“I kissed the sky”, my friend, and fellow long-time street vendor, Mohammed K., from Tunisia spoke softly as he stood in front of his table of watches for sale, looking side to side nervously for any approaching cops. After the herstorical revolution unfolded in Egypt, my heart was sparked to dream of poor people-led revolutions, re-ported and sup-ported on by poor people media, all across Pachamama, yet the only people who were quoted in the media seemed to be culled from Academia and political establishment., so I walked downtown to speak with fellow poverty and worker scholars from Tunis, Algeria, Egypt and Yemen who operate micro-businesses on the streets all across Amerikkka.
“Don’t forget Jordan,” our mutual friend, an Egyptian named Tayeb joined in the discussion while he opened his small card table to reveal an array of multi-colored ties, concluding, “Its all wonderful, maybe we will have true liberation for all peoples in the world.”
As a person who has lived in deep and unending poverty, struggled with landlessness/houselessness and witnessed my disabled single mama of color deal with racism, joblessness, violence and depression for the majority of my life in this so-called first world, I watched the last weeks revolutions in North Africa, with a deep feeling of joy and elation. It had been four years since I had been downtown selling art and products made by my mama and me, in our underground, criminalized (read: illegal) micro-business, which I had been working in since I was eleven when my mama became to ill to work. Our never-licensed, always criminalized business was the only way we paid for nightly motel rooms, gas, food and the occasional apartments, if we sold enough that day or week or month.
Day after month, month after year, I stood along-side mothers and sons and daughters and uncles and fathers stuck in Amerikkka, lost in the criminalized diaspora of false borders across the globe. From indigenous nations in Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico and Bolivia, to deserts in North, West and East Africa, to the streets of Oklahoma, St Louis and New Jersey, we stood together, Christians, Muslims Zapotecas, Tainos, Rastafarias, Mayans, Protestants, Catholics, selling watches, ties, sunglasses, our misery, our bodies and/or our lives, watching, always watching for po’lice officers/immigration, rain or customers, whichever came first.
“But what will change, the same people who hold property, run businesses, will retain the power to be heard?,” Tayeb began, “ My family was always poor in Egypt, we live on the roof of a building alongside 5 other families, the conditions for the very poor there will never change,” he concluded as he looked down and re-arranged his floral print ties.
“Don’t be so pessimistic, we had to start somewhere,” Ma’moud from Algeria, another vendor of watches joined the conversation.
“Tayeb is right, that’s why many of us are here, so will these revolutions make real change for very poor people so we can go home?”, Mohammed added.
Our conversation continued into the afternoon, the sorrow of our collective loss of family, land, culture, dreams and spirit and most of all hope, circled around us like a thick cloud of poisonous smoke.
And then it hit me, the Egypt and Tunis revolutions weren’t everything, but they were something, and they were done by the people of many parts of society, not all, but many.
So as us po folks in the US face the genocide of trillion dollar budget cuts proposed this week by the federal government to thousands of poor people programs like section 8, public housing and healthcare, like so many of us protested yesterday about in San Francisco and across the US, perhaps we should not only take inspiration from the North Africa revolutions, but lessons. Lessons in revolutions not guided by non-profit industrial complexes agendas and philanthro-pimp dictated guidelines but a revolution guided by angry mamaz, hungry babies, housless elders, jobless fathers, profiled and criminalized migrants and gang injuncted youth of color. A revolution in Oakland, Philadelphia, Minnesota, New York, Mexico, El Salvador, The Philipines, Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, a revolution guided by our spirits, our dreams, our hope and our hunger.
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