Standing in line on Bryant street, on San Pablo av on Waller Street, on Polk street, waiting, always waiting, for a poverty pimp, an institution, a social worker, to throw a overnite shelter bed crumb, a plate of food crumb or a tiny bit of cash assistance crumb, that for just that moment would ease the pain of 519 years of landless indigenous peoples theft, 45 years of my indigenous, orphan mama's colonization and loss, and 18 years of my mental destruction through poverty, houselessness and criminalization, until the next crumb must be thrown and the next line would need to be stood in. Some of this melted away on April 1st 2012.
As the people, self-determined, and un-pimped, sang, danced and chanted away criminalization pf poor peoples in Union Square by private security forces under the confusing moniker of Business Improvement Districts and then marched to take over a building on Turk st in San Francisco, in an action called The Poor Won't be Fooled Any Longer- a small moment of those hundreds of years of capitalist confusion and loss were chipped away from my tired soul.
After my mama and me had spent years of our life in and out of shelters, our cars, motels and market-rate apartments, our street hustling was never enough to afford, I was eventually incarcerated for the sole act of being houseless in AMerikkka. In my case that meant citations for sleeping in our vehicle.
After these many soul destroying experiences of poverty and criminalization it was long journey to consciousness. The begining of our revolution started with the creation of POOR Magazine, a poor people-led,indigenous people-led grassroots org. Once we started POOR Magazine we set about trying to realize our vision of HOMEFULNESS. Sadly San Francsico, is a theoretically progressive city with alot of pimps and controllers that ascribe to the idea that your legitmacy is tied to your relationship to "established Housing providers = translation, large, well-connected and well-funded housing providers. We had approached many of these, including a multitude of philathro-pimps with our poor people-led vision. One of the other we heard, "well, its a great idea, but you don't have the building, you don't have the money, or you don't have the political will" This last one always confused me.
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"We are meeting with the Archdiosese as soon as we can get some people to be in the house, because once we leave we won't be able to get back in," Beth, one of the folks who inhabited the abandoned building on Turk and Gough in San Francisco, spoke with me on Monday, April 2nd, "We are here and so far we are safe," she concluded.
The day before. Sunday, April 1st, the people went foreward. A building was taken back. A beautiful collaboration of Western Regional Advocacy Project, Homes Not Jails, OccupySF, Coalition on Homefulness and many more organizations s and people with PoorNewsNetwork mama, youth, elder and poverty skolaz rep-porting and sup-porting with our "without-a-bed-reporter" Bruce Allison in the building currently, moved on an abandoned building owned by the San Francisco Archdiosese. their goal was to turn it into a healing space and shelter, un-pimped and people-led. And just to be VERY clear, this kind of radical action did not begin with Occupy or anyone, Homes Not Jails (HNJ) has been doing it for awhile, taking back abandoned properties and giving them to the people. Recently HNJ has been helping people take back their homes from Bank-pimps who have been stealing properties with their rightful owners in a series of paper trails and real estate snakkes.
At 3:00 pm on Monday, April 2nd, POOR Magazine's Without-A-Bed reporter reported from the scene that without a clearance order, or any warning, Po'Lice in riot gear had surrounded the building and were arresting people and harassing wombyn protestors with threats of violence.
"What amazes me is that this building was used as a mental health treatment center for low-income people," said WRAP director Paul Boden when asked to comment on the Archdiosese sending in deadly force to "deal" with the protestors. AS earlier in the day ot was also reported that protestors had attempted to negotiate with the Archdiose to no avail.
For a very few minutes in herstory, the people resisted kkkapitalism and took back a Home. Now the people were incarcerated again and none of us were housed .
For more information on the herstory of this fight go to www.wraphome.org