We stood strong youth and elders together walking, calling, singing manifesting spirit. The spirit of our African ancestors, our indigenous ancestors, our Freedom Riders, Our Freedom walkers, into the hallowed, marbled floors of City Hall to save another Black family from forced Out Migration.
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom land.
But this wasn’t 1967. This wasn’t Mississippi or Atlanta, South Africa, or Argentina- this was San Francisco and this was the new Freedom Ride. We were trying to save another Black family from eviction to make way for privatization and corporate profit-making. We were walking to save single mama Sabrina Carter and her three suns from an unjust, racist eviction from her housing to the streets. An eviction about to drop tomorrow at 5:00am
Ain't gonna let no Devil-opers turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let no Devil-opers turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom land.
“You can’t sing in here, you are constituting an unlawful assembly” As we walked , 30 deep, youth, adults, elders, singing the spirit, we were stopped by three sheriffs who said we were in fact, an unlawful assembly because we were singing.
:”I thought this was our constitutional right to free speech, to free song,” I said.
“No, you are protesting, therefore you are an unlawful assembly.”
“We aren’t protesting, we are singing,” I continued to say
Then more sheriffs came. They talked among themselves. They had guns, and batons. We had our voices. We were walking spirit of our ancestor freedom fighters inside the politrickster-infested walls of soul-ed out peoples of color, trying to get mines, capitalist pawns and apologists of the ruling class.
“Where are you going?”
“To see the Mayor”
“Well you can’t see the Mayor if you are singing, You can’t protest in this building,” As the man with the badges and the guns spoke, the walls shook. The floors, trembled. The statues of politricksters past shook slightly on their marble podiums. Mama Sabrina’s face shook with tears, her strong young 10 year old and 17 year old suns looked down as they stood valiantly by her.
Ain't gonna let no Greedy Landlords turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let no Greedy landlords turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom land.
“Well, if we can’t sing we are going to speak. We can speak right? Sister, freedom fighter, and POOR Magazine family member Theodora Mayes took her fierce voice of spirit and resistance and began whispering the words into the walls, alongside our spirits, our orixas, our Creator, our hope.
Ain't gonna let Privatizers turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let Privatizers turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom land.
We walked up the marble stairs. In unison. One step, one note, one less Black family forced out of this stolen Ohlone land because of the greed of devil-opers MacCormack & Barron who “manage” the Plaza East Apartments in the increasingly wite and rich Fillmore district of San Francisco, which used to be a powerful Brown, Black and working-class community before 1960-70’s re-devil-opment.
And then we were at the top of the stairs and our whispers rose to the rafters and our voices rose into the heavens.
Ain't gonna let Privatizers turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
“I gave you a direct order, You can’t sing in here, I will have to escort you out now,”
So we started to speak again, we spoke about eviction, about Negro Removal, about redlining, about racial profiling and criminalization of our children, about the history of out-migration of Black families, about the greed and theft of stolen Ohlone land, about the re-devil-opment of our people,, about wealth hoarders and wealth hoarding enablers like Mayor Lee, Newsome and Brown before him who invited large corporation after another into this City, giving them tax breaks and corporate welfare benefits and other gifts to lure them here ending us in the wholescale eviction of so many of our people. The RAD ( Rental Assistance Demonstration) which is the selling off all public housing buildings in the country to private investors, about the fact that we have nowhere to go. That we have nowhere to go, that Sabrina and her babies will be evicted tomorrow and she has nowhere to go.
“Do you have something for the Mayor,?” Suddenly in the middle of our deep truth-telling another tall man from the mayors office asked us what we had for the Mayor. We gave him our demand notice
DEMAND FOR CONSCIOUS FROM MAYOR ED LEE - in the name of Uncle Al Robles, Uncle Bill Sorro and all of our ancestors who Ed Lee, the activist, fought alongside in the struggle for the Intl HotelCall off the Unjust Eviction of Sabrina Carters Family from the Plaza East Apartments
Sabrina Carter and seven other families were evicted from the Plaza East Apartments because of the criminalization of their children and to ready the buildings for RAD. You can intervene Mayor Lee and save 1 more African-American family from Forced Out-Migration under your watch to ready these buildings for RAD Funding
Landlord: MacCormack, Barron & Salazar Lawyers – Bornstein & Bornstein
After a few more minutes another man in a suit appeared, “I am Karl, I am here to listen, I will report this back to the Mayor,”
“We are here to call upon the conscious Mayor Lee, the Mayor who stood with other elder Chinese and Filipino tenants to fight off the devil-opers of the 70’s. Who cared about people. He can call this un-just eviction off, he can call one of the people he knows in the multi-national corporation MacCormack & Barron.
“Karl listened, He thanked us for remembering Mayor Lee’s conscious days. He said he will get back to us about Sabrina Carter’s family. He said he didn’t know if Mayor Lee could stop the eviction but they would see what they could do.
We walked down the stairs. We sang the spirit of our ancestors out of the building. We held our hearts, we walked our bodies, we raised our voices in resistance until this family received justice.
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom land.
We are asking the community to please call the mayor and ask them to intervene and stop the eviction of the Sabrina Carter Family. (415) 554-6141. As well POOR Magazine’s Revolutionary Legal Advocacy Project (Jailhouse lawyers outside of jail without a degree) are trying to do a last minute emergency legal maneuver to save this family from the street.
