(Ancestors mural at Homefulness on BlackArthur in deep East Occupied Huchuin /Oakland- cared for by Al Osorio, Prensa POBRE/POOR Magazine familia and member of the Oakland Chapter of the Brown Berets)
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Dedicated to Poverty Skola ancestors on Dia de los muertos...
From the United Snakes to Bangledesh
There are so many ancestor poverty skolaz - who names never get said-enuf
From Malcolm Samuel to Maria Moore to Papa Bear-
Never find them in Wite archives, libraries or
With elite Nobel prizes
No we at the corner sto-
In the recycling bins,
On the shelter beds and Resisting all the lies
We are fighting welfare workers - and for worker rights
We are in the assembly lines
And fighting for our equal pay and equal time-
We are in the encampments
And local struggles to be de-crimanalize homelessness and camping
We are squatting houses and refusing to take more shit
From hater bosses -
We are changing minds and demanding your time
And not giving up
NO MATTER WHAT
Todays message from a poverty skola on dia de los muertos/day of the dead is dedicated to all the deeply revolutionary change warriors and all the stories of liberation that get fetishized and selectively memorized, cleaned up and leeched out so that land-stealing and lying can continue on un-fettered in the way it continues to - Today is dedicated to all the rarely heard poverty skola ancestors who were walking liberation but no-one ever listened- to John Africa and MOVE Africa in philly- it wasn’t just the hater poLice and fake- ass poltricksters who worked to bring them down- it was also the hater neighbors- who couldn’t understand why they were moving differently- refusing to send their babies to institutional schools- composting before it was even Wite-Sexy - environmentalist to compost- and refusing to “go along with the demiCONs who might be his melanin but not his kin-
To Papa Bear- POOR Magazine panhandler reporter- who spoke, taught and schooled all the time about the ongoing WAR ON the poor and the fact that he was receiving citations for being houseless and black on San Franciscos streets and was rarely if ever listened as the skola/teacher he was -
To Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat who didnt ask for “help” but just asked to be humbly recycling as he always did and instead received that unwanted help by “savior” call from a gentriFUKEr in SF which led to his death by PoLice who answered the call -
To my Mama Dee who established original theory of Motherism, spoke and taught about the hetero-patriarchal krapitalist theories of counseling and psychology is how the away nation is created, how isolation is what we all struggle with and how we as humans have all been forced to become complicit in the violence of gentriFUKation and the violent disease of colonization. Who dreamed with me the vision that has now manifested 22 years later into Homefulness...
To my now ancestors sisSTAR Laure McElroy who co-founded Homefulness with all of us houseless, disabled and formerly houseless folks trying to build a self-determined solution to our own landlessness and was always saying people don’t get what we are doing because we are always 10 years in front of the curve and somehow people aren’t even ready to believe they can be manifested.
To Margret Mitchell, Desiree Quintero and Shannon Marie Bigley, all killed for being houseless women In this stolen land - for desperately trying to rest, to stay safe and to not be endlessly criminalized for the sole act of being houseless and poor.
To Uncle Al Robles and Uncle Bill Sorro and Felix Ayson- tenant leaders, advocates and poverty skolaz who refused to give up the idea that disabled elders in poverty should and must have access to safe secure housing where they would never risk eviction
To Jazzie Collins - a Black, Trans, Poverty Skola who kept all the ghetto love in her heart while also living into liberation, love-work and the dreams of all of us poverty skolaz to be respected and listened to and loved.
To so many incarcerated, disabled, bordered, unhoused, disrespected, and often shit-talked liberation warriors, land liberators throughout the generations more throughout herstory who rarely if ever are seen or heard- but who walk liberation in EVERY way and take bullets for their walk - For all of you out there - we poverty skolaz on this side of the journey are humbly walking with you who refuse to allow us to move the same way, who refuse to enable us to keep stealing and not seeing - loving but not liberating- and living but not listening -Ometeotl, Aho, Ibaye....