The Inquisition or.... When POOR Folks Try to Organize

by Lisa Gray-Garcia aka Tiny

It was early, perhaps too early – the light at the newly named daylight was thin and gray. Thick strands of night fog reached into the 6:00 am sky. My body felt cold, empty and raw. I watched normal things like wet streets and moving windshield wipers and shuddered with their strangeness. My head throbbed a steady beat. A glaze of terror racked my body.

I had felt this feeling before. Four years ago – when I was in front of my PAES (welfare) worker, Why didn’t you turn in your month-end report?" She demanded.

"It was an accident, I was sick – the form was only one day late" She wasn’t looking at me anymore.

"We are sanctioning you for not getting that form in on time, you won’t receive your benefits for this month" I couldn’t cry – or even scream, for fear the security guard stationed at the door would drag me out of the building within seconds.

"Ok", I whispered.

On this day, four years later, I rode towards the offices of POOR Magazine, a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to providing media access, art, advocacy and education to very low and no-income folks. I was one of the very low-income folks who founded and organized POOR., and now acted as executive director and Co-editor. Yet I was still on welfare. As a very small organization with leadership comprised of very low-income youth and adults, we as an organization were on welfare and I was on my way to a meeting where the entire organization would be sanctioned.

The stakes were higher now – it was our whole budget. The POOR staff had developed a very innovative Job creation program that paid folks a living wage who (like a lot of us) were transitioning from welfare to work and wanted to work in the fields of media and multimedia. Our belief at POOR is welfare to work should mean welfare to WORK, and include training in something that actually enriches the person on welfare. After several months of development community support and lobbying , we had finally attained a referral based contract approved through the San Francisco Department of Human Services (DHS) which would be administered through the Private Industry Council (PIC). And of course even though it was dangerous as a funding source due to the illogical nature of bureacracy and funding, we all felt we were already "at-risk". And finally, how else could any of this even happen, without the DHS contract. Noone had any funding. We were just a bunch of idealistic poor folks trying to organize, trying to be heard!!

Unfortunately as many of the other smaller organizations noted when funding was finally granted through DHS, The Individual Referral contract we were granted was a very minimal contract at best. It offered no actual dollars unless people were referred to your program. And as we found out later , DHS would make it VERY difficult for anyone to actually get a referral to our program. The referral process, replete with the regular bureaucratic hoops included yet another additional level of hoops. And if anyone was persistent enough to make it through those hoops they could look forward to DHS Jobs assessors who would actually discourage them from joining our program and name our program as not as good as the "Other" programs. Interesting to note, most of these "others" happened to be ones that graduated you out into the work world in a matter of weeks, to get a "job" any job and therefore didn’t cost DHS as much money.

So here we were at 9:30 sharp. The inquisition was soon to begin. Light hit the classroom at POOR in sad shadows as though it too knew the sad fate about to befall its walls. There were three representatives at the meeting; two from DHS, one from PIC. As well, three staff were present from POOR as well as two other grassroots media organizations in support of POOR’s JOBS Program; Marie Harrison, of The Bay View and Terry Messmen of Street Spirit, as they employ and/or are beneficiaries of the JOBS Program. The moment was thick with discomfort.

The DHS/PIC group were somewhat put off by the other attendees and asked them to leave, as this was a monitoring meeting (read: sanction mtg.) Terry and Marie ( who helped create the JOBS proposal) insisted that they were integral to the program and were finally allowed to remain until the "monitoring" began.

After that issue was sort of resolved, I began by stating clearly, " POOR has already paid out their almost non-existent money to the participants' wages and as of yet have not received the reimbursement that PIC is contracted to give us."

The representative from PIC replied by saying clearly, "As soon as I get back to my office, I will send those invoices through" I breathed a sigh of relief as we had invoiced for those wages 9 days ago and as of yet received nothing even though we paid wages in good faith. After I resolved that the meeting officially began by the media partners voicing strong support for the program. Questions were asked of them about how they knew of the participants et al. They answered every question, thoroughly and emphatically.

"This is a great program, there is no other journalism training that does the things POOR does," Terry Mesmen, began an extensive testimonial in favor of the interns and graduates of POOR’s JOBS in the Media Program.

"I refer my upcoming writers to this organization – as it does a much better job at training in journalism that several formal journalism programs…." Marie Harrison began a long statement which encompassed several parts of the program design

They asked more questions, "What encompasses the internship duties at your publication"

"There are several duties, including writing, reporting….", Marie went on in great detail as to the kind of things involved in a media assignment from the Bay View and how that comes through Community Newsroom at POOR.

Yet oddly enough as though it had never been addressed, 20 minutes later they asked again. "What does an intern do?"

And so the day went. Whenever a moment of clarity would be attained, it would get buried in another hour of some kind of new version of the same question which would lead to yet another twisted "question" until a new version of the question would finally transcend into a "problem" or "discrepancy"

The questioning continued for four more hours. The entire day culminated with the PIC/DHS staff "meeting" (read: cornering, intimidating) with participants in the JOBS
Program, all of whom are current welfare recipients who are attempting to achieve success and hope through media and multi-media, and in fact one of the JOBS participants made a dire misstep in one of her responses to their questions out of confusion and stated that internship time was mixed with class room time. That was it. We now officially had Discrepancies.

After four and a half hours were over. All three "representatives" headed out. I went after them and with the last bit of energy left in me, repeated my query, " So we will expect those reimbursements for the participant wages this afternoon, right?"

" Oh yes, as soon as soon as I get back to the office"

I watched them descend the stairs. It won’t be long, I thought before the inquisition "findings" will be official, I knew just like that day four years ago, something was wrong with everything we all said or did. Did POOR really ever have a chance ? maybe we just thought we did, after all… we’re all still on welfare…………

Postscript: Later that afternoon POOR staff was called by PIC staff who informed POOR that PIC would be withholding participant wages until the "findings were complete", thereby reneging on their agreement earlier that day to reimburse the participant wages already paid out by POOR Magazine to the participants.

This situation has not only had a dire impact on POOR – the organization and the very low-income staff, but also all the JOBS in the media interns seeking to be heard. If you want to voice your support for POOR's JOBS in the Media Program - please call Deputy City Attorney, Virginia Elizondo at (415) 554-4276 or Joyce Crum at Private Industry Council (415) 431-8700 and urge them to make good on their contract and reimburse POOR's wages.