There are so many more terrorizing things in this povertyskolaz’ life than a virus….
Before you read on, please turn your phone, TV,Radio or Computer off for just a minute. Take a deep breath and give your CorpRapeMedia terrorized mind a rest.
After that breather, I ask you to understand and overstand that just like before there was a terrorizing thing called a “Corona” virus, there was a crisis called homelessness, poverty, poLice terror, racism, femicide, displacement, incarceration, false borders, gentriFUKation, scarcity and Mama Earth extraction/destruction, all stemming from the violent diseases of colonization and what I affectionately call krapitalism. All of which cause the death, sickness and harm to many people including Mama Earth
And as I know most of you conscious readers know, just because of the terrifying moment we are in of Covid19/Corona these other issues have not disappeared - in fact all of us communities impacted by violent scarcity models and colonial violence are not only still here but are also impacted by this illness terror and impacted even worse than you might be, especially if you are not incarcerated, not living with a disability, not on a non-existent or fixed income and are currently safely housed, with roofs, and wifi access and computers and working vehicles and dry blankets and beds and utilities and access to healthy food and sanitation.
And as you take a break from the consumption of all of these terror-filled, action -free messages about an illness that many of us will never have, please remember that as humans we all have this magical thing called an immune system - which has protected us for our whole lives from other murderous diseases and bacterias. And finally that this global pandemic of terror and panic actually suppresses our immune system so its actually bad for our health and heart to be endlessly in panic and terror mode.
“Yo tengo miedo,” an elder who I take care of for one of two only paid gigs I have to support my family spoke to me on the phone. Telling me she has been so scared she hasn’t even gone to the pharmacy to get her medicine. And she didnt want me to come and treat her cause I might be bringing the virus with me. Elders and poor folks are absolutely terrorized with the droning on by CorpRape media of this terror message.To what end?
I do question the droning CorpRape terror message and its relationship to the disaster krapitalist profiting off of Big Pharma’s eventual vaccine and the endless purchase of “survival gear”.
Meanwhile all of us poor folks, houseless and barely housed, who survive on the edge, with or without a virus, of this broken, stolen society, are barely taking in what we need to eat and feed our families and pay rent and survive right now.
So many low and no-wage workers who people never see are being laid off, stopped from working or just not called in to work.
“Im out here now because I got laid off,” said Mike Z a RoofLESS radio reporter who just became unhoused this week in Oakland after not getting called to work for three weeks straight due to “CoronaVirus” work stoppages. RoofLessRadio at POOR Magazine serves food and grassroots, poor people-led media every week at encampments in East Oakland.
And that one of the most terrifying things about getting terrorized is our default to other very serious and murderous processes like isolationism, ableism, fascism, racism and scarcity models that can kill us all, with or without an illness of any kind.
From the weird silent anti-Asian messaging and not patronizing of restaurants to the constant ableist and classist messages we are receiving, assuming we all have hand-washing stations ( even if we live outside and have no running water) Stay inside messages (even if we have no inside to stay in). Social distancing, stay inside and stay away messages even if we rely on peoples care, medicine, doctors visits and support to stay alive, and equally important, to stay sane. Social distancing sounds bizarrely like social anxiety, a very real disability, bu is used in this context to institutionalizes isolation in a creepy fear of Black/Poor/Different planet kind of way that actually sounds like so much tech-bro speak by people who don’t care about people in the first place
The funny, not funny thing is, in krapitalism, we are already propagandized into what I call the Away-nation. We are already sold and told on western-wite, hetero-patriarchal notions of individualism, isolation and separation, from our families, our cultures, our villages and communities. Because alone, separated, individualistic people make good and constant CONsumers and gentriFUKErs who endlessly have to buy products like new blankets and dishes and shelves, rent, buy, seize more and more of mama earth ( property) and hoard and hoard and never give back.
Herstory and Fascism and Hoarding
Throughout herstory, panics have happened over mass illnesses, and emergencies and that is also when fascism can easily show its ugly, the unknowing leads to more suspicion and greed and suddenly people who were all talk and no walk get more self-centered and somehow people who talked a good game about “helping and serving” people no longer give two cents about anyone but themselves.
The non-profit industrial complex shutters its doors, the people with homes and trust funds and credit cards stay home and hoard and the rest of us are still outside with less access and more hate than we had before. Plantation prisons put little or no precautions in place and act worse than they were already acting to people stuck inside their unjust walls.
Action not fear
Bottom line is we are still here, elders and families who are homeless, incarcerated Black and Brown and poor people not getting medical treatment, proper food or any kind of safety and thousands of unhoused people getting criminalized. To address these issues, just like before there was a virus, things need to be done. And just like our front-line medical professionals, this is when we need people to get active. Radically redistribute your hoarded cleaning supplies, wipes and latex gloves and masks.
Show up for the elders who are terrified of going outside. Make sure the poltricksters put up porta potties (like the ones unhoused North Oaklanders at the Self-help Hunger Program has been fighting for for years) hand washing stations, trash pick-ups, stop violent sweeps and equally violent evictions like Dean Preston in San Francisco and the Mayor of San Jose proposed. Insist the Plantation prisons protect and provide sanitation for the peoples still inside their plantation walls. Radically and actively move hoarded and stolen wealth and stolen land to poor and indigenous peoples so we can build back our self-determined solutions like Homefulness, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Here/There and Where Do We Go Berkeley.
In these times, indigenous, landless, homeless peoples own self-determined solutions rooted in ancient life-ways and liberation models are what will “Save” the day not because we are saviors, but because w aren’t working for a paycheck, a medal of honor or a lygislation, but we are working for each other, inter-dependently, like we always have, like we always do, to get what needs to be done, done.
Please Radically redistribute your hoarded sanitation, cleaning and healing supplies to POOR Magazine/Homefulness by or before March 24th. RoofLESSradio at POOR Magazine and United Front Against Displacement will be launching a series of Self-determined Healing, Sanitation and Cleaning Supplies Distribution days at unhoused encampments and with unhoused and very poor communities across the Bay Area (Oakland and San Francisco) beginning March 25th. For more information please email poormag@gmail.com.