they say, “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” Every time I have given money away, I have turned around to have more money appear. - POOR Magazine's PeopleSkool has taught me to think long-term, to live as a spiritually whole person and recognize how capitalism destroys my humanity by making me forget all the poor, indigenous people whose backs wealth is built on. As a person with privilege, it can definitely be easier to forget. But remembering is the commitment, the recognition that is reparations. When I remember whose land this is, when I remember whose backs this is built on, that is the more painful seeing and remembering that is my spiritual obligation. Reparations is the material manifestation of recognizing that I only earned this ease, this way of moving through the world, this option to forget, on the backs of others who I may never meet”.

Excerpt of a statement read by Lizzie on Park Ave at the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour through Lenape Territory.

Trump and Ben Carson’s Plan to Destroy HUD

“They are proposing 6 Billion Dollars in cuts to HUD’s budget, this will mean all of New York’s public housing will either be demolished or privatized,”  said Louiie from Picture the Homeless, who like POOR Magazine is a poor and homeless people-led organization and also co-sponsored the NYC tour and sat down with me and Leroy Moore in their Harlem offices the next day. Louie went on to describe the exact same situation that already hit San Francisco in 2013 (reported on exclusively by POOR Magazine and the Bay View Newspaper  This while thousands of dollars get funneled into the hands of non-profit and for profit developers to manage our meager bits of truly affordable housing, that is increasingly hard to even attain because the housing developers, both non-profit and for-profit make the application and credit check process impossibly hard and rigorous. Many of whose long-time poor people housing is demolished take “pay-out” a useless section 8 voucher that most landlords won’t accept and which is also on the Trump-HUD chopping block. This is another reason we tour.

Shinneock Territory aka The Hamptons

“Bring us back our stolen land, Bring us back our stolen land…..” In Shinnecock Territory we linked up with Ahna Red Fox and Cholena Smith from the Shinnecock Nation, the 1st peoples of that land whose reservation sits on the shore alongside some of the most extreme wealth-hoarders in the US whose homes are valued in the multi-millions and even billions and who not only hoard blood-stained dollars but way more homes, indigenous land and possessions than they or their families could ever need. this is why we tour.

From left - Laure, Ahna Red Fox, Aunti Frances, Tiny, Queena and Leroy in front of the colonizer museum - Shinnecock

“Most of the members of our nation are living below the poverty line and yet our people were the first people of this land and most of the people who come here to live or vacation have no idea of our existence, “said Cholena Smith, a youth land liberator with the Shinnecock Nation who we had the blessing to meet when we arrived in this terrifying town of extreme wealth.  

“Watch out, we are driving into Get-Out territory,” I warned my fellow poverty skolaz in our rented van as we rolled deeper and deeper into the winding roads of Upstate New York on our way to the Hamptons. We were already wary of what kind of PoLice engagement would await us here. Would it be like Beverly Hills and try to stop us from touring within 5 seconds of our arrival, or would we actually face arrest.

“In the last two years we have experienced a terrifying spike in suicides among young people as well as a rise in serious substance use, this is one of the problems we deal with here, it is what my organization is working to heal,“ Anna Red Fox, who works with  Blossom Sustainable Development explained to fellow tour guide and poverty skola and POOR Magazine reporter Laure McElroy in an interview.

Leroy Moore speaking with Ahna Red Fox in the Greenhouse of the Shinnecock Nation (Hamptons)

“Bring us back Our Stolen Land, Bring us back our Stolen land,” we shouted into the bullhorn in unison as we entered the Zoning and Building Department located in the Town Hall of Shinnecock.

“This is a calling in - not a calling out, Laure added. We only stood there for 3 minutes repeating our song verse and our tour manifesto which was a demand for land reclamation to the first peoples of this land. Within seconds several poLice officers materialized. While they gathered downstairs we proceeded to march upstairs, still singing, until we arrived at the office of the head poltricksters in charge. While we sang, the poLice ascended, a door opened and we were invited in to meet with two city managers of the Town.

Meeting with Hampton Town Council. Click picture to view video

“You got our attention,” they said in unison, “now tell us what you want.”

After we stated what our tour was about and that we were there to support the Shinneock Nation in their rights to equity and land reclamation, Ahna took over and the we got the bureaucrats to listen to our demands for a real conversation on land use for 1st peoples of the “Hamptons”.

Our meeting lasted 30 minutes and the town council representatives committed to a meeting and a re-framing of the use of land for 1st peoples. We committed to staying involved to hold them to their commitments with ongoing involvement and media watch-dogging. This is another reason we Tour.

The Zoning department shake-down was my personal highlight of the entire trip as we Poor, indigenous and unhoused folks at POOR Magazine have struggled for the last 4 years with the insane costs of building permits and Politrickster sanctioned hustles to get permits to build our landless peoples self-determined movement we call Homefulness. Suffice it to say, street hustlers don’t got nothing on the white collar hustlers, with their permits to build, their endless requirements for more paper and licenses and their crazy things like “an expeditor fee” to move up the “line” in the building permit process. As poor folks who are always moved out of anything we take back, we made a decision to do it within the settler colonizer laws so it can’t/won’t be taken from us. Another hard lesson we have had to learn through this process is why it’s so hard for poor people to launch building projects and why corporations have it on lock. This is why we tour.

In addition to the Town Hall, we challenged and demanded change, equity sharing curatorial leadership, land use and reparations when we were shown the blatant exclusion in spaces like the Chamber of Commerce and the “Whaling Exhibit” in the local museum, which included none of the original peoples who taught the settlers about whaling and then whose bodies were ultimately stolen and enslaved by the colonizers so they could capture their whaling knowledge.  

Shinnecock Nation Reservation - the Hamptons

Philadelphia - Lenape Territory- Mama Dee’s GentriFUKed hood

Whenever i drive down the streets of North Philly, i realize clearly why my ghetto fabulous Afro-Boricua Mama Dee was the proud, angry, beautiful poverty skola-survivor she was. Poverty there isn’t like it is in California. Not to say poverty isn’t real in California, but the entrenched sorrow, scarcity, and desperation is older, deep and terrifying. This kind of Gangsta struggle and survival is what helped give my my mama her fighting spirit to stay alive through so much trauma and hate. This trauma is also what raised me and i tried to hold on to no matter how hard it was.

POOR Magazine/Homefulness at the site of the MOVE Africa bombing

Being one of the poorest areas in the nation, North Philadelphia is also one of the most beautiful, sad and real. North Philly, an African-Puerto Rican barrio, is also facing some of the most blatant gentrification in the US. on every other block, entire blocks are boarded up and gated over. One or two doors down developers have put up signs for the future condominiums, luxury apartments and/or “art” spaces. Hipster cafes and mono-syllabic bars and gourmet restaurants line every other block. This is another reason why we Tour.

“The so-called progressives were involved in the stealing of an election here, so for the stolen land tour we also want to highlight a stolen election,” said Cheri Honkala, organizer, superbabymama with Poor Peoples Economic Human rights Campaign from Philly.

Before we launched the Philadelphia Stolen Land Tour through the part of the stolen Lenape Territory called the Main Line POOR Magazine and Edgardo, Pablo, Gaylen and Cheri from the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign sat down together to share poverty scholarship, solutions and struggles.

“They came up with this great-sounding idea called a “Land Bank” we found out later it wasn’t really what it was being represented as.” she concluded.

We went on to explain to PPHRC comrades the idea of Homefulness, They shared their recent acquisition of an abandoned building which needs a build-out and how they would love to make that possible and build their own version of Homefulness in North Philly.

From left - Laure from POOR, Cheri & Gaylen from PPHRC

The next day we gathered in the Main Line.

I knew there was such a place as the Main Line because my mama used to talk about it. A place, she used to say, where the rich people live and where people like us go to be their servants. Her mama, my grandma, a Roma/Irish immigrant worked as a domestic worker, washing the floors and only being allowed to enter from the servants quarters in the back. My abuelito, an Afro-Puerta Rican man would work to sweep their streets, if he was lucky.

Stolen Land Tour in the Main Line

“Most of the people who are homeless in Philly are women and children  I was homeless with my children, so i know how hard it is to care for children when you are struggling to keep a home,” Gaylan from PPHRC spoke at the opening press conference on a street corner in a neighborhood called Bryn Mawr which barely had sidewalks, cause I guess who needs sidewalks when you never have to walk?

POOR Magazine spreading the medicine of decolonization and community reparations

“Who are you,” The white man dressed in dockers answered the door, looking our powerful group of Black, Brown, Youth, elder and disabled bodies of tour up and down and gulping nervously  After the press conference we moved through the neighborhood, delicately moving aside the wrought iron gates, walking up what seemed like block long driveways, knocking on huge glass, wooden doors and harry potter-like door knockers.

Unlike a lot of the previous tours, in Philly we encountered the user-friendly liberal haters. They would open the door, listen politely to us and then when we left their doors, call the poLice. By the time we got to the third block of this stolen Lenape Territory, they arrived.

“What are you doing here?” One poLice car pulled in front of us at an angle so we couldn’t walk any further, another one parked behind us.. As is happened in almost every tour, they asked us what we were doing and what we were selling. We told them we were sharing the medicine of redistribution and community reparations and they explained that someone called because we said they, “stole their land,”

After several minutes they “let us go” explaining that we only one of us would be allowed to approach each door and that we needed to make sure we weren’t soliciting for money, which we explained we never did.

Commitment to the Bank of Reparations and a Philly Homefulness!!

“This prayer goes out to all of my ancestors who were stolen to build neighborhoods like these”…excerpt of QueennandiX Sheba, POOR Magazine poverty skola, teacher and welfareQUEEN leading us in closing prayer at the Main Line.  

As we huddled together back at the sidewalk-less corners in the Main Line to do a closing prayer for justice and open-heartedness of all the peoples we had just spoken to we made a direct ask for Community Reparations to some of the conscious young folks with race, class and/or formal education privilege who had toured with us for two families who worked with PPHRC and were on the brink of losing their apartments due to a rise in rent in the gentrification-ridden North Philly. As well one of our young folks involved in POOR Magazine’s Solidarity Family made a commitment to the Bank of Reparations and to helping to launch a Homefulness with PPHRC’s abandoned building, which needed to raise approximately $35,000 to do the build-out. This is why we Tour.

Stolen Land Tour with PPHRC - from left - Cheri Honkols, Pablo and Edgardo Gonzalez

PeopleSkool at every tour stop.

“Sad, exhausting, mind  blowing,crucial, and very important, connecting dots getting the word and education not not only to the rich but to the people, our people.” Aunti Frances Moore

In addition to the tours we presented poverty scholarship and the Decolonization/DegentriFUKation seminar at Wesleyan and Vassar Colleges, two huge institutions that have huge swaths of stolen Mohegan, Pequot, Lenape territory to name a few of the nations colonized and stolen from and entire degree programs built around the studying of poor peoples and indigenous peoples struggles with never so much as sharing a slice of their privilege and access. This is another reason we Tour.

POOR Magazine at Vassar

“In my activism from police brutality to budget cuts, I always felt that people in power could escape our activism by retreating to their wealthy neighborhoods.  I and other activists spent countless hours at City Hall or police stations shouting at buildings.  Poor Magazine with their Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour have taken our request to the front doors of the most wealthy and powerful from Beverley Hills in LA to Park Avenue in New York City with not to blame and shame but to offer medicine to heal what capitalism teaches us for example that we need to cumulate wealth like many houses, condos, summer homes, cars and such for oneself and at the same time walk pass a family on the street and not only do nothing but feel nothing,” - Leroy Moore, founder of Krip Hop Nation. columnist with POOR Magazine and Stolen Land Tour co-leader.

Stay Tuned For the release of Poverty Scholarship- Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth- A PeoplesTextBook which will be released this Summer The Next tour will be in the Bay Area - if you would like to join us please email poormag@gmail.com. The next PeopleSkool decolonization/degentrification seminar is in black August. If you would like to learn more, redistribute or learn anymore information about any of these projects or seminars please email deeandtiny@poormagazine.org

Back in the late 90's I and Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia​ had the honor to present our work in San Bruno jail.  In July of 2017 I had another opportunity to present  my work, this time, Krip-Hop Nation under Poetry For the People's teacher Amalia Alvarez​. The men responded great to the videos, songs and talk all about Black disabled issues from Hip-Hop to police brutality but the spark was the song by Keith Jones​ and I entitled SSI Dollarz.  We ended the class by writing what they thought of the presentation and a cypher.  Click on the link to read the writings of the men responding to the song, SSI DOLLARZ.  I want to thank them for sharing their words and the teacher, Amalia Alvarez for inviting me. Read & Learn:
 

Greetings sisters and brothers!



    As man of you know South-East Texas was bombarded by Hurricane Harvey recently, and 500 prisoners located in Rosharon Texas were displaced because of flooding.  C.T Terrell is very similar to Wallace Pack Unit in that they house prisoners who are predominantly elderly, infirm, and disabled.

    Eastham Unit located in Lovelady, Texas was chosen to house the displaced prisoners.  Many prisoners have read about or heard of the ongoing problems with Eastham’s water supply, but on Wednesday, August 30, 2017, they got a first hand look at what many Eastham prisoners have suffered through for years!  Contaminated water!

    It started out as strange debris floating in the water - then without warning, we were told the water was being shut off and the pumps had broke!  The water pressure had dropped and historically when water pressure drops, high levels of bacteria enter the system and boil notices are issues!  Shut off time was 12:30 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, Aug 30, 2017.  Turned back on Wednesday night, 10:30 p.m. I am sending out a call for help and action!  We need phone calls to be made to the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality employees:

Brian Buster - (936) 437-7285

Frank Inmon - (936) 437-7200 / (cell) (936) 577-4035



We need you to inquire and find out exactly what the problem is with the water system at Eastham Unit and demand answers (unit # is 936-636-7321)  Safe and clean water is a Humyn Right!  All power to the people!



-Comrade Malik

I travel for gigs, Krip-Hop Nation and other projects however at this time facing a lawsuit against my landlord and helping another Black disabled friend who is facing illegal eviction. So being deeply involved in POOR magàzine's East Coast Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour was more than just a project. Plus being back in cities that I grew up in like Manhattan and West Hartford, CT was hard and beautiful.

In my activism from police brutality to budget cuts, I always felt that people in power could escape our activism by retreating to their wealthy neighborhoods.  I and other activists spent countless hours at City Hall or police stations shouting at buildings.  Poor Magazine with their Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour have taken our request to the front doors of the most wealthy and powerful, from Beverly Hills in LA to Park Avenue in New York City, not to blame and shame but to offer medicine to heal what capitalism teaches us. For example, that we need to cumulate wealth like many houses, condos, summer homes, cars and such for oneself and at the same time walk past a family on the street and not only do nothing but feel nothing.

Leroy Moore with Jean Rice, one of the original board members of Picture the Homeless

New York is a different city compared to the days of the 70's & 80's when I was growing up there.  I say all the time these days and that is, gentrification have killed the notion of home!  Now a days you can't go home cause the home i.e. City you grew up in is now too expensive and looks totally different almost like it is dead with city policies that makes it hard to live in your old neighborhood.  I‘ve seen cities i.e. San Francisco and New York become cities unrecognizable with so much wealth, a whole new landscape and local laws that profile you if you are like me poor, Black and disabled man living in section eight apartment.

When I was a teenager I lived on Greyhound going from CT. to NY and the landmarks were the tall public housing brick buildings when I saw those buildings/housing complex where my friends were creating what we know today as Hip-Hop I knew I was in NY..  On the East CoastStolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour, we stopped by the new office of Picture Of The Homeless in Harlem and interviewed the new executive director and long time member Luie who told us that privatization is hitting New York hard.  He went on to say that all of those tall public housing buildings are slatted for privatization.  My heart dropped!

One of Krip-Hop Nation co/founder, Rob 'Da Noize Temple who has been living in Brooklyn all of his live and opened up a music studio is facing eviction cause the landlord wants to privatize the building.

Poverty skolaz offering the medicine of redistribution

Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour like in San Francisco, Beverly Hills now New York, Philly  to West Hartford, CT., the common factor was that the wealthy were and are protected by layers upon layers of barriers from isolation and gated off communities to security guards to police to even other poor people who are their nannies, gardeners or dog walkers and this was the reality on Park Avenue in New York and other cities on the East Coast!

As universities get bigger taking over cities in CT, NY, Philly and Berkeley and public housing from CA to NY become privatize, the question remains, where can we live, pee etc.  The Poor Magazine's Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour from West to East also have been invited into colleges and universities like Weselyn University, U.C. Berkeley, Vassar College to name a few to tell real everyday struggles through poetry, plays, songs and lectures that touches on the way that the capitalist society police us on where we can pee, where we live, who is acceptable to receive services and what we have to do to keep those services, public housing, food stamps and more.

Queenandi Xshena of POOR Magazine in North Philly

From San Francisco to Beverly Hills, LA to Philly to West Hartford, CT the police were called and came out to protect wealthy neighborhoods from what we call our medicine from the disease of wealth hoarding. From police to the media the main assumption of touring wealthy areas was nothing more than just begging and pouring on the pity.

However once people, like reporters, professors, wealthy college students and even some police officers listen and read what Poor Magazine is teaching they nine times out of ten agree and realize that Poor Magazine have taught a few wealthy people that the wealth that they do have came from the backs of others and needed to be brought back for community good, what Poor Magazine calls community  reparations.  It is powerful to listen to Poor Magazine's People School graduates who are now spreading the teachings of Poor Magazine with us on these tours in their own wealthy neighborhoods.

On this East Coast Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour, Poor Magazine went up face to face with East Coast  wealth that is different from West Coast wealth!  East Coast wealth is very intrench, cold and has no liberal costume on.  The only city that showed us any love was Philly where we got some media and some wealthy folks gave up some dollars to local poverty scholars to meet extreme housing emergency.

Our East Coast Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour hit three states knocking on doors of the wealthy and for me the South Hamptons, upstate New York was really tough and beautiful at the same time!  Being from the East Coast, I grew up hearing how the wealthy escape to the Hamptons for vacation but I never been there. I heard New York rappers boast about the bling bling of the Hamptons but I didn't know about how the South Hamptons was originally Native American land.  Now Native Americans, Shinnecock tribe has been pushed to a tiny reservation, away from the big houses with front yards that don't end.

Poor Magazine connected to the Shinnecock tribe in South Hamptons way before the tour so when we told them about the tour, they were down for it and took us around to the wealthy neighborhoods.  Poor magazine really loved the tour and teachings of the tribe in South Hamptons!

In South Hamptons, we went into a museum, the Chamber of Commerce and City Hall and in all of these places we were met with White faces professing that they are working very closely with the tribe.  This White guilt was corrected by Ahna Red Fox who was from the Shinnecock tribe .  The only place that agreed to do better collaborating with the Shinnecock tribe was the museum in which Poor Magazine agree to follow up.  Once again the cops were called on us this time at South Hamptons' City Hall.

From left - Laure, Ahna Red Fox, Aunti Frances, Tiny, Queena and Leroy in front of the Colonizer Museum - Shinnecock

In West Hartford, CT., my sister, Melissa Moore and my nephews and nieces came on the tour with us.  Ace, my niece, who is eight years old was all into going up to front doors, knocking and saying her two cents.  I was glad that Tiny's son, Tibu and Sasha had a chance to hang out again.  Sasha knew Tibu when my sister lived in West Oakland before she was force to move back to CT cause of the expensive housing market in the Bay Area.

As we head back to the gentrify Bay Area all of us of Poor Magazine are worried about our own housing situation as many of us are fighting illegal evictions, cuts in our benefits like SSI and separation of our family and friends as more and more love ones in the Bay have to move to different states like my sister in search for cheaper housing. The struggle and Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour continues.  Look out for Poor Magazine Poverty Scholar textbook, out Summer 2017!

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done; discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

― George L. Jackson

Unlike the so-called Black History Month, a month that celebrates commercialism and a sanitized version of the history of decedents of the Afrikan holocaust, the month of Black August acknowledges the fallen comrades that die, sacrifice and struggle for the self-determination and liberation of the kkkaptive Black colony.

Resistance: The Meaning of Black August

Black August originated in the California penal system to honor fallen Freedom

Fighters, Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain

and Khatari Gaulden. Jonathan Jackson was gunned down outside the Marin County

California courthouse on August 7, 1970 as he attempted to liberate three

imprisoned Black Liberation Fighters: James McClain, William Christmas and

Ruchell Magee. Ruchell Magee is the sole survivor of that armed liberation

attempt. He is the former co-defendant of Angela Davis and has been locked down

for 47 years, most of it in solitary confinement. George Jackson was

assassinated by prison guards during a Black prison rebellion at San Quentin on

August 21, 1971. Three prison guards were also killed during that rebellion and

prison officials charged six Black and Latino prisoners with the death of those

guards. These six brothers became known as the San Quentin Six. Upon his

release from 43 years in solitary confinement, San Quentin Six member Hugo Yogi

Panell was murdered on the yard of New Folsom prison.

In the late 1970's the observance and practice of Black August left the prisons of

California and began being practiced by Black/New Afrikan revolutionaries

throughout the country. Members of the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM)

began practicing and spreading Black August during this period. The Malcolm X

Grassroots Movement (MXGM) inherited knowledge and practice of Black August

from its parent organization, the New Afrikan People's Organization (NAPO).

MXGM through the Black August Collective (now defunct) began introducing the

Hip-Hop community to Black August in the late 1990's after being inspired by

New Afrikan political exile Nehanda Abiodun.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BLACK AUGUST

Traditionally, Black August is a time to study history, particularly our history in the North

American Empire.

The first Afrikans were brought to Jamestown as slaves in August of 1619.Underground

Railroad was started on August 2, 1850.

The March on Washington occurred in August of 1963.

Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave rebellion occurred on August 30.

Nat Turner planned and executed a slave rebellion that commenced on August 21,

1831.

The Watts rebellions were in August of 1965.

On August 18, 1971 the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA)

was raided by Mississippi police and FBI agents.

The MOVE family was bombed by Philadelphia police on August 8, 1978.

Further, August is a time of birth. Dr. Mutulu Shakur (political prisoner & prisoner

of war).

Pan-Africanist Black Nationalist Leader Marcus Garvey, Maroon Russell Shoatz (political

prisoner) and Chicago BPP Chairman Fred Hampton were born in August. August is

also a time of rebirth, W.E.B. Dubois died in Ghana on August 27, 1963.

The tradition of fasting during Black August teaches self-discipline. A conscious fast is in effect from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm. Some other personal sacrifice can be made as well. The sundown meal is traditionally shared whenever possible among comrades. On August 31, a People's

feast is held and the fast is broken. Black August fasting should serve as a

constant reminder of the conditions our people have faced and still confront.

Fasting is uncomfortable at times, but it is helpful to remember all those who

have come and gone before us.

Black August exemplifies the need for the continuous struggle self-determination and resistance against amerikkka empire and how our fallen hero’s and sheo’s, have paved the road to achieve and fulfilled our destinies.  It is now up to us to build a vehicle to travel down that road.  We will need to build a bus so everyone has a seat toward their liberation, and this bus will not have any back seats.  Everyone will be riding upfront, even if we have to build this bus sideways!  

LONG LIVE BLACK AUGUST!

VITA WA WATU!

[transcript of upcoming YouTube video]

Revolutionary Greetings,

It is I, Justin Adkins, and I have a very serious and urgent message to delivery to you. Malik and I support and defend many causes, but there are certain struggles and fights that have a higher priority to us than others.

One such struggle is the fight to save our planet from imperialist multinational corporations which exclusively deal in the extraction of fossil fuels from the Earth.  Comrade Malik and I are both Environmentalists.  I personally introduced Malik to this struggle.

A couple of years ago, I ordered Malik a subscription to the Earth First! Journal.  That was before he was transferred to the Wallace Pack unit.  Pack is the Texas prison where Malik helped expose the presence of high levels of arsenic in the water supply.

Professor Victor Wallis Ph.D. showed Malik the connection between capitalism and the destruction of our environment and in the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.  Malik and I believe all of us got an up-front and personal look at what Environmental Racism looks like in Amerika - It’s Real!!

Now Malik performs his own studies and in depth analysis, and, as always, he has something to say to you.  I hope you will listen to the words of my comrade and friend.  

Comrade Malik says:

Revolutionary Greetings Comrades!

Energy Transfer Partners!! Yes, let’s say it together, Energy Transfer Partners!! The name tastes like a fat piece of cow dung in my mouth.

This Imperialist Corporation is the chief developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and they have filed a federal lawsuit against many of the groups here in Amerika who are fighting hard to save our planet and ensure safe and clean water supplies for future generations of humyn beings and animals, as well as plants and trees.  

Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, Texas, filed the complaint and it seeks damages of no less than one billion dollars!!  I will briefly give you a list of some of the defendants who have been cited in the complaint: Earth First!, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace International, Bank Track, Bold Iowa, and Mississippi Stand.

The lawsuit alleges environmental protection groups initiated campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims and other purported misconduct, inflicting billions of dollars in damage - Now this is a direct quote from the USA Today - August 24th, 2017.  

Now STOP! Let’s listen very carefully to the language these Earth defilers are using - they are saying that WE are initiating campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims.  Ok, first of all, they are lying!! And I can prove it! But first we need to fully expose their hidden agenda, because there is much more going on here than meets the eye!!

The Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, Texas, seek to label us and eco-terrorists in an effort to criminalize and silence our Free Speech activities.

In other words, they was us to allow them to destroy our planet, poison our water supplies, pollute our air, and be quiet and watch while they do it!!

And I say Hell NO! I’m not going to do THAT! What do you say?

Now, I am a socialist/communist - I lean hard to the left and I am deeply sympathetic to the Green Anarchist cause.  I’ve been trained to apply a scientific analysis when I encounter a problem.  I seek out facts!! I shut down my emotions in order to perform a concrete analysis of the conditions around me.  The timing of the lawsuit is very interesting and I smell a RAT!

Yes! On its face, this complaint seeks to bully and intimidate environmentalists.  It seeks to cower us into silence.  But I firmly believe there is a SNAKE lurking in the background, and that dirty, rotten, scoundrel has emboldened Energy Transfer Partners.

I state today that Department of Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, is secretly promoting this attack on our free speech rights!!

In Rick Perry’s failed presidential bid, guess who was his number one donor? Really, I want you to take a guess.  I’ll wait.  

Give up? Ok, I’ll tell you; it was Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners! Are you Surprised?

Would you like to know how much Mr. Warren donated to good old honest Rick Perry? Six million dollars!! Now listen to me, Mr. Warren got $4.5 million back after Rick Perry pulled out of the Presidential Race, but that is not the only questionable connection our buddy Rick Perry has with Energy Transfer Partners - there is more, much more!!

In a financial disclosure form Perry filed in July 2015, Perry indicated that his wife owned up to $15,000 in Energy Transfer Partners stock, and about the same amount of stock in another pipeline company, Sunco Logistics.  Sunco Logistics is supposed to be the operator of the pipeline that was being protested against at Standing Rock.  

And I have some very interesting information about Sunco Logistics.  According to Reuters, Sunco Logistics leads all of its competitors in spilled crude!!

And if anyone would to fact check any of my reporting, please read the article to the incredible news website truthout.org and find the article entitled: “Rick Perry, Tapped for Energy Department, Has Multiple Ties to CEO of Controversial Pipeline Project”, posted December 16, 2016 at Truth Out!!

Comrades, who was it that said, “If you want to hide something from a black man, put it in a book,”? Who the hell made up that saying? Whoever it was, they hadn’t met me! Comrade Malik, the servant of the people!!

Comrades, as I wrap up this YouTube video with my good friend, Justin, I must encourage you to be more aggressive in the expose of these unsavory relationships between fossil fuel corporations and highly placed members of the Trump Administration.

Furthermore, please be more mindful that the U.S. Federal Government is waging a war against those who seek to protect and preserve our planet.  But more urgently the Legislative Branch is overtly and covertly crafting laws which criminalize our right to protest.  

We need lawyers on our team!

We need environmental scientists on our team.

We need computer information specialists and technologists on our team!

Sisters and brothers, one of the reasons I am so passionate about this fight is that poor people, and people of color like me, are being exploited and abused by Rick Perry and his cronies in Dallas, Texas at Energy Transfer Partners!  

When you get time, I encourage you to read a brief article by David J. Krajicek on Alternet (January 23, 2016) entitled, “7 Toxic Assaults on Communities of Color Besides Flint: The Dirty Racial Politics of Pollution”.  The lead poisoning of the children in Flint is only the latest example of environmental racism in the U.S.

Remember, comrades, there is strength in diversity.  We must encourage and allow more persyns of color inside our environmentalist ranks.  Justin invited me to the table, who will you invite?  

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win,

All Power to the People!

Homeless to Yale

And Then Back Again.

On purpose.

By Choice.

Because it Makes More Sense.

Read one woman’s story of why we all should be paying attention to Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia and POOR Magazine.

Valerie Klokow

May 12, 2017

   I used to think that the worst thing

in life was to end up alone. It's not.

The worst thing in life is to end up with

people who make you feel alone.

   ~   Robin Williams  

I’m probably not going to be able to explain to anyone, including myself, how it is that being a member of a homeless community makes more sense than being an ivy league alumna (or a member of any other privileged group), but that doesn’t make it any less true. I thought about changing the last part of this title to “Because The People Are Nicer,” but that’s just being bitchy and it also doesn’t do justice to what Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia and everyone at POOR Magazine stand for and are doing. I’ve lived at 2 extreme, opposite “ends” of American society and, while at first –  prior to having “made it” to the more privileged end – I wouldn’t have even attempted to explain how the other end made more sense, I’ve always experienced, felt andknown it to be true.

I dropped out of school in the 7^thgrade, eventually spending some time homeless in California until, in my 30’s, I decided to “turn my life around.” I went, first, to a drug and alcohol treatment facility, and then to a community college where I graduated with a 4.0 and transferred, on scholarship, to Yale. I spent two years in New Haven, where I completed my undergraduate work in philosophy and then went on to earn a J.D. at the University of Connecticut School of Law. I worked for a few years in legal compliance for a large corporation and I’m currently writing grants for a nonprofit organization. I am making considerably less money today than I was when I worked in compliance and I didn’t need my law degree (or, really, even my college degree) to do the work that I’m doing. I have always loved to learn and am very grateful for every bit of my education, but the money really doesn’t matter to me; I am much happier writing grants than I was in compliance and I also have more time to spend with my son – not to mention being in a much better mood while I’m with him! My experience with POOR Magazine’s Stolen Land and Hoarded Wealth Tour has me looking… hard… though, at how I feel about participating even in this type of work. This nation was taken (stolen) by colonizers from the Indigenous peoples who lived here, and then built on the backs of enslaved and exploited people of color. Working in corporate law made me feel complicit –  because I was, contrary to what I’d believed upon having been hired to work in compliance– but the work that I’m doing now is just another cog in the same privilege-machine. The concept of charity… of nonprofit organizations and the infrastructure of this country that has created a “need” for them… isn’t something that I am happy to participate in without question.

symptom

[simp-tuh m]

noun

1. any phenomenon or circumstance accompanying something and serving as evidence of it.

2. a sign of indication of something.

3. Pathology. a phenomenon that arises from and accompanies a particular disease or disorder and serves as an indication of it.

It is my sincere hope that everyone in the United States is questioning a lot of things today. And I’m not just talking about the outcome of the last Presidential election. Donald Trump is not my President, and more importantly, he isn’t the problem. Donald Trump is a monster that we have created and focusing on him is a surefire way to feed the privilege-machine and keep it rolling but, again, he is not the problem. The fact that this particular individual was elected to hold this office is a festering, pus-filled symptom of the problems of savagery and greed that caused colonizers to believe that they had a right to 1) take the land that is today the United States of America; and 2) kill or displace all of the rightful owners of that land. Trump is an insignificant man who is an inevitable, later-stage symptom of the barbarity and inhumanity that plagued the privileged citizens of the newly colonized nation when they enslaved human beings and he is a blinking, flashing, neon-lit symptom of the arrogance, ignorance and apathy (I’m being kind with the use of this last word) that is causing privileged citizens of the United States of America to continue to believe – or, worse, to simply accept it, unquestioned, as being the way things areand thereby assume– themselves to be in possession of rights that others don’t have.

In the past 6 months I’ve felt overwhelmed, inadequate, frustrated and depressed as I’ve tried to figure out how to make people who aren’t experiencing any problems take a look at systems of oppression that have been at work in their lives and their communities since before any of us were born. I still haven’t figured out how to get people to want (or even be willing) to learn more, but I do have a few ideas as to what they can do to get a better understanding, and one of them is to attend a PeopleSkool Decolonization / DegentriFUkation seminar, and to learn more about the Stolen Land Tour. The members of this tour are performing ceremonies of healing every time they offer a seminar or walk in a tour. These Poverty Skolaz are some of the nicest people that I have ever known, and my son said the same thing after we both met them a few weeks ago.

On Sunday, April 23, 2017, my 11-year-old son and I participated in the Connecticut leg (Pequot/Mohegan Territory) of POOR Magazine’s Stolen Land and Hoarded Wealth Tour. We first attended a PeopleSkool Decolonization / DegentriFUkation seminar at Wesleyan University from 1:00 – 3:30 PM and then, from 5:00 – 6:30 PM we walked with a group of Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled and homeless youth and adults from POOR magazine, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Krip Hop Nation and Deecolonize Academy as they knocked on doors in a wealthy West Hartford neighborhood to share the medicine of redistribution and community reparations with the residents who live there. For these 5 ½ hours, for the first time in almost 20 years, I felt completely at home. I have not been homeless since 1996, and the hours that I spent with the members of this tour made me feel more at home than any of the houses and apartments that I’ve lived in ever did. There is a sense of community and a feeling of camaraderie amongst the members of the Stolen Land Tour, and within moments of being in their presence, I knew that they followed the same code of honor and respect that I followed (and valued) when I was on the street. Very naïve when I graduated from law school and got my first job, I was stunned when I encountered the very different schema of respect that is employed in corporate America. Working in a nonprofit and living on the outskirts of a suburb put me back into a more comfortable respect-zone, but I hadn’t realized how “not at home” I’ve felt until about halfway through the PeopleSkool seminar at Wesleyan. The social structure at play in that room and on their tour makes much more sense – and feels much better –to me than the capitalist society that we all live in.

I was introduced to the work that POOR Magazine is doing by Reverend Cathy Rion Starr, who is co-minister of the Unitarian Society of Hartford, where I am a member. Reverend Cathy had come to know POOR’s work when she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she asked me if I’d be interested in this East Coast Tour by telling me “I don’t know exactly how to explain or describe it, but every time that I’ve seen the work that these people are doing, I think ‘Yes. This is good and right. This is something that we all should be doing.’”  After spending a day with them, I agreed wholeheartedly with Reverend Cathy’s “not sure how to explain…” comment and now, after doing some more reading of their materials, I also agree that their work is good, right, and something that we all should be doing.

The PeopleSkool’s Decolonization / DegentriFUkation seminar features a series of powerful live theatrical performances that audience members eventually come to understand are depictions of actual scenes from the actors’ lives. From a landlord’s eviction of an elderly tenant, resulting in her death a few days later… to a police officer’s forceful, physical separation of a mother and child based on their status as vendors who are living and working on the streets, these vignettes give spectators an uncensored, up-close view of people living in poverty. These scenes are “the rest of the story” of the homeless and poor people that every one of us “doesn’t see” on the streets every day. Attendees at a PeopleSkool seminar are not able to pretend that they don’t see. Anyone who sees these performances and participates in the seminar discussions will be forever changed, and I believe that this is precisely the change that is needed to meaningfully address the soul-sickness that is at the root of our nation’s problems of arrogance, ignorance and apathy- i.e. the sense of entitlement that allows some people to not understand how truly repugnant the act of hoarding wealth when others have nothing is.  

After the seminar at Wesleyan, my son and I participated in a Stolen Land / Hoarded Resources Tour in a wealthy neighborhood in our hometown, West Hartford, CT. The tour began and ended with sage and humble prayers to the Pequot/Mohegan ancestors of the land that we were walking on, and it felt very different than any protest marches that I’ve participated in. This tour feels like a ceremony, with participants bringing the gift of the richness that they have created in the community that they've built together and asking nothing in return but the opportunity to begin a dialogue on the idea of “community reparations” – of redistributing the stolen and hoarded wealth thatcame about on the backs of others and using it for community good. Leroy Moore, founder of Krip Hop Nation, columnist with POOR Magazine, and Stolen Land Tour co-leader, describes the tour as “…taking our request to the front doors of the most wealthy and powerful from Beverly Hills in LA to Park Avenue in NYC, not to blame and shame but to offer medicine to heal what capitalism teaches us – for example, that we need to cumulate wealth, like many houses, condos, summer homes, cars and such for oneself and at the same time walk past a family on the street and not only do nothing but feel nothing.” I feel very humbled to have been a welcomed participant on this tour; I was sad to drive away when it was over and I’ve thought about the experience and everyone involved every day since. My son has mentioned it, too. He wants to know when we’ll see them again. We live on opposite coasts; I told him that I really don’t know when we’ll see them again, but that I believe that we will.

The words of Aunti Frances Moore, one of the tour’s members, ring true for me:“Sad, exhausting, mind blowing, crucial and very important, connecting dots, getting the word and education not only to the rich but to the people, our people, is critical.”Yes. Getting this word and education out to the people (all of the people) is critical if we are ever going to have even a chance of stopping the privilege/entitlement machine. We are a nation split into two groups: those who are able to clearly see the problem (not the symptoms); and those who do not (and are not willing to) see the problem because they are products of (and benefit from) it. We all are capable of seeing the problem; we all, in fact, were able to see it very clearly when we were children. As soon as we began to communicate with adults, though, we learned that our “survival” (success) depended upon our no longer seeing it – or, for those who were not born into privilege, we learned that our survival depended upon our not speaking of it amongst anyone who is not like us.

So, what’s the problem? Here’s where we’d all like to think that it gets complicated, but that’s only because we’ve all been trained to not see or speak the truth about what’s going on in our society. The problem is privileged peoples’ sense of entitlement. The problem begins with the fact that the land that the United States of America sits on was stolen from Indigenous peoples, and then this leads to the fact that everything that exists today on that stolen land was built on the backs of enslaved people, and exploited people of color and poor people. All of the “success” that anyone in this country has enjoyed is a result of the systems of exploitation that grew out of these initial, barbarous acts of pillaging and savagery. The problem is that the descendants of the monstrous colonizers who annihilated everyone and everything in their path have inherited all of the spoils of their ancestors’ acts. These material spoils afforded the colonizers’ descendants with unearned power, and they used that power to write laws and develop political structures to ensure that they would maintain that power. Our nation is based on the morals and belief systems of brutal, ruthless conquerors who valued material wealth above all else. Anyone wishing to “survive” (succeed) in this nation has to agree to not acknowledge any of this; they have to agree to comply with the systems that are in place. Which brings us back to…

Homeless to Yale

And Then Back Again.

On Purpose.

By Choice.

Because it Makes More Sense.

I wasn’t born into poverty; I grew up in a predominately white, working class, factory town in the Midwest. My mother and her husband owned a small house and none of us ever went hungry. My neighbors, friends and family all believed in the American Dream, and everyone worked hard to try and give their kids a better life than they’d had. What I remember most about my childhood, though, is always wondering why no one’s actions ever matched what they said. As a little girl Ibought the whole "Sesame Street" thing about being kind, sharing and treating everyone fairly.

Come and play, everything’s A-OK…

I believed everything that Luis, Maria, Gordon and Susan said. I loved Mr. Hooper, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and especially Oscar the Grouch. I traipsed through the first 3-4 years of my life trusting that, so long as I was kind and good, everything would be A-OK. By the time I got to kindergarten I’d learned that this is not the case. I watched adults mouthing the Sesame Street credos as they behaved in adversarial, self-interested ways. I especially hated watching when they acted like assholes to kids; I was sometimes completely unable to focus for the rest of the day (or year) in classrooms that were led by teachers who were mean to poor kids, kids of color, or kids who struggled to learn. I learned about the Bill of Rights on School House Rock and, until I was 9-10 years old I believed that all I had to do was get good grades, go to law school and then I’d be able to come back and make grown-ups act like the law said they were supposed to act.

I wasn’t a quiet or a shy child. I asked, first my mother and then the other adults in my world, to explain to me why no one ever actually acted like they said that we all should, and I got really unsatisfactory answers. I spent a lot of time being frustrated, but until I was 9 or 10 years old I held out hope that I would, indeed, “understand when I got older.” I’m 52 years old today and I still don’t understand any of it. I’ve come to know that our society is based on a lot of bullshit, but I don’t understand why we’ve all agreed to go along with it. I mean, I sort of get it on a surface level. We all have been raised in a culture that has instructed us to value material things above all else. We all have been programmed to agree that it is acceptable, on a daily basis, to walk past poor people and homeless people on the street... and pretend like we don't see them. I, for one, do not understand. I don't understand how we have gotten here. I don't agree. I don't and have not ever accepted this as being the way that any of us should be living. I rebelled as a young person; I walked away from the bullshit bases of power and privilege that I was being indoctrinated to build my life on.

The emperor is not and has not ever been wearing any clothes.

As a young child I realized that I didn't have any power; I knew that I couldn't change anything around me and I felt angry, confused and... increasingly... frantic in a world that didn’t make any sense to  me. As a pre-teen I discovered alcohol and other substances that made it less uncomfortable and painful to exist in the unacceptable reality that is our society. At 13 years old I struck out on my own because I couldn't stomach it any more. I couldn't "behave;" I absolutely was not willing to act the way that I was told that I was supposed to act – I refused to "be a good girl" and just be quiet. I rebelled and my rebellion damn near killed me, but it didn't. I am still alive. I am still here and I have opted to not base my life or my worth on material possessions. I spent one day a few weeks ago with Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia and the members of the Stolen Land Tour; I did this on purpose and by choice because it makes sense. The research that these Poverty Skolaz have done on models of self-determined solutions to land use, homelessness, poverty and gentrification made possible through redistributed wealth and resources makes much more sense to me than capitalism ever has or will. The work that they are doing is something that I am paying attention to and it is something that I will be contributing to in any way that I can.

After my story was featured on a 2002 "Graduates Overcoming Obstacles" episode of the Oprah show, I received emails and other communications congratulating me. One that I will never forget said a lot of things about how horrible my life must have been prior to being accepted to Yale, and in conclusion, this email said "But thank heavens you got out! You made something of yourself and you got out."

No.

I was not nothing prior to attending Yale.

I was not nothing that needed to be made into something. I was not nothing and, despite other peoples' attitudes and behaviors, I was not even invisible. Prior to my attending Yale I was the same person that I am today. Please think about this the next time you don't see a homeless person on the street. Please think today about Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, POOR magazine, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Deecolonize Academy, and Krip Hop Nation. The work that they are doing is good and right. The work that they are doing is what we all should be doing to begin needed change in our nation today. Plus, they're really nice people whose message makes a lot of sense.

Other than the terrifying 21st century hetero-patriarchal kkklan-colonial violence I couldnt tell what else bothered me about Charlottesville and Berkeley and all the other sites of this recent wave of amerikkklan hate.

Obviously the dangerous-ignorant white men perpetrators are violent and erratic and we lost a sister in the struggle (Ibaye Heather Heyer) and so many more in the last year since they got their boy in the white peoples house and got even more arrogant.  These new hyphy attacks are terrifying and triggering like all the attacks on indigenous people and people of color have been  for as long as indigenous peoples, 1st peoples and poor peoples have been struggling with repression, incarceration and exploitation from the kolonizers.

But still something was missing. And then I found out who the perpetrators really are. Other than appearing flagrantly melanin free and moving in fascist-like formation while uttering idiotic, meaningless chants, the demographic of who these people are was the key to the missing piece of this story

These are not the "white working class" that Bernie and the liberal democans supposedly  "forgot about" in the recent (s)election, in fact most of them are currently enrolled in formal institutions of learning in highly paid degree programs, they are driving late model vehicles and tweeting, face-craking and insta-scaming on $800.00 Iphones and/or currently being well-paid workers in the tech industry. These are not “ignorant” kkklan members. This is not your grandfathers nazi’s. These perpetrators are housed, fed and cared for. These are a new brand of millennial, privileged, bored and rage-filled 21st century dangerous 20-30 something white men.

And their "fight" has no basis in Anything, except their own confused angst.. These are the logical progressions of the separation nation. Of confused, violent, video-gaming testosterone filled, isolated teenagers, embued with all the un-bridled access that this stolen nation grants white people for no reason, but for the fact that they are white, with the added cocktail of extreme violence-promoting media and gaming. This elder-abusing, violent young man attacked his disabled mother over and over again when she tried to stop him from video-gaming 24 hours a day. These are adult -sized versions of the columbine shooters. And this is what amerikkklan has birthed.

But there is also a specific class analysis here. These people have no farms to tend to, no crisis of hunger or housing or health. They are middle-class and upper middle class people with nothing to do. They have no empathy and no spirit and no sense. And this is what they are spending their money, time, gas and effort on. 

Do you know how much it costs in gas to drive from Ohio to Charlottesville like 20 year old klan wanna be, video-gamer murderer James Fields did ? Do you know how much a late-model Dodge Charger costs? This is a privileged mans struggle for Nothing?  And we are sanctifying it.

Just like Trump, there is something so comical and pathetic about these men ( and the women who enable them) that like we all know they are actually frighteningly laughable. When we see them in their weird, campy marches with their weird , strange shields and weaponry, its actually hard not to laugh. And i know we need to respond somehow, but like any privileged people who like my mama used to say, have never missed a meal, im just not sure about giving them, their "movements" and their actions all this collective credibility.

As a formerly unhoused, incarcerated, white appearing, mixed race poverty skola ( daughter of a woman of color and a white man colonizer) who has struggled with homelessness, poverty and criminalization of my mama, myself and my community for years, i teach, speak, walk, fight and manifest liberation, struggle and resistance to race and class supremacy everyday. Most of which means showing up, advocating, standing with, standing along-side and/or creatively visioning different worlds not laden by the rules and guidelines of the amerikkklan separation nation, cult of independence and the criminalization of all of us indigenous and poor people.

It seems like a privileged position to even be in this fight. To lose good-hearted sisters like Heather Hyer to the idiot whims of these fools when they could be fighting and achieving real change so that less of us are being deported across these false borders, less of us are living outside, less of us are incarcerated for poverty and racist crimes.

Yes I overstand that one important perspective is that folks need to show up, especially white people, to counter these perpetrators, but be strategic and don't lose another brother or sister in the process.

And in the mean-time, stop waiting for the pathetic video-gamers to make a move. Don't  wait for protests, marches, events countering privileged, bored, violent white men- speak to EVERY FUKING BODY!!!! every day, in stores, in the DMV, in banks, at events- wherever & whenever u have the energy- teach, preach, speak, & say: Fuk Your Fascism, White Supreamcy and revisionist his-story.

Like any trauma survivor Mama Earth is unsettled, anxious, in physical and mental pain and actling erratic. This state of her being is now her norm, not the aberrant, so I refuse to call it Climate Change or any other euphemism. Mama Earth is in crisis, period.

And to all of us earth peoples struggling with the collective pain caused by the crises and trauma of our post-colonized and corporate tortured Mama Earth - i am sending so much prayer and healing across these digital streets
 
That said, the way Mama Earth in her trauma-filled state hits different communities is complex, tragic and horrifying. If you are already unhoused and on the street and the street you reside on gets flooded. You have now lost the nothing you already didn’t have and somehow even have less.

On Monday, Oct 9th Northern California, in a county with a very high medium income just sufferred with a serious fire crisis resulting in over 1500 homes being destroyed and over 10 people dying. The story of the poor folks lost to this fire, the hurricanes of Texas and Florida and Puerto Rico and the earthquakes of Mexico is rarely, if ever, spoken about or considered.

If you are in prison and “asked” to be a volunteer firefighter, what choice do you really have? Or worse if your cell-block is flooded like in Houston recently, and now filled with growing black mold, where do you go?  If you are living in what i call  poor people housing unit with 6 families in one room so you can collectively pay the over-priced rent and still have money to send home as remittances across the false borders, what happens when your roof burns down or is flooded. If you are a disabled elder holding on to your “house” by any means necessary, but u can’t afford  the earthquake insurance or the “good” fire insurance with the low deductible or the earthquake insurance at all, what do you do to rebuild? If you are renting from a scam lord who was already trying to evict you illegally and now you are burned out or flood out or earthquaked out, where do you go?

Mary X who is a very low-income, disabled elder who suffers from asthma and was living in poor people housing in downtown Santa Rosa, not only lost her home but can’t even stay in a shelter in Santa Rosa cause she can’t breathe. Juan L who was juggling three dishwashing jobs in kitchens in Napa County under the table now has no home and no jobs and no unemployment. Rena who was sleeping in a “same” place next to her old home in Santa Rosa, now can’t even breath muchness “sleep” in her tent hidden in Sonoma County.

Struggle hits different people depending on your support networks, access to resources and village support. Most people who are poor in a captialist society are isolated, and like my mama used to say Isolation kills,

The other terrifying lesson that can come from these fires, hurricanes, Tsunamis and earthquakes is a horrible and real empathy exercise, the kind we teach in PeopleSkool. The ways in which folks with different forms of race and class privilege can now overstand and understand the violence of losing Everything you care about in one minute. From baby pictures to your favorite momentos burned up in a tragic and immediate fire or thrown away by DPW workers cause you are unhoused and on the street when they are doing a “sweep” the pain is the same.

The way people recover from these little murders of the soul as my mama used to call them is
strikingly different if you have another home to go to, a family with extra room to house you, a trust fund, surplus income , a good fire or earthquake insurance policy or just a really powerful network of friends who love and are always there for you makes the difference between surviving and giving up competely.

These violent lessons of empathy are more important than ever as we learn back inter-dependence and move away from the lie of independence. Which cannot sustain any of us, rich or poor, struggling or supported as more and more of us lose more and more of our lives behind these times.

If we can take anything away form these violent and diffincult series of new Mama Earth normals, it is that we must care for each other in a deeper and different way and spend much less time on the lie of "succeeding" and more on the notion of caring for one another. And ultimately caring for our Earth Mother for without whom there woudl be no us. Otherwise, as indigenous nations and earth care-givers have taught for years, none of us, not just some of us, will survive.

Sending love, empathy, activation and healing to all of the victims of Trauma-FilledMama Earth in so much crisis  and all of us earth peoples from all four corners trying to survive, thrive and be alive.