By Leroy F. Moore Jr.
I have been blessed since 1998 when Tiny and her mother Dee saw me at the Berkeley Rep Theater during the hey day of spoken word and the the Bay Area’s spoken word scene to not only start one of the first online columns on race and disability called Illin-N-Chillin after the police shooting of a Black woman with mental health disability, Marget L Mitchell of LA. Since that time it seems I continue to walk beside Poor Magazine learning from them and putting their education to work when it comes to people with disabilities. Tiny and I realized at an early stage that Disability and Poverty went hand in hand but the shame kept it hush hush.
The second thing I learned from Poor Magazine was to have control over your own destiny. That’s when Gary N Gray and I started Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, DAMO and like Poor Magazine had Po’ Poets DAMO had New Voices: Disabled Poets & Artists of Color. We also found out that the non-profit avenue was not our ticket to self determination! We also created our own ways of making decisions with the creation of family elders council which is one of the many elements of the medicine to Never call the poLice which a lot of people talk about but we manifest and have manifested together since 1996 after DAMO and Poor Magazine organized the first ever Senseless Crimes Open Forum after the police shootings of Black Disabled young men in San Francisco.
Even Krip-Hop Nation started at Poor Magazine and that's when I once again learn from Tiny and started to create words, terminology and theory following in the footsteps of words like Poverty Scholarship came Krip-Hop, Black Ableism and Afro-Krip, etc.
Poor Magazine published my first book entitled, Black Disabled Man with a Big Mouth & High I.Q. in 1998 and then went on to publish two Moore books and once again Krip-Hop’s founders learned from Poor Magazine and Keith Joes created his own press, Soulful Media Works.
Almost like Homefulness of Poor Magazine, Krip-Hop Nation wants to build on a lot smaller scale in what we call the Krip-Hop Institute. It will be a place of learning in the community and will house two of its founders and be a venue for cultural expression. In a strange way Leroy is going to the roots of the founders of Poor Magazine in the Fall of 2021 as I enter in academia at UCLA where Dee tried to get in and where Tiny was raised, on the streets of LA.
Poor Magazine will always be one of my Foundations to keep me grounded even in the academy in LA.
Thank you Poor Magazine!
Leroy F. Moore Jr.
4/21/21