We Are All Criminals

by Lola Bean/Race, Poverty and Media Justice Intern at POOR Magazine

"You're a thief!" The words came crashing down the staircase and slammed against a poverty scholar at the Roxie Theater. The large man with the wild dreadlocks and warm, buttery voice at the bottom of the stairwell had been sitting two seats over from me in the front row of "A Dialogue on the Criminalization of Poverty." Taken aback by the force of these words ringing through the air of the lobby, my eyes traveled up the stairwell to see who could have possibly hurled these words through the air of the lobby after the event we had just experienced. A young man with a crisp dark shirt, lily clean skin, and indignant down turned eyes looked down at this gentle giant and took aim, "You are stealing! You have to pay for that!"

I arrived at the Roxie at 16th and Valencia just before the 7pm dialogue began. I approached the ticket booth of the Roxie and told the ticket taker, a sandy-haired man with thick black-rimmed glasses, that I was with POOR Magazine and I was looking for my folks. He told me that the event was 3 doors down and pointed up 16th street. I made my way up the street and through the front door. The lobby was bustling and the tables were lined with books and informational packets. To the left I saw Laure McElroy, a welfareQueen and Poverty Scholar at POOR Magazine. She was standing in behind a counter right near the entrance where cans of soda were balanced. My tongue was cotton and the drinks were a welcome sight. I picked up a can and Laure said, "I think you have to pay for those, but I'm not sure." I asked her if any Roxie employees were nearby, but we didn't see any. I put the drink down discouraged and made my way inside the theater.

The evening was opened by the welfareQUEENS, a revolutionary group of mamaz struggling with poverty, welfare, racism and disability creating art with the goal of resisting and reclaiming the racist and classist mythologies about poverty and the criminalization of poor people in America. They performed their respective and collective stories. A poem posted in large print made clear their purpose:

This poem is in honor of

Homeless Mothers and Poor mothers,

Low wage mothers and no wage mothers

welfare mothers and THREE job working mothers

in other words INS-ed with

CPS-ed with

and most of all System messed with

Mothers

who fight and struggle and steal and beg in every crevasse and corner to keep their
kids in a bed....

Tiny, aka, Lisa Gray-Garcia at-risk mama of Tiburcio, daughter of Dee and co-founder of POOR Magazine set the tone for the discussion. In a clear and penetrating voice, she cut the silence in the auditorium with her scholarship and her story of survival. Tiny spoke her truth and described, "When we hear those hygiene metaphors we need to be conscious that the human beings who are being �cleaned up� and �cleaned out� are people of color, poor, homeless, youth, elders, someone functioning with a substance abuse problem, living with a mental illness or other disability, living in a car, migrant day laborers, etc. Or they could be people whose work is not recognized as work, such as panhandlers, street newspaper vendors, recyclers, and/or workfare workers. These people, if they happen to be dwelling, sitting, sleeping, and/or working or soliciting work in a neighborhood that�s undergoing gentrification/redevelopment, will be targeted for harassment, abuse, arrest, and eventually incarceration." Tiny knows. She was incarcerated for crimes of poverty, has a PhD. in poverty from the school of hard-knocks, and speaks with the unapologetic force that accompanies true scholarship.

I was there to learn from Tiny, Leroy, the welfareQUEENS and all of the folks engaged in the daily struggle against the criminalization of every day life. As an abuse and poverty scholar at POOR Magazine, I was also there to report on the discussion. In addition to Tiny and Leroy, Renee Saucedo from La Raza Centro Legal, Juan Prada from the Coalition on Homelessness, Dr James Garrett a founding member of the Black Students Union, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi and Ross Mirakarimi were all present to share their thoughts and solutions on the criminalization of poverty. Following the performance of the welfareQUEENS and Tiny�s powerful words is never an easy task, but the challenge was posed to a worthy scholar, Dr. Garrett

Dr. James Garrett, who is a teacher at Berkeley City College and poverty and race scholar, walked us through the history of the gentrification and criminalization of everyday life. He described how we, people of color, poverty, and radical politics are communities historically attacked by the government, pacified by nonprofit organizations, and incarcerated for not only acting to secure our basic rights, but for the simple act of voicing a demand for them. For over 60 years, we have been denied the basic things we need to survive and then turned into criminals for trying to access these things. It is now a crime to want to be heard. He concluded his powerful discourse with the searing statement that in the attempt to criminalize more and more of us, they, the criminalizers, the oppressors, the powers that tighten the rope around our collective necks, have made us ALL criminals.

The packed theater was not short on people that wanted to be heard that night. The audience was filled from lifelong scholars of race, poverty, disability, and abuse. We were there to open our mouths and make our voices hear, but we were also there to see if anyone was really listening.

Renee Saucedo, a tiny, clear-eyed mujer took center stage and let loose the struggle of a thousand immigrants from her mouth. She belted cries of fear from mothers confronting helicopters and uniforms when trying to take their children to school. She connected the dots between US policy and how US corporations force immigrants to seek work in the United States. And she reminded us why immigrants are willing to risk death and incarceration day after day and time and time again. She speaks for the rootless and impoverished brown multitudes. Ask an immigrant what they will do if they get deported and they will tell you, "If I get deported, I'll come back tomorrow. Why? Because my children's survival depends on it." But is anyone asking? Is anyone willing to listen to the answer?

"Repeat after me three times. People with disabilities! People with disabilities! People with disabilities!" POOR Magazine�s own race and disability scholar Leroy Moore took the stage next. A captivating and brilliant public speaker, he described how his voice and the voices of other people with disabilities have been silenced. He described the high crime rate against, the segregation of, and the silencing of people with disabilities. He reinforced the importance of language and language�s connection not only to how people are perceived, but what history they are connected to. People with disabilities share an amazing and rich history of struggle. Leroy reminded us that people experiencing the struggle have the answers; it is the people physically and societally able to implement these answers that need to start listening.

I saw the faces of many community activists in the room. Mostly people of privilege, white middle class folks dressed in clothes too casual to be recognized as someone that works for profit, but characteristically lacking the couture of daily struggle. Their eyes, purposefully calm to the point of unconscious condescension, have created blinding barriers between them and those whose struggle they have claimed. Their faces tell few stories but their lips keep flapping as if their long words make up for their short sightedness. Still, many of them were there to attend the dialogue on the criminalization of poverty. I wondered who they were there to hear.

I had no doubt that they listened intently to the words spoken in the language of politics. Jeff Adachi, the public defender of San Francisco, was among the experts invited to attend the dialogue. He wore a dark suit and a blue tie. He spoke with the consistent smile and slow clear cadence of a politician, yet his actions have continuously backed up his speech surrounding issues of race and poverty in the Bay Area. His legal work has clearly been rooted in the struggles of low and no income communities of color and he has fought against the system that continues to criminalize those living in poverty. To explain the crisis of the criminalization of poverty, Adachi spoke numbers and statistics. The California Youth Authority spends $220,000 per child per year to keep them in incarceration. Over 40% of prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. 200,000 young people are doing time in adult prisons. 85% of judges are white. Incarceration of poor people, according to Adachi, is about more than just crime. He explained, "It�s now become a way of dealing with poor people."

After Adachi�s words, I began to think about the idea of dealing with poor people. The fact that poor people are being incarcerated for the simple fact that they are poor is an unacceptable way to deal with poor people, but is there really an acceptable way to deal with poor people? When my legs lock in pain from cleaning houses for 12 hours a day with broken bones and twisted joints and I still can�t pay my bills, I deal with it. When the welfareQUEENS struggle to feed and house and clothe and raise their children on next to nothing in one of the most expensive cities in the world, they deal with it. When people without homes are denied time and time again the bare necessities that humans need just to keep living and breathing, they deal with it. Poor people are not problems to be dealt with. Poverty is the problem that needs to be dealt with.

Juan Prada of the Coalition on Homelessness reminded those in the dialogue that when society chooses to see poor folks, we are demonized and public wrath is directed upon us. People with homes are especially targeted. According to Prada, 48% of people in incarceration are homeless, and the San Francisco Police Department has designated 32 police officers to act as "homeless outreach workers." It is a crime to be poor.

As the Dialogue on the Criminalization of Everyday Life continued, I began to get a little restless and uncomfortable in my chair. My mind started to drift through time after time when I was violently silenced because I was seen as less than human. Fists and words flew at me and I was locked in my chair. My brows lowered and my muscles grew tight. I thought to myself, "Am I really supposed to prove that I am human?" I know that I am human. My folks from POOR Magazine feel me and see me. I saw the other humans in the room. I even saw the activists and the politicians. A burning nausea in my stomach and water pooled eyes reminded me why I long ago resolved not to beg for scraps of humanity from anyone inhuman enough to claim that I have to.

I thought about my struggle, my language and their language; the language of the politicians, spoken with a similar accent as the community activists. Community activists speak in a similar form of emotional monotone. They paint struggles with numbers and statistics mistaken for black and white. They tell stories of people in the emotionally barren language of ideas. Seeking solidarity with struggle but fearing the depth of struggle�s experience, they speak with a loftiness reflecting both their desire to be heard and a fear to hear. But they truly believe they are fighting the good fight and they have access, albeit limited, to the eyes and ears that see them as people and us as numbers.

"The first failure of this government is it doesn�t see its people," explained San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirikarimi. Politician primped and rhetoric clad he admitted, "We don�t recognize poverty in San Francisco." To illustrate his point, he defended his recent vote to in favor of building the new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. He exhibited the same failure as many other activists and nonprofit workers. According to these often well meaning individuals, there are conditions in which it is acceptable to act as if we don�t exist. There are condition in which it is acceptable to treat us as numbers and statistics. There are conditions that they - activists, politicians, and so-called community representatives - willingly accept in which their humanity is assumed and ours must be fought for.

As the dialogue wrapped-up and again the voices of Tiny and Leroy and other people engaged in the most profoundly human struggles filled the room, my shoulders relaxed a little and my focus returned. I was grateful for the scholarship of the poverty scholars I had heard that evening. Tiny reminded us that they fact that such a dialogue was able to happen was a victory in and of itself and my fists began to unclench. As I walked out of the theater and into the lobby, I passed a number of people enthusiastically continuing the dialogue on the criminalization of poverty. My mind returned to the words of Tiny, "In our pathologically self-centered modern society, where we are all expected to survive and prosper in a cut-throat economic system that does not provide child care, housing, healthcare or a good public education, mine is not only a story of survival but of triumph. And above all it is a call for vision and clarity: the denunciation of the oppressive system that drives people into poverty and keeps them there, and the recognition that first and foremost all people deserve whatever help they need."

"You can�t just steal that! You have to pay for it!" The Dreadlocked soldier, whose name is Johnnie, a member of the POOR Magazine family had made the same mistake I made and taken a soda from off of the counter. The young man in the button up shirt didn�t see a man with a PhD. in poverty, he saw a criminal. He didn�t see how easily one could mistake these sodas as complimentary; he saw an opportunity to put a poor man in his place. From his place high on the stairwell, he shot thunderbolts of false righteousness at a respected resister � demanding he exchange his self respect for a one dollar soda pop.

"How much is this?" Johnnie pulled out his wallet to pay the man. He is NO thief. The self-proclaimed hero at the top of the stairs told him his dignity would cost him a dollar. Johnnie pulled out two green Washingtons and handed them to the man. "One for the soda and one to buy yourself some class." Johnnie was invited to listen to a dialogue on the criminalization of poverty. What he got was another taste of the disrespect that brings about the need for such a dialogue.

The nausea in my stomach returned and I left wondering who was heard that night. Whose scholarship was heard and respected? What was learned by our progressive "friends?" When will we stop being criminals for being thirsty and reaching for something to drink? When will we stop having to convince people that being thirsty is not a crime?