2018

Salt, grease and fried meat filled the air. with just hint of burnt sugar thrown in. My mind wandered to breakfasts past sizzling in a greasy diner. The only thing was, i was on my bike, riding past an empty lot in East Oakland at 6:30am. No houses or restaurants were remotely close. And then i saw the smoke,and heard the sizzle. It was coming from one of a long line of late model Subarus, Hondas, BMW’s, Acura sedans, and even a Mercedes, no car older than 2015, parked along this hidden street. This breakfast was courtesy of a tiny grill plugged into a cigarette lighter in a 2017 Honda two-door.

This humble quiet group of cars and their inhabitants were part of a rising group of unhoused peoples, teetering on a fragile middle class, earning just enough to pay a car note but not the scamlord, gentriFUKed rents of 2018 Bay Area rentals.

“I work everyday, sometimes 12 hour shifts, but i still can’t afford the rents in Oakland or SF,” Malcolm, one of the unhoused parkers told me. “I originally got out here due to an Ellis Act eviction from my San Francisco apartment of 20 years, It costs too much to get back inside,” Malcolm concluded.

Malcolm went on to tell me that he had always paid his rent on time and had dreams of buying a cheap home out of the county and then the eviction happened. Now he is unable to raise the $5- 10,000 it costs to get back into an apartment, pretty much anywhere in the Bay Area.

Malcolm is a 62-year -old Black elder and was really scared about his future. He is a contract worker (code for no health insurance, no pension, no security)

On today’s bike ride, which my formerly unhoused, trauma-infused self calls my Bike Rides for Sanity, cause without it i truly could not function with all of the PTSD triggers constantly rolling through my brain. i witnessed over 10 new cars added to the 9 cars already there, all with folks of all colors and cultures and ages in different states of getting ready for work or school. My own past with homelessness and vehicle dwelling made me terrified for them and their safety against the poLice, poltricksters and hater neighbors.

“I come from a working class family, I couldn’t afford rent and school supplies,” Yesica, a UC Berkeley graduate and one of over 15 fellow unhoused folks who live in RV’s in Berkeley that the City of Berkeley recently evicted from a parking lot in the Berkeley Marina, for no reason but the fact that notwithstanding the veneer of political correctness oozing out of Berkeley, the city is full of HypoCrazy and anti-poor people hate.

“They have done nothing to change the laws, there is no way to legally live in a vehicle in Berkeley,” said revolutionary lawyer for the people Osha Neuman who is working with the Berkeley RV dwellers to fight the anti-poor people hate of Berkeley and its poltricksters. “Emeryville repealed the law on the books specifically targeting vehicle dwellers, but Berkeley uses a law that says you can’t park a commercial vehicle between 3-5am targeting non-commercial RV dwellers.”

His words pierced my heart. I had been there for most of my childhood. We weren’t living in RV’s, or late model Honda’s, we were in hoopties, buckets, whatever me and my mama could buy with what we earned from a street based micro-business. We parked wherever we could, working really hard to avoid people, bougie neighborhoods and poLice. Usually this wasn’t very successful and we were ticketed and towed literally all the time. Either it was parking tickets for sleeping in our vehicle or no current registration, taillights and other poor people crimes. When the cars were towed it was either sleep on park benches or doorways out of sight or unsafe shelter beds where we were predated on. When I turned 18 i did three months in Santa Rita County jail for the poverty “crime” of sleeping in our car.

Every Tuesday myself and other PoorNewsNetwork correspondents go out to conduct poor people-led media and research or what we call “WeSearch” for RoofLESS radio (which also includes healthy hot meals served to all who are hungry and hygiene kits as have them). Every week unhoused poverty skolaz hiding in their hoopties, in parks and under tents report multiple stories ranging from “sweeps” of our unhoused bodies like we are trash, being asked to move, having their tents and belongings stolen by Dept of Public Works or just plain being told like the recent reports in SF that they can’t sit down at all. You could argue that the sort of middle class car dwellers are better off because they don’t get this same non-stop hate and have a container for their belongings but the harassment hits them too, it’s just more subtle.

“Parking enforcement was ticketing me literally everyday. I’m parking here because there are hardly any residential homes here so less people to call the police on us.” An elder Latinx woman who works at a hospital spoke to me out of a 2015 Subaru. “I’ve got so many tickets I’m at risk of losing my car and ending up in a tent.” she concluded.

Real Solutions instead of More anti-poor People Predation.

From San Francisco to San Mateo people are harassed ALL the time and the settler colonizer- anti-poor people laws on the stolen land books, lygislators and poltricksters support, promote and underwrite this harassment .

Its why poverty skola elder Bobby Bogan and myself are calling for a Poor Peoples Party. Its why us Po and houseless folks at POOR Magazine are building Homefulness- a homeless peoples, self-determined solution to homelessness.

But more importantly for people reading this, it is urgent to understand and overstand we are in a different time.There is no room for the same old greed-filled, land stealing wealth-hoarding policies. Mama Earth is weakening. Climate destruction is increasing. More and more of us are unable to afford the insane prices being falsely placed on Mama Earth. For our collective survival and thrival as human beings it is an emergency for us to listen and learn and follow the practices indigenous nations have been teaching and living and manifesting since the beginning of human-ness.

“San Diego has a huge lawsuit going right now on the right to sleep in their vehicles,“ said Paul Boden, poverty skola and long-time poor people revolutionary and director of WRAP (Western Regional Advocacy Project).

No-one owns these parking lots like the ones the Berkeley RV dwellers were parking on because no-one owns Mama Earth. No-one owns the public streets that peoples are parked on in San Diego just like no-one owns the (so-called) public streets in San Francisco, San Mateo, Berkeley or East Oakland.

My proposal to conscious folks like Jovanka Beckles and Cheryl Davilla and Cat Brooks  who happen to walk in those politrickster halls is to unearth the property first settler colonial laws and actually create space for us growing members of the Unhoused Nation. Decriminalize parking and sleeping, decriminalize sitting, standing, living and being while unhoused. These practices aren’t logical in a 21st century reality and of course never were logical, but rather undergirded this culture rooted in scarcity models, crabs in a barrel survival models, racism, classism and greed.

Support indigenous women-led projects like Sogorea Te Land Trust and their fight to save, preserve, liberate and honor a 5,000 year old sacred indigenous site, the West Berkeley Shellmound from more devil-oping and land stealing, profiteering and politricking

Transform both private and publicly “owned” empty lots (like the thousands of acres of CalTrans-owned land) and privately speculated empty houses into collective land use not rooted in Property values” and more buying, selling and speculating.

And conscious folks reading this don’t have to wait for the poltricksters or beg them to activate. You as the housed citizen are the ones the poltricksters supposedly implement and enforce all these anti-poor people laws for and so it’s why I’m putting a call out to conscious housed people to stand with us Po and unhoused people and say, no, you don’t want unhoused people incarcerated or criminalized, you don’t want vehicularly housed people to be poLice harassed.

And if you have inherited land or resources, please understand that projects like Homefulness happened with the redistributed dollars of decolonized young people who learned from poverty skolaz at PeopleSkool  and the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour to redistribute to poor and unhoused folks for their own self-determined solutions. These are the deep and life-changing lessons shared in Poverty Scholarship- Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth- coming out with a radical book and curriculum tour in 2019

Similarly, stop enabling, funding and building more and more high rises and rich people housing and liberate stolen indigenous territory to poor people-led projects like Homefulness. We poverty and indigenous skolaz at Homefulness are going through a long legal and ceremonial process to take our small part of Mama Earth permanently off the real estate snaking market, so it will always remain a space for people to live and learn and grow and heal without the threat of removal , eviction or displacement.  The four families who live here now (i being one of them) are all formerly unhoused folks, don’t pay rent to anyone, aren’t trying to make a “profit off of Mama Earth and only pay toward the taxes, insurance and utilities, and don’t want to own any part of Mama Earth- but like i always say to my Sun, are very certain we would be homeless if it wasn’t for Homefulness

“It’s not the best grill and sometimes the pancakes don’t get cooked all the way through,” Malcolm told me looking out his window, “ but its all I have and it’s better than nothing.”  

To co-lead or walk with us in the next Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Tour or book us for a reading or workshop on the upcoming  poor peoples Textbook Poverty Scholarship email us at poormag@gmail,com. To register for the upcoming PEopleSkool DegentruFUkation and Decolonization Seminar happening BlackAugust 25 & 26th  go to www.racepovertymediajustice.org  

Well I went down to the rich man’s house- to take back what he stole from me- take back my dignity- take back my humanity…..

There we were - the unhoused, the evicted, the displaced, the disabled.Black, Brown, Indigenous, Poor white, youth & elders on one accord, all colors, all nations, all cultures, all ages, all abilities- cause that’s what poverty looks like in this stolen indigenous territory the colonizers called the US.

“We poor mamas are marching on Washington DC because poverty is violence against our babies, our elders our families and if you stay silent you are part of the problem,” said Tara Colon, Puerto Rican/Mexican mama of five from Philadelphia and PPEHRC co-founder.

The 2018 Poor People’s March on Washington was originally launched by impacted poor, houseless and formerly unhoused people from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) 15 years ago. Poor folks walked from Mississippi to Washington in honor of the 35th anniversary of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968. The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is a truly poor people-led movement, which like POOR Magazine is walking for our own criminalized lives, our struggles and our own self-determined solutions.

The War on the Poor is in full effect from Frisco to Oakland to the Philippines and Iraq- but now the soldiers are social workers, poLice and Poltricksters creating deadly legislation and contracts , Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, Po Poet, houseless mama and author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America

“In St. Petersburg Florida, the Palm trees have more rights than homeless people,” Shay, a unhoused resident of Florida and  a poverty skola as we call it at POOR Magazine, meaning someone who has struggled with poverty and/or homelessness, continued her report of extreme criminalization of unhoused people in her town, “it’s illegal to lean against a building  while homeless, basically it’s illegal to be alive in our town if you are homeless,”

Shay and Tara,  along with over 100 unhoused and formerly unhoused poverty skolaz from Florida to California, all experiencing different forms of deep criminalization of our lives, began walking on June 2nd from the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philly, where rates of homelessness, evictions and police harassment are on the rise.

We are the poor people, walking for ourselves, cause we don’t need corporations or non-profiteers to speak for us, we can speak, teach and build for ourselves, we just need people to stop pimping us.

The march through occupied Lenape territory ( aka Philly ) and later on to Maryland was a metaphor for our struggle as poor folks. We would depart intentionally blighted poor people of color neighborhoods like Kensington and gentriFUKed North Philly where my Afro-Boricua, disabled and later houseless mama was born and is now literally being seized by Temple University for student housing and a new corporate sports stadium, and then move onto wealth-hoarding neighborhoods with huge swaths of mama earth used for lawns that don’t grow food or house people, but just sit there as a testament to the sickness of wealth-hoarding and land-stealing- something POOR Magazine has been highlighting in our Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tours Across Turtle Island,

“Maryland is the 2nd wealthiest state in the US - we rate number 2 in the most homeless people in the country and we are the oldest state in the US,” said Rev. Annie Chambers, Black Panther elder revolutionary from the Spiritual Love Ministry who this poverty skola had the blessing of sitting as she described another problem that plagues poor folks, the intense poverty pimping and non-profiteering of poor people that happens in Baltimore where she is based doing liberation advocacy and truly poor people-led organizing.  

From Oakland to Oklahoma, poor, disabled elders, children, families are in an emergency. In Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley where myself, Leroy Moore, Bilal Mafundi Ali and Youth Skola Tiburcio from POOR Magazine are based, there are an ongoing series of Po’Groms on poor people as Bilal Calls them and our homeless, disabled bodies, are being violently "swept" by Mayors from San Francisco to Santa Monica, like we are trash- our elders and children are being evicted by speculators and we refuse to continue being criminalized, displaced and terrorized, we Poor people have innovative solutions like First they Came for the Homeless in Berkeley & Homefulness in Deep East Oakland. People need to hear our own poor people-led solutions, " which is also why all of us unhoused and formerly unhoused mamaz and uncles at POOR Magazine founded Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness, which is one of the poor people-led solutions we are lifting up in this march.

Across the nation, unhoused and poor folks have minimal or no healthcare, with hospitals like Georgetown Hospital, who are mandated to treat us dumping our houseless and disabled bodies out of the back doors of ambulances and leaving us to die in parks.

“This is where all pastors and congregations should be, in the streets with the lost, the last and the least,”  said revolutionary Pastor Keith Collins from the Overcomer Church in Philadelphia

Migrante Raza families who cross these false borders not being seen at all, incarcerated in detention centers and shot cross colonizer borders not to mention becoming the highest rise, next to elders in the homeless population across the US and facing increased multi-layered racist profiling resulting in our deaths, like Mayan, indigenous father Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat who was killed in San Francisco, for being houseless in amerikkka, because a resident got scared of a peaceful houseless recycler who did nothing but be Brown and Unhoused in these stolen streets.

“We are the new and unsettling force that King spoke of in 1968.” said Galen Tyler, PPEHRC member,  

"Yes, we the poor are marching, speaking for ourselves: the homeless, residents of Puerto Rico robbed of their land and culture, people in recovery, the disability community, the ‘welfare queens,’ the ‘deadbeat dads,’ homeless veterans, the hustlers, young and old, immigrants, the criminals, the ‘undeserving’ poor, black, white and Brown. We will march for our lives and when we arrive in Washington DC we will construct Resurrection city and Reclaim our future for generations to come, “.said Cheri Honkala, PPEHRC founder.

Side by Side

chair frames and baby toys,

jackets, toothbrushes coffee cans and pillows

wrapped up in paper made of memories… Tiny Po’ Poet

“We are marching to Washington to get our Reparations, said youth skola Tiburcio, 14 years old, formerly homeless youth poverty skola from Deecolonize Academy and Homefulness, built with Community Reparations from wealth-hoarders redistributing their stolen and hoarded or inherited wealth.

From Sacramento to San Jose to San Juan, Puerto Rico, public housing units which housed literally thousands of people are being destroyed by neoliberal and now racist Trump policies, doing things like tripling the rent on poor folks who already barely have enough to pay for our lives and our rents. These anti-poor people policies are being implemented by Trump directly following the selling of public housing leases to for-profit housing developers under Obama with a program benignly called RAD - reported by the SF Bayview and POOR Magazine and barely even mentioned by mainstream or independent media, resulting in the evictions and relocations of thousands of elders and families into nothing and as reported by comrades at Western Regional Advocacy Project (wraphome.org) this is the just the icing on the scarcity model cake, for us perceived as the undeserving poor.

“Us Poor folks are going to HUD on Monday to meet with Ben Carson, to prevent widespread homelessness,” said PPEHRC founder Cheri Honkala.

The cycle goes around But the kids of Poverty & Disability organized Without foundations who have roots of cycle of abuse The children of Poverty & Disability Marching to D.C.hand and hand with their knowledge, art and music Proud and loud "

Excerpts from Leroy F. Moore Jr's poem Poverty & Disability

Took Back what he stole from me- took my back my dignity - took back my humanity - under my thumb under my thumb ain’t nobody gonna walk all over me…

From Rebel Diaz to Infinite Skillz and the Po Poets Project will be part of the line-up of hip hop artists and cultural workers performing in Washington DC at Resurrection City starting June 9th through the 12th. POOR Magazine's poor people-led media project RoofLEss Radio will also be broadcasting from the march at this link For More information go to economichumanarights.org. or the facebook page here

IT’S GOING DOWN!  NATIONAL PRISON STRIKE AUGUST 21ST THROUGH SEPTEMBER 9TH.

”Let this nationwide strike be a wake-up, prisoners will destroy the crops, we will not comply, we will not allow you to exploit our families' hard-earned dollars anymore. Striking the match, let it go up in a blaze. We are humans! On behalf of the prisoners nationwide, we thank every supporter out there that's making our voices heard through their actions of solidarity. Stay vigilant, we will need you more than ever during the strike.” -  Jailhouse Lawyers Speak.

Men and women incarcerated in prisons across the nation declare a nationwide strike beginning on August 21st and extending through September 9th, in response to the riot in Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in South Carolina, this riot is being called the most deadly in decades.  Seven male inmates lost their lives during a senseless uprising that could have been avoided had the prison not been so overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration and a lack of respect for human life that is embedded in our nation’s penal ideology. These men and women are demanding humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery.

In a salute to Black August Month, the strikes begins on August 21st (This date commemorates the assassination of Black Panther Party, Field Marshall, and prison activist, George Jackson, by San Quentin prison guards)

Over the past decade, a wave of prison rebellions has swept the country, increasing in both frequency and intensity. In September 2016 the largest coordinated national prisoner strike occurred in facilities around the country. These rebellions prove time and time again that caging and torturing humans is violence and will be resisted by those locked up by the system. Prisoner resistance demonstrates that instead of solving the crisis of capitalism, prisons themselves are the crisis.

Retaliation of the state - Federal and state authorities are on high alert across the nation. Pre-emptive repression tactics have already been initiated to silence visible prisoners that have influence who have vocally supported the August 21st call. This includes those less-known figures to the public. Prisoners are reporting in a few states that wardens are openly making threats to prisoners of consequences if they participate in the nationwide strike. Even with the authorities threatening, prisoners are ready for action.

It’s important to be very clear about why our sisters and brothers behind enemy lines have decided to wage resistance against an institution born out of slavery that this nation must come to grips with and address. South Carolina is only a reflection of the issues facing other states and governmental buildings of confinement.   Prisoners aren’t striking simply because the circumstances that their living in are mildly uncomfortable. They’re striking because the circumstances that they’re forced to live in are unbearably and innately abusive and no human being should live in a state of constant repression or abuse:

THE FOLLOWING DEMANDS HAVE BEEN FORTH BY PRISONERS WHO ARE LEADING AND ORGANIZING THE NATION PRISON STRIKE AND THE MANNER THEY’LL CONDUCT THE STRIKE

Immediate improvements to the conditions of prisons and prison policies that recognize the humanity of imprisoned men and women.

An immediate end to prison slavery. All persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction must be paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act must be rescinded, allowing imprisoned humans a proper channel to address grievances and violations of their rights.

The Truth in Sentencing Act and the Sentencing Reform Act must be rescinded so that imprisoned humans have a possibility of rehabilitation and parole. No human
shall be sentenced to Death by Incarceration or serve any sentence without the possibility of parole.

An immediate end to the racial overcharging, over-sentencing, and parole denials of Black and brown humans. Black humans shall no longer be denied parole because the victim of the crime was white, which is a particular problem in southern states.

An immediate end to racist gang enhancement laws targeting Black and brown humans.

No imprisoned human shall be denied access to rehabilitation programs at their place of detention because of their label as a violent offender.

State prisons must be funded specifically to offer more rehabilitation services.

Pell grants must be reinstated in all US states and territories.

The voting rights of all confined citizens serving prison sentences, pretrial detainees, and so-called “ex-felons” must be counted. Representation is demanded. All voices count.

OUR SISTERS AND BROTHERS IN PRISONS ACROSS THE NATION WILL STRIKE IN THE FOLLOWING MANNER:

WORK STRIKES: Prisoners will not report to assigned jobs. Each place of detention will determine how long its strike will last. Some of these strikes may translate
into a local list of demands designed to improve conditions and reduce harm within the prison.

SIT-INS: In certain prisons, men and women will engage in peaceful sit – in protests.

BOYCOTTS: All spending should be halted. We ask those outside the walls not to make financial judgments for those inside. Men and women on the in side will inform you if they are participating in this boycott.

HUNGER STRIKES: Men and women shall refuse to eat.

No individual on this planet should be placed into an environment that’s violent, deadly, abusive or oppressive regardless of the behaviors that they engaged in in the past. Prisoners are striking because this is their daily reality and it has been for centuries and they want to see this change for the better of, not only themselves, for the benefit all the communities that they belong to. Inmates are striking because not only are the environments that their forced to live in are innately oppressive and violent but because their conditions repress rehabilitation and evoke violence. They want to be in an environment that praises their social, educational and emotional development and we should support them out of love.

The Bay Area National Prison Strike Solidarity Committee is organizing a Mobilization and Call to Action on August 25, 2018, at San Quentin State Prison, with the objective of raising awareness of the inhumane conditions, treatment and policies that afflict those held in these gulags throughout amerikkka.  We are also mobilizing to let these sisters and brothers being held behind enemy lines know that we on the outside have their backs and that we support their Demands and the ongoing historic prison movement for human rights, led and organized by those being held captive in amerikkka’s gulags.

Image: Corey Jackson (Little C-Note) on the Ellen DeGeneres show

The videotaped arrest of 12-year old Corey (Lil C-Note) Jackson along with his aunt Coraletha Jackson has once again slapped another black youth in the face with the message that no matter what path chosen whether it be positive or negative you will be criminalized and penalized for either breaking the law or daring to think outside the box when it comes down to self-determination.

The early October arrest at the Cumberland Mall in Cobb County, Georgia came after Lil C-Note allegedly refused to speak to the officer or give his name after supposedly being warned twice to not sell CD’s at the mall. Jackson was also accused of trying to break the po’lice’s fingers and his aunt has been in the hot seat for not “acting appropriately” after defending her nephew from the talons the cop had deeply and harshly clutched onto the young man’s arm.

The video showed the officer threaten to incarcerate Corey while the soft-spoken youth said that he was aware of his rights and the voice of his aunt in fight-or-flight mode to turn lose her #@%&! Nephew was heard in the background. Cobb County police chief Michael Register has upheld his officer’s decision, despite the county’s department catching heat that is documented in the International Association of Chiefs of Police studies for being plagued with “perceptions of racism.”

“Discipline is not the enemy of enthusiasm”

Some argue that what Lil C-Note had done was criminal and he should not have returned to Cumberland mall after being told twice he wasn’t allowed to sell his merchandise there. Others  asked where were the parents to discipline the child but as the video showed, the officer refused to speak with the father who was on the phone with the kid’s aunt displaying disrespect for Corey’s real authority. What is wrong in my opinion with this picture is the generational wite supremacist ethics the cop possessed of discouraging Black people against inter-dependence just like our ancestors were forbidden to read and own property. When unjust, discriminative laws are put into place that even goes against the very laws of nature resistance and punishment is inevitable. One de-escalating approach would have been for the cop to acknowledge that what the youngster was doing (entrepreneurship) was a positive move instead of doing negative things but (biased or not) the law is the law and the job of the kkkop is to uphold it and tell him that he had to leave the premises. What made the officer think that Corey Jackson had “rabbit in him”, meaning the possibility the kid may run away is unclear and may be the reason he held onto the boy with such a vice grip- that would fall under the category of “Presumptuous Prejudice” and this could have led to a much worse scenario.

The aunt, Coraletha Jackson, was faulted because of her reaction. But how was she to react to her nephew’s life being jeopardized in the hands of an agent who works in a field that has a terrifying past and present of slaughtering Black people (and others) and getting away with it? The conscious and subconscious fear and anxiety of our loved ones being taken away and in most cases never seen or heard from again is a generational psychological condition but no one wants part of this conversation and would rather write it off as negroes just being criminals that are subjected to arrest without explanation and denied the right to remain silent or exercise the 5th amendment.

DID ANY OF COREY’S “COP FRIENDS” SPEAK UP AND OUT??

NO COMMENT, NEXT POINT!!!

If Lil C-Note was barred from returning back to Cumberland Mall for trying to make an honest living my question would be then why did any of US go back to the mall? It’s not about supporting wrongdoing but you must question and challenge laws that makes it illegal for folks- especially Blacks to become self- sufficient (without selling one’s soul) and to call out any agents who crosses the line of detainment and child abuse/endangerment. Our blood-stained dollars should not be invested in any establishments that criminalizes the people for putting food on the table!

Our Nation’s youth should be supported by creating spaces for business-minded children to come out with their tables and sell/trade their goods without the fear of having the police called on them by “BBQ bastids” and “Presumptuous prejudice patties” for simply making a living that doesn’t consist of scrubbing the crap out of Becky’s toilet. With adult guidance, create protocols to ensure customer satisfaction/ liability and let the children do their thing! POOR Magazine’s DeeColonize Academy not only educates the youth and their families but also supports the children and encourage cultural activities, journalism and micro- business. After all, the children are our future so let us not allow for these “beasts with badges” to continue to discourage and brutalize them when they are doing good, but let’s teach them well with more fierceness and let them lead the way!

Queennandi Xsheba

“We are surrounded by Black Cops”, said Leroy Moore, with POOR Magazine and Krip Hop Nation about the 15 black cops who surrounded us houseless and formerly houseless mamas, uncles, children, and elders from the Poor People’s March when we walked humbly into the Washington DC office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demand our housing back.

“We are here to meet with Ben Carson,” we all said.

We poor folks, most of whom are on Section 8, living in public housing and/or no housing at all- paid a visit to the Washington Dc headquarters of HUD on Day 12 of the Poor Peoples March from Philadelphia to Washington DC only to be surrounded by poLice officers (all of color), blocking us at the door when all we asked for was a meeting with the housing director, Ben Carson who is fulfilling the neoliberal and neoconservative dreams of dismantling poor people housing as we know it.

“HUD changing their own door locks to keep us out is a perfect metaphor for the ways poor folks are locked out, swept up and treated as though we are trash, when we are evicted from our public and private housing and end up on the streets,” said this reporter/poverty skola, Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, about HUD actually sending locksmiths to the front of their building to change their main entrance locks.

After a tense stand off at the HUD entrance we were all told that one of us could get a meeting if the rest of us left the building. We figured this was another politrick, but we complied in the hopes that at least we had a slim chance of actually getting a meeting. So as we all filed out, Cheri Honkala, marcher and founder of Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign in Philly, stayed inside the building, determined by any means necessary to, “get a meeting”.

"We sit down with McCormack and Baron all the time," said a smooth talking HUD Public Relations (PR0 officer. While we were waiting "outside" HUD's PR person walked outside ostensibly to "answer" our questions. When I asked him about the destruction of poor people housing as we know it aka the benignly named RAD program- which sells the mortgages of public housing buildings on the private stock market to for profit banksters like ING and Citigroup and gives the management over to for profit and non-profit housing devil-opers and me and we at  at POOR call the E-RADification program, he claimed complete ignorance about how it was rolling out in San Francisco, one of the 5 demonstration cities who struggled with it first before they unveiled it on the whole of the US.

"So you are aware that the RAD program reneges on HUD's guarantee to provides housing for the poorest among us and demolishing buildings all across the country building buildings we are not able to get back in," I asked.

Evading the question, he looked away and then came back with, "Well in Baltimore tenants have a right of return written guaranteeing them housing when demolitions happen,"

"You mean like the Hope IV right of return which which meant no hope and no return."

"Well i don't know about all that, but i know what we have in Baltimore" As he was popping his Brooks Brothers Collar, i was thinking to myself, that's not what I heard from poverty skolaz in Baltimore and then said, "So that's not what i have heard about Baltimore, and I know that in San Francisco the housing devil-opers McCormack and Baron are trying to sweat out Plaza East residents by never replacing their broken appliances and plumbing and heating and making it impossible for them to getting any recourse or justice," at which point he revealed the sick, sleazy relationship between corporate for profit and non-profit housing devil-opers and how they talk "all the time" and then walked away from me.

Sadly, after pretending to take Cheri up to a meeting they just escorted her to the back entrance and when she refused to move they arrested her. “People are afraid of us organized poor, " said Cheri Honkala as she was being dragged away from her disabled sun Guillermo and all of us by poLice agents of the state at HUD.

“They are selling off all of our public housing,” said Louie from Picture the Homeless speaking to PoorNewsNetwork when we did our Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour about just a part of the ongoing destruction by HUD of all of our poor people housing, a story POOR Magazine poverty skolaz Tiny and QueenandiXSheba released in 2013 in the SF Bayview.

A Real Poor People March

From San Francisco to San Juan Puerto Rico- we Black, Brown, Indigenous, Poor White, disabled, children, adults and elders all took part in this powerful poor people-led march to highlight and manifest poor people-led solutions to our crises of evictions, displacement, incarceration, criminalization and brutal anti-poor people-hate that are increasing across this stolen indigenous territory. ( Read Part 1 here)

After our first day getting poLice called on us for Sitting While Unhoused in amerikkklan on the porch in Philly- the poLice presence and harassment continued throughout this herstoric march. We walked past wealth-hoarder and land stealers in Oxford , Penn, to Baltimore, Maryland. The police harassment us marchers got were an example of the micro-abuses that happen everyday in amerikkka to unhoused and disabled people of all colors.

In the march they manifested as churches that “let” us stay in their basements waiting for us to leave at the crack of dawn. Or posted up in their church lobbies like we were going to steal something- not sure what, maybe a basketball hoop considering we were in the gym sleeping on the floor.

And then we arrived in Washington DC- the rich white mans house to take back what he stole from us - like our theme song sang by Tara Colon’s beautiful daughter throughout the march reminded us. and the beautiful crazy was on.

“We have a permit, “ said poet, drummer and revolutionary Pastor Bruce Wright from the Florida chapter of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign to the park police as they began an onslaught of harassment of us unhoused folks when we arrived to build Resurrection city on Dupont circle in Washington DC, a few blocks from the (Rich) Wite (Mans) House.

“Our Permit was revoked,” said Cheri Honkala to all of us. After a two hour stand-off between park ranger police and us unhoused and formerly unhoused black , brown and white people who built the historic Resurrection City in Honor of the 50 year anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King’s march on Washington, our permit was revoked for no reason at all. We weren’t causing any trouble, we weren’t fulfilling any racist and classist stereotypes about poor folks. We were just sleeping while houseless in this stolen territory.Just like the multiple other unhoused folks who slept on the perimeter of Dupont Circle and were continually harassed every day by park police for the duration of our time there.

At POOR Magazine/homefulness we houseless and formerly houseless black, brown and indigenous people learn from our teachers, elders and ancestors that parks like Dupont circle park and Golden Gate Park are a lie in the first place, just a way to sanction the stealing of land from 1st Nations people. That “heroes” like John Muir was just a sanctioned gangster who created documents that claimed ownership on huge swaths of stolen indigenous territory on Mama Earth, locking it up and calling it “public” but never really intending it to be for “all” the public. Which is why revolutionary poor folks like Auntie Frances’ Self-Help Hunger Program is harassed for serving food, for living, sitting and standing, planting trees while unhoused in amerikkklan. Whose attempts to put a porta pottie in gentriFUKED Driver Plaza in North Oakland is stymied by poltricksters and hipsters alike, and Corrina Gould, 1st Nations Ohlone /Lisjen Land Liberator and co-founder of Sogorea Te Land Trust and Homefulness Elephant Council member, has to fight so hard to save another sacred site, this time the West Berkeley Shellmound, from more desecration.

So there we were, the actual poor folks trying to honor, lift up, seize and manifest Dr Kings Dream- the one excerpted, sliced and diced and used over and over in propaganda in public relations campaigns for Airlines to Parades and we were threatened with arrest, displaced and evicted. Another perfect metaphor for the treatment of lives and bodies of houseless people across the US.

“These are the purveyors of the American Dream, which for all of us poor folks, black and brown folks is the american nightmare,” said Revolutionary Pastor and fellow marcher Keith Collins, outside the Poor Peoples March ’s last stop, the Chamber of Commerce, which as Cheri explained was the real power behind the Rich white Mans House.

And as poverty skola comrades at Western Regional Advocacy Project (wraphome.org) and POOR Magazine Wesearch  teaches us, the Chamber of Commerces in every stolen city in amerikkklan are the backers and promoters of the Business Improvement District (BID) which is one of the reasons us poor folks are “swept” off of the sidewalks like we are trash.

This march was a really real representation of 21st century poverty and included some amazing mamaz, daddies, youth, elder and disabled skolaz providing rides, support vehicles, back up food, blankets, air mattresses, tents, love and medical support, like Lisa and Leon Richards and their fabulous daughter and photographer Eva Cristo, and all their fierce and beautiful children, Tara Colon and her suns and daughters and granddaughters, carrying us with their beautiful singing voice and support, Julia and her sun Jeremy, Cheri and her Sun Guillermo, and Ondre and "T" and Robert and POOR's mentee Josie, and Eddie Somerset and his amazing brother Gaylen and Pablo and Curtis and Sha and Steve and me and my Sun Tiburcio and Bilal and Leroy so many more...

“This beautiful march was life-changing for me, thank-you all for your hearts and love,” said “T” one of the powerFUL unhoused poverty skolaz from St Petersburg, Florida who marched with us through thick and thin and spoke at our beautiful closing circle and prayer on July 12th.

“We all know this fight isn’t over, and we as poor folks need to be leading our own fights and our own liberation,” said Pastor Bruce Wright.

For more information about the poor people march on Washington go to economichumanrights.org. For more information on one of the templates of poor people-led housing we po folks call Homefulness go to www.poormagazine.org/homefulness.

Photo credits: Jason Bosch, Eva Cristo, Tiny, Tiburcio

"Nobody should be put out alone into this cold night," said Benita Turner, mother of Jessica St Louis, who died after being released from Santa Rita County Jail at 1:30am on July 28th. 

What does these two men have in common? Both are powerful figures with a lot of money and both MARRIED men have been accused of sexual assault with the result being that Cosby was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison and Kavanaugh was elected to the supreme court. The complexion protection is the one thing that Cosby did not have in his favor but regardless of color, no man has the right to rape a woman.

William Henry Cosby, Jr. was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women over the decades but after a June 2017 mistrial he was only convicted of these allegations against former Temple University employee Andrea Constand and is now serving his sentence. Several of Cosby’s other accusers have filed civil suits and the outcome has not been finalized yet.

Brett Kavanaugh has been sworn in as supreme kkkourt after the retirement of Anthony Kennedy after successfully dodging sexual assault accusations from Christine Blasey Ford that go back to 1982.  Ford was made a mockery of by Trump and by some labeled credible, but her voice and story was said not to be truly heard.

In all this, Trump praised Brett Kavanaugh and his family saying that this country is very proud of them and when it came to his accusers he handled this like the loud-mouthed bully he is thus further convincing the people that the penis can be utilized as an egotistical symbol of power or a weapon of war.

Why didn’t the women speak up sooner?

Fear, guilt, shame and intimidation are strong and understandable reasons a woman doesn’t speak up right away and the worry of no one believing the victim. Many survivors are known not say a word to a soul for years, even decades like in the case of Sally Quinn vs. John Tower, who penned in her memoir “Finding Magic” the attempted rape she survived from a man in power but took years to speak up on it.

As a child survivor I felt ashamed and ruined and even thought Mama schooled me on the rights and wrongs I was caught at the wrong place at the wrong time celebrating a so called friend’s birthday party.  Mama did say- “Do not ever be afraid to tell me when someone hurts you or do something they are not supposed to do.” I asked her “What if they say they’ll hurt you?” She responded “I’ll be on a warpath, so don’t worry about me!” With that boost of confidence from the warrior woman I made sure I would tell any and everything that goes on- even my close friends were comfortable enough to share their hearts and she has saved many lives and spirits with her fierceness and blamed no one.

Let’s bring all the world’s rapists to injustice, yeah?

Mother Africa is being raped every single day of her people and resources, children forced into prostitution are being raped and broken and Mother Nature is constantly robbed and raped of her land and water but no one gives this fact a thought because money and wickedness rules everything for the time being. There should be no statute of limitations when it comes down to any crimes against humanity and no man, regardless of his social status or nationality should be above the law, but one asks “whose law”? Because obviously some men are rewarded for their treachery and brutality under the rule of wite (non)supremacy.

[image description:  sweet photo of 30 year old Black Loved One Charleena Lyles smiling and wearing intricate hoop earrings, she has long eyelashes and is wearing lip gloss and a hat.  Photo courtesy Katrina Johnson]

Black, Disabled, Mother, Sister, Lover, Cousin, Daughter, Niece, Neighbor, friend, Poverty Scholar, and Loved One, Charleena Lyles, called 911 for assistance from her Seattle/Duwamish home on June 18th, 2017. Charleena had survived many things in her lifetime, including intergenerational racism, domestic violence, and the criminalization of being on the radar of CPS (“child protective services”). She loved and nurtured her four children, one of whom is Disabled, with Down Syndrome. Charleena navigated Poverty and struggled to find affordable housing for her family, having never truly felt safe at the Brettler Family Place apartment where she resided. When white poLice officers Steven McNew and Jason Anderson showed up to Charleena’s apartment in response to her call for help, they misused information about her, which they could have used to support her. Those kops knew she had mental illness and that she was a trauma survivor, they knew there were children there, they knew Charleena was their protector. Instead of providing care, access support, or the help that Charleena requested, Seattle poLice officers McNew and Anderson shot Charleena Lyles seven times, violently killing her in front of her children, whose lives are forever changed.

“We never called her Charleena,” says Charleena’s cousin Katrina Johnson. Katrina is one of a group of young Black Matriarchs at the center of this justice struggle, including Charleena’s sisters Monika Williams and Tiffany Rogers. Katrina explains that Charleena’s name is pronounced with a hard CH (not “sh”): “It’s CHarleena like charcoal,” she says. “And for us, it was always Leena, or Leena Boo. She was the life of the party. She was lively. She always had this huge smile on her face. She was very giving, so like if it was her last, she would give it to somebody, regardless of if she had anything left. Above all of that, she was a Mom. Leena loved her kids,” says Katrina.  

Katrina continues, “We used to run around together, do stuff, hang out at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue when we all lived out there. She lived with my Grandma and we lived with my stepdad.  We used to go down to the community center out there. She loved listening to music and going dancing. Those are some of the things that I'll always remember.”

Calling poLice into your home should not result in your own death.

“My first cousin Leena called for help, to report a burglary, and instead of getting the help that she needed, she took seven bullets to her one hundred pound frame, in front of three of her four Kids. Her youngest Son laid in a pool of her blood. That’s what I think happened to her. That’s what the medical examiner told me. I believe my cousin was murdered. I believe they did not have to use deadly force. I believe that the killing of mentally ill people has gone on for far too long. It is time for some things to change,” says Katrina.

Charleena had called poLice in the past, to report assaults she had survived. She repeatedly had asked kops, kourts and The System for survival assistance. She followed through on filing restraining orders. “I feel so scared for my safety, and I just got out of the hospital from having our 6-days-old baby boy, and I had a c-section. I think he ripped my stitches open,” Charleena wrote in a petition for an order for protection.

But the poLice criminalized her instead of supporting her. In response to a recent domestic violence call, in early June 2017, Seattle poLice actually ended up arresting Charleena, and then flagged her address - and her - as being problematic, instead of in need of access support or de-escalating. Charleena was jailed for two weeks, then diverted to mental health kourt after that arrest. She was released literally four days before Seattle poLice returned to her apartment and killed her, using previous documentation of their interactions as justification for using deadly force.

Months after her killing, an “investigation” into Charleena’s death found that her killing was “justified,” and that the Use of Force followed the training, that poLice “feared for their lives.” The System protected the poLice, instead of Charleena, and blamed Charleena for her own death. Neither of the poLice officers that killed her would be held accountable.

[image description:  Charleena and one of her kids are blowing kisses to the camera, this is a selfie taken by Black Loved One lost to poLice violence, Charleena.  Photo courtesy of Katrina Johnson.]

Lies and inconsistencies in the ever-changing poLice narrative.

“It makes me wonder, what lengths will the poLice go to?” asks Katrina Johnson. “The poLice said that Charleena had not left her house 24 hours before her killing. I know for a fact that was a lie, because her sister Monika had a birthday party in the park for her daughter. Charleena and all of the kids were there, and our family was there,” said Katrina.  

Katrina continues, “I know that when the family was shown the footage, I know they kept saying that a person walking down the hallway was Charleena, but it was not, that was her daughter. So, that was a lie. I know that the time stamps did not line up, so it was like pieces of the tape were missing, and they couldn’t explain to us why. They STILL haven’t explained that to us. We are still waiting for a response, and that was probably seven months ago that we asked about that.”

The poLice claimed that Charleena had a number of knives, though they never said “put down the knife,” at any time on the audio from her killing. “I still don’t understand the whole knife thing,” says Katrina. “I do not, and my family does not believe that she actually held a knife. I’ve never seen an officer, dealing with a person with a weapon, that never says ‘put down your weapon.’ So that leads me to believe, since he never said that, that she never had one. You know I asked the medical examiner, and people like that, if it was possible, since they found a knife in her pocket, is it possible for her to have had the knife out and then put it in her pocket?  And he said ‘No, that wasn’t possible.’”

The poLice reported that there was also one knife found by the door. “The other knives were in the kitchen,” says Katrina. “I’m not sure where anybody else keeps their knives, but I keep mine in the kitchen.”  

“We are talking about two 250-pound-plus men, one five foot three one hundred-pound Woman, and a little steak knife, even if she had one, and these guys have on bullet proof vests and all that… I’m still trying to figure out, how does this happen? Even if she had a knife, which we do not believe, it still doesn’t make any sense. In the poLice officers’ report, he said ‘I had an out. I could have left. But I was worried about the kids,’” says Katrina.

“If that officer was ‘worried about the safety of the kids,’ how is it possible that BULLETS were going to help the safety of the kids? I mean, I’m no rocket scientist, but I do have a degree. And this just does not make any sense. Knife or not,” says Katrina.

[image description: in pink sidewalk chalk and hearts are written REST IN POWER Charleena Lyles, Leena, Leena Boo.  there are flowers and petals in the hearts. Photo POOR Magazine]

[image description:  outside Charleena’s apartment, a huge daytime vigil is held.  There are children and adults there, candles, flowers, photos of Charleena and notes written by community members.  There’s a poster with a drawing of Charleena that says CHARLEENA LYLES, #sayhername Black Disabled Lives Matter, Black Mothers Lives Matter.  Photo POOR Magazine]

Her family is still reeling from the loss, and can’t rest until there is justice.

[image description:  selfie of Black Loved One lost to poLice violence, Charleena Lyles, her hair is black, straight and long with bangs that graze her eyelids.  Photo courtesy Katrina Johnson]

“Many of us are still numb. Half of us are in disbelief. Some of us can’t even grieve because we’re still fighting for justice,” says Katrina. “We are still so worried - okay, what’s happening with the kids, what is this going to look like. I mean, we just haven’t had time to grieve. We are highly traumatized right now.”

“I know for me, I have to keep going. I cannot rest until I get some sort of justice,” she continues. “And the justice is not going to come in the form that the officers are going to pay or go to jail. Because, I was told, even before the investigation was over, that that wasn’t going to happen.  That no officer would be charged with her killing. So, getting justice for me is getting accountability, getting laws changed, so that other people aren’t dying in egregious ways, the way that my cousin was killed.”

“People with mental health issues, or people that are in a mental health crisis, should not be condemned to their death because they have crisis. If you are not equipped to handle people that are in the middle of a crisis, then you should stand down, until you can find a better way, instead of putting bullets in people. My cousin deserved to BE ALIVE. WE MISS HER. Our lives are all forever changed.  None of us will ever be the same again. Seattle will never be the same, because of what happened to her. It wasn’t just our family that lost somebody, it’s a whole community lost somebody that day.”

[image description: nighttime vigil for Charleena Lyles, there are dozens of candles lit and many flowers and petals are lovingly placed around a portrait of her, outside her home where she was killed by Seattle poLice.]

{image description:  a sweet snapshot of smiling Momma Charleena Lyles and her daughter.  They are wearing summer attire, there’s a children’s stroller in the foreground, and the big blue sky is behind them.]

After a long tiring battle of the surviving Black Women in Charleena’s inner circle fighting to protect her kids, Katrina reports with gratitude that Charleena’s children are doing well right now.  “All four of them are together. That’s what their Mom wanted, was to always have her kids together."

Black siblings, their lives forever impacted with the violent loss of their 30 year old Mother.  As a part of the poLice investigating themselves, after her death, Charleena’s body was tested for drugs and alcohol, and her body was drug and alcohol free.  One of the seven bullets that riddled her body, entered her uterus and grazed her unborn fetus.

BLACK LOVED ONE AND MOTHER, CHARLEENA LYLES, SHOULD BE ALIVE.

Please join the family, friends and community of Charleena Lyles on Monday, June 18, 2018, for a public gathering in honor of her life, from 3-8pm at Warren G. Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115.

The Charleena Lyles One Year Remembrance, Reflection and Healing

will host spoken word, offerings and performances. Please attend and bring love.

facebook event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/197075477785698/

Please visit the Sins Invalid’s Disability Justice Statement on Police Violence in Memory of Charleena Lyles, including a free download of the Charleena Lyles charcoal portrait poster by Vilissa K. Thompson, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, and Micah Bazant: http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/sins-invalid-statement-on-police-violence-republished-in-memory-of-charleena-lyles-rest-in-power

STOP KILLING BLACK DISABLED PEOPLE

BELIEVE BLACK WOMEN

BLACK DISABLED LIVES MATTER

BLACK POOR LIVES MATTER

BLACK MOTHERS LIVES MATTER

ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER

SAY HER NAME #sayhername CHARLEENA LYLES #charleenalyles

This article is being written on June 12, 2018, the 17th angelversary of the death of Black, Disabled, Loved One, Idriss Stelley, who was killed by SFPD in a bipolar manic episode.  La Mesha Irizarry is Idriss’ Mother, and is the catalyst for me to write these articles.

Lisa Ganser is a white Disabled genderqueer artist and activist living in Olympia, WA on stolen Squaxin, Chehalis and Nisqually land.  They are a sidewalk chalker, a copwatcher, a Poverty Scholar and the Daughter of a Momma named Sam. Lisa is currently on house arrest.

Edited by Nomy Lamm, Sins Invalid.

From CPS to ICE- the Separation Nation didn’t begin with these Incarcerated Babies

The Violent Separation Nation  didn’t begin with this generation
with these babies
or their incarceration
The Separation Nation began with the theft of Turtle Island
and the humans who lived here and thrived on it

It continues today with the Confusion of age grade separated schools, Special Edukkkation and racist classist Child Separation SErvices
predating on poor parents and parents of color

With people being encouraged to leave their peoples, languages, spirit
and cultures of who made them
with disabled children drugged against their human nature
with indigenous children ripped, violated, stolen and abused from their families and nations

African children stolen from their mamas - so poltricksters and wealth-hoarders could hoard and amp up their profit-making machinations

With mamas on HEll-FARE being considered Unfit and Cut from their babies
because of poverty and the profit of the Charity industrial system
the savior complex and the lie of best interests of the child

for the System that gives monies to foster care and state run homes
rather than poor mamas, poor families just trying to live and thrive
with little to be alive

Please stay focused family on what matters now -
how this time of the hatchet man for the aristocracy
CON-FUSinG us all

stay focused on the false borders
the false evictions
the buying and selling of our misery, bodies, Mama Earth
and all our generations

“Please don’t take my baby….” Cosmo cried to the CPS anti-social worker.. from 1998 CourtWatch article by Dee Garcia - POOR Magazine Vol 4 MOTHERS

As we grieve, show up, demand and scream for the freedom of these incarcerated babies - please don’t get confused by the blur of this present genocidal history. Take a refresher course with me through the violent herstories that built this stolen land - and continues to assist in the realization and manifestation of the most important aspects of what i call the Separation Nation.

From the beginning- under the lie of discovery- colonizers “finding” something that was never lost aka indigenous land and peoples on Turtle Island and beyond, the message, the narrative and the story has and will always be.. “Everything you do, have done and continue to do to raise your children, care for Mama Earth and honor your spirit and ancestors, is sick , broken , aberrant and evil and therefore we have the not just the right, but the mandate to take, exploit, steal and kill your children, your land and your bodies.

The cult of rehabilitation, of fixing, saving, teaching and changing “for the better” for the “best interests of the child” for the white-ness, for the “success” model has always been the way. And lest you think that all changed in modern day reality, think again. Now the only difference is people think they have “choices” and yet, most of society in the US have all been brainwashed, and what is happening to migrant babies is just an extension of the lie of CPS, poLice, colleges 8,000 miles away from your parents, the cult of angst, perpetrated by media and everybody and the idea that if you leave, separate, destroy, and most importantly forget everything and everyone who made you loved you and cared for you, you will be better, stronger, smarter, and most importantly, more successful, within the definition of wealth-hoarding, land-stealing success amerikkklan style.

We believe this without question, it is why we sink thousands of dollars into institutional schools thousands of miles away from us to “send our children away to college” it is why people support and fund the foster care system to care for poor children instead of helping parents raise their own children with well funded and free child care, cash aid, food aid , etc. It is why elder ghettos are a multi-million dollar industry, It is why we go to other countries with weaponry and bombs to “help” read “save” the people under attack. It is why we believe that the buying and selling of mama earth makes us safe and the calling in of armed guards to deal with emotional , physical and violent situations make us “safe”.

We are all caught in this illusion and only when it becomes so violently obvious like now, just like the Japanese internment camps and Nazi’s, the genocidal "boarding schools" for indigenous children and the past of the enslavement of people can we really see its full agenda in play. Actually this current incarceration is a logical progression of everything the settler colonizers stole this land with and so i ask people to please stay focused, to buckle down - to understand and overstand that migrante warriors like POOR Magazine’s own Ingrid Deleon and Gloria Esteva from Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia have been writing and reporting on the separation and criminalizing and terrorizing of migrant families have been going on for years behind the concept of these colonizer borders. 

That the myth of the orphan and the ripping of children from their mamas arms happened in the genocide called the Vietnam war by white anti-social workers and wealthy global south Stanford University educated social workers  ( see Daughter of Danang for reference- one of Mama Dee’s required reading at POOR Magazine’s PeopleSkool ) it is why us welfareQUEENs at POOR Magazine reported and supported on the Transubstansive error ( as Black psychology teaches us) of Daniel Moynihan going into black single mother headed households and pathologizing every family, deeming them “unfit” and broken, and therefore criminalizing their lives and forever locking in the already racist, classist US hell-fare system.  

It is why the first lie giant saviors like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey perpetrates on the children of the (African) continent is that we “need to open schools” for the poor children of Africa.

It is why thousands of children were stolen in Haiti after the earthquake to feed the ever hungry “schools” of the euro-saviors.

it is why the first thing the kkkolonizers aka missionaries did in the Philippines ( and so many other island nations) were to build colleges to educate the indigenous consciousness out of the people they “found” in the Philippines. Colleges that remain there today and feed the aristoKrayzy with more and more brainwashed, colonized peoples of color.

It is how the beautiful black children could be run off a cliff a few months back by white foster family who were considered “better” than their own biological family.

It is why Iris Canada, a 100 year old Black elder could be evicted from her home of 40 years by the campaign manager of Bernie Sanders.

It is why my own mixed race, unprotected Mama Dee was almost killed in a rich white woman’s foster home that was deemed by the state to be “safer” for her than her indigent, single mama.

it is why my mama pulled me out of institutional schools rather than lose me to CPS who deemed my mama unfit because she was disabled and unhoused.

Yes we all must fight for the release of these babies And recognize this is NOTHING new and so as we fight, remember to not get lost behind this defensive struggle against this current evil. To make the connections and fight for support for poor families and food stamps ( just ended in New Orleans !!?)  and transform these multiple, criminalizing scarcity models out of the deserving versus undeserving poor into actual supportive models. To look, as we do at POOR Magazine’s PeopleSkool, at the ways we as colonized people support/enable this system, our own separation and this 21st century colonization, even when we think we don’t.

To help build actual reparations and decolonial models of self-determination for poor and indigenous people by redistribution of your privilege and access, (like Sogorea Te Land Trust and Homefulness) your inherited wealth or stolen land, and most of all to fight. live and work for the abolition and decoloization of all these colonized borders.

To read the work of Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia click here. To find out more about the next session of PeopleSkool click here

i can’t exactly describe the sound of an aluminum walker being crushed by a Dept of Public Works (DPW) truck - but its a special sound of material violence unlike any other- with each crunch-clap - another unhoused disabled life is metaphorically and actually dismantled, while the truck continues to chew like a dog on a bone- our precious momentos, pictures, medicine and lives are now reduced to trash and our own bodies , no longer awarded the respect of being considered humans swept, cleaned up, removed.. As i witnessed and futilly tried to stop another sweep on thursday, in one of our Bay Area RoofLEss Radio Support/reporst i prayed for Shannon Marie Bigley - a 32 year old woman who was killed by a Cal-trans sweep in Fresno, which was sadly a perfect metaphor for the ongoing attacks on poor people who happen to live without a roof - in the “public” aka occupied indigenous land the land-stealers call America- 

I begin this story of Climate change and poverty about Shannon Marie Bigley, because it is the poorest among us, folks like me and my mama, when we spent our lives unhoused, without shelter or protection, our belongings constantly predated, lost, stolen and crushed by scam lords, DPw trucks and Sheriffs, that are and will suffer the most in this time of Mama Earth’s pain

From the indigenous peoples who cross false borders to work in this stolen land to the poor families like me and my mama, we barely have enough to get by  when fires, earthquakes, Tsunamis and floods, happen, the wobbly thread we were holding on to before they happened snaps . Folks like Shannon Marie Bigley’s thread already snapped, she was unprotected, un-connected and unsafe in a society already set up on the lie of kkkrapitalist scarcity where US poverty is born.

“I was homeless in Santa Rosa but i was working, after the fire i lost my job, the protected place i went to sleep and my car, “ said Miguel Flores, a day laborer, who was one of thousands of unseen poor people impacted by the climate change fueled fires that rage across Mama Earth increasing in the last two years exponentially.

“Many of us have gone deeper inland in California where the work is more scarce, the heat is worse and we can’t even support ourselves much-less send money home, which is why we came here in the first place,” Miguel concluded. Miguel had moved near to where Shannon Marie was killed, pushed to the poor people suburbs where we he have no work or protection and was now unable to support himself.

“I used to sleep on the beach, but every week more and more of the beach disappears, they aren’t talking about it much cause they don’t want to scare the rich homeowners down here, but the California Coast is already disappearing and land down here is no longer safe to be on for any of us without a roof,” Michael Kong, a Filipino fisherman who was evicted from his longtime home in San Francisco due to rising rents and now sleeps in his car, houselessly in San Francisco. “Those folks will just pack up and move somewhere else, covered by insurance, supported by their families and their extreme wealth,” Michael said waving towards the billion dollar homes that line Ocean Beach, “ I will lose my livelihood, food and place to park.

As reported on by this poverty skola in a previous story the rising numbers of working poor, working class and almost middle class people who have lost their homes through the insane rent increases across the Bay Area are now sleeping in their car in huge numbers across the country and the world.

“More of our extended family members from Puerto Rico had to come live with us after Hurricane Maria because their humble homes were devastated, now we are all getting evicted because they say we have too many people in this apt and its really because they want to make more money on this apt and double the rent, “ said Trinidad T, whose family in Brooklyn is facing gentrification fueled eviction because the new owner of the building is saying they have too many people living in the apt.

“I never got any of that re-housing help after Katrina cause i was homeless before Katrina, so of course I’m still homeless, Ricky E from New Orleans, who lives in a lean to under the bridge explained how the heat sometimes gets so bad he feels like he is going to die right there on the street and as usual no-one will care-, “Actually people will be happy, one less poor person taking up space on the street.” Ricky E tragically concluded.

“I almost died last week, literally right here because the heat was so bad, i didn’t have money to buy more water and there was no shade and they just look my tent, “ John O, Unhoused and living and hiding in an undisclosed location in San Jose.

John O’s story made me think of when me and mama were hiding in our hooptie (old car) when there was the fires of several years back in Oakland and literally had to close the windows with no air conditioner just so we could sleep safely and work up almost dead from suffocation.

While Mama Earth burns, floods, melts, shakes and implodes, losing more and more of her precious surface, we are are still caught in this flagrant and violent system that supports and condones and her buying and selling, stealing and destroying,

Now there are many climate change activists and 1st Nations Land warriors, land water protectors for thousands of years before climate change was sexy that fought, died and prayed for Mama Earth to resist this corporate destruction that has led us to this dangerous place we are in now. But it is rare that people also include the concept of real estate speculation, development, eviction and gentrification this same conversation.

We as homeless and poor people are being pushed out of our homes and residences by the thousands by this ancient colonizer-created scarcity system, rooted in greed and wealth hoarding, considered the ulitmate model of success and yet, our lives are considered not important, our bodies and belongings constantly swept like we are trash and rarely, if ever are our stories included in the conversation on Climate change, similarly, we are pushed out of places and spaces and we are forced to deal with an increasing criminalization of our poor bodies.

It is why us unhoused and formerly unhoused, criminalized and poor folks at POOR Magazine launched a different model of living and thriving- a model truly rooted in sharing not more wealth-hoarding and increased profiting off of Mama Earth- projects like Homefulness- which we see as a global template for land use and housing and healing- which we are legally and spiritually taking off the real estate snaking market to live in actual harmony with Mama Earth and her earth peoples. A model that doesn’t perpetuate this deranged profit model of rent and eviction and gentrification and removal.

In the end this story is meant to lift up our stories and lives like Shannon Marie Bigley who rarely, if ever, are viewed as experts in the conversations on “climate change” - to realize that in many ways us folks who are surviving on the streets are living in the most “harmony” with mama Earth and to make a clear ask as i always do for folks who have more than they need to survive, inherited/stolen wealth or land to consider inviting us Poverty Skolaz in to teach about the concept of Community Reparations - this way of life is not sustainable for Any of us and we are all connected, even if some of us are more easily forgotten-

For more information on Community Reparations and Poverty Scholarship workshops contact me through my website- www.lisatinygraygarcia.com. For more information about Homefulness go to www.poormagazine.org/homefulness  (This story is dedicated to my poverty skola-Sista warrior Laure McElroy who worked so hard along with me and other poverty skolaz to realize the dream of Homefulness and joined the ancestors last week )

WeSearch Report from Poverty Skola/WeSearchers from the Occupied Ohlone/Lisjan Village of Yelamu (San Francisco) Presents: Tent and Belonging Theft in San Francisco under Mayor London Breed
 

WeSearch def: Poor and indigenous peoples-led research. Launched by POOR Magazine poverty skolaz)

SF WeSearch Release Summary
Since the inauguration of Mayor London Breed unhoused residents of San Francisco have struggled with a series of tent and belonging seizures and police and DPW harassment. The overall attacks on poor and unhoused people is a continuation of previous mayoral administrations’ ongoing attacks on unhoused San Francisco residents. What was evident from this WeSearch study is the attacks now include the specific seizure of peoples tents, which adds yet another inhumane and violent aspect to the attack on our lives for the sole act of not having access to housing in a city which has some of the most violent forms of displacement, removal and evictions of poor and working class families.

WeSearch Process
Beginning BlackAugust 10th RoofLESS radio WeSearchers -a team of Unhoused, Working Class, Very low and no-income Black, Brown Poor and 1st Nations youth and adult poverty skolaz, all who have been working and sitting and and sleeping and living in and out of housing in San Francisco conducted interviews and conversations with their communities and families of fellow poverty skolaz and then quantified the data to the following results.

Who are the WeSearchers (demographics):
Data Creators/Collectors/WeSearchers/Poverty Skolaz: 62 San Francisco residents sitting, standing , convening, sleeping in San Francisco while houseless
 
65% were of African Descent or Mixed African Descent
35% were Raza /Indigenous or other
30% were 65-75
70% were 30-45 
70% were men 
27% were women
25% trans & non-gender-conforming
70% were houseless after displacement from long-time homes and neighborhoods
80% are living with untreated psychological disabilities
70% are living with physical disabilities

WeSearch Findings of Poverty Skolaz SF residents:
-111 Tents were seized form unhoused residents from Sept 7th-Oct  5th
-$16,230 dollars in belongings and medicine were seized and disposed of by DPW and/or SF police.
- Tent, belonging and medicine seizures resulted in severe illness and emergency room visitsof unhoused residents of San Francisco

Demand/Ask based on WeSearch findings:
-Cease and desist in the taking of our enclosures and belongings

-Cease and desist in the ongoing criminalization of our unhoused bodies

-Us Unhoused people of San Francisco are asking for liberated Ohlone/Lisjan land so we can build our own self-determined projects like Homefulness
 

The WeSearch Project a project of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE- a poor and indigenous people-led, very grassroots, art-based movement. RoofLESS radio is a PNN-KEXU 96.1fm radio program for unhoused peoples to create their own radio and video documentation and investigations in their own voices about their own experiences. Please credit POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE WeSearch Project /PNN-KEXU RoofLESS radio when re-printing. for more information email poormag@gmail.com or go to www.poormagazine.org

The subject of whether or not Black students and other children of color receive harsher punishments than their counterparts has been a conversation that’s been ignored for too long. The latest disciplinary action was against a 11 year old Black student of Christ The King Elementary in Terrytown, Louisiana. The roman catholic school sent the child home after she had “broken” a “No Braids” protocol that was allegedly implemented over the summer. After 2 years of attending the school without any issues over her hair, she was told that her hairstyle was “unacceptable” and was sent home in tears. The family of the girl did not agree with the school’s decision but nonetheless they (school) had the last say and the student’s mother is looking into placing her daughter in another location.

In Amerikkka’s learning institutions, the miseducation and the destruction of Black people’s culture has always been on the agenda, going back to restrictions such as not being able to speak one’s native tongue, what is worn, and now the hairstyles. Braids have correct names such as Suku (Shuku) and Didi meaning “basket” and are part of African cultures with many different styles defining a woman’s social and marital status. For example, Suku that start at the forehead going all the way to the nape of the neck may suggest that a woman is married. Single women have a different pattern. So let’s be clear that “braids” is just not a trend but but it says something meaningful and it is part of a people!

The emotional toll this “Administrative Discrimination” takes on Black children is swept under the rug while the child is either branded with being “bad” or having a “learning disability.”

Any teacher or staff that tells a child that something that is part of his or her culture is “unacceptable” might add that the student’s VERY existence is “unacceptable.”

The kid is basically punished for being who he/she really is, just like anywhere else when dealing with racism here in this kkkountry.

In doing POOR Magazine WeSearch, The Government Accountability Office can say stat-wise that Black students are far, far more likely to be punished unfairly and more severely, even students who attend schools in the more affluent areas, but there were no talks of action to change the problem.

Here in SF, frustrated Mamas such as myself and Mama Jewnbug have little support and we are ignored and our children persecuted.

“These big public schools are suppose to be practicing restorative justice and they are not. They have no real community building and no conflict resolution in practice. My son has been retaliated against twice and was suspended along with his friends. Other students didn’t get any consequences but I had to place my son in a school outside SF for his safety and to avoid having an expulsion on his record. The public schools are not de-escalating violence they only punish. Our Brown and Black children should be safe and yet they are targeted, labeled and criminalized.”

Mama Jewnbug has been dealing with the runaround and the unjust tactic of Black, Brown and other children of color being but against each other just like myself with the case of my kid being bullied when she attended Everett middle school and was punished more than the girls that bullied her. The young girls are of Latina descent and there was one teacher in particular who sided with the girls no matter what they said. We had several smoke blowing meetings and I along with another Mama had came up with solutions and Queena asked if she could either change classes or do her work in the office to avoid conflict and WE were refused these simple accommodations while the girls who are filming Queena in class, harassing her, labeling her the “angry black girl” and provoking her to fight or react out of anger and the same teacher blamed her. After witnessing the unjust ways this teacher was showing I kept Queena out of school because she did not feel safe and she felt as if the adults did not listen to her. Our children have the right to be treated with dignity and equality,  not like ⅗ of a human being. Also the “hidden” agenda of pitting all us people of color against each other is way overplayed and if the skkkool system refuse to eliminate these biased school protocols then it is about time the community come together to educate our own children ...-fairly.

Queennandi Xsheba PNN KEXU

Amerikkka the great. Amerikkka the beautiful. Amerikkka the colonized land of confusion that consists of wicked rulers who slaughtered the Natives and kidnapped the Africans. (just to name a few crimes against humanity) These are the same “great ones” that bombed other nations with impunity and enslaved US citizens to toil in a corporate, capitalist society where we are proud to be oppressors in the form of someone’s else’s boss.

The great Amerikkka that eats her young, lynches Black people, exploits the world and now when things can’t get any worse the wite house is conducting koon meetings with rappers that do not make any common sense whatsoever when communicating with a prez who always has the “little nigger” look on his face whenever he has to pacify his “black brethren”....

Kanye West sounded ridiculous and the mumbo-jumbo he spewed out of his mouth made it clear that he was short on his meds and needs to really take care of himself-pronto.  The prez

frolicking with Hollywood won’t exactly solve this Nation’s problems, HW is still the land of make-believe and some celebrity ranting will not house the houseless, feed the hungry, protect the defenseless, heal the sick for free nor will it save this land from judgement for the centuries of wrongness and injustice.

We have someone in the wite house who contradicts himself, tweets like a bird, he’s rude and obviously mean to cats when it comes to his hairstyle but he runs the US of A and literally he’s running it to the ground because his way of making Amerikkka “great again” is by repeating the history of this country’s bloody, wite supremacists agenda.

The history of genocide, land theft, racism and terrorism has left the US soil with a bitter taste from the poison of strange fruit that has been planted HERE by the forefathers of colonization.

The prez cannot even share an umbrella with his own wife so how is he to is to take the issues of global warming, poverty, and human rights violations seriously and consciously? Instead of bragging of victories over adult film stars who claimed he came up short, calling him “TINY” prez should have more class and integrity about himself- first of all and to have more important “victories” under his belt by doing his part to see that every family in this country is housed, fed, acknowledged and safe. We still have the hoarding of guns, money, land, education and hellthcare to address and the man who is supposed to lead and represent America never in his days has ever tweeted the likes of; “HOMELESSNESS? NOT IN AMERICA!!!!! HUNGRY FAMILIES??? NOT IN AMERICA!!! POLICE BRUTALITY??? NOT IN AMERICA!!!” If a prez is going to brag, boast about doing right by the world! It may be unnecessary and egotistical but doing “the right thing” is not going to happen anytime soon besides doing all of the above weren’t the deeds that made America great in the first place in the name of wite supremacy and if this isn’t the case the why did the highly propagated  movie D.W Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” (originally called “The Clansman”) suggest otherwise?

It is no accident that this (strange) fruit still grows flawlessly today but at the same time the vines are choking the souls out of the people and this land’s “leader” is not taking this earth crisis seriously for it is all about sport, play and arguing with porn stars to him and what is so “Great” about that?

Grieving mother ... today faced with my own cross to bear. I'm realizing more and more that the hell that God speaks of may be the very personal experience that one relives here on Earth. I had the opportunity to Bear Witness a 18 year old young man transition out of here by train. His life was taken. I didn't see it personally but the tragedy has hit the news in the hoods neighbors family and friends of Miss Christa Holloway. Her son Victor is a great ancestor now ...

I haven't known Christa long maybe all of under 2 years I met her through Tanika blue who brought me to Fadeelah Granny's house  And the 1st Person To Greet me Warmly Was Christa Warm and Sweet so Genuine and then i was Re- introduced to the Gang Some Knew me Some Knew of Me. However who would have thought we would share this extended inherited family experience parallel. Young mother like me she is in her first trimester the first 3 months of coping with her son's death ... and another piece I am inspired to speak on the element (words) ... do we in fact need to utilize words and the reason why I skip to that is because this mother will find herself arms up needing to be armed up and prepared for all of the words that will hit her yet. Pierce her like bullets. She like me and so many other mothers will then be forced to make a decision on how connected or disconnected one should be when it comes to words...  and lately words can be so cliche often used for evil vs. Good. And so my heart goes out 2 anyone who personally feels like they don't have to die to experience what hell actually feels like.

 

I believe it's not subject only to fire I believe he'll is any form of torture... I miss my son Torian Dajour Hughes. I Swear i do and so this brings me to the Cross i mentioned i was to Bear... Every day i pick it up to put it down to wake up to pic it up in the morning remembering his name the fact that he existed and he belongs to me BUT the pain is far too much to bear on this cross Which is My Mind & This 98 pound body Is 

Standing in Revolution- A Love-Uary for SisSTAR comrade, Laure McElroy who joined the ancestors BlackAugust 31st 2018

I would rather die on my feet, than live on my knees. Emiliano Zapata

Who dies on their feet?

the hardcorest revolutionary warriors you will ever meet...

Emiliano Zapata, Laure McElroy, Papa Bear and so many more who only and always tell the hard truth -

no matter who it scares.....

walking into stolen land spaceships-

tripping up colonizer liars

lifting up poverty skolaz everywhere

Living/ Manifesting -Always with calm hands

Having trouble going on without you sisSTAR laure

almost too hard to hold this loss- too hard to stand…

“You were right Tiny- Inter-dependence does work for us poor mamas.” My revolutionary poet, fellow welfareQUEEN at POOR Magazine and co-founder of Homefulness and KEXU radio- Laure McElroy and i spoke quietly on the phone in the kind of intimacy befitting deep sister comrades like we were and had been for many years of deep struggle and deep resistance.

We were both daughters of very traumatized single parent disabled houseless mamas, we are both single parents of Suns, both struggled with suicidality and depression from our lives and were both houseless and/or marginally housed on and off with our young children which led us to co-create MamaHouse2- a collective home for houseless single parent women and children in the rapidly gentriFUKING Mission District of San Francisco.

This is how we do it at POOR; using the " I ", the first person, we centerpiece our own knowledge. We choose to use who we are and what we’ve personally experienced as both the keystone narrative for any story we write, as well as the lens through which we interpret it. We believe that doing this is the best way to be honest about where one's point of view is coming from, and that the journalistic cult of the third person in this country is not objective at all, but rife with hidden, mostly privileged bias. We also insist that those who experience it must create the news, rather than any non-participant journo, however formally educated; those who live the stories both interpret the stories and claim the byline at POOR…Laure McElroy 2007

The first time Laure walked in my life, was in 1998 with her long-time friend, Ivy, another poverty skola, writer, and daughter who walked into POOR Magazine when we were all located on 9th street in San Francisco, in an old, beautifully musty union hall, doing our poor people-led journalism trainings. Laure began a story that would later become part of the MOTHERS issue of POOR Magazine. My mama Dee, a harsh critic of sloppy writing, believing that as poor folks , poverty skolaz it was our duty to tell our own stories, without translators and fetishizers, but tell them beautifully and see them as art, agency and resistance, proclaimed, “Laure is an amazing writer,” a statement my mama rarely said about people. She was excited to meet someone so eager to write, and live the radical values of voice and literary art that we all walked at POOR Magazine.

Capitalism killed Mamahouse

Fast forward to 2007, after the passing of my mama, my own serious crisis with homelessness and barely keeping POOR Magazine alive and currently houseless myself after facing scam lord -fueled insurance fires and forced displacement from MamaHouse 1. Laure had expressed interest in joining me to launch a 2nd iteration of the beautiful vision of interdependence, poor mama-led self-determination that is and was MamaHouse.

We played all kinds of raced and classed poverty skola games that anyone poor and of color and a single mama has to do just to secure housing in amerikkklan, especially gentrified San Francisco, which sort of went like this; Laure put on her best wite-voice(which Laure truly mastered) and called all kinds of realtors, owners, etc and then like a page out of Black-kkklansman (yes our stories at POOR Magazine are truly filmic, and awaiting the right revolutionary filmmaker) I put on a suit and used my witeface to play Laure going to see the apartments, cause in this situation even though i was working, which i was and she wasn’t Laure had a beautiful credit score and the stipend that would make the insanely inflated rent of $2,300 and redunkulous credit check process possible for all of us poor mamas and children. But i knew this well- this was the game me and mama played for years, I being a melanin challenged daughter of a poor single parent of color- this was the only way we got housing whenever we raised enough money to even rent an apartment throughout my childhood of homelessness.

It was an extremely terrifying time for me and Laure, so even as i write this i shudder with the fear of our impossible situation. My mama was sick with what took her to her spirit journey at a very young age, I had a 2 year old sun and no place to live with all of us. and was just constantly scared that we wouldn’t find a place and would end up on the street with our children and elders.

And then i walked into “Florida street” as we used to call it. The ancestors sang in that kitchen, the sky opened up and became large and sweet, birds seemed to circle around the yard in a love affair with the multiple fruit trees always in bloom- the Sun filled every room. It was beyond beautiful, it was truly magical.  I knew when i walked in that this was where we were meant to be. This hustle must work. By Any Means Necessary we must get this place.

Suffice it to say, we finessed another process with the picture ID required so Laure’s identity wasn’t completely revealed until the end and then, thanks to my special “scam-lord love dance” or “rent-starter” as my mama used to call it when i was 11 years old posing as a 25 year old adult, they were charmed, it was our place if we wanted it.

After we were told we got it- i had another severe anxiety attack cause it required $7,500 just to move in and Laure didn’t have that and i didn’t either so i needed to borrow a big chunk of money which i was truly afraid i wouldn’t be able to pay back. One day at my desk of my non-profit job in downtown financial district of SF, a beautiful large hawk landed on my 13th floor window sill  and began screaming (in a hawk way) at me until i listened. i know it was my mama- slapping me telling me to “Make a damn decision already—this is THE place- make this happen- - it is meant to be.”

“Omigod Tiny, this kitchen alone- its Everything.” Laure and i were equally nervous, but knew we had nowhere else to go. And felt we were being pushed into this luxurious, Home-& Garden magazine place with a kitchen big enough to house us and all of our extended family members.

We moved in. We brought our Suns, aunties, sisters, uncles, brothers and babies from our multi-generational, multi-cultural, multi-lingual POOR Magazine revolutionary family. We brought our love and our complete trauma-filled souls. We invited another single parent mama in struggle to live in the downstairs space, the beautiful prayer-bringer and danzante Sandra Sandoval. We held rehearsal meetings for the welfareQUEEN’s play we were all working on, so we could eventually co-create along with Mama Jewnbug, Vivian, Dharma, Queenandi and Tracey Jones Faulkner the beautiful stage play of the same name. We held workshops and art events and performances and prayers. We launched Theatre of the POOR/Teatro de los Pobres Theatre Learning project. We co-wrote the Declaration of Interdependence and the Manifesto of Change and so much more.

And what Laure and I realized so clearly, so solidly, more than in any other moment of struggle before that one, was that we had to manifest the landless/poor/houseless people’s movement that became Homefulness, a homeless peoples solution to homelessness, which we did end up manifesting and co-creating in Deep East Huchuin, with the prayer and permission of our multi-rationed ancestors and permission from the 1st peoples of this territory. An extremely hard process that Laure has worked on since day one when we literally removed the asphalt from this powerful small slice of Mama Earth. Now working very hard to build the 4 multi-family townhouses on the land along with everything else we named MamaHouses.

“I will SURVIIIIVE……..” Laure’s beautiful melodic voice, always perfect pitched and clear, sang up her Mama’s spirit in a beautiful ceremony where we all sang Gloria Gaynor’s song, held at MamaHouse. Her mama transitioned while we lived there. It was tragic, as it always is for our traumatized mamas who were already poor, of color, and angry. POOR Magazine family was there in any way we could be to hold Laure and her mama and her Sun in what we call Revolutionary Social work, resisting the non-profiteers and the healthcare system. Laure, as usual, was on point calling out the Medi-Hell system that led to her mama’s early death. This becoming an integral part of our welfareQUEEN’s play.

in 2010, the deep gentrification hit that beautiful home and we were served with a $700 rent increase which was completely impossible considering we were struggling just to cover the rent as it was. And so in September of 2010 all of us poor mama were scattered to the wind, barely able to stay alive through this grief, much-less re-house ourselves. Most of us, like Laure and me, never really recovering from that loss of so much. And we were trying our hardest to build Homefulness as soon as we could to save us. the poor, isolated, mamaz.  

Laure - Xtascene, as curator from the Sex Worker Film Fest


Xtascene joined the Festival in 2009 as film curator. Xtascene is an SF Bay Area native; although currently rolling in the city of San Francisco, she misses Oakland and the East Bay desperately and is moving back as soon as she puts her chihuahua through college. Xtascene writes like she is giving birth - painfully, over the course of hours or sometimes days. Xtascene is an afropunk, a cis that doesn't believe in the gender binary, an ally looking for allies. Xtascene constantly burns with equal parts fear and wonder, and her narcissism is exceeded only by her compassion. Laure’s Bio written by her for the Sex Worker Film Fest

“It’s so funny Tiny, as usual, poverty skolaz like us are silenced in so many spaces, we have to bring in our poverty scholarship workshops,” Laure shrieked out over the phone to me with nervous glee, she so often spoke with. In this magical time at MamaHouse, Laure also began to work with the powerful Sex Worker Film Fest project, curating the festival and speaking her own Sex Worker Scholarship, Poverty Scholarship everywhere she could.

“She put her beautiful heart and deeply real perspective into her curation work of every festival,” said founder and Sex Worker/Artist Carol Leigh, also a very good friend of Laure’s.

“She was so brilliant, always thinking, reading critiquing,” said, Vern McElroy, Laure’s brother , who shares the same father but a different mother, and who lives and works in Berkeley.

“Our father was a Black muslim and revolutionary, Laure lived a lot of his revolutionary spirit in her work with POOR Magazine. She was so excited by all the powerful work you all do and she was so dedicated to it,” Vern concluded.

Elephant circle after elephant circle, family council after family council where we hold each other in a circle of accountability because we refuse to engage with the poLice or kkkorts, who are there to test, arrest and incarcerate every poor person they get, Laure’s calm love literally held us together. Facing people and systems always ready to tear us down for being the baaadass ghetto skolaz we are and were. Writing this today is so hard for me between tears and pain, I’m so unsure of how to to just go on without her love.

“We the people, the unhoused, the displaced, gentriFUKed and destroyed, are here with a proposal, with medicine to offer, the medicine of redistribution,” Laure speaking the manifesto of redistribution from the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tours POOR Magazine launched in 2016 to help people with hoarded, inherited wealth and/or stolen indigenous land redistribute to folks who have none to create models like Homefulness.

“She lived for this work and would want us to keep it up, even stronger, even fiercer,” Krip Hop Nation founder, poverty/disability skola and my brother Leroy Moore said.

“I miss her so much,” fellow Po Poet, poverty/indigenous skola and Homefulness co- leader/co-founder Muteado Silencio called out in September’s Community Newsroom our monthly indigenous news-making circle that Laure ran countless times over the years, this one we did in Laure’s honor.   

HOMEFULNESS stands in direct opposition to the cancerous American profit ethic, the paradigm that sends individuals fleeing from each other in the public and private spheres, fearful that if one assumes the geas of caring for another, one’s security/retirement fund/college experience/life plan/ ”me time” might be lost or greatly reduced or altered in some frightening way beyond individual control. The donations of participants and allies buy the land for the project: owning the land HOMEFULNESS stands upon free and clear will insulate the community from the vicissitudes of rent and land speculation, but the heart of HOMEFULNESS is the idea of people banding together to create stability through shared sweat, assets, and commitment to being not only our brother’s keeper, but our brother’s daughter’s keeper, and our sister’s boyfriend’s mother’s keeper, and the keeper of the Paki grocery store owner down the block.

HOMEFULNESS is a vision of intention, rooted in the idea that taking responsibility for each other in love and mutual accountability is a radical act….Laure on Homefulness

Join us this Sunday, Sept 23rd at 1pm for a multi-nationed, tree-planting ceremony in Laure’s honor at Homefulness. We will be planting a tree in her honor in the Ancestor Forest at Homefulness- 8032 MacArthur Bl. Oakland, Ca 94605

Gregory Bush was arrested shortly after killing two African Descendent elders at a Kroger store in Jeffersontown, KY. The 51 year old was charged with 2 counts of murder and multiple counts of wanton endangerment and is being held on 5 million dollar bail.

Around 3 PM, Vickie Lee Jones, 67, a caretaker to an elder family member and retiree from the Veteran’s Hospital and Maurice E Stallard, 69, the father of Louisville’s Chief Equity Officer Kellie Watson was shot and killed in an unprovoked hate crime. Bush entered the store and fatally shot Stallard in front of his grandchild and upon exiting the store, he shot Ms. Jones. One armed bystander was said to have shot and wounded the suspect but according to Chief Rogers the claim of the armed bystander and the statement from a witness who was inside of Kroger could not be verified. The witness, Steve Zinninger, told a TV station that while inside the store his father was armed and had confronted Bush but that the gunman said to his father that “whites don’t kill whites” and then he left.

Not long before the Kroger shooting Gregory Bush was seen on video attempting to make a hateful entry into the first Baptist Church of Jeffersontown. It has been reported that Bush was trying to enter in hopes of ambushing the churchgoers.

“There were 70 people at our weekly meeting service just an hour before he came by. I’m just thankful that all of our doors and security was in place,” said a churchman by the name of Mr. Williams.

Bush, with an extensive criminal record including domestic violence, assault and racially motivated threats says that he struggles with mental illness and I must admit I agree with the kkkiller. Because to have hatred for someone’s skin color- not because a person was mean or cruel-  but because of their skin color is not only a mental illness but a cultural insecurity.

The brutal attack against Blacks has seen an everlasting uptick especially since ratolerant (A racist that tolerates those racist against) president Trump entered office. We have laws like stand your ground backing up racially motivated crimes disguised as self defense, and the fact that if someone is charged with offenses under these laws against Blacks the charges are often lessened or dismissed altogether. Community casualties behind such biased laws have included Markeis McGlockton, Stephon Clark, Travon Martin and Marissa Alexander who have been murdered or incarcerated because of rules not meant to protect people of color.

Take the April 19 case of Dorika Uwinmana, a Black child on her way to school that was assaulted and choked to near death by a white man “needing help” from her.  She would have been killed had it not been for the school bus pulling up intercepting the attempted murder, and the attack left the child with severe damage to her vital organs due to lack of oxygen, for which she had to have a heart transplant. The suspect, Terry Wayne King ll was arrested and charged with a mere “injury to a child causing serious bodily injury” and NOT “attempted murder, assault on a minor causing serious bodily injury, child endangerment and hate crime.” The police say they can find “no motive” for a hate crime but they deliberately overlooked the “uphold the rule of wite supremacy law” which has been a motive since wite supremacy was planted. The hate crime is fueled by resistance the “trump whites” showed against the migration of over 15,000 Congolese citizens to North Texas who are fleeing war and crimes against humanity.

Dorika’s father Twizere Buhinja had fled the Congolese war with his family and spent many years inside a Ugandan refugee camp before migrating to North Texas where the family has been for the past couple of years, still struggling to make ends meet. Families like Twizere’s have been the target of racism and resistance from the “make america great again” crowd but many of the crimes went unreported because one the lies amerikkka sells to our families migrating from other countriesthat it is better to be “free, poor and live “good” ” here than to be “persecuted and slaughtered” back in your “Cultureland.”

As far as Dorika’s family situation, the terrorizing ordeal forced the family to relocate out of fear but they were fortunate to have the support of the village (community) to come through with love and Dorika’s recovery is going along well.

My friend asked me the other day my feelings about all of this. I told her “I feel 1940’s nervous! You know, the fear our folks felt back then, like TrumpaKlan is going to bum-rush (raid) the community at any given time he takes a notion and that we will be totally defenseless!”

What a nightmare!!