Story Archives 2000

by Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe

Lakota TwoCrow

Slam Bio

I like the color green

My taste is sour

My smell is pizza

My touch is hard

Chameleon

I’m from many tribes

I live with my mom

I live with my dad sometimes

by Staff Writer

While swimming in Hawai’i, Larry Lattimore, Father and Grandfather, had a fatal heart attack. Six months earlier he went there to recharge his batteries and his faith in activism and people after 20 unbroken years of working to change the world for the better.

I met Larry 10 years ago, when he’d already co-founded POWER (People Organizing To Win Employment Rights), the first night of the founding of the Living Wage Coalition. I didn’t speak to him then, he looked cranky; I later found out that was his armor against the world, we became good friends.

Intelligent, to almost genius level, he worked for San Francisco General Hospital as a janitor, picking up hazardous waste without proper safety equipment, like gloves. Larry caught an immune difficiency disease doing Workfare for the General Assistance Welfare program, and got SSI benefits after fighting for them until 2005.

We worked together on the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition in 2000, when he was elected Co-Director. I remember the night we got the Living Wage, sitting in the SEIU union’s local office negotiating with SF Mayor Willie Brown. He was in an air-conditioned hotel in New York, we were on the 14th Floor of Fox Plaza: 20 people in a hot room.

Josie Mooney, Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU Local 1021 (it was 790), made an unofficial deal this poverty scholar can’t prove, which excluded CalWorks and GA Workfare workers from the receiving the Minimum Compensation Ordinance benefits, including health benefits which would have gone to anyone working or any company accepting city contracts.

In 2005 Larry and I were on the Committee To Get A Minimum Wage, which fought to raise the San Francisco County minimum wage to $10 per hour, enduring 4-hour meetings once a week to get through one agenda item. Larry was patient, this poverty scholar (to be polite) wasn’t.

After petitioning to get the MW on the local ballot, Larry was the happiest person I saw on Election Night. I never had an easier friend and ally to work with. We went to Sacramento often enough, to lobby and to protests that we knew every tree by name.

The night he got his daughter back in his life, we were hanging out in the Living Wage offices. He had an ear-to-ear grin on his face. They lived in a Winnebago until a better place could be found. Larry gave his daughter a home-school education and did a great job. His activist work and his daughter are his legacy to the world.

by Staff Writer

Pt 2

by Tom Mc Kay

When I got divorced at the age of 33, I felt betrayed by our cultural belief system. I had done everything right. I had conformed to the social standards that were deemed “proper” -- and that belief system had led my life to TOTAL FAILURE.

What good is a life with NO HAPPINESS in it? Why would I want to work to support a social system that denies me happines? Happiness and love go together. Where there is no happiness, there has been a lack of love. Jesus taught us that LOVE is the most important thing we need to learn in life. In the beginning stages of learning how to love, happiness, love, and sexuality are closely related.

Sexuality is a powerful force in the attraction between men and women. Sexuality brings us together, and then we need to learn how to love each other.

Unfortunately, our culture is fanatically hateful towards sexuality for many reasons. People who express their sexuality in irresponsible ways can cause tremendous problems. Many religions teach us that celibacy will help us to grow spiritually (although this is not true). Many of our corporate leaders feel that frustrating sexuality can help them turn us into neurotic workaholics. Many of our military leaders recognize that frustrating their soldiers turns them into viscious killing machines.

In The Ultimate Frontier, by Eklal Kueshana, page 257, a member of the Great White Brother tells Eklal: “The human brain will produce a personality which is either pleasure-oriented or violence-prone. Its neurological structure allows it to develop only one way or the other."The hatred of sexuality in our culture has caused us to become extremely violent and cruel."

In order to promote an authoritarian structure in our families, men are taught to use economic blackmail and physical intimidation to control their wives. Women are taught to use sexual blackmail and verbal skills to control their husbands. The end result of these teachings is that many relationships between a man and a woman become power struggles to determine which person will be dominant in the relationship. Sharing and mutuality are not encouraged in our cultural attitudes.

The most unrecognized form of sexual abuse is the conscious and deliberate frustration of a man’s sexual needs. Whether it is done as an act of punishment, for manip- ulation, or for blackmail, it damages the TRUST that is the foundation for all social relationships.

Sexual frustration hurts men much more immediately and much more intensely than it hurts women. This is because men are living their lives under the influence of TESTOSTERONE and women are living their lives under the influence of PROGESTERONE.

Unfortunately, the pain caused by sexual frustration makes men angry, hostile, and aggressive. This can sometimes be expressed as criminal attack, assault, rape, battering, infidelity, or even kidnapping and enslavement. This is no way to run a society.

Our cultural leaders have engaged in a massive mind-control campaign to deny the relationship between sexual frustration and the many different social problems it causes or exacerbates. This denial is dishonest and destructive.

It is impossible to solve a problem until after we are willing to be honest about it. Honesty must come first. This problem can be solved, but first we must engage in some honest social dialogue. Sexual abuse cannot be tolerated.

by Joe B.

Tuesday, Oct.16, 2001, 8:45 am.

Whisper of winter not chilly enough for an overcoat.

Seeing Select President G.W.Bush Jr. actually say no to the Taliban regime when they suggested a neutral country to discuss terms of handing over Osama Bin Laben.

Only when he's satisfied! Does this guy know he's President of all the people not just hawks but doves, conscientious objectors, and anti-war activist's also?

It is chilling to see him determined to "stay the course of" war and not even contemplate alternate ways to settle this quickly, safely, using diplomatic means.

We do not have a King but G.W. is acting like one. Let’s not compound the problem in 2004. Bye

Please send donations to Poor Magazine C/0 Ask Joe at 255 9th St. Street, San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA

For Joe only my snail mail:
PO Box 1230 #645
Market St. San Francisco, CA 94102
Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

by Anna Morrow

There is a pristine cleaniliness

that comes from digging through these mazes

This relentless naughty jungle that keeps hostages

of folks that are mightier and penniless

A purity of soul transcends them

hovers over the sticky hot cement

Posibilities rise up from the sweaty pavement

where people hold there hands out

Working hard barely moving in active

participation of grassroots tithing

Consumed by meakness and hostility

dispising and worshiping themseves -

day after dingy day

The monotony collides with hypnotize:

an unavoidable medititation

of what it is to be without

To be lifted up, to fly away

outside this body that offends some

that most everyone ignores

I might rise up above the masses

confessing the secrets of these trenches

shouting out all of the inadequacies and betrayals

into the wind into the ear of god

You could tell the story of our lineage

how our once humble hearts were belittled

and now are humbled once again

by the history of our grievances

the tale of our common sorrows

Unashamed Unadorned Unappologetic

by Sam Drew/ReVieWsForTHeReVoLutioN

As a staff writer at POOR Magazine, I proudly claim the title of poverty scholar since I’ve suffered through low wage and no wage security jobs at some of the most prestigious buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area. This life experience informs and infuses my journalism. Not only do I report the news, but I use media to support the community. At POOR Magazine we are not just media voyeurs but media makers.

Sitting in a half empty movie theatre suffering through trailer after trailer of bombastic summer blockbuster films, my senses were suddenly awakened as I saw Don Cheadle on the screen decked out in polyester and plaid with his 1970’s style butterfly collar shirt open to his navel. "Oh, no” I thought to myself, “not another movie about a street smart Black man who says outrageous things and wiggles out of difficult situations by fooling uptight whites and saves the day by spreading peace, love and SOUL to America.”

If you’ve seen one of these movies you've seen them all. Eddie Murphy, Eddie Griffin, Chris Rock, Chris Tucker and the Wayans Brothers excel in this type of standard Hollywood fare. I almost gave up on this movie just by viewing the trailer. But something said give this movie a chance. Don Cheadle’s body of work has been stellar and Director Kasi Lemmons has shown a sensitive and powerful touch in movies like “Eve’s Bayou.” This is one of the few times the small voice in my head was right.

Don Cheadle portrays Ralph “Petey” Green an ex-con who becomes a mainstay on Washington D.C. radio during the turbulent 60’s. His tell it like it is disc jockey style makes him a hero to the average joe in chocolate city. He has no fear calling Motown’s head honcho Berry Gordy a pimp because of his exploitive contracts with young people. He routinely undresses crooked politicians over the radio without fear. It is his relationship with the community that turns him into a folk hero.

A watershed moment in the movie occurs when Petey gets his chance to perform on “The Tonight Show” in New York City. For Petey’s former radio director and now career advisor, The Tonight Show is a slice of assimilated heaven; a crossover dream realized.
Sitting across from Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon as a black man was almost entirely unheard of before than and to many signaled that the entire race had risen.

When Petey is about to perform his comedy routine he is hit with an epiphany. These well heeled white folks have come to laugh at me not with me. As he walks out on the Tonight Show, Petey also walks out on his career as a disc jockey. His personal demons catch up with him and his career comes to a grinding halt. There are ramifications for not falling in line with societies pressure to conform.

But what made Petey a hero to the average person was his willingness to take on power and privilege, yet remain true to his roots. For him to become mainstream would require him to turn his back on what made him popular to begin with.

I can totally identify with Petey’s dilemma. At POOR Magazine what separates us from the mainstream is the fact we embrace our disabilities and poverty and incorporate them in our journalism, poetry and books. To turn your back on this would be like turning your back on what makes you unique. This would be turning your back on your community. The motto at POOR Magazine is that not only do we report the news but we sup-port too. Through his unwillingness to change and conform to society’s wishes, Petey did just the same.

by Noemi Martinez

you don’t smoke do you?

no parties?

no overnight stays.

no visiting relatives.

no party types.

you don’t smoke do you?

how many kids do you have?

they go to school right?

you don’t smoke do you?

no overnight stays.

i’ll walk through once a month.

no parties. no party types.

you do work, don’t you?

where do you work?

you can afford this, can’t you?

no other adults?

no, there are no rats.

I don’t care if you don’t have a social security.

the traps are cautionary.

ignore the dead roaches.

and the cracks in the walls.

the mold won’t make you sick.

the stains in the rug aren’t blood.

ignore the smoke stains.

smile.

sign here.