From UC Berkeley to UC Hastings /Peoples Park to the Tenderloin Colleges Steal & Hoard Land, Lives and resources
Akademik Land Theft, Desecration and the Dorm Industrial Complex -
by tiny
It was 5am- the sky was charcoal Black with barely some moon creeping in. After i adjusted my eyes the sight was terrifying. At least 20 armed poLice officers standing behind poLice tape glaring at a tent while a houseless man hurriedly tried to collect his things and another man in a florescent vest with huge electric drill pounded in a 9-10 foot chain link fence into the tiny stretch of herstoric mama Earth known as Peoples Park in Berkeley, Ca
"They said they are soil testing," said Michael Delacor, one of the handful of revolutionaries who showed up to kopwatch and document this bizarre scene.
a reference, a brush stroke, a photo, an exhibit, a dream to be studied, theorized, painted over, documented and/or forgotten and erased completely as though we were never here.... excerpt from POOR Magazine's GentrifUKation Tours R US-manifesto spoken at sights across Turtle Island of poor people removal
As i stood there on that freezing cold, dark morning my heart was heavy with the the ongoing land, housing and human theft, murder and desecration caused by huge universitites like UC Berkeley and UC Hastings, Stanford, Temple and many more and their adjoining complicit town poltricksters. In Berkeley, long known for its mislpaced progressive reputation because of the revolutionary histories of anti-war movement, free speech, and anti-apartheid struggles, is one of the leading akademik insitutions currently causing removal of houseless and working class people so it can feed its ongoing and hungry need of what i call the Dorm Industrial Complex,
Once samples are collected the closed areas of the park will reopen. At no time will the entire park be closed...Flyer distributed entitled Soil Analysis at Peoples Park.
"They are always coming up with some new bullshit to take this park away from the people, we know this EIR (Environmental Impact Report) is just more of that," concluded Delacor.
GENTRIFUKATION TOURS “R” US exists to document the theft, reclaim & take back the stolen spaces, memories, images, pictures, lives and dreams.
Since i was a pre-teen and me and my mama were struggling with houselessness in Berkeley, Oakland and SF, i heard about the fight for Peoples Park, led by radical lawyers, revolutionaries, yippies and hippies like Mchael Delacor, Carol Denney, Osha Neuman and many more. .In the case of a young woman named Rosebud, shot by poLice in 1992 when she broke into the chancelors office decades to resist the land theft with a note that demanded the end of the construction police officers with dogs entered the house, where one shot and killed Rosebud. In the case of revolutionary lawyer David Nadel, he was conveniently "shot" outside a club he ran in Berkeley, while he was struggling for Peoples Park liberation.
"The people built Peoples Park, with an orginal land take - over of abandoned land decades ago, and UC Berkeley has been trying to take it back since the beginning, " said revolutionary lawyer and muralist Osha Neuman ( who also broke this poverty skola out of jail for the crimes of being houseless when i was a teenager with my mama Dee) "Thats what my mural is about," concluded Osha talking about the beautiful mural of herstory that can be seen on the back end of the Amoeba Records wall that faces Haste street near Telegraph avenue.
There has been oVer 50 years of struggle including riots, where people were shot and resisted the fences put up by UC Berkeley, resisting the attempts to put volleyball courts and in general to try to turn Peoples Park into dorm housing- now they are saying they will be putting up "transitional housing" on the site of Peoples Park, which has even gotten the support of Berkeley City Council members ( Poltricksters) , so the fight has never stopped.
There are many young warriors, students and revolutionaries who held a rally on Friday after the insane fencing who, like their foremothers and fathers took that fence down and delivered to the UC Berkeley campus....
In addition to Peoples Park the ever- hungry jaws of UC Berkeley, is stealing, desecrating existent homes. Tenants at 1921 Walnut St. were told that UC Berkeley has decided to go ahead and tear down their 112-year-old rent-controlled building in order to use the land as part of a planned massive housing project for transfer students.
This all with ongoing housing shortages in Berkeley for low-income and disabled tenants.
We houseless, very poor, indigenous, Black and Brown San Francisco residents hereby demand that UC Hastings, an "elite" law school located in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, who sued the City and County of San Francisco about its "homeless problem" give-back one of the many buildings they "bought" to houseless people so we can build our own solutions to our homelessness. Excerpt from POOR Magazine's LandBack Proposal to UC Hastings who has contracted with private poLice to conduct 24/7 "sweeps" of houseless people in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco that surround the three blocks of the Tenderloin, that they "bought" to build Dorm Housing
Sadly , this is not relegated to Berkeley, From Temple University to USC this land theft is common to Akdemik institutions who like one of my poems says "Study About us Without US" in other words , get rid of us pesky humans in poverty but still build entire degree programs based on "geography, sociology, poverty, social work, law and disability" to name a few, but don't want to make space for the actual people who they are constantly studying, "researching" lecturing and writing thesis projects about.
In San Francisco, POOR Magazine houseless, indigenous, disabled, adults and elders who are teachers and visonaries of orginal theory called "Poverty Scholarship, Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth led one of our herstoric Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Tours to the buildings of University of California, Hastings who has "bought" over two blocks of a traditionally poor people of color neighborhood, aka the Tenderloin so it can build hundreds of units of "student housing" with a #LandBack proposal, naming that if you dont want to see us poor and houseless people, most of whom are disabled and Black, then give us back one of the buildings you just "bought" so we can build our own Homefulness project, ( like we are currently manifesting in Deep East Occupied Huchuin /Oakland, with 1st Nations leadership and no lie of rent)This Landback proposal is part of a concept we hare actively leading and teaching called ComeUnity Reparations which is something us poverty skolaz teach to young people with race, class and formal education privilege. For us as poor and houseless people our theory and teaching always translates into solutions, not just more studying.
We also proposed this to the mayor of San Francisco, who was telling the thousands of Shelter in Place tenants in motels that they had to leave their motel rooms in the middle of a pandemic, (which as of press time, continues to put us off) while hundreds of motels remain vacant in a pandemic.
This poverty skola has written and lectured extensively on poor and indigenous people led land reclamation and is one of the houseless mama visionaries of Homefulness and as well has taught folks with race and class privilege the lies of what i call the Away Nation, the krapitalist lure of "college" thousands of miles away from your homes and elders so you can pay akademia thousands of dollars to live in temporary housing that is now causing the displacement of the very people you came to college to Help, Save, Learn about, Study and research. It is an amazingly successful pyramid scheme that is drummed into your youth through the forces of krapitalist media, education and society. Even in a pandemic you have people living in Dorms. One of the powerfull lessons of PeopleSkool which we do twice a year and Poverty SCholarship is reverse this violence and begin a process of Land Back and ComeUnity Reparations, rather than continue flying to cities to study and save us - and in the process, gentriFUK, remove and lead to the death of us.
We are proposing that UC Berkeley/US Hastings administration grant our LandBack proposals rooted in comeUnity Reparations us so that houseless, very low-income and disabled residents of Berkeley and the Tenderloin can be permanently housed with their own solutions. Stay tuned for the next Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Tour thru Occupied Huchuin - UC Berkeley
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