Incarcerated for Crimes of Poverty
That’s being homeless,
Being poor
And being on welfare
In this Capitalist Society
Currently At-risk
Of Falling Back in the Cracks
On this earth
To save the world
Through the Word
And in the process –
Me and mines….
Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled, indigenous mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. She is also the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of A Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution, Born & Raised in Frisco and - Poverty ScholarShip -Poor People Theory, Arts, words and Tears Across Mama Earth which was just released in 2019. In 2011 she co-launched The Homefulness Project - a landless peoples, self-determined land liberation movement in the Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin territory known as Deep East Oakland, ,and co-founded a liberation school for children, Deecolonize Academy She has taught Poverty Scholarship theory and practice in Universities, street corners and encampments from Columbia to Skid Row.
In 2019 she co-launched The Bank of ComeUnity Reparations - and is working with fellow poverty and indigenous skolaz across Turtle Island to UnSell more parcels of Mama Earth so Poor, landless, houseless people can manifest projects like Homefulness as well as actively manifsting immediate emergency reparations for rent, utilities, motel payments, food, health care and more for poor, indigenous, Black, Brown and DIsabled families in struggle
In the Covid19 Pandemic she and other poverty skola leaders at POOR Magazine have galvinized folks with race and class privilege and solidarity community so POOR Magazine could increase their already existent street love-work, education , service and support to supply food, masks, gloves, healing and sanitation to over 700 unhoused and no-income housed communities per week across the Bay Area as part of healing, surviving this Corona crisis-she has dubbed it "interdependence" and Radical Redistribution-and was the visionary and co-editor of a book on Covid19 & the other pandemic called poverty entitled: Po Peoples Survival Guide thru Covid19 and the Virus of Poverty