During these holiday seasons we want to bring in the new year with your support so that we may continue to build walls and roofs for houseless folks; so that we may continue to school our youth, traumatized by poverty, displacement and disability; and so that we may continue to build and empower our community through financial aid, radio, print media, and storytelling.
As Poor Magazine always says, Homefulness was built with a prayer and story. We believe in community solutions and collaborating with community who have race, education, and/or class privilege, to support those of us who struggle every single day with the realities of immigration, poverty, and displacement. In hopes of supporting people in a sustainable way, we officially launched the Bank of CommUnity Reparations, the first bank that doesn’t loan money, but gives it to the people who need it most. This direct approach is crucial, because in crisis, the last thing poor folks need is a bunch of papers to sign and hoops to get through to access basic needs.
This year, one of our community members reached out to us as her friend was in deep sadness around her landlord trying to evict her and her water shutting off. This deep East Oakland mama with four children and one grandbaby on the way needed $600 to pay off her water bill. According to Section 8 code if a tenant cannot keep up with their utilities, that is grounds for forced removal of the home and the loss of Section 8. If her water got cut off she would face forced removal from her home and the loss of Section 8. Within days, we raised the money and cut a check to this mama and her water did not get shut off.
Last month, a community disabled elder, who is also on Section 8, was being illegally evicted from his home. Through the CommUnity Bank of Reparations and legal support from our Jailhouse lawyer, we were able to save his housing.
These examples are just two recent ones. We have hundreds of stories. Our model has been spreading across Turtle Island and reached as far as India.
In the coming year, we need your help to complete Phase Five of Homefulness as we finish building this housing for our unhoused and formerly unhoused elders and children. We have now specifically received a notice from permit gangsters that we need to complete the whole project by Feb of 2020 or will need to pull all new permits (more Politrickster Gangsterism- which we will be launching a fight against FOR sure!!!) but we also need your support to build Homefulness Houses while we continue to educate houseless and formerly houseless youth in DeeColonize Academy in our street-writing workshops at encampments and so much more!
We believe that your gift is not a coincidence. You are reading this letter because our ancestors are working together to create a new model of living. From Houselessness to Homefulness-- these are the houses, banks, books and media that poor people built. EVERY single part of it is hard and beautiful and unspeakably challenging and a struggle and strange and almost impossible and each day we pray for its completion. And we cannot do it without your help.
In prayer, resilience, and gratitude -
POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/DeeColonize Academy/Homefulness Families
Over the span of THIS year, these are SOME of the things we have accomplished, in no particular order: (more at the on-line version of this letter available at www.poormagazine.org)
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PUBLISHED OUR FIRST TEXT BOOK, POVERTY SCHOLARSHIP- POOR PEOPLE-LED THEORY, ART, WORDS & TEARS ACROSS MAMA EARTH: A poor people theory book release was launched with a reading at City Lights bookstore and then went on a book tour with 6 poverty skolas and 12 akkkademia infiltration workshops across Turtle Island from Tennessee to Columbia University in NY to St. Petersburg, FL to Los Angeles. $4,000 of books sold and all proceeds from book sales and book tour workshops went to Homefulness.
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PUBLISHED FOUR OTHER POWERFUL POVERTY SCHOLARSHIP BOOKS: Skeletal Black, Ishy-Me Stranger Danger Saga, Making of Aunti Volume 2 and Krip Hop Graphic Novel Volume 1 were published.
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LAUNCHED THE COMMUNITY BANK OF REPARATIONS with Solidary fam from POOR Magazine moving in SERIOUS LIBERATION - so that Po Mamaz Reparations Fund & Radical Redistribution Fund could support Houseless mamaz with Motel rent, Water bills of po mamaz could be paid, monthly rent could be paid- elders facing evictions could be un-evicted - and on and on.
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LIBERATED AND LOVED ON TWO MORE YOUNG INDIGENOUS MEN OF COLOR from the InJustice system through powerFULL work of DeeColonize Academy Liberation School, as well as successfully transferred core leadership to a young poverty skola/African Descendent teacher/leader Jason.
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CREATED TWO ISSUES OF DECOLONEWZ: Our student newspaper, the newest one is on Black Land Theft from Oakland to the Amazon- led by youth and with family.
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OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED PNN-KEXU 96.1FM - Po Peoples Revolutionary Radio Station- with weekly revolutionary radio programs by Joey Villareal (Pelican Bay Plantation prison poverty skola reporter/commentary); Slave revolt radio by elder Black poverty skola Gerald; KRIP HOP radio on race and disability; Po Peoples Newz hour; Voces de Inmigrantes en Resistencia- a bilingual, indigenous radio; youth poverty skola radio, with young afro-indigenous formerly homeless youth; & RoofLESS radio with unhoused poverty skolaz across this occupied Bay Area & with more to come.
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LAUNCHED WESEARCH ON THEFT OF TENTS with ROOFLess radio reporters in Occupied Yelamu (SF) and Huichin (Oakland)- 7 teacher/Mamas/Youth and Families spearheaded by SisSTAR poverty skola teacher Junebug.
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LAUNCHED AN EXTENSIVE WESEARCH REPORT by intergenerational poverty skola mamaz and youth on the hoarded vacant and across occupied Huchuin (Oakland).
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HOMEFULNESS FINALLY GOT THE $29,000 FIRE SPRINKLERS. It was SUCH A RACKET, with endless hidden fees, and us pushed to the bottom of the list of priority "jobs" for the one of three contractors available to do this work- and the Luxury SRO which will house another unhoused poverty skola POOR family is almost done!
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HELD THE SCAMLORDS B SCAMMING PROTEST for elders and aunties and black residents of Oakland being gentriFUKEd out of Oakland.
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HELD THE PRESENCE, PRAYER AND PROCESSION of the housed for the unhoused, where people with the privilege to be housed in gentriFUKation Bay Area came out to Oakland and SF City Halls to show support for their houseless neighbors and say no to sweeps of houseless people- which are done in their name
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OPENED THE UNCLE AL/MAMA DEE LIVING LIBRARY a free library for the Homefulness & the BlackArthur Come-Unity of Deep East Hucuin (Oakland) - which doubles as the Pnn-Kexu 96.1fm-Po Peoples Revolutionary radio/TV studio filled with small collections of books by Poverty, Indigenous/Migrant/Disabled Skolaz as well as collections of Raza Studies, Women's Studies, Black Studies and Indigenous Studies Skolaz and Youth fiction and poetry
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STOLEN LAND TOUR THRU TECH Truth is scarier than fiction- and the truth is Marc Benioff evicted 125 houseless people from the transbay terminal to build the shiny new saleforce headquarters, then donated $30 million to “study” homelessness without giving a dime to housless people- we as unhoused peoples have already been studied, examined, surveyed and swept- now cut us a check!!
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ROOFLESS RADIO street-writing workshops on both sides of the bay with vehicular housed residents and people living in encampments
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POVERTY SKOLAZ THEATER PRODUCTION- A Free three week bi-lingual Theatre workshop that includes a stipend, healthy meals and inclusion in a play of the same name- tour and play has happened so far in LA and San Francisco
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POOR PRESS 2019-2020 class launched at POOR for poverty skolaz to write and publish their books
AND SO MUCH MORE!