Cuz my knowledge don’t come from the institution
So How can we Abolish PoLice- when yo racist & classist neighbors
Don’t think twice
Bout calling, hating, sweeping - bating
Us houseless mamas/workers/ survivors when we r sitting, standing or just waiting
Abolish PoLice ?
When Middle class people hide behind the myths of Nice?
To go back to overstand & Unpack the cult of the Karens - we must overstand the cult of the Carings
Anti-social workers began in business with the PoLice & Prisons - like they are now
For Abolition to be a solution-it cant cause more poor peoples oppression
For abolition to be a solution it must free up the witepeoplelies about the absence of us from your middle class eyes
For abolition to be a solution we must not look to institutions that separate, preDate and destroy poor families all the time
For abolition to be a solution- it must be a poor people-informed revolution
Filled with sideways, indigenous life-ways - prayer , poetry and all kinds of surviving/thriving/ & liberating without more othering, silencing charity and savioring
Today’s message from a poverty skola is dedicated to poverty disability skola James Craft who wasnt killed by poLice two weeks ago and all the warriors against poLice terror who might not understand and overstand that the Social Work industrial complex has acted in tandem and on their own to predate, separate and criminalize poor and houseless families - poor black, brown and indigenous elders and black and brown , indigenous and poor wite youth. And that poor peoples theory is a necessary part of un-colonizing our minds from the lie of poLice safety.
As many in the Bay Area know an elder Black, disabled war veteran and resident of San Francisco, James Craft was surrounded by over 35 poLice officers and stuck on a street corner for over 8 hours two weeks ago following a Karen/gentriFUKer (poLice) call claiming Mr. Craft was holding a “weapon” and looked “menacing” classic code-words for being Black, Disabled and Poor in amerikkklan. The “weapon” was a small metal pipe - which he held whenever he was outside by accounts of other long-term neighbors who knew him, the menacing was him having a mental health crisis, and/or just being him.
“There were two DPH ( Department of Public Health) workers called in and neither of them did anything,” except stand by the kkkops” said Jeremy Miller, POOR Magazine Poverty skola and co-founder of CopWatch SF to Po Peoples Radio .
In the end Mr Craft was not killed mostly because of trained kkkop-watchers and poverty skolaz like Jeremy and over a hundred witnesses who were also present due to Black Lives Matter protest re-routing their march to the area. So this is a success of sorts, but how bout a complete change of that scenario, no PoLice, No useless DPH workers and no Karen-calls.
To begin with the end of the culture of the Karens we must go back to the origins of the Carings- aka the Caring Industrial complex known as the “settlement” houses, which were the original iterations of group homes, “closed placements” shelters and jails, these early anti-social workers were in business with the police like they are now. Getting “referrals” for “criminals” which were always poor, disabled people, often times immigrants or indigenous people that they had already forced off their lands and were now setting up with free and easy alcohol access so the early day sheriffs and kkkops could arrest them.
When the Ugly laws were introduced ( making it illegal to be unsightly/disabled and begging in public) the anti-social workers were the ones benefiting, the ones urging the poLice to pick up their future clients and bring them to the settlement houses.
These evil roots progressed into the roots of the Roosevelt launched “New Deal”-created for wite widows of war veterans aka the deserving poor, which the welfareQueens uncovered in 2006, which is pretty much the same today with some racist tweeks created in the 60’s. WQ- which is a theatre and action project of POOR Magazine documented this through the telling of our own lives dependent on state aid, struggling, surviving through endless racist ,classist norms of what and who shoudl be a parent, how and where we should be parents and how our lives and choices were automatically viewed as suspect at best, criminal at worst.
And then there is the way the so-called “public” views poor, houseless, disabled and poor people. I intentionally left POC and indigenous out of the last list, cause like my sister Jewnbug says, Poverty is a culture. Like Audre Lord says, Class Matters, and like I say, poverty is real, so yea, our loudness, our children, our life-styles, our hoopties, our stresses and our struggles are often “incomprehensible” to middle and land-stealing classes. We are often seen as annoying, a bother, messy, dirty, and/or violent when all we are is convening. As a houseless person, its whole nother level.
As houseless people we don’t even have what I call the “privilege of privacy” and struggle with the violence of exposure, so all of our belongings and lives are on display for people to judge, hate, sweep, and profile. And in the case of disabled peoples, again our ways of being are automatically seen ( or unseen) as strange, scary, or other and when you bring the ways that houselessness, disability and culture intersect with deep racist amerikkklan violence our lives are absolutely in danger.
Witness Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat and Steven Taylor, both houseless, disabled and of color in the public, ending in their poLice murder.
Poverty Scholarship and PeopleSkool urgently needed in all non-poLice trainings
So to take a scenario, If a person is having a mental health crisis due to all kinds of reasons us poor, houseless and disabled peoples have break-downs; a scam lord threat or an eviction notice, a fight with someone we love, a sweep, aka removal of our belongings while we are living on the street, to name a few, or even more dangerous for families, a social workers referral to CPS/APS and courts systems, or even a community person who is maybe trained in de-escalation, but as my mama dee says, never missed a meal, might end in their death, incarceration or family separation. It is why I say the cult of the Caring- Not just cult of the Karens.
And sometimes, there is nothing you can do. Period. Sometimes, no matter how messy, how escalated or how angry we are we need to be left alone. Just like people inside, we need to not be “intervened” with.
In so many cases of so-called “Well-Checks” it is the reason we as poor , disabled and POC peoples end up dead. Being “escalated”, Black, and a poverty skola like our beautiful Trans SisSTAR Kayla Moore, who was living in low-income housing as a formerly houseless, disabled poverty skola, was perceived as “violent” because she was having a mental health crisis, because of the structurally racist, ableist and classist gaze of the poLice.
Similarily, Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat, as an indigenous houseless man was considered “violent” just because he was houseless and brown and doing what he always did in a wite, middle -class, gentriFUKEd public space.
In our work manifesting the Elephant Council ( the way POOR Magazine has made sure to stay PoLice/kkkorts and State Mandated reporter free for the last 22 years) we have had literally dozens of “encounters” with ourselves in our multi-generational villages of folks living newly inside and so many still outside, that include actual violence, escalations, extreme depression, and threats to children, elders and adults. The Elephant Council, as we teach on in the How To Not Call PoLice EVER workshops has always dealt with these mulittude of crisis interactions in our Poverty Scholarship -informed ways and have managed to take care of escalations, violence and trauma, which as poor and colonized peoples we sadly perpetrate often on each other and our children.
Im so excited by MH response group that is being born out of Anti-PoLice Terror project and the community response teams being planned for Seattle, and all the anti-police movements coming up now in cities across this stolen land but in all of these cases I hope that Poverty Scholarship specifically is sought out, rather than just a flip to the Social Work Industry, which is NEVER poverty Scholarship Informed.
The Anti-Social Work industry (which we teach on in PeopleSkool) is rooted in wite- hetero-patriarchal theory and our lives as poor, houseless and traumatized people is rarely if ever overstood by Anti-Social Workers or even conscious, middle -class care-givers and so PoLice or not, our bodies, lives, children and families are always at -risk of separation, mis-diagnosis and increased trauma without a deeper grasp of Poverty Scholarship, which for us poor people is “our Life”
PeopleSkool’s next DeGentriFUKation/Decolonization Seminar where we teach, speak and share Poverty Scholarship will be on Zoom on Saturday BlackAugust 29th & 30th - register at www.racepovertymediajustice.org To get a E-book or Physical copy of Poverty Scholarship- Poor People-Led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth go to www.poorpress.net
To schedule one of our workshops for your street-corner, church,comeUnity or University classroom/zoom-room email poormag@gmail.com