2021

By Ziair Hughes

I never got to really know my dad but that's another story. Me and my mom struggled through everything, lose our house and car together. We didn't sacrifice anything. It was taken from us. My mom taught me what it was to be strong because if she wasn't strong we wouldn't have made it this far. She is also my father figure because my dad was never around, I thank my mom greatly for taking a possession that she was not expecting to take. When there was no food mama cooked warm plates for me and amir, my mom is one of the best people on this earth. I know that's cliche but she is like an ultra rare pokemon card you've been waiting so long to get and it's one of a kind, if I wasn't carrying my moms blood I wouldn't be the best young man I can be.  

My mom started on the pavement and it's still hard. We are just in phase two, my mom didn't have the best education but she has Enough to live and she’s street smart. My mom was born in 1981, she was the first born and came from a poor family. Her mother and her father were struggling, they didn't have it all and she certainly didn't have it either. My mom had to raise her siblings. She has eight so it's like she already had kids. My mom was always moving like an adult when she was a kid. The main reason why my mom is so good at cooking because she had to start young. She had me and my brothers young, Torian at 18, Amir at 23 and me at 28, so it was really hard. She lost her first son Torian 5 years ago. She was dejected for years, it was like she lost her soul and still she's saddened but her joy is slowly recharging. When my mom yells at me I know it's because she's scared for me and Amir's life that's why she does it.

She is one of the best cooks, she makes homemade meals that make you want to think that she's a professional cook. Me and amir always tell her to Go Pro but she just laughs. It's like my momma can cook anything. For mom it's hard to love for people to love her even tho people love my mom, but her scars are too big and sometimes I Wish her scars were thinner. Normally she's in a good mood but when mom's mad it's talking like with albert einstein. You could never be right but i don't mind because when shes happy shes the sweetest person.

“My name is Audrey Lovell Hughes and life for me growing up in oakland aint been no crystal stair, in fact I ain't never had a crystal nothing, not in my childhood. I've never even seen one up close and personal” said my mom Audrey Lovell Hughes 

“until your brother Torian Hughes passed away, January 11th 2015. I Received my first crystal and the poem life ain't been no crystal stair by langston hughes resonate in my heart. In 4th grade at the oratorical Fest I recited this poem. It resonated with me then it resonates with me now. So son I encourage you when life gets hard and the pressures of the world are on your shoulders don't you give up don't you sit down on them steps cuz ‘life for your mama Audrey lovell Hughes ain't been no crystal stair yet still like dust i rise’, a quote by Maya angelou. You’re cut from fine sturdy cloth.”

In conclusion: I love my mom. She's the perfect light skinned green eyed earth angel for a mom. She may not give Me everything I want but she gives her love and that's all I live on and need. I hope my mom lives long because she deserves it, and thanks to my mom I'm striving to be the best young man I can be. I love you mom and appreciate you for doing all you can do for me and my brothers.

By Queennandi Xsheba PNN KEXU

In recent news there have been several reports of children who have gone missing and in one story two children, Sean Fang, 1 and Winnifred Fang, 4 were found safe in San Francisco after their father was carjacked while making deliveries. Although we are all thankful that the Fang family was reunited, our hearts still hurt for the children who vanished without a trace and have unfortunately slid through the cracks. 

Even during the hurricane Katrina catastrophe an exodus of children- especially of color had disappeared and some are still missing to this very day, many did not receive any news coverage and because we live in a biased society where race and class determines the priority of a life we will never know their names. The same could be said with the countless number of kids who were separated from their families and placed into inhumane camps in the attempt to have a better life on the soil of this “great nation”

The December 21, 2020 disappearance of brothers Orson and Orrin West, ages 3 and 4 years old from California City, Ca had hardly any media coverage regardless of the suspicions of foul play being a factor while in the care of their adoptive parents Jacqueline and Trezell West. 

Antoine Whitley, the African-decsendant teenager who was put out of a rideshare on the Richmond bridge due to an alleged drug-infused paranoia of being kidnapped has been missing for several weeks now has the “drug-infused” stigma branded on him by mainstream media and the painfully obvious fact that his life will not be a “top priority” but just one less Black kid Amerikkka has to worry about.

14-year old Katlin Gallaread has been missing since Feb 17th from the Fillmore district in which she resided and her family has since protested in front of the police station for the lack of interest in her case. Whether Katlin was taken against her will or ran away from home is unclear but one thing is clear and that is- BLACK LIVES DO NOT MATTER! If our lives did matter then why did most of the fliers of Katlin and Antoine have since been torn down from public view?

We as a community are left to be the ones who prioritize our children’s lives and not allow for those who do not care for their well being to continue to stigmatize our village in a negative form that spearheads the bias reasons why our youth’s disappearances are of no importance.

Going back into time with the case of the Atlanta child murders, it took for several children to be killed and plenty of hell-raising from the community before this “great nation” had decided to take notice. Parents and other adults in the village had taken the “self-determination” route by escorting the children to the school bus stops and standing guard whenever the youth were present. Today, we must follow the same protocols to protect our children by any means necessary from the dangers of sex-trafficking and other elements out in this insane world. We must no longer put all of our eggs in one basket by having faith in an unjust system run by folks with the “complexion protection” who continue to treat us less than humans.

Because we too have the right to protect our children and to see to it that our precious babies make it home.

CR Queennandi Xsheba PNN KEXU

By Favian Gonzales

My mom Jasmine Harvey was born on a cool spring morning of April 15th, 1987 in San Jose. She was born into a pretty abusive house, mainly my mom’s dad putting his hands on my grandma. So with them fighting throughout most of her life she felt she had to grow up very fast and really just be there for her mom and pretty much be her therapist throughout her life.

Then she moved to San Francisco when she was about 8 years old with her mom. When she came down here she was focused on getting to some money even at such a young age. She would walk dogs, baby sit, wash cars. When she got older she started Myeep, a program that helped her get a job in a senior center when she was about 15.

Around 18 is when she had me and it was a struggle at first for her to raise me from being homeless for a bit when I was a baby to family just not getting along. As she got older she liked taking care and helping people so she became an EMT and a phlebotomist and a medical assistant. When I was about 7 years old I got sucked into CPS for about 2 years and my mom never gave up on getting me back into her house and I'm very happy about that.  

Some quotes she has said to me and I like are, 

“What you give is what you get” 

“Health is wealth” 

“Don't start nothing won't be nothing” 

“Always love yourself” and

“Believe it and you’ll achieve it.”

By Queennandi Xsheba PNN KEXU

After the shooting in San Francisco’s Western Addition on March 16th, I struggled hard with trying to keep my body from trembling due to trauma and prevent my mind from exploding as I re- lived the past neighborhood gun battles that resulted in even me, personally losing loved ones as I closed my eyes, I revisioned all of their bodies falling down around me like blood-stained dominoes. The gunshots that rang out shattering the chilly, still but yet quiet night sounded like huge cannons in the confederate war. Earlier reports of the shooting had stated that there were no fatalities, however a female bystander was allegedly grazed by a stray bullet but fortunately she escaped serious injury.

On March 17th- less than 24 hours after the shooting that happened the night prior, more gunshots had sounded off from a moving vehicle shortly after noon. Although the intended target had managed to avoid being shot, myself, the groundskeeper of the Plaza East housing “complex” and another bystander were within several feet of harm’s way. Unharmed but yet shaken, the three of us just looked at each other in disbelief with the same thought in mind- like “What the hell is going on here!?” Afterwards, the police showed up five minutes later than the response time it would have taken to attend to the more affluent neighborhoods, regardless of it being a police station- just 3 blocks away from the scene and as of to date, it is unknown if the police have any confirmed suspects pertaining to either case in custody.

Violence, especially in Black/Brown/Multi-cul(tural) neighborhoods is a common thread amongst us “traumatized common folks” unfortunately due to Ignorance, oppression, depression, the inability to de-escalate a heated situation and “unacknowledged, untreated generational pain and rage”... Add to the mix the layers of a pandemic and the inconsistency of aid to prevent the masses from going into more deeper famine then you have the perfect recipe for a nationwide disaster with no recovery date in sight.

One would ask…. What is the connection? The violence of poverty comes in many forms and not just contained amongst the “hood violence” we see on the news all of the time. “The violence of poverty” can be committed by politicians who support and sign into law inhumane protocols that harm and kill folks just as well as the negative elements and so-called “gangstas” who contribute to the toxicity that sicken our communities.

For example...

The previous reports show that evictions have contributed to several new cases of covid-19- close to 400,00 cases to be clear. There have been many organizations all across the country  petitioning The Prez, Joe Biden to revise the eviction moratorium that is set to expire in just a few weeks.

When it comes down to the new relief bill recently signed into effect, there was little to no mention of a budget reserved for the housing crisis which threatens the millions of people who face eviction and if Prez Biden doesn't grant an extension to the eviction moratorium the floodgates of eviction is sure to open up and saturate this nation. The American Rescue Plan Act includes $1,400 per person (including dependents) , the continuance of $300 per week in unemployment benefits, and an increase in the child tax credit, up to $3,600 per child. There is over 400 billion set aside to aid city, state, small businesses, transit, healthcare, food assistance, and childcare. 14 billion dollars has been reserved to cover the shortcomings stemming from the airline industry during the pandemic. What about the housing crisis? No money to make sure folks' health is not being jeopardized by being forced out onto the streets??... Once again, the violence of poverty.

After the third round of “hunger stimulation” payments run dry, then what? It will be a very long, hard struggle without consistent aid going to those who will continue to endure hardships on a day-to-day, month- to- month basis. What happens then? The crime rate will continue rising to over-alarming levels because the seedy and the common citizens alike will eventually surrender to the temptation to fraction a law or two in order to survive.This is not by any means an excuse to fraction the laws, but a “default due to oppression” - This is the violence of poverty.

CR Queennandi Xsheba PNN KEXU

Hello my name is Amun-Ra. I'm writing to you a little story about my dad. My dad was born in the 1980’s. The city he was born in is Oakland, CA, the same city my grandmother and my grandad met. My granddad was an investor and my grandmother was a college student at the time my dad was born. He was the fourth of five children, the last boy. 

         My dad grew up in Oakland playing every sport possible. He played sports such as basketball, baseball and football. He tried to skateboard but he still can’t ride till this day. I try to help him, he’s getting better but he is still a little shaky. He is better at basketball. A great thing that I will never forget that my dad told me is “life is like sports; if you work hard you will score.”

By Momi Palapaz

suckers for white supremacy will always deny the unity of people of color.  white supremacy needs you to divide and conquer. Yes, i have been called JAP, CHING CHONG CHINAMEN, GOOK, SLANT EYES, SLANTED PUSSY. I HAVE BEEN mistaken for Filipino, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, and whatever ignorant people think we Asian Americans are.  THAT IS RACIST, HATEFUL, SEXIST, DIVIDE AND CONQUER GOAL OF THE MENTALITY OF WHITE SUPREMACY.  WHEN some person of color says that Asians have NEVER STOOD BY THE BLACK COMMUNITY, YOU ARE NOT INVOLVED IN JUSTICE.  It may not make mainstream, Channel 7 news, but don't underestimate the power of Asian Americans and the fight for justice OF ALL PEOPLE.  Historically we have all  been oppressed by the same system that kidnapped and enslaved African people.  This is the same white supremacy system that invaded the Philippines under the Manifest Destiny program.  Japanese, Okinawans, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans were the next population to be enslaved after so called emancipation proclamation.  My ancestors were part of migration to farm for corporation like Dole Pineapple in Hawaii, farmland up and down California, work at Birdseye in New Jersey, after leaving a concentration camp in Utah.  Then to be attacked for being farmers who knew how to grow food.  Muhammed Ali, said, "no Vietnamese ever called me a nigger". and that light went off to expose the racist imperialist greed of the USA.  White supremacy, cuts up the countries all over the world and portions it out to its white supremacist cronies and suckers in people of color to collude, murder, rape and control communities, towns, cities, nations and the world.  DONT BE A SUCKER FOR WHITE SUPREMACY. STAND UP FOR EACH OTHER, ALL COLORS. CONFRONT YOURSELF AND RACISM.

By Tiburcio Garcia

By GoddessMother OfOrisha SupaQueen

We are a whole different kinda thing. Especially if some of us grew up in group homes and watched the crack era destroy shyt and we couldn't do shyt about it. Been molested and told we were liars. Witnessed our beloved hip hop turn to Shyt and that thang madona claim she invented vouging. Plus a host of other madness public and private. We can't and will not be bullied. We ain't playing mammy, faithful wound licking dog, fixing miss ann dress, uncle nA&&3r, save Mr charlie burning house, smiling tap dancer, happy negros on tara and any other crazy in yo place box. We ain’t the magical negros that gonna sabe de hole wurl. Fix ya own mess that you created and leave us alone. After all you did all of this. We are not your personal Global Janitorial Staff or guilt dumpsters. We don’t want to ease your guilt or take the fall. Stop pinning your crimes on us. We have not screwed up the planet. We have not with impunity killed in the name of power and named it history and victorious conquest. 

By Amir Cornish

By Queennandi Xsheba PNN KEXU

Millions of americans have received their “hunger stimilation” payments but there are many more who have yet to get the aid. While there are “waves” that marginalize the masses, folks who receive SSI, SSDI, Veteran’s benefits or Railroad retirement have been placed on the back burner with a date pending in regards to when the stimulus payments will go out.

Bills are due and food needs to be put on the table, we cannot tell the bill collectors that we are in debt to that their money is “pending”, just like we can’t tell our children and elders that our meals are “pending” as far as hitting the table. That would be categorized as being negligent in today’s society and although a few corporations and institutions have granted small extensions to those who need a little bit more time to pay however, late fees and other penalties continue to accumulate resulting in deeper debt.

Earlier reports stated that the delay in the stimulus payments is mainly due to the failure of the SSA (social security administration) submitting the proper files to the IRS so that the funds are dispersed correctly to the people who receive government benefits. But I say, who knows?

The $1,400 “band-aid” is hardly enough for many to cover bills for a month, no to mention having to take care of the past due bills meaning that the stimulus check is spent before you even get a chance to smell the money. Rent in the bay area alone runs in the thousands monthly so how are the people to survive without recurring aid to those in need to stay afloat. It feels like you’re financially drowning and the powers that be keep throwing out life rafts that are riddled with holes. 

The emergency COVID EBT food allowance has been slightly cut but not on a significant level, but folks are not making a “super fuss” about the small reduction because according to “how the people feel”, The EBT-COVID food allowance has been more consistent with the recurring, monthly emergency grant on a county level, while lawmakers are still coming up short when deciding on whether or not they are even going to decide to vote on any type of aid that runs concurrently.

Ever since the COVID pandemic began and even before, it has been communities of color who always get the short end of the stick when it comes down to receiving any kind of assistance during a natural disaster or a deadly epidemic. Whether it was the AIDS crisis, the massive earthquake of 1989, hurricane Katrina or even the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccination, us poor folks and people of color have always been the last priority. With that said, it is a felony crime against humanity to marginalize people because of income or race statuses because when it comes to LIFE, poverty and help from the powers that be should never be PENDING…

CR Queennandi Xsheba, PNN KEXU 

CR Queennandi Xsheba, PNN KEXU 2021

With the deadly COVID-19 spreading quicker than an ignited gasoline race claiming many lives, there is one element that remains consistent and uninterrupted which is the other pandemic and that is systematic failure. Businesses are closing by the masses, folks are living in tents because the almighty paper dollar is worth more than lives and mental well being- with the results ending in walking past blank faces whose spirits have completely given up on life and turned to self-medication trying to escape this “earthly hell” and the stench of fecal matter that resides on almost every street corner. It has taken this nation’s rulers damn near a year to decide if they wanted to render any emergency assistance to the people to avoid famine of this magnitude and the “stimulus band-aid” is doing very little to cover basic needs such as food and housing.

This so-called “Sssystem” consists of loopholes and hamster wheels that would make a person sell their soul to the devil for the whole loaf of bread instead of settling for just crumbs. The “just us” cesspool is still a joke and speaking “100” on a personal note I was criminalized because a family member robbed me blind and then tried to attack me after bringing two officers to my house that disregarded every crime she committed and opted to yell at me and a minor over the family member’s “tenant’s rights” and when I brought up “constructive eviction” I really got yelled at!

The other kick to the face is the fact that Bank of America refused to reimburse me for what so-called “family” had stolen from me (even Wells Fargo didn’t diss me like that!) I have also been residing at a place with half a ceiling in the living room for almost a year with a decades- old moldy carpet and with our lives in serious danger we are yet to receive adequate assistance because my trauma won’t allow for me to relocate to areas where other family members of mine were murdered. Paying some “real bro-bros” to watch our backs with my limited income is an option because now there’s a newborn home with us but the “catch 22” is the baby needs up-front money to be seen by a pediatrician thanks to the “hellthcare” shuffle. I share all of this to say that “a system not meant to survive” is not some “cutesie” catch-phrase to sugarcoat the hell myself and my family have endured in 2020, right along with an exodus of other folks- all while surrounded by COVID. I’m a real “Poverty Skola” I don’t just write about it and judge the less fortunate, I live it and see it everyday- Empty storefronts, tents and tarps and a “zombie apocalypse” of lost souls both young and old and I struggle daily with a body that quits but a spirit that shouts “Quit?!?! Bulls#&%!” and I am not the only one going through the motion of trying to save a nickel a month towards the solution of safety and interdependence. 

Instead of wasting resources and time equivalent to another presidential term focusing on impeaching one of the worst dressed, openly hateful, confused and “covidly careless” presidents in “his-story”, immediate attention should be paid to the “hell on earth” steadily creeping up us with repeated examples like evicting folks out into the streets to be at a more higher risk of exposure to a “dis ease” that can potentially be fatal. It is a crying shame that lives are lost due to the inability to pay nose-bleed high rent for a roof made of drywall and plumbing that does not work properly. In my sarcastic opinion I guess the way the “Sssystem” sees us common folks is that we should be “satisfied” with a half of a ceiling and other uninhabitable conditions because it is “better” than sleeping in a tent or a tarp. The way us “common folks” see it is that this type of attitude and treatment from the “powers that be” is inhumane either way and it is sending this nation to its doom quicker than BART traveling from San Francisco to Oakland. So how is this system “survivable” you ask???

By Val Vera

Editor's note:

The Brown Crip aka Val Vera, is a poverty and disability skola and recent participant in our revolutionary poverty journalism class at PeopleSkool

All of the views expressed in this piece are Val’s truth Un-cut like all of our contributors 

POORMAGAZINE as a poor /indigenous,houseless  povertydisabled peoples movement believes that all of us should have sovereignty over our own bodies  in our decisions to vaccine or not and this piece is in no way meant to reflect our movement principles. As poor and indigenous peoples we are not a monolith 

Vaccine Machine 

by Val Vera

Sucked in, stuck inside the vaccine machine. This Brown Crip realizes that looking for a way out was not as easy as finding my way in. "You have to go where you received your first shot", I was told. "We don't do second shots", I was informed. "Go back to your provider", I was instructed. My provider? They left me high and dry and told me to "look around." Look around!?

Searching for a second dose of the vaccine within the required timeline was like looking for a needle in the pharmaceutical haystack. According to the CDC, 22 percent of the residents in Texas (where I currently reside), have received the first dose of either the Moderna, Pfizer or single dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Only 11 percent of Texans have received the required second dose which, classifies individuals as fully vaccinated. Keep in mind, there's up to a 5-6 week window to get the second dose. Yet, it begs the questions; how many folks will get caught in the cogs of this Vaccine Machine? Will supply meet demand or, in my case, exceed demand? 

During a routine appointment with my doctor, I was told that they had "extra" vaccines and wanted to know if I wanted it. I felt like I won the loteria … without playing! Don't get me wrong, I planned on getting the shot but, not so soon. After further discussion with my doctor, I took them up on their offer and scheduled an appointment to get vaccinated the next day. 

February 5th was a bright sunny day and my anxiety was on ten. I was about to get this experimental cure for a disease that killed so many and kept me in hiding for so long. The day began with a call from the doctor telling me that this "extra" vaccine may no longer be available… followed by a call three hours later, from the same doctor, telling me that a shot may be available… followed by a call telling me yes, I'll get the vaccine… followed by another call telling me to be on standby because they were not sure if one will be available. Standby? It takes my personal care attendant 3-4 hours to get me up and rolling. Standby doesn't exist in my world. 

I sat in their parking at the close of business day waiting for their call. 

Already feeling the effects of being processed by this vaccine machine, I began to second guess my decision to get the shot at that time. After all, I was on the waiting list to receive the vax from the local county public health department and, although the wait time was unknown, it was a sure thing. 

Ring, ring! They had a vaccine! I rolled into the office with high anticipation and a lot of questions - even though I did plenty of research. I was reassured that they would call me to schedule an appointment for the second dose. I also discovered that the shot I received was intended for someone else who traveled out of state and could not return for their vaccine appointment. 

Red flags, right? This was just the beginning of my fight. 

The Moderna vaccine requires the second dose to be given no sooner than 28 days from the first dose; no later than 42 days. The countdown began. I followed up with the office frequently and each time I was told they didn't know when they'd receive the next dose. That rhetoric lasted for three weeks then, my doctor fessed up like a bank robber with pockets filled with dinero.

"I really don't think we're getting any more vaccines… you should look around."

Angst, anger and frustration! My response was filled with profane exclamations! This clusterfuck of a situation needed immediate remediation! Ahora!

I quickly began reaching out to my comrades. I needed resources, connections and, ultimately, that damn second vaccine! Like an army of activists, people appeared en masse. Resources, suggestions and connections flooded my social media and phone. I felt supported. Unfortunately, those leads and resources led to brick wall after brick wall. No one was giving second doses unless you received the first one from them. The vaccine machine was running on all cylinders and I was just a cog, a small piece mechanically moving in a circular motion. 

Randomly, in the darkness of disparity, divinity appears with a nugget of clarity. 

On day 36 at 2:00 AM, I decided to do a last minute online search before resting. With little expectation, I trudged through the CVS pharmacy vaccine portal. Answering each question while mumbling expletives, I reached the search available appointments section. Like many nights before, I tapped the screen with little intention. Unlike the nights before, this search resulted in a pot of gold! I found an appointment… for a second dose… near me! The sigh of relief expelled from my breath served as a fresh breeze on my battered spirit. 

Forty one days after my first dose, I received my second. It should not have been that difficult. At the same time, I can't recall the last time this Brown Crip experienced ease. 

This world wasn't created for my kind. Everything I've been through has been a hustle and a grind. 

A cog in THIS machine no more. Time to take a deep breath before I barge through the next closed door. 

There are so many moments in that murderous day 

Has this poverty skola mama feeling all types of ways

Which must be spoken- 

Not silenced for the simple kkkort & CorpRape media take-away

The corner sto- 

The Blood-stained 20 dollar

The worker poverty skola behind the counter 

Just covering it cuz thats how we skolaz take care

of each other 

And the unspoken recognition that George Floyd 

Like so many of us poLice terror victims 

Was a poverty skola 

The call to the kkkilers - the poLice

The lice on the Po

Who arrive with guns - 

Cuz thats what krapitalism demands 

So blood-stained dollar can CONtinue to flow

From human to human - 

Without hesitancy 

Without thinking 

Without questioning 

So life itself has a price- 

Locked in wit so many PoLice kkkulture Lies 

So evil can lurk inside 

Ghosts with names like Chauvin  and Mellone

Called to “take care of” Houseless, Disabled and poor Humans lives with murdering tools; Guns and Tasers and ChokeHolds 

Black, Brown, indigenous Disabled fathers and Suns and Brothers and Uncles- humans colonized behind so many lies about poverty, trouble and other 

Poverty scholarship is the over-standing that we poor people arent always ok- that our trauma bleeds into conversations, cement streets-corner stores, shopping carts, substance use and our own colonial destroyed roots

That goals and dreams were long ago lost to so many of us - and now there is a killer around every corner called a kkkop dropping a dime on us-for not living into that fake success model called the amerikkklan dream  

None of these are mistakes- they are krapitalist dreams, nightmares - and warnings - we r all loaded up with from an early age- 

That no matter how many times we poverty skolaz try 

we just cant make 

This poemCast from a povertyskola is an ode to a poverty skola and their names are Luis, and Steven and George Floyd - and your lives are in every young man of color lied to in this krapitalist void - every young man who is just doing his best to keep on keeping on no matter the noise- 

This mama heard u - cries for u and so many more poverty skolaz  and thanks u for all the fierce spirit medicine you bring everyday to us from the other side 

This poemCast from a poverty skola focuses on poLice murder and poverty - rarely spoken in the same breath- mostly due to the fact that poverty, like disability is rarely spoken about, period, much-less as it informs poLice harassment, profiling and murder. 

Most of the time it isn’t mentioned because of the inherent shame us poverty skolaz have about poverty itself. Issues like homelessness, poor people housing, incarceration, intentionally blighted and destroyed neighborhoods, joblessness and welfare aka hell-fare, are whispered about. We are all supposed to make it. To be successful. To own mama earth (property) and have a good car and good job and if we don’t we have “failed” and no matter how conscious folks are, this reality lurks in the back of our collective minds. 

 “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Cuney Homes kid. They got so many rats and roaches I can play with.” A song made up by youth who lived in housing projects in Houston that George Floyd spent most of his early life in  to deflect the teasing children received growing up in the projects of Houston

In Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat’s case, he crossed false amerikkklan borders just to get here work for rich gentrifyers in San Francisco’s kitchens so he could send money back home only to get gentriFUKEd out of his home and end up houseless. 

In George Floyd’s case he tried all the amerikkklan success models, but ancestral trauma and the amerikkklan poverty traps are real.

Failure and success in United Snakes narratives are cloaked in a thick dose of shame so they can never be rebuked and resisted. And then they are “protected” aka enforced by civil military killers aka poLice so more money can be made with our arrests and incarceration for not making it, and in all of that our death is intentional and collateral damage. 

These pieces are important lift up for everyone even the revolutionaries who are re-thinking poLice calls and culture. 

Not everyone is ok just because we don’t want them to be sick. And poverty scholarship informed care-giving, love-work and support recognizes the necessity of not only empathy but a kinship and connectedness as well as a deeper ask for stolen equity, land, reparations, liberation and a move toward un-Shaming and un-gentriFUKing. 

I am worried by some of the facile way that people happily talk about abolition without ever recognizing its deep connections to abolition from krapitalism itself. 

From the deep ways that profit is made off of EVERYTHING, even our problems and they are all connected. 

In addition that trauma from poverty and disability shame and fake so-called failure from success narratives are absolutely related to mental health crisis and violence in a krapitalist system

In the end George Floyd is a poverty skola, just like Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat and Steven Taylor, their struggles and ongoing profiling and harassment were linked with not only deep sickkk Amerikkklan racism and wite supremacy but the ways poverty is seen and not seen in this stolen land.

These are some of the many things we struggle so hard as poor people to manifest in the Homefulness vision and why we teach in the How to Not Call PoLice Ever- handbook, but it is also something we struggle with un-prepared, un-clear and in an ongoing struggle with our own internal messages and colonized minds. 

Liberation is complicated and unclean and manifestation is a mofo 

Endless gratitude for your lessons George, Luis, Steven, Jessica and so many more.

April 7th is the 5th year commemoration of the murder by poLice of Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat in San Francisco -stay tuned to www.Justice4Luis.org website for more information about how they will celebrate his life. 

Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Un-Tour thru Akkkademia - Un-Tour Stop #1 UC Berkeley kkkampus - 1) Hurts ( Hearst) Museum of AnthroWrongOlogy 2) “Krapital Strategies” (Capital Strategies) Building 3) Peoples Park - Our Demand:

Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources,Ancestors Land, Resource and Culture Back Demand for UC Berkeley - From POOR Magazine/Homefulness/Deecolonize Academy /Indians Organizing For Change and Krip Hop Nation 

DEMANDs to UCBerkeley Regents, Donors/Staff and Students  

1)We The Indigenous unHoused, Displaced, Privatized, Enslaved, Bordered, po-Liced , Disabled, and profited off of Peoples Present UC Berkeley  a Demand first all of the Stolen Ancestors of the Ohlone Lisjan Nation - warehoused in the Hurts Museum and #LandBack to the Ohlone /Lisjan Nation so they can properly honor their ancestors. As well any and all indigenous, 1st peoples/Aboriginal Peoples & their Belongings, culture, books, knowledge and practices warehoused at that Museum be returned to the 1st Peoples/Indigenous peoples descendents within 30 days of this demand.

2) We, the aforementioned peoples demand Land Back for Evicted and Unhoused People PoLice Harassed and gentriFUKEd out for the Dorm Industrial Complex and the land hoarding and resource theft perpetrated by Institutions like UC Berkeley and UC Hastings 

3) We Demand Land Back and reparations for Generations of Cultural theft and Cultural appropriation of disabled black and brown and indigenous bodies  

4) We demand that Peoples Park remain free, un-devil-oped, and maintained for the use of the people, however the people see fit to self-govern themselves 

5) We demand that the rent- controlled apartment building at 1921 Walnut Street remain in tact and the tenants never be displaced or threatened with removal again.

6) We demand that houseless, disabled, Black, Brown and indigenous peoples who have been the “subjects” of studies, research, Arkkkeaology Extractions, Evictions, Sweeps and poLice harassment be supported with reparations and returned stolen resources and stolen “studied” knowledge so we can build our own solutions to our own problems informed by #PovertyScholarship like Homefulness and Deecolonize Academy

7) Finally That UC PoLice be closed and the millions of dollars paid to continue the ongoing harassment, profiling, incarceration and murder of Black, Brown, Disabled, Houseless and Indigenous Bodies be returned to communities who have sufferred/survived their ongoing terror. 

8) We offer to begin a dialogue with Akkkademia to redistribute, reparate, and begin a generational and ancestral healing process from the disease of wealth and/or resource-hoarding , generational or inherited land-stealing, displacing, academic or cultural theft and/or desecrating of indigenous bodies, houseless bodies,DIsabled Bodies, Black and Brown and incarcerated and silenced Peoples

8) We offer to assist in this healing, changing, decolonizing and degentriFUKing move  A Session of PeopleSkool at POOR Magazine- informed by Poverty Scholarship- Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth

www.poorpress.net

www.racepovertymediajustice.org -To reach us to begin this urgent healing contact poormag@gmail.com @povertyskola and @poormagazine on Twitter and IG www.poormagazine.org

From Left: Aunti Frances Moore, Muh Queena, QueennandiXSheba, Laure McElroy, Corrina Gould and Leroy Moore (sitting) on the Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Tour Thru Occupied Lenape Territory (NYC) 

(Click here for the Podcast of this piece )

When People Say

Happy Mamas day 

it jus never felt ok

When so many mamas & babies sit behind false borders and steel bars, 

sleeping in tents and cars, 

Dreaming of their lost babies shot by PoLice fire

No equity , No Money,

Not time to love or spit bars

Hold their babies in their arms

Dream Dreams or Gaze at stars 

Our Communities and support and life lost to gentriFUKED streets

Our ideas and dreams so often Silenced so we can barely speak

Happy Mamas Day…

How can it really be - 

anything more than Amerikkklan Hypocrisy

How bout Equity, Healing-Care Not HellthCare

How bout Housing, De-carceration and the end of PoLice Terror of our Suns and Daughters and the War on the POOR 

Happy Mamaz Day

How can it be

Until all of our Mamas & Mama Earth Can b free 

Otherwise isn’t Happy Mamas Day just more krapitalist HypKRAZY?

30 day notice to pay a $700 rent increase or quit… the white paper with oversized violent black font fluttered in the morning breeze. We three houseless, disabled mamas  sat huddled at a long wooden table in the huge kitchen at MamaHouse#3 located in San Francisco’s dangerously gentrifying Mission District - where the word gentriFUKation originated from my mouth, born out of my anger and sorrow for the violent plight of so many poor folks dealing with displacement. The bright morning sun streaming through beautiful long windows warmed our terrorized faces. 

“I knew it, this place was too nice for us, it was just a matter of time” Laure McElroy, my longtime sisStar, disabled , houseless mama warrior, fellow Po’ poet and founding member of POOR Magazine ’s welfareQUEEN’s project with me and other poor mamas, crumpled up the notice and then un-crumpled it. The pace of her voice sped up like it always did when she got triggered by fear of homelessness. 

“700 dollars ??” Sandra Sandoval, long-time Mission district resident, organizer and the 3rd fierce mama who struggled with homelessness with her infant sun before she moved into MamaHouse with me and Laure, shook her head at the notice.

Mamahouse was a dream launched when me and my mama were struggling on and off with homelessness in San Francisco due to ongoing gentrification. It was a poor mama-led solution to homelessness, poverty, child care, and isolation, all real problems that plague poor single parents in the US and beyond. 

MamaHouse was more achievable than Homefulness, because it only involved code-switching into middle-class wite-ness, and CONvincing racist, classist scam-lords to rent to three poor, disabled, houseless women and our children. This was never easy and meant a lot of back-story massaging and wite-voice implementing.

The MamaHouse dream was everything we knew it would be. We all supported each other with child care, shared resources, and love, which helped to solve one of the poverty scholarship informed lessons taught by me and my mama since the inception of POOR Magazine, isolation kills and it plagues poor single parents in the US- struggling with the multiple and compounding traumas of loss of relationships, family, resources and community. 

Laure used to say, “ You were right interdependence is truth, I won’t make alone tiny, I just won’t” In September of 2010 all of us mamas were scattered to the wind b that eviction from MamaHouse, sitting outside our beautiful ex-home on Florida street. Houseless with all of children and our belongings in hefty bags on the sidewalk.

“I miss MamaHouse so much, I can’t wait for Homefulness to be done,” Laure whispered to me a year after the eviction when she was struggling to get some stable housing. She passed away in BlackAugust 2018, a victim of the compound trauma of houselessness, poverty, isolation and depression.She never recovered from that eviction.Most of us don’t.

By 2010’s struggle with Mamahouse#3 it had been 14 years since me and my mama slept on park benches , bus benches and in back seats of cars dreaming, visioning , planning, working, albeit in vain, for a poor people-led model of housing and support  and healing for poor and houseless, disabled, indigenous, black and Brown and poor wite families and elders that we called Homefulness. The only thing we always never had was equity, credit, money, or family to make a beautiful idea into a reality

And it wasn’t for lack of trying. We had applied for HUD grants, private grants, bank loans, begged and pitched investors, tried  credit schemes and credit improvement plans. In the end we had nothing but a dream. A dream we knew was the answer, but could never be attained by poor women with no credit or assets.

“Where is my Mothers Day card? Mama asked me on one Mothers day when we were struggling with yet another eviction notice in yet another apartment in gentriFUKing Bay Area, this time, the fear was worse, I was pregnant with my soon to be born sun . 

“Mothers Day is a CONsumer lie,” I replied angrily, “ How can we celebrate when things are so bad for us so many poor mamas?,”

Her response was quick and hard - the back of her hand on my 30 year old , thought I was grown  head, “Thats just an excuse to not get me a card, “ she snapped, “in our poverty-stricken lives things will be bad and good and hard and not so hard, but no matter what, you celebrate who gave you life,” she stared ahead. Her eyes hard and dark with fury.  

My mama passed in 2006 and of course, as always, she was right. She had pushed me to never think inside the krapitalist box us poor people were dealt. No matter how hard it was. And for that and so much more I owed every breath of my being to her and had no business tripping off that damn card.

I prayed and cried for mama and in my grief and while at the altar, I realized, so clearly, and im sure with her whispers from the other side, that POOR Magazine needed to move a different way to realize the dream of Homefulness. That like Mama used to say, its not peoples fault they believe the fuked up lies they were taught about wealth-hoarding and land-stealing, that we needed to teach them another way to live, to give wealth-hoarders and descendants of wealth-hoarders a chance to transform. But in the end it is up to us poor folks to lift up, to own, to create our Her-Stories and His-stories, to follow our indigenous life-ways and ancestors teachings, this is our liberation. 

After intense prayer and dreaming with all of my ancestors from 2006-2008 while struggling with POOR Magazine’s organizational poverty and homelessness, in 2009 we expanded our already existent PeopleSkool to include a comprehensive curriculum series on the lies of krapitalist wealth-hoarding and land-stealing and how to transform the extractive “helping” industry into radical redistribution and a new concept I developed called ComeUnity Reparations. 

Peopleskool is a school run by poor peoples who learned our knowledge in the street and by surviving incarceration, ableism, homelessness, false borders, loss, eviction, violence, abuse and so much more. We share/teach this knowledge with fellow poor peoples ( poverty skolaz we call ourselves), about our connectedness, shared struggles, ways to express and heal using media, theatre,poetry, and art and that first and foremost  our own story-making and struggle is the basis of our liberation and with our stories and truth and poverty scholarship we can teach folks with race and class privilege how to work along-side us in solidarity, to lift up poor peoples led solutions to our own problems, rather than perpetuate more about us without us extraction and “savoring and profiteering.

After the 1st herstoric session of our new seminar on ComeUnity Reparations, several of the privileged graduates of PeopleSkool launched the Solidarity family and began to raise resources and credit and access points that enabled us poor and houseless people to “buy” a small part of MamaEarth so we could spiritually and legally UnSell her and begin the long process of actually manifesting, building Homefulness 

Laure and my mama always said they were certain many of us would be killed by poverty and gentriFUKation violence before Homefulness would be realized. My Mama and Laure were gone along with Aunty Gerry Ambrose, long-time POOR Magazine family who just passed in February of 2021, another victim of violent displacement. All poor, houseless, disabled mamas of color, who barely held on through the depression, isolation and pain in our collective minds when we try to raise children alone in a society that never makes equity accessible so poor folks can manifest our solutions.

It would be 11 more years before Homefulness would be realized

In 2021 Homefulness #1 on BlackArthur in Deep East Huchin (Oakland) houses 6 formerly houseless, very low-income families and elders, a liberation school which is poised to graduate 4 formerly houseless young men of color, a radio station, a library, and a grassroots publishing movement called POOR Press.

In 2020 after the January Decolonization/DEgentriFUKation Seminar at PeopleSkool, in the middle of a pandemic, another group of Solidarity family members raised enough money to “buy” another small part of MamaEarth to build a Homefulness #2  

I hold this work and these successes in a forever traumatized heart, crying for my mama, Mama Laure, , Mama Gerry Ambrose, Mama Iris Canada, a Black Grandmama evicted at 100 years old because of violent gentriFUKation and countless incarcerated mamas and indigenous/migrante mamas killed from the pain of carceral violence, abuse and the separation from their children and families. 

I know Mama was right and this is still no excuse to dismiss Mothers Day. But I still got to call out the HypoKrazy of the Happy Day wishes when so many of us mamas are in so much pain.

“If they tow my van I will die, I have nowhere else to go,” reported POOR Magazine RoofLESS radio reporter Charles M, 68, lifelong San Francisco resident. Charless is houseless, landless and disabled and lives in his van. San Francisco, like Oakland and so many other cities across the US, has increased its towing, “sweeping, Cleaning and removal project of houseless peoples, our sleeping, bags, belongings, tents, vans, RV’s and cars throughout the pandemic.  And as all of us who have struggled with homelessness know, once they take everything from us, we run an increased risk of death by exposure, polLice terror and illness.  

“They are increasing the tows of houseless peoples RV’s and Vans, said Sam Lew, an organizer, advocate and baadass with End Poverty Tows Coalition who spoke with Po Peoples Radio last week.

108 year old Kashmiri elder Zooni Begam facing colonial eviction 

From Frisco to Kashmir

“Where will I go?” Said Zooni Begam 108 years old, as she squatted on the ground outside her house which was located in the village of Zilsidora, Jabbad, hidden in the vast jungle of central Kashmir’s Budgam district. “I was born here. My parents also lived here. We have been living here for ages. How can the government make us homeless all of a sudden?” 

Huma Dar, a fierce Kashmiri warrior for truth introduced the story of Zooni to a panel entitled Degentrifying Academia sponsored by POOR Magazine, Indigenous Peoples Organizing for Change, Krip Hop Nation and the Ethnic Studies Library at UCBerkeley in April. The goals of the panel, lovingly moderated by Dr Fuifui Niumetolo,  was launched by myself and Leroy Moore before the pandemic to connect the land struggles of indigenous, houseless Black, Brown and Disabled peoples across Mama Earth so we could achieve collective land liberation from the colonial terror of evictions and removal that continues today.

 Huma added This is just the tip of the iceberg, and doesn’t even mention the genocidal ethnic cleansing of 1947-50 when up to a million Muslims (out of a total population of ~4 million at that time) were massacred or forcibly exiled out of the state by Indian Army and the army of the draconian Hindu colonizing ruler, Hari Singh. Nor do they mention the more than ~6700 mass & unmarked graves unearthed in Kashmir, which India refuses to do DNA testing on to return to their families.

Youth and Families in the Streets of San Francsco to show solidarity with Palestine

From Oakland to Palestine 

“There is no way I’m leaving this neighborhood unless I’m dead,” said a resident of Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, requesting anonymity for fear of retribution by Israeli authorities. “It’s been 65 years that I’ve lived in this neighborhood.” They concluded

Across Mama Earth  the colonial terror of removal, eviction, sweeps and gentrifUKation as I call it, is a common thread. Rooted in the original genocide called colonization which has terrorized indigenous peoples across mama earth for centuries, continues today from West Papua to West Huchuin ( Oakland)  pushing people and lives out, killing elders, abusing and traumatizing children and desecrating indigenous ancestors to make way for “commerce, more houses, different people and/or the lie of “cleanliness” code for land without oppressed people. But the root of it all is that ownership of Mama Earth has always been a settler colonial lie. And a bad one at that, Mama Earth is not infinite, you cant keep buying , selling destroying and demolishing her forever.  

Irisi Canada, 100 year old Black Elder resident of San Francisco Evicted from her home of over 40 years 

“I cant believe you are doing me like this Peter (Owens),” said Iris Canada, to the new “owner” of her home of over 40 years who evicted her. Iris was a 100 year old Black elder who died after recording that message, because as POOR Magazine and this poverty skola has said and barely survived, Eviction is elder and child abuse. Iris was one of the few remaining Black residents of  what us gentriFUKed peoples of San Francisco call the FilNoMore, aka Fillmore district, which in the 70’s was decimated by the moves of Urban Renewal, re-named by all who were victims of it- Negro Removal, led by head gentriFUKer aka devil-oper ( I like to re-name the colonial terms to express their true impact) Justin Herman, and continues to this day.

Since the well- documented “dot-com” boom of the 90’s working class, low-income, Black, Brown, poor white, disabled and indigenous residents of San Francisco and Oakland have suffered the ongoing terror and abuse of eviction. Countless fights led by organizers and advocates have ensued, land trusts have sometimes been brokered, enabling the elders to stay housed, but by and large it has resulted in the slow bleed of removal of working class and poor people from the Bay Area, which many times results in our permanent displacement and death.

Altar for Mario Gonzalez created-sponsored by the Oakland Brown Berets and Tele-Jaguar at a ceremony for him held at the location of his murder 

Luis Gongora Pat, a Mayan indigenous father and worker, evicted and then killed by poLice for being houseless in the gentriFUKED mission, Ron Likkers, an indigenous elder evicted and then died two weeks later, Gerry Ambrose, a domestic laborer, died from the violence/ trauma and poverty caused by eviction of her and her whole family from the home of 43 years in San Francisco. Desiree Quintero, a houseless woman killed from the violence of sweeps in Santa Cruz. Steven Taylor, a houseless resident of San Leandro murdered by poLice for having a mental health crisis in public and Mario Gonzalez, who made the mistake of “tweeking” and possibly being houseless in Klanameda. 

Once we are ancestors, we are also not seen and our sacred burial lands are continually desecrated as in the struggle for West Berkeley Shellmound, or our bodies and relatives are viewed as something to study and profit off of or just warehouse, displace and dispose. 

From Left: Corrina Gould, Leroy Moore, Tracey Bell Borden, Aunti Frances Moore and Tiny on the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour thru Akkkademia - photo by Brooke Anderson

Anthro-Wrongology and Arkkkeology

“The ongoing occupation of our territories means that our ancestors and in turn, us, their living decendents have to continually resist erasure and being categorized as less than human. The disease of capitalism and private land ownership necessitates that we no longer exist in order for them to justify the destruction of our sacred sites, like the West Berkeley Shellmound and the hoarding of thousands of our ancestors at institutions like UC Berkeley.” said land liberator, warrior and prayer bringer of the Ohlone /Lisjan Nation and POOR Magazine Elephant Council leader and co-founder of Sogorea Te Land Trust.

POOR Magazine launched our 2021 Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tours into Akkkademia, on May 5th. We did this because Akkkademia (I re-named this more appropriately) plays a huge role in the perpetuation of land-stealing, resource hoarding and warehousing of indigenous, Black and Brown ancestors and culture, as witnessed by the warehousing of Ohlone /Lisjan ancestors at UC Berkeley and “storing’ of the bones of children of the MOVE Africa Family by Princeton University and University of Pennsylvania -one of the many reasons this poverty skola re-names these departments and perpetrators, Anthro-WrongOLOGY and Arkkkeaology 

“Entire blocks of communities in Philly were stolen by Temple University,” said Galen Tyler,  another powerfull poverty skola and truth -teller with the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign and #PoorPeoplesArmy out of Philadelphia presented at the DegentriFYing Academia panel, connecting the dots of gentriFUKation and land grabs for what I call the Dorm Industrial Complex, which is exactly whats threatening Peoples Park and 1921 Walnut street in Berkeley. 

Benny Wanda independence leader from West Papua 

From West Papua to West Huchuin (Oakland) 

“While our demonstrations were entirely peaceful, the Indonesian police were determined to use brute force to crush them. Such mass arrests and brutality are becoming increasingly common in West Papua and it is estimated that in the last two months, nearly 3,000 West Papuan people have been arrested by the Indonesian authorities.” There is gold to extract so the West Papuan indigenous peoples are seen merely as an obstacle stopping this violent extraction from Mama Earth, whether it means the death of the Kashmiri Forest Dwellers, West Papuan indigenous peoples or West Oakland RV dwellers.

West Oakland Sweeps of Houseless Peoples 

“CalTrans is backing out on agreements made with residents & moving forward with evictions during the current pandemic…. “ From EFAM ( Essential Food and Medicine) - a group that has helped to build a powerFUL clinic and other beautiful services with a houseless community in West Oakland, called Cob on Wood, who have faced the endless violence called sweeps due to the fact that the poltricksters don’t want to see houseless people, the nearby  “land-Lord” (Fred Crave) and Killtrans ( my name for that agency) wants to profit off the land that houseless people peacefully have parked their RV’s and cars for years. 

All across the bay and the United snakes these evictions, tows and sweeps ( equating humans with trash) have continued throughout a pandemic, causing people to die of exposure, not Covid. 

Its controversial to connect these dots, a lot of organizers who can “feel” and organize and throw down for Global struggles of indigenous peoples have no interest in seeing the connections to houseless, disabled elders struggles with sweeps, evictions and gentriFUKing. 

In addition, revolutionaries and even land liberators often call out for reparations and land-back for Black, Brown and indigenous peoples but cannot see the connections of houseless peoples or even the notion of Mama Earth itself not being a commodity. 

Formerly houseless/landless, youth, adults and elders from Homefulness 

I humbly propose in this story, as a formerly houseless daughter  of a disabled, indigenous trauma survivor,  and later houseless mama of my Sun, and co-founder , visionary of Homefulness, a houseless, landless peoples solution to homelessness, to not only expand and connect the dots of settler terrorism to include landless poor peoples who are being swept, evicted, towed and destroyed every day in every colonial city across Amerikkka and further that as land liberators working for true liberation, to please re-consider the narrative of land use itself.  My argument is that the goal of revolutionaries, should not be “Ownership” at all. 

#UnSellMamaEarth & #UnSettleMamaEarth 

Because no matter who does the “owning” the colonial lies ( I mean Laws) about MamaEarth’s use are a set up from the get-up to evict, remove and displace anyone every poor and indigenous person, over time. That as I have stated before, even the notion of land-trust is rooted in their removing platform. Land trusts come with an expiration date. Embedded with the eventual profiting off of and why we houseless, indigenous , disabled peoples at Homefulness, are working really hard to spirtually and legally UnSell Mama Earth and my newest goal and associated “hashtag” is to UnSettleMamaEarth- so please help us get that into the Hashtag lexicon. 

That the messiness of our connectedness is our liberation. That us houseless peoples from all four corners of Mama Earth have so much in common with houseless, landless 1st Nations Turtle Islanders,  West Papuans, Kashmiris, Palestinians and beyond and that what really needs to happen is we co-organize these fights against the Extraction terror of what CorpRape and politricksters have been doing for 528 years and before to all of us. Not some of us.

CPS- APS- all the Ssses’ 

That lead to our babies stolen, arrested & even death

Mamas , papas Don’t show yo real feelings 

Of sorrow or distress 

No mandated reporters here

Rooted in racist classist Krapitalist principles of fear 

The Lie of ghettoization 

And separation Nation - 

Each seizure of our babies is blood-stained dollaz for the 

Colonial Domination 

“I couldn’t breathe ,whispered fierce Black warrior mama Lyvesha Franklin through tears into the mic about the unspeakable pain of dealing with the endless number of false accusations from Child Separation Services (aka Child Protective Services )  Lyvesha was one of over 30 mamas and grandmamas, fathers and supporters gathered in front of Santa kkklara County InJustice Center on May 19th, from all four corners, Black, white, Asian, Raza, with this one shared nightmare of a court sanctioned system filled with so much corruption its almost hard to name. 

A powerFULL action for mamas and daddies and babies who have struggled with that Injustice kort system held intentionally on Malcolm X’s BornDay was organized by a new collaboration between California Families Rise and POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE’s CourtWatch project

“We must unite as parents, put aside our differences and rise up together,” Michelle Chan, told her families story of CPS abuse and encouraged us all to come together, because together we are strong. When mama and warrior for justice  Michelle approached POOR Magazine about forging a collaboration, although overwhelmed with all of the other struggles we hold as poor peoples, had no choice but to say yes. 

POOR Magazine’s CourtWatch Project was launched by my fierce ghetto fabulous, disabled  Afro-Boriken  poverty skola Mama Dee in 1998 as a response to the PTSD , severe trauma caused to families struggling with the CPS system. My mama and I had multiple  personal experiences with this trauma. Over and over again.

As an orphan,  my mama, a mixed race, unwanted child was called “a ward of the kkkort”, subject to the extractive racist, unsafe “foster care system. In that case her own, teen, domestic violence survivor mama “gave her up” to the system because of her guilt of having a child out of “wedlock” a half-breed, a “N.. child” as she was called by foster parents. My broken grandmother gave up her parental rights when she was “on the run” from a severely abusive husband who she thought she killed. 

My mama was trafficked in the Foster & juvenile dependency kkkort system, to over 35 foster homes, every single one physically and sexually abusing my mama, starving her and hating her, until she ended up in an orphanage, where they enslaved, berated, bullied and hid her into indentured servitude, hid her, as the orphanage was only funded  to “accept”  poor wite girls. 

Mama made it out of that somehow, like all of us poor folks do, by any means necessary. But not unscathed. Later in life when I was 11, she could no longer fight as she called it after she was laid off from her last job and ended up disabled and unable to work. We ended up on the street and 1 year later after a violent “sweep” of our belongings, I ended up in a group foster home after being taken from my mama, cuz she was seen as unfit cause we were houseless.

Fast forward another 10 years and my foster sister was taken from the home, because my mama told her not to wear make-up and the school said, she wasn’t being allowed to be a “teenager”. I cant describe to you the levels of all of this pain compounding on more pain, but I will tell you that it breaks the heart of the parents and guardians in ways that are almost unspeakable. 

“I had never laid a hand on my sun,I was a strict mama, but nothing out of the ordinary, they discriminated against me because I was strong and Black.” Lyvesha concluded. 

And she was right, there is a series of code words, they have to describe parents in distress. They shut down normal grief and the CPS and Juvenile Dependency Kort system is one of the most racist, classist and corrupt of any system. 

All of the different players, from the public pretenders “appointed to the parent” to the judge and anti-social workers ( as I call them) assigned to your case, all conspire together against the parent. Its mind-numbing. Its crazy-making because there is no way out. If you don’t jump through ALL of their hoops no matter how wrong, you most likely will not get your babies back. And it is the only court system that allows here-say into the case, and completely sanctions it. 

“Document everything and don’t give up,”  Robert Powell, a powerful advocate and attorney for parents and children for over 28 years, that has successfully brought lawsuits against the Juvenile injustice system. “You got to open the courts, there are over 20 states that have opened up the juvenile dependency courts, this has to happen in this state, because of the abuse of power.”  Powell went on to explain that the draconian system is a blatant example of abuse of judicial power.

“This is MalcolmX and Yuri Kochiyama’s birthday, we honor them today as they fought this racist system and still do,” Brother Buffalo, long-time POOR Magazine/Self-Help Hunger Program extended family and Fierce Black Panther Poverty Skola showed up, spoke up and stood up for the families along with Momi Palapaz, Jeremy Miller, Israel Munoz and Jonathan Gomez who spoke one of his beautiful poems on the mic. So many of us po mamas and daddies have had nightmares in this system, many of us have just given up.

In POOR Magazine’s liberation school Deecolonize Academy and Homefulness - a homeless, landless peoples movement for liberation for all poor, indigenous and houseless peoples, we never engage with the poLice and we arent Mandated reporters. This does not mean we look the other way from abuse, in fact what it means is we draw people closer and given them more support. Something my mama was doing in her job in a group home, which is shy a wite psychologist fired her. Family restoration isn’t lifted up or honored in this society, separation of ages and generations is, because there is more money to be made on our separate-ness.

“I never saw my grand-baby again,” A Grandmother clutched her little dog close to her chest as she held back tears and told her story with that system. “Never”

POOR Magazine and California Families Rise will be doing more work as California Families in Resistance. Stay tuned. Get involved by emailing poormag@gmail.com

Above image: Youth and family poverty skolaz/danzantes from Deecolonize Academy/POOR Magazine/Homefulness- Photos by Muteado SIlencio, Tiburcio Garcia-Gray, Amir Cornish, Israel Munoz, Ziair Hughes, Akil Carrillo, Kimo Umu

“Caltrans comes and just takes everything you have, “ Pomo Elder Priscilla Hunter was standing next to sacred Pomo rock - they called the Mama Rock - near the shore of a California coastal beach long ago stolen from the Pomo people by the weaponized paper known as contracts. She was speaking and teaching on the colonial removal of her relatives, her ancestors bones, hundreds of years ago and last week to all of us youth and adult poverty skolaz on the 1st stop of our Stolen land Hoarded Resources Un-Tour Across Occupied Pacific Northwest Turtle Island,

Priscilla’s words cut me in half. CalTrans, the same forces that perpetrate the violence called Sweeps on houseless peoples bodies like myself and my mama for the years we were houseless in Oakland, SF and Los Angeles. Caltrans the same State-owned entity that “accidentally” killed Shannon Marie Bigly when she was huddled under a cardboard box on the side of the 80 freeway near Fresno because her houseless body and so many thousands more was deemed an act of criminality. Connecting these oppression dots is the work of the Stolen Land/hoarded Resources Tours as well as to lift up and manifest poor and indigenous peoples self-determined solutions and leadership. 

Priscilla went on to describe the ongoing violent removal, theft, seizure, of trees, ancestors, land and lives of the Pomo nation by the state who works in collusion with giant corporate entities ( I have re-named them CorpRape) called the Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC) and the Humboldt Redwood Company (HRC). 

Above image from left: Muteado SIlencio, Amir Cornish, Ziair Hughes and Pomo Elder Priscilla Hunter

Humboldt Redwood Co. (HRC) and Mendocino Redwood Co. (MRC) came to their position as major forest owners in Northern California (400,000+ acres) via different trajectories: MRC owns  227,000 acres in Mendocino County purchased from the multi-national Louisiana-Pacific when they left Calif. after reaping millions, and HRC got what was Maxxam/Pacific Lumber’s ravished land in Humboldt County, minus small but precious protected groves of old growth redwoods surrounded by a sea of clearcuts.

Both of these evil desecrators are owned by San Francisco.-based Fishers, owners of retail giants the Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy, the Oakland A’s (majority share), as well as HRC and MRC both, positioning the billionaire family as owners of more coastal redwood forest than any other private owner. 

But before you sharpen your arrows in the wealth-hoarders direction alone, none of it would be possible without the deep, centuries old collusion of the lead colonizers in charge, aka the State of California operating under the CalTrans and Cal Fire.  

“They (Calfire) mark the redwoods, all of which are over 100 years old, with a black  circle when it is time to cut them, they decide “how old” the trees are based on their science of “coring,”  said Andy Wellspring, our docent Un-Tour guide/ ComeUnity reparator and alumni of PeopleSkool at POOR Magazine who had raised ComeUnity Reparations to enable us poverty skolaz to even have the privilege of traveling to this unspeakably beautiful stolen Pomo territory.

When I heard the terrifying words, coring, it felt like all the other ways that wite-science, akkkademia and CorpRape entities have always perpetrated violence on Mama Earth, Black, Brown and indigenous peoples, under the benign cover of multiple forms of studying, researching, digging, cleaning, warehousing, developing, building, discovering, buying, protecting, securing, selling and claiming to name a few. These multiple forms of sanctioned violence have meant the perpetration of 528 years of raping, dissecting, murdering, profiling,stealing, removing, gentrifying, dredging, extracting, desecrating and evicting.

In addition to private corpRape entities, institutions of so-called higher learning aka the departments of AnthroWrongology and Arkkkeaology as I have re-named them, have been perpetrating this same violence on indigenous peoples bodies, ancestors and land under the guise of “learning” and why I re-named it akkkademia. 

It is always about taking apart, figuring out, disconnecting, separating so theft, eviction, removal and desecration  of sacred burial grounds sacred land and ancestors can continue uninterrupted.

The screams of Mama Trees 

This mama, daughter of a houseless, disabled , colonized Afro-Boricua Mama, orphan, tortured, experimented on,  and un-protected and later disabled, held my mamas screams, tears, pain for years, have held countless co-mamaz, poverty skolaz from our POOR Magazine movement in that kind of colonial pain that cant be described, that is unspeakable and shreds your soul. 

It was these sounds, these tears that I heard on Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Un-tour thru Occupied Pacific Northwest Turtle Island Stop #1, when myself and Muteado Silencio, Israel Munoz and 5 youth povertyskolaz from Deecolonize Academy (who like me and Israel, are all formerly houseless) Black and brown and indigenous youth and uncles, walked into the old-growth redwood forest in Pomo territory aka so-called Ft Bragg, to witness, stand with listen to and support a MamaTree, who is one of over 50,000 acres of old growth redwood trees facing clear-cutting by these CorpRapeshuns, CalTrans and CalFire.]

It is our goal as poor and houseless, pan indigenous peoples who launched these tours in 2016 and are currently working so hard to build a self-determined, poor people led solution to homelessness we call Homefulness with spiritual guidance from 1st Nations Ohlone/Lisjan family in Huchuin, Oakland, to lift up indigenous land protectors, houseless poverty skolaz, ancestors and mama earth’s voices struggling with the ongoing, colonial terror, War On the Poor, War on Mama Earth and War on Black, Brown, Indigenous peoples, to intentionally connect these dots, to connect the washing of colonial removal, terror, desecration and eviction. From San Francisco to Sheik Jarrah, From Kashmir to Iris Canada, from West Oakland to West Papua, From Pomo territory to Palestine. 

There is no more time for the colonial model of death, destruction and desecration. Of clear-cutting and evicting, removing and sweeping. The lie of public land that has never belonged to the “public” 

“They took these lands and made them “public” and removed all of our families multiple times, away from our water-ways, our life-ways, our uncles didnt know any better, and now they are taking all of our trees and our ancestors bones, putting them into places like UC Berkeley” Priscilla continued.

For those of you who follow POOR Magazine’s Un-Tours, we went just held a herstoric tour at the department of AnthroWrongology at UC Berkeley and Peoples Park, because UC Berkeley, like so many of these akkkademic institutions hold Ohlone /Lisjan relatives of warrior, co-founder of Homefulness, Corrina Gould, while at the same time evicting houseless people from Peoples Park, elders and long-time tenants from 1921 Walnut street in Berkeley for more of their profit and greed. 

“Public land for public good,” said multiple times by Aunti Frances Moore, from the Self-Help Hunger Program and POOR Magazine/Homefulness, about the removal, eviction and poLice terrorizing of poor Black residents of North Oakland from the pocket park that they steward so poor Black elders, who have been evicted from homes in that neighborhood, can actually have a safe place to sit and think and rest. And yet they are criminalized and constantly harassed, because just like Priscilla pointed out , this public land isn’t “public” its just another way for the State to cut deals with huge devil-opers and land stealers like the Fisher family.

Tree-sits and the so-called Climate Change movement

For as long as me and my xingon Mama Dee, have been conscious, I have been disturbed by the wite privilege that pervades the so-called climate change movement. So many of the “leaders” are mostly middle-class and trust-fund having wite people that seem to be intentionally disconnected from the centuries of love, care and stewardship of Mama Earth, our tree and plant relatives, four-leggeds and winged ones, that indigenous peoples have been doing, not as part of a “movement” but just as part of their life-ways of mama Earth care and stewardship. 

When we were invited in by Andy to come lay down prayers in the old-growth redwoods, we were so happy to see that sisSTAR priscilla Hunter and her xingon partner Polly were teaching, speaking and holding prayer and leadership, in addition at the coast Pomo sisStars Misty and Tina, were also holding up and lifting up the reclamation of a sacred rock back from the so-called State-run control and finally that our docent reparator, Andy and his partner Vicki were very clear whose leadership was being followed in this sacred tree fight. We were happy to see privileged wite people leveraging their race, class and physical body privilege holding down tree sits in those sacred trees, not something everyone can do and what a beautiful act of allyship to 1st peoples protectors. 

Photo of Youth and family poverty skolaz offerring Danza prayer for the Mama trees and Mama Earth and resistance to this CorpRape desecration 

Each Stolen Land Un-Tour presents a series of demands that lift up, support the movements in the occupied and stolen territory.  For Occupied Pomo Territory - these were the demands that we sent up with prayer smoke at the site of the Mama Tree Sit to MRC, HRC and the Logging Industrial Complex, CALfire and CAlTrans:  

-All 48,652 acres of this sacred forest be re-turned to their rightful stewards - the Pomo peoples of this land 

-THAT ALL LOGGING OF THESE SACRED TREES - BE STOPPED

-That in addition to all of their stolen land be re-matriated to original peoples - that the 1st peoples be surported in their own Cultural & Tribal Sovereignty and creation of Unified Ecosystem Restoration Climate Change Mitigation Environmentally Sustainable Economics 

-We also propose that wealth-hoarders and land -stealers who think they “own property” in this stolen Pomo territory return land to 1st peoples steward ship and /or redistribute stolen and hoarded wealth to Pomo peoples so they can “buy” back more of their stolen land and/or come to the next degentriFUKation/Decolonization two day seminar of PeopleSkool to help heal from the diseases of wealth-hoarding and land stealing and begin their journey to ComeUnity Reparations. 

-In addition that land be secured so that houseless peoples can create their own solutions to homelessness like Homefulness. As the violence called sweeps is alive and well in this stolen territory

“Mother Earth is bleeding and barely breathing as the Rain Forests are cut down from here to the Amazon and up north to Alaska. Climate change is wrecking great damage on our local community with forest fires raging all around us due to drought.  For the health of the forest and the critters within it, for the wellbeing of my people both spiritually and culturally, and for the fresh air and carbon sequestration that large redwoods provide, the coast  redwoods in Jackson Demonstration State Forest should be protected. They should be allowed to grow to become ancient trees, sustained in a family circle of madrone oak trees, pepperwood trees and manzanita and huckleberry bushes. Priscilla Hunter, tribal elder of Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and Chairwoman of the Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council consisting of ten local tribes who have purchased 3,900 acres on the Mendocino Lost Coast in order to preserve the forest there and save it from a third clear-cut. Excerpt from a powerfull statement by Pricilla Hunter. To read the whole article - click here  To sign a petition that Priscilla and other tribal members agree doesn’t go far enough can be found on this website 

To follow the powerFul Un-Tour on its way to so-called Oregon and Olympia click here or follow @poormagazine on IG and Twitter or PoorNewsNetwork on Facebook or Youtube

Image of Tree Warriors and POOR Magazine family from all four corners of Mama Earth standing together to Save these Mama Trees 

“I started shooting meth when I was 12,” said CJ from the DeShutes encampment in occupied Squaxin Territory aka so-called Olympia, Washington. His voice was soft, almost a whisper. He was one of over 37 RoofLEss radio reporters who reported out their multitude of reasons for now living in an encampment. All of them reported an endless, non-stop struggle with sweeping, cleaning, moving, hiding, evicting, belonging theft and arrest.

From Deshutes to Division street (SF), the racist, classist violence of “Cleaning” Sweeping, Clearing and Abating. Coded words signifying the removal of unhoused peoples of all cultures and genders and diasporas is constantly used as a way to remove us.

The notion of of our collective "dirtiness" as houseless poeple is rooted in the same colonial missionary lie of the so-called "savage" Rather than see the violent settler violence of racism, poLicing, private property, eviction, removal, exploitaiton and endless criminalization of poverty which fuels the silent destruction of people and communities, or even krapitalism itself, which was never meant to be a caring system, but rather a destroying system, that needs new markets of destroyed people and stolen land to create new "products" and new profits, the 21st century colonizer perpetrates the idea that we are dirty when we are outside,  

Our percieved, unquestionable dirtiness, is necessary to perpetuate the violent hygenic metaphors about unhoused peoples bodies and belongings, which then creates a simple rationalization for  sociaty as a whole to agree to our removal under this lie called "sweeps"

Those of you who might be thinking right now, well they are dirty, they always got stuff all round, and defecate/urinate outdoors, yes these are all facts. to which i always counter, what if someone came into your home, dorm room or apartment and took the roof off, what would they see? a perfectly clean house? what if someone said you no longer had access to your bathroom? where, ( as me and aunti Frances famously stated in 2014 when the City of Oakland seized the Self-Help Hunger Programs porta Pottie) Where would You Pee? ( or worse, shit?)

Our lives are under Your scrutiny when we are outside, we dont have the privilege of privacy rather we have the violence of exposure, so yea, just like all human anmials, some of us are messy, dirty, sick, we need a toilet, we have belongings and medicine and sometimes we use substances, just like you, the only difference, everyone sees us doing these things. Our lives are exposed.

Our lives and back-stories are messy, filled with violence and colonial-named bad choices, self-medicating substance use and service resistance. We are fraught with all the dual diagnoses one human can hold. And everyone gets to see all of this. All the time. 

RoofLEss radio street workshop at Deshutes Encampment

“They come in the night, without warning and take all of our stuff, Miguel H said in Spanish, one of the literally hundreds of RoofLESS Radio reporters from Oakland and San Francisco that have reported to POOR Magazine when we do RoofLESS radio radical redistribution of tents, sleeping bags, food and medicine, which we have done since POOR’ Magazine’s inception, but increased to four days/night a week throughout the pandemic, because the settler politricksters never stopped sweeping our houseless bodies, and in fact in many cases increased the sweeps, and in the case of SF Mayor London Breed, resisted using the FEMA money to rent motel rooms, while peoples shelters (tents) in place were being stolen from them, or in Oakland’s case where an “encampment ban” was added to the hundred of laws already in place to criminalize poor people for being poor, and houseless people for being houseless. 

And because we have no access to a stable roof we are constantly grouped and kettled and contained into a monolith, The Homeless People -oftentimes even separated from the word People, into a criminalized, de-humanized object, “The homeless problem” used as fodder for settler colonial politricksters and huge non-profiteers. But, just like housed people, we are a multi-verse,with different opinions, perspectives, PTSD’s and struggles.  

In addition to a disproportionate amount of Black and Brown peoples, many unhoused peoples are poor and wite, elder and disabled, evicted and barely holding on by a thread. We have been in and out of krapitalist service models of “care” and “support” so-called “service provision”

From Occupied Squaxin Territory to Huchuin (Oakland) and Willow Street in San Francisco, housed people, pumped with all these lies about our "dirtiness" then start to blur the lines of dirty into "dangerous" . Like the savage mythos, once you have made our "dirtiness" into other that human,  our lives into a "group" and our actions into words like "erratic" or "crazy" or "bums"- now we are easily percieved as dangerous.

Fueled by all of these dehumanizing, classist, racist hate people resort to the solution they have all been taught,  calls to the poLice and then state agencies like CalTrans and Department of Public Works perpetrate these deadly sweeps.I say deadly holding Desirree Quintero killled by a falling branch in Santa Cruz after a sweep pushed her into a dangerous terrain and Shannon Marie Bigley, killed by bring run over by a DPW truck and so many more. 

“They make it illegal for your to sit, lean or even rest in Olympia,” said JX another powerfull RoofLESS radio reporter rom Occupied Squaxin territory telling his story of endless sweeps violence. “There is no housing, there is no services, but there is constant harassment from poLice and so-called residents,” JX concluded. 

Stolen land /Hoarded Resources UnTour Guides Across Occpued PAcific NorthWest Turtle Island

As houseless and poor folks and all of our economic justice advocates and organizers, we need to stop acting, naming and placing the blame solely on PoLice and policy, and face the sickkk fact that all kinds of housed and sadly even some of us unhoused people have accepted this colonial lie of dirty, messy, disorganized, and so-called failures.

“I went into rehab and then relapsed, and then went to prison and then came out and did rehab again and then went to prison,” CJ’ went onto explain a series of snares and relapses and treatment stints and more relapses. 

Non-profiteers and the therapy industrial complex- also needing our problems for their products asserts that our only problem is we don’t have access to treatment and “services” but oftentimes this explanation falls into what I call the Cult of Rehabilitation- always trying to “fix” us. Many of us have been in rehab and prisons, we have been studied and reported and saved and theorized and reSearched, incarcerated, criminalized and legislated against and yet like I have said multiple times, No matter how many times, you jail me , sweep me or study me, it doesn’t give me a home. Entire institutions like Stanford and UC Berkeley continue to conduct studies about our poverty, homelessness, racism and struggle. Yet there is never a conversation about self-determination. About “support” of what we are already doing- like the hashtag of an upcoming action- Support Not Sweeps.

Tiny ( wit Stevie K) inviting wealth-hoarders to radically redistribute their stolen and hoarded wealth so people without a roof can build their own solutions like Homefulness 

Non-profiteers continue to get huge grants to save us and CalTrans continues to Sweep us. But the reality is so many of us have made it clear we have our own solutions and many times those solutions are not perfect or complete, but they are what we are doing to stay alive and what we need is sovereignty and support to practice them. 

Talauna Reed, Warrior Shero from So-called Olympia 

“This is the Red Lion Motel where organizers rented rooms and occupied some to house unhoused folks in the middle of winter in a pandemic and then faced terrifying poLice violence of a brutal eviction with armed police officers which included the repeated tasing of the only Black houseless member of the group, that has left him disabled to this day and there is no accountability from the City or our mayor,” said Taluana Reed, a warrior Shero, powerful organizer and niece of Yvonne MacDonald who was killed and never properly investigated because she was a Black woman in Amerikkklan Instead officials pushed a false racist narrative and blamed Yvonne for her own death.

“I am running for office in this town to get some justice in this racist system.” Taluana explained to Black and Brown youth poverty skola reporters from Deecolonize Academy/POOR Magazine/Homefulness youth media mentorship who along with us adult poverty skolaz, all survivors of homelessness, poLice terror, sweeps, and gentriFUKation, are co-building Homefulness and were in so-called Olympia to bring the 2nd stop in a powerFULL Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Un-Tour thru Occupied Pacific Northwest Turtle Island. This Un-Tour made possible only thru the radically redistributed dollars of ComeUnity Reparators and the love -work of POOR family Lisa Ganser and Talauna Reed, Nomy Lam, Stevie Kampaus and Crystal Renee of So-called Olympia.

Homefulness is only made possible because we poor and indigenous poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine teach folks with race and class privilege about Radical Redistribution of their stolen and hoarded wealth and land in a seminar we do called PeopleSkool 

The point of our Un-Tours which we originally launched on MamaEarth day of 2016 is to unWash the Settler HIS-stories of Discovery, Racist lies of Safe, violent lies of rent and eviction and sweeps and removal and connect the dots of the settler-kkkolonial lies about so-called Private Property, PoLice Terror, CorpRape Extraction, Eviction, Removal, Criminalization and Desecration of MamaEarth, ancestors and all of us. 

Equating us with “the Jungle” is another colonial code for houseless, indigenous and poor people of color. The jungle-izing of humans has a long history of genocide of disabled and migrant/indigenous and African descendent peoples. Casually assigning  “savagery” or four-legged metaphors are on a contium with the missionary lies of our dangerousness and the urgent need of us to be "cleaned-up" cleared out and our removed completely. Of course this is all so extra evil when we poor and indigenous peoples know the real savages are the land stealers who stole Turtle Island. 

Its so disturbing to me how even so-called service providers in cities from so-called San Jose to so-called Olympia use these terms casually. Why we at POOR say no more about us without us media, art education and culture production. 

We also lift up poor and indigenous peoples solutions like Sogorea Te Land Trust, Homefulness, West Berkeley Shellmound, CobOnWood, Where Do we Go Berkeley, Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, Poor Peoples Army, Liveaboard Mariners, Camp Compassion,   Missing Murdered Indigenous Women #MMIW, and so many more poor and indigenous peoples unseen solutions and soverignty that have been being practiced for 528 years and before the multiple Wite Supermacist lies of Discovery, Akkkademia, Safety, Savioring, and Missioning caught so many of us in their lies . 

How our collective and ongoing struggles of homelessness, Sweeps, sacred site desecration, poverty, ableism, eviction, false border terror and poLice Terror are connected to Mama Earth and her earths peoples  being seen as a commodity to be bought and sold, profited off of and stolen from.

“We are on the street where the racist, classist mayor, who condones cover-ups , poLice terror and sweeps in this City lives, “ said Miguel, a revolutionary warrior for justice from so-called Olympia, who joined us on the powerFULL stolen land Un-tour as we humbly shared the medicine of radical redistribution, The Bank of ComeUnity Reparations and Homefulness with wealth-hoarders and land-stealers living in the occupied Squaxin with the offer of them attending the next degentriFUKation/Decolonization seminars of PeopleSKool.

“Get out of the street, poltrickster Selby of So-called Olympia shouted out to me and the other Un-Tour Prayer-bringers and guides after she almost ran over us with her car and then got out angrily and walked away from her car, leaving it in the middle of the road while poLice circled us on every block.

 “Here is information about PeopleSkool- its coming up in BlackAugust, I think you should register,” I shouted out to her, as she defiantly brushed past us 

Youth and family indigenous poverty skolaz on the 1st stop of this Stolen Land Tour, laying down prayers in the Danza Azteca tradition for Pomo relatives and ancestors to lift up their solutions and help stop the CorpRape extraction and removal of Old Growth Redwoods and ancestors bones 

The Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Un-Tour thru Occupied Squaxin Territory began as it often does with multi-nationed prayer from a sister prayer-bringer of Squaxin descent - Tamika Green,speaking/singing praying in Lushootseed, one of the first languages of Salish Tribes. Salish is the word for the so-called puget sound. There were also  powerful liberation words from sisStar warrior EarthFeather Soverign at a location I  call a “KlanMark” (my newest Tinyword- I like to mess wit the oppressors language) in this case it was a series of monolithic greco-roman structures called the Capitol- you know I re-named it The Krapitol.

“As we stand in front of this Colonial Cash register, lets be clear about the violence that is perpetrated by these people, “ said Greg Urquhart, an indigenous prayer-bringer and warrior medic with the South Sound Street Medics, talking about the so-called Washington Governor. Greg brought beautiful words and hand-drum medicine and ancestors songs of healing for us all.

“We are struggling with an ongoing threat of CalTans sweeps just for sleeping while houseless, I am an elder and disabled and this is exhausting, why don’t they just leave us alone,”  said a houseless resident of the Wood Street Collective, one of a powerful coalition of curbside communities that includes Where Do we Go Berkeley, Sea Breeze Encampment, Ashby Street  Encampment, Marin County Homeless Union/Liveaboard Mariners, Sacramento Homeless Union and Homefulness to name a few that are coming together to demand the end of this endless violence of criminalizing public land and houseless, roofless members of the “public” to ask for support like water and trash service, and to demand that  our own self-determined solutions to our problems like Cob On Wood and the Homefulness project, which is currently being blocked by the City of Oakland to finish 8 units of no rent housing for houseless families, built by houseless families, be allowed to thrive, open, live and be “approved”.

We poor, indigenous and houseless peoples aren't any dirtier than you and we don’t need to be cleaned or saved or swept or removed - we just need basic humane support serives so we can build our own.

Join us at two actions on Tuesday, June 22nd - at 2pm to demand Support Not Sweeps at CalTrans at 111 Broadway and then on the same day at 430pm at the Oakland City Hall to demand that Homefulness be Free to finish the 4 last homes us poor and houseless people have been building for the last 11 years even though the City of Oakland has done everything to stop us, charge us and block us and now 8 units of housing remain empty while houseless youth and families remain houseless.  

To read Stolen Trees, Stolen Land and Stolen Lives -Pt 1 of the Tour- click here To register or find out more about the next decolonization DegentriFUKation Seminar at Peopleskool go to www.racepovertymediajustice.org To watch a video from our last UnTour thru Akkkademia- click here To watch some of the powerFULL RoofLESS radio reports go to PoorNewsNetwork channel on Youtube 

Im getting weak tiny,” said Ronnie, “ Really not sure how long I will last in this heat. Ronnie X, a long time RoofLESSradio reporter called me from his torn tent pitched on the streets of East Oakland in September of 2020 when the Bay Area was experiencing severe heat wave. The hardest part for me is he refused to tell me where he was, “ I don’t want help, im done. ” and then he hung up.

I went to all the places he normally slept and couldn’t find him. I know his privacy was important, he never wanted to tell his story publicly but was always there for anyone else who needed help. He had lived through a long life of trauma and struggle, like all of us on the streets, was part of our JailsToStreets WeSearch as he had a home until he was profiled for being Black and disabled in amerikkklan. When he got out of the plantation kkkage he couldn’t jump the hoops to get back inside. Like so many of us you see on the street. And then living outside itself killed him.

So many privileged people and non-profiteers make a job and business and lifes work out of the so-called Climate change movement and they NEVER talk about poverty and homelessness - but the reality is as a houseless person I have been learning and humbly living on Mama Earth for years trying to be a good care-taker of her. As the daughter of Taino indigenous, disabled woman I have learned how to walk softly on Mama Earth- Attaabey as Mama Earth is called in Taino and as instructed by my mama have learned and listened to 1st Nations and indigenous elders who have been taking care of Mama Earth for years before wite colonizers stole, desecrated and destroyed so much of it for their own profit and greed.

But like is always the case poor people from the Congo to California we are already and will be continue to be the ones suffering, dying, sickened and destroyed by the destruction of our Mama Earth.

In deference to his need for privacy i didnt speak on Ronnies tragic death until now, inspired by POOR Magazine family and povertyskola Lisa Ganser who told me yesterday about another poverty skola who just died in the heat wave of their stolen territorial home so-called Olympia, Washington - which just experienced a deadly heat wave.

Since 2006 us poverty skolaz have been writing, screaming and telling people about the impact of Mama Earth destruction on our poor and houseless bodies. But really no-one cares about us anyway so why should they care if we die outside from heat or cold exposure, smoke filled air, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. The violent scarcity models already in place causes us to get barely enough food, resources and support to stay alive - and in fact, work to take everything from us. The violence called sweeps continue on our exposed bodies and did all the way through a pandemic and are ramping up to get worse across California .

Once we are in these plantation cages, they let us die there too.

We are building our own solutions with natural, recycled trash and materials and no-one is listening. Cob on Wood, Liveaboard Mariners, Camp Commorant, Poor Peoples Army, Homeless Unions. We are growing our own gardens, building our own housing and deconstructing the lie of ownership - Sogorea Te Land Trust and Planting Justice, Self-Help Hunger Program and Homefulness. Sweeps continue, bulldozers keep bulldozing and permits (For Homefulness) are exorbitant and unaffordable, 

"They just came by and literally power-washed us off of Division street- where are we supposed to go, " said Miguel another RoofLEss Radio reporter. This power-washing of humans is nothing new, it used to happen to me and my mama when we were on the street houseless in San Francisco. But  with the backdrop of so-called Climate Change, and trying to be "green" its disgusting that these violent sweeps of our houseless bodies use these dangerous chemicals to literally wash us off the street

From West Oakland to the Mission, our poor bodies keep getting moved and evicted. And yet when beautiful solutions like Cob on Wood are created in the middle of recycling lot in West Oakland, the land-stealers and CalTrans and the Mayor endlessly threaten them with removal. 

When homeless peoples self-determined movements like Homefulness are created in Oakland, the permit gangsters descend to make it so costly to build houses for fellow houseless folks that we have to stop.

The settler colonial goals are to get rid of us, kill us and/or incarcerate us, so really why would they care if poor, disabled and indigenous people die from the impact of their endless extraction and destruction. IF anything we are just an obstacle, standing in the way of krapitalism, profiting off of mama earth This is why the indigenous resistance movements of Mauna Kea, West Berkeley Shellmound, MamaTreeSits by Pomo Nation, Line 3 pipeline, and Standing Rock are so important.  

“We are asking to meet with the Mayor (Of Sausalito) said one of the many houseless disabled elders who faced off bulldozers at “Camp Commorant” , a small encampment of houseless mariners whose boats were crushed before their eyes because the wealth-hoarders and land-stealers of Sausalito didnt like their old boats, and tagged them with the same blight notices they tag old homes in poor and black and brown neighborhoods and RV’s and cars we poor people sleep in when we have been evicted.

In the end as i try to teach to as many wealth-hoarders and land stealers and descendents of that theft and hoarding who want to walk differently in the world, that impacted peoples, disabled, houseless and poor, indigenous and 1st Nations have always been innovators and liberators and should be leading this work on so-called Climate Change,

I also must say again to everyone, even the land-stealers, that Mama Earth is not an infinite resource to be endlessly traded, destroyed and desecrated and if anyone want to learn back the humility that colonial policies and profit margins stole from us - hit this povertyskola up. Come to the next session of PeopleSkool.  There is no more space, time or air to continue to hoard and steal and destroy.