Story Archives 2000

by Mission Resistors

When I was six, I remember the smell of fried oil in the air and the smog that surrounded my young lungs. We had arrived in Tijuana, where I saw people selling, dealing and stealing all kinds of stuff. It was my two sisters, my mother and me waiting anxiously in a busy intersection where people were running and rushing up and down like the migra had arrived.

I overheard my mother talking on the public pay phone where we were waiting for the coyote or smuggler. I could hear the coyote on the phone ask my mother: “Bueno, ¿donde estan señora?”

She responded with a broken voice: “Estamos en la avenida primera y la central.” The coyote was the area and was going to pick us up. My mother asked: “¿Vino la muchacha con usted?” She wanted the coyote to bring a female smuggler, because she heard of incidents where the male coyotes were molesting women going to the United States and she was afraid it would happen to her and my sisters.

Here in Amerikkka, it seems that fear is a part of life for migrant Raza. When it is not ICE raids, it is sobriety checkpoints set up by the Police in migrant communities like my own to criminalize us when they are supposed to protect and serve us. I remember before the last May 1st march in 2008, an ICE van was parked in front of La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland and a lot of people from the community did not show up for their medical appointments, afraid that they would get deported. This reminded me of the fear and anxiety that I felt as a young boy when we were waiting for the coyote in Tijuana.

Now, the U.S. Government is trying to put a new law in place that would not only deny basic healthcare for migrant Raza, but also make it impossible for my community to access basic human rights to healthcare for their families. I can see the fear and anxiety that my community is going through by being targeted and crimalized by the authorities more and more each day. As a migrant scholar, I feel it myself and every time I leave my apartment.

I hope I make it back…

by Queennandi XSheba & RAM

I am tired of being a slave. A slave that has to work with a broken body that’s sacrificed

Just to put food on the table. 

A slave who had to lay to rest a demised family, disrespected by tha world

Gone forever without justice. 

I am tired of being a slave to the kourt Sssystem, where my terrible cries for help falls upon deaf ears

Life tampered with and tortured before leaving out, laughed at and ridiculed.

As my rights are stripped from me easily, like a loose fitting garment. 

If I can’t protect myself and my family, WHAT AM I? WHO AM I? Nothing but a empty shell existing for profit, robbed of something that takes a LIFETIME to restore-


                                        MY WOMANHOOD! 


Don’t I sound like a female slave, captured centuries ago??? And they said HERSTORY doesn’t repeat itself… 

I am tired of being a slave, who at 7 months pregnant was beaten by officers Miller and Shea…

If there were no witnesses, I’d be dead in my grave. 

IS THIS THE LAND THAT THE LORD HAVE MADE?

Shot dead was my unarmed neighbor just the other day. Now Oscar Grant lies beside him in a King’s  marked grave… 

But… ALL THE UNJUST SPIRITS SHALL RISE!!! To tell their stories through US!

POSSESS MY VESSEL!!! I am tired of being a slave… I just want to be!!! 


QUEENNANDI09- ALL POWER!!! 

by Juan Antonio Pacheco

How can I start this? From the now I guess.

Well, here I am starting my fifty-fifth year, doing close to what I damn well please, and, oh yeah, spending most nights in my van. Yes, I can say I paid my dues. Work, kids, and a failed marriage are all part of my past and present. I can also say I attend Cal State Long Beach, where I am preparing myself to teach and develop a career as a documentary photographer. This all sounds great right, well, some problems have arisen!

"You need roots," my daughter, and others have told me. Roots, I thought I had roots. My children and grandchildren are my roots.

You need, "to get on your feet," someone just remarked. Hell, I have been saying this to others, and myself, all of my life. Planning ahead is one of the major factors in a successful life. I say this all the time. Do I really know what I am talking about? How many of us actually live just for today? Very few, and not without good reason . See, there I go again!. Therefore, I have embarked upon this path. I would like to share some photos with you, and hopefully gain some wisdom along the way.

I would like to call my present lifestyle choice, for the lack of a better term, "a study" in simplification. The anti establishment, anti materialistic, and anti-authority mentality is often expressed by a choice to live within the “creases” of society. Being homeless is one of those creases. Homelessness, from my conversations with some who are, has three root causes. One is economic, the other mental health, and for some, an expression of a “freedom of choice”. A freedom from the constraints of “establishment” dictates and mores. These circumstances, as in many circumstances we may find ourselves in, has its roots and consequences. I would like to experience, address, and report on those consequences through my images and text.

I am not attempting to produce neither "works of art" within the guidelines of postmodern aesthetics, nor art criticism. My main interest is dealing with the importance of one's most basic daily needs—food, shelter from the elements, security, and surprisingly, basic human contact, or a sharing of communal space with others whom we feel care about us. These needs are often denied the truly homeless. I feel I must be particularly sensitive to the issues discussed and the images produced, hence: a self-analysis was the best solution. Empathy through self-immersion is the best way I can describe the approach to my subject matter. I am not in any way trying to pass myself off as an “expert”. Thanks for the opportunity to serve, and for providing an audience for my work.

by PNN staff

On Tuesday, January 16, 2001 the Mission Anti-displacement Coalition (MAC), Senior Housing Action Network and several other neighborhood groups held a rally to support SanFrancisco’s new Board of Supervisors. The rally will call on the new board to vigorously protect our neighborhoods from displacement and promote a progressive agenda that includes more affordable housing, environmental and economic justice, a people’s budget, and community control of city planning-- the spirit Proposition L.

Last December’s election of a progressive slate of district supervisors
culminated a year of community organizing and movement building by MAC, SAN and other community groups across the city. Everyday people tired of the

corruption at city hall won a clear mandate for an independent Board of
Supervisors, one that will enact a progressive agenda to safeguard San
Francisco as a city for working people.

The rally of several hundred San Franciscans will serve to celebrate our
electoral victory as well as to remind the supervisors that we will be
actively participating in the legislative process. Speakers from various
neighborhoods and constituencies will be present along with community
members, supervisors and their staff.

by Joe B.

June Jordan’s Legacies Live.

Wednesday, April 30, 2003 in U.C. Berkeley’s Barrow’s Hall people gather for a special night of celebration as youthful wordsmiths gather in strength and force guided by June Jordan.

June Jordan.

She was a Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley where she directed the enormously popular Poetry For the People program. Poetry For the Peoplereceived a Chancellor's Recognition for Community Partnership on September 19, 2000.

Jordan, an award-winning poet, professor and activist, are mourning her loss.

After battling cancer since the 1970s, Jordan died Friday at age 65.

She is an award-winning poet, professor and activist, novelist, essayist.

It'll take more pages to list all that she is an has done and lives change both personally and through her powerful, lyrical works. Italics mine.

As a professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley, Jordan founded and directed "Poetry For The People," a course in which 150 undergraduates participate in marathon poetry readings
before large audiences.

They also study the poetry of African Americans, Arabs and Arab Americans and many other groups Jordan considered generally overlooked in the classroom.

Jordan is survived by her son, Christopher Meyer.

"Though the master has moved on," said Reed, "the Jordan school of poetry, I suspect, will be with us for a long time. This is her legacy,"

Thanks to: Ms. Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations.
(Taken from the June 17, 2002.
www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases)

Jordan’s Legacy Continues.
From 1973 to 2003 30 years of evolving spoken word power.

As usual I here bits of news about it but its peripherally a micro dot way in the real of this near empty brain pan.

It’s on a Wednesday.

(wouldn’t you know it my day off after doing yoga practice in S.F.’s City College and getting a healthy African descended woman using a hacksaw to break my own lock, seems I locked the key in locker.

After that bit dodo brain wit I race home to shower and wear clean clothes, no lunch.

I’m looking forward to one on one with someone in Berkeley after the KPFA radio program.

Called and called no answer only to find out later that she and her sister were going to a baby shower later that day.

After the show wrapped close to 5 pm. called again mostly forgot that a Poor M’s intern is one of the poet’s speaking in Barrow’s Hall in U.C. Berkeley.

I decide to stay until 6 pm. Lost of youth helped setting up sound systems, food, and chairs some by the poets themselves.

I wait, get a seat and save a few for guests who said they were coming.

So many heart searing emotional/physical pain of women from family, culture, men, women, plus rumor and speculation of strangers.

One guy did a sensuous, deliriously, delicious tome on eating fruit that made the young and older women swoon and I never looking or eating fruit as just an ordinary undertaking ever again.

(I should’ve learned that from tongue lashing strawberry ice cream cones on Market and Polk Streets).

The event is worth missing some delayed physical pleasure in the night.

Only one guest shows the other is sick waiting in the car.

I wanted to stay but before leaving kissed her hand, hugged, praising Christina for her work using action instead of words conveying how her words said to me.

A place I always passe as a kid but never went in was open where people danced slow, steady, and close won’t try to pronounce the name buts in Berkeley far from my friends home as I find out by walking.

After three dances and being whipped about by a young, strong, pregnant woman (I swear she has the strength of Hera, an angry, jealous Greek Goddess, wife of Zeus who couldn't keep his godhead under his robes).

Called a last time then left Super Mother to be walking into the night toward a good time and maybe afterwards sleep.

Christina’s words came to me as I near Berkeley High School.

As shadowy figures appear I keep my hands swinging empty knowing that sudden movements, jerks, can mean bullets or a blade in my gut.

Wary, I walk slow smiling to young and old men walking or standing on the street, near bars, and bus stops.

I cannot forget for a second I’m a black man, male in America and can be killed either by accident of identity, by police or rival gang’s even a group of women can take unfocused rage out on me if I give the wrong signal while on their path.

Finally after reading R. I. P.’s on a stop sign at one the safety zones to slow down traffic I go up the door aware of two police officers male and female both white as I pass them my hands out slowly swinging.

The car is there after three knocks I leave then turn to knock one a last time. (why am I out here in the pitch black of 10:07 pm because of a chance of flesh on flesh, head knocking bed-board, high energy dehydrating rock solid body rocking soul meshing, brain numbing pleasure.)

You know the answer people.

I pass the cops seeing them, hands in pockets not looking at them as if there invisible.

‘Damn, its still a dangerous for black men in America and I’m a timid guy not basher of women or anyone else just a regular mortal man ‘walkin with blood veined swelling refusing to ease up.

Walked to bart and down on bench a small white woman.

("Don’t go sit near her, it’s late at night, she’s alone, don’t know what’s she thinking how she’ll react just stand and wait for the Colma/Daily City train).

Another white woman sits by the first and I wasn’t going to sit by them no matter how tired my feet are and besides my helmet head is still vibrating
up/down, back and forward twitching, pressing urgently this wasn’t a before bed, bathroom urge, or morning urination urge but the primal only a woman’s primal secreted flesh and juicy slick wet can help calm down but not tonight just full arousal frustration.

I’m gonna let it deflate on its own and let it/me suffer as a lesson to not do stupid things that can get me killed.

Still some things are worth missing besides it would take me and hour or so to release and sleep was beating us both.

Helmet lost the fight and the bigger brain learns to control its smaller reptile one.
Ladies, Women, Youthful Adults.

I’ve been accused of writing porn.

Please tell me if that is true and how can I avoid it if I do. Bye.

Please send donations to

Poor Magazine or in C/0

Ask Joe at 1448 Pine Street,

San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA

For Joe only my snail mail:

1230 Market St.

PO Box #645

San Francisco, CA 94102

Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

by Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe

Takoda Armstrong

Slam Bio

My color is blue

My smell is apples

My touch is tough

I’m a bear

Got strong power

I live with my sister and my mom

Sometimes my sister could be a stupid punk

My mom cool

I struggle with school

Sometimes life could be like gun shootings

by Bruce Allison/PNN; Writer Facilitator: Lola Bean

For the last 40-Years Jose Morales lived at 572 San Jose Ave. For a decade he has been fighting his landlord. Ten years ago, the landlord took Jose’s backyard access away. Jose filed a petition with the rent board and they told the landlord to cut his rent by 50%. The landlord and the company that owns the building, ABT, LLC, retaliated against Jose by trying to use the Ellis Act to kick him out of the apartment entirely.

The Ellis Act gives the landlord the right to get out of the renting business without selling his property. The landlord just has to go to court and say they want to stop renting. The judge OKs it and the landlord is then allowed to bypass the tenants lease agreements and give out eviction papers. This is how Jose Morales ended up in a battle for the home he has lived in for 40 years.

At 9:13am on Aug 22 of this year Jose stood his 78 year old body outside the San Francisco Courthouse. He was dressed neatly in a green and blue jacket and wore a blue baseball cap. Behind him was a small shopping cart filled with fliers. He gave a flier to anyone and everyone that would take one. I took one of the fliers and read the horrible story they told. Printed in black ink was a brief history of Jose’s battle to save his home and a brief history about my friend Jose. It was sad for me to see him in that position outside the courtroom.

At 9:30 we made our way into the courtroom. Jose, a fine gentleman, took his place in the front row. 20 supporters and friends from St. Peter’s Housing and the Bernal Heights Senior Community Center and this reporter from POOR Magazine were there to bear witness to the proceeding.

At 10:45 the battle began with the judge hitting the gavel. Each party had 15 minutes to state their cases in front judge.

The advocate for the evil landlord opened the debate by saying that the Ellis Act gives him the right to evict people I don’t like.

The judge decided to let the jury decide his fate.

His jury case is scheduled to end this week. Please come out to show your support for a cherished community elder.

After five years your soul enters your house. After 10 years it enters the neighborhood. 15 years you become an Icon of the neighborhood, after 40 years, they ask you to leave.

Currently the Ellis Act is one vote away from being eliminated by State Assembly Members. Please stay tuned to PNN for more reports on the Ellis Act.

by Noemi Martinez

he was right, the shadows in the wall look like a tree. we all want guns.

we were born under the sign/”tomorrow you may hear”/time notes.

that is a story. you are just a vomit of symptoms. you really are not
that. “your spirits will rise

when you think

of balloons…” you

when i left the room

wrong

you can’t define yourself. let me help you. insert here.

this is what you mean.

“cheer up! things are never

as bad as they seem

if you dream your

favorite kind of dream”

that ain’t right, you are

just a metal flower

this companion is relentless,

“it helps to remember brooks

that trickle” you should

have known.

by Dee

Walking sticks appear, seemingly from nowhere to dine on tender leaves. The spindly insects resemble trees as they slowly creep up the tail and paws of Hands and Lester.

Hands and Lester look around to find themselves deep in the countryside of North Eastern Oklahoma, It is the year 1839.
Why, lands and Lester wondered, why have we found ourselves in Cherokee country and why did we have to travel the Trail of Tears?
In generations past the Cherokee people come to this area to rebuild their nation after the westward trek from their beloved homelands in the mountainous South - Herded by federal soldiers, the Cherokees took a path in 1838-39 that became known as the “Trail of Tears.”

Why, Hands and Lester wondered? Why have we found ourselves in Cherokee country? Was it to live on the hard scrabble farms dotting the region that many Cherokees continue to live on?

Was it to attend some of the first schools west of the Mississippi for the education of both men and women? Or perhaps it was to work on Oaklahoma first newspaper published in both English and Cherokee.
After all it was only 1839 and again lester and Hands were living another of their nine lives.

That nite Lester had a dream. He dreampt he and and Hands were ill. No amount of Medicine or prayers could heal Lester and Hands in this dream. A native American spiritual leader appeared to lester in Lesters dream.

He told Lester that Native Americans regard their names as essential parts of their personalities. A native persons name is as vital to his or her identity as the eye or teeth.

If prayers and medicine fail to heal a seriously ill person, the spiritual leader tells Lester, then the spiritual leader sometimes realizes that the patients name itself may be diseased. The spiritual leader then goes to the water and with the appropriate ceremony bestows a new name on the sick person.

The healer then begins anew with the patients new name in hope that these measures will bring about restoration and recovery.
Lester anxiously awoke from his dream. He awoke. “Hands, Hands.hands"Lester said, “I’ve found the answer in a dream as to why we have found ourselves in Cherokee County in 1839.” Hands listened excitedly, while quietly purring. Lester continued “We have to find a spiritual leader and most important, ask him to change our names!”
To be Continued.

by Dee Gray, M.S.W., M.F.T

I am the co-editor and co-director of a media organization, I am also a social worker and licensed psychotherapist in the state of California.

As a mental health professional I believe that Gavin Newsom's plan called Care Not Cash (Proposition N) is so very antithetical to help for mental illness, substance abuse, etc.

CARE, the word, implies empathy, help, reaching out. Gavin Newsome's use of the word CARE is cynical, cruel, distinctly the opposite of empathy, help, or reaching out.

To remove money from the San Francisco worker's paycheck (aka;the Cash Assistance Grant given to folks on General Assistance/Welfare who do Workfare) with the idea that mental health services and all needed services will be provided instead is cynical. These services do not exist and would require several years to develop. What really exists for poor people and homeless people is meager at best.

In my opinion instead of decreasing the amount of the paycheck to the (workfare) workers, (workfare, the work that people must perform to receive their monthly cash assistance grant) yes, workers, because that’s what they are – very low-wage workers (similar to indentured servants). Instead of decreasing the paychecks, these workers paycheck should be increased to $3,000 per month, at least.

The primary reason for the pay check increase would be to pay for mental health services which for "talk therapy" and "meds" would cost from $60 per 50 minute session to $300 per 50 minute session. 50 minutes being the usual length of time per session with mental health professionals.

The $150 to $300 per 50 minute rate is the cost that Gavin Newsome can pay for psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic pyschotherapy. This type of therapy usually takes from 2 to 5 days per week. Because there is a significant amount of mental illness and substance abuse in the worker population, that in some cases date back to early child hood experiences as well as abuse by the system that poor people live with every day, daily or almost daily therapy would be the most beneficial.

I personally believe a combination of psychotherapy, advocacy, and self help is the best way of helping folks in the population being discussed. Psychotherapy in the form of long term cognitive or "talk therapy" would be of great benefit in any treatment plan or, as I have stated, long term psychoanalysis. I also would recommend any therapy be based in cultural and ethnic awareness and not be based simply on eurocentric psychology that stresses the individual over the group. Eurocentric psychology - that is, the parallel of the economic system of capitalism –

At Poor we view all labor as work and all those that labor as workers – this includes unrecognized work such as recycling, panhandling, work fare, street cleaning, (etc.)

Workers in any system normally have, or try to have, work that includes health care, vacations, sick leave, etc. Yet in the eyes of San Francisco and under Proposition N (Care Not Cash), these workers performing unrecognized work, not only do not receive benefits but are now being told that they should receive a major cut in pay – thereby making it impossible for them to acquire the expensive psychotherapy that would benefit them immensely. Additionally they are scorned for the very work that they do by those with wealth and privilege (and higher paying jobs) such as Gavin Newsome.

If these scorned workers can’t have access to the type of work benefits that the wealthy folks like Gavin Newsome have access to because they do not receive high enough wages for their work or do not have inherited wealth, then it makes sense for their employer, the city of San Francisco, to provide benefits. One of which would be a really good health care plan that provides top-notch culturally aware mental health services – the expensive kind that Gavin Newsome has access to. I also recommend that each worker have a healthcare card that identifies them as an employee of San Francisco, similar to the cards that Kaiser and UC, etc. give to their clients.

These mental health care benefits combined with advocacy and self help programs already in existence, would be what I as a mental health professional, would recommend that these workers receive. And if the city of San Francisco refuses to provide the benefits for these workers like the rest of the city’s workers receive, than I would recommend a large increase, up to $3,000 per month, in monthly benefits for each worker so that they could buy their own private mental healthcare benefits.

Finally, This Care Not Cash plan put forth by Gavin Newsome, only perpetrates misery and poverty and most important, makes a mockery of the word CARE.