January 8, 2010
The Inhumane GA Cuts in Oakland
Full Board Hearing Tuesday,February 23rd @ 9 am
1221 Oak street, Oakland, CA
Please come and speak up for your brothers and sisters in struggle
PNN-TV posse: Camera: Muteado Silencio
Editor: Carina Lomeli
Stuart x/Oakland Poverty Reporter-PNN
Friday, January 8, 2010;
This is not my name. But i wont tell u my name. I suffer from the disease called shame. Shame fueled by racist, classist, capitalist values of "success" and achievement. I am currently on General Assistance in Oakland.Which means i am seen as a bum, a useless human and other stereotypes created to make people feel bad if they arent functioning as a non-stop cog in the constantly moving machine. This hate and distaste is at the core of why Oakland's GA recipients, people like me, are facing drastic, inhumane cuts.
I am an african descendent, Choctaw indian poet, born into this hell called Amerikkka. I worked for 22 years without missing one day at a machine shop, 9-12 hours a day. then one day i got sick. My sickness was messy, i might be disabled, i might just be a "to-up", broke-down machine no longer able to produce, to pay taxes, to pay rent, to "put out", but sickness and inability to work doesn't fit with a system that only supports you when you are able to produce.
As of January 2010 we, the poorest of the poor in Oakland, the disabled, the veterans, the domestic violence victims, the foster care youth transtioning out of institutionalization, will only recieve three months of General Assistance a year.
Get a job, i can hear the digital collective scream. To which i reply, i am one of the many of folks, who have tried to get employed in this economy. i am too old, most jobs tell me. I am also intermittantly sick, I am very discouraged.
These crumbs, known as "Budget cuts" are continuously threatened to be removed from us. From Schwarzenegger to Bush, from local to federal, we are never safe. And the more they take from our small little support, the more they seem to take from us.
So where does that leave us? the confused, the disengaged, the allegedly employable who are barely surviving in Oakland? Unsure, scared, desperate, hungry. Angry. Dead?
Join the coalition to Stop The GA Cuts at stop-the-ga-cuts@googlegroups.com. To learn how to become a community journalist like Stuart X, go on-line to www.racepovertymediajustice.org - or email deeandtiny@poormagazine.org to register for the upcoming session of PeopleSkool at POOR Magazine.