Story Archives 2000

by Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, PoorNewsNetwork poverty scholar

"There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose, if they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life"
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"In Durban, South Africa, it is not racism, it's poverty that's affecting us now." I was blessed to meet Mazwi Nzimande, youth and poverty scholar leader with Abahlai base Mjondolo (The Shack Dwellers Union) in South Africa, a revolutionary group of landless folks in Capetown and Durban, South Africa, who were one of the organizations sharing scholarship at the Poverty Scholars Program Leadership School held in West Virginia in August of 2009.

Myself and Laure McElroy, poverty scholars, co-madres and staff writers with the welfareQUEENS project of POOR Magazine, and our sons, POOR Magazine youth scholars Evander McElroy and Tiburcio Garcia-Gray traveled for over 9 hours and three consistently late plane connections to be here, leaving unpaid water bills, unfunded programs, unsent unemployment checks, racial profiling, po'lice abuse and almost unpaid rent to make sure our voices and scholarship could join with over 120 other scholars from across the globe to re-ignite Dr. Kings dream.

With scholars from Scotland to New York, from Africa to Detroit, we were educated on multiple models of resistance and struggle throughout herstory, organizing through art and faith, multi-lingual inclusion and systemic change in the face of the often talked about but rarely understood economic downturn.

There is money to build housing but the money is being spent to build stadiums,
Mazwi went on to explain how the homes of the shack dwellers in Durban and other cities in South Africa are being systematically demolished so the poor people remain at least 50 kilometers away from the upcoming World Cup stadium. In an act that will permanently criminalize landless South Africans, the current government is trying to pass the Slums Act which allows the eviction of families by saying that certain areas of South Africa must be slum free.

When the people of South Africa challenged this unconstitutional act, they faced a judge who fell asleep while on the bench supposedly adjudicating their case, similar to the cases of many of the judges and lawyers in Amerikkkan Criminal Un-Justice System that have convicted poor black men and sent them to death row in Texas while sleeping throughout the trials.

"We have a very nice constitution in South Africa that states no-one can be evicted once they have lived in a place for over 24 hours without due process, but its dust now, no-one follows it", Mazwi concluded. Mazwi told us how poor children who are found living on the streets are put in jail for weeks at a time if tourists are expected to come to Durban. Mazwi's stories of removal and criminalization reminded me of the ways that encampments of landless folks in the Bay Area are arrested and washed away with high pressure power washers when they are found in settlements under the freeways, under the bridges, in doorways, and other outside residences.

As of 2007, 37 million people are living in poverty in the US, that's up from 5.7 million in 2003, the powerful week of knowledge sharing and coalition building began with youth leaders from Philadelphia Student Union (PSU) and Media Mobilizing Project, breaking down the numbers of people struggling to stay fed, housed and employed in every city in the US today.

Yo soy Angelica Hernandez, y yo soy trabadora domestica, (I am Angelica Hernandez and I am a domestic worker) Angelica explained that she worked with an organization called Domestic Workers United in New York, an organization that many of PoorNewsNetwork's migrant and poverty scholars have worked with to achieve worker rights for migrant scholars.

Christine Lewis, also with Domestic Workers United explained how many amazing women have spearheaded the fight to create a domestic workers bill of rights which makes sure that domestic workers are paid decent wages and given proper protection and recognition for the crucial work they do.

We must root our struggle in the history of all peoples struggle, and that includes all of our struggles across organizations and regions, religion and race. In a training on multi-lingualism sponsored by Voluta Interpreters collective based in Philadelphia, Willie Baptist, long-time organizer and one of the poverty scholar leaders involved in the Leadership School, articulated the current goals of the campaign.

After all of these powerful women and men shared their resistance struggles my eyes traveled outside the window of our plenary session. I watched drops of thick warm rain as it rolled down deep green leaves onto fertile West Virginia earth. Land once tilled and harvested by Shawnee, Iroquis and Seneca peoples before guns and treaties and more guns stole it away. Earth stained with the blood of coal miners, former slaves and migrant peoples struggling for workers' rights, civil rights and human rights and now land rights.

"Mountain-top removal is causing weekly flooding round these parts, we are losing our land, our homes, and our jobs", Gerry Randal, a life-long resident of Matewan, West Virginia, said, explaining how corporations like Massey Energy, one of the largest coal producers in West Virginia which is part of the "clean coal" movement and has been destroying the land his family has lived on for hundreds of years. "We are poor people we have nowhere to go", Gerry concluded and then in a deep West Virginia drawl, told me to have a nice day miss..

The corporate-fueled, flagrantly illegal land destruction in the name of development reminded Laure and myself of the poisoning of communities by private housing developers like Lennar Corporation who is attempting to gentrify and destroy the Bayview/Hunters Point district of San Francisco, even if it means poisoning our children and families.

I ran into Gerry while I was on a tour provided by the institute through Matewan, the town known for a shoot-out between the town's sheriff and the thugs hired to kill, evict and harass any coal miners who were suspected of union organizing. On this tour we learned the bloody and deadly herstory and histories of repression by coal companies of their workers. We also learned the inspiring stories of resistance like the true meaning of "red-necks" and the "red-neck army:--a group of over 1700 coal miners who were known for wearing red scarves around their necks and dared to take up arms against the brutality of corporations like Massey Coal, who paid their workers in script worth cents on the dollar and only redeemable in Massey company stores.

We left Matewan, the heat and humidity dripping slowly down the backs of the chewed on mountains. Carpet green hills, forests dense with deep brown and red. Spirits of poverty scholars and amerikkkan survivors seemed to sway with songs of lost ancestors.

When John Henry was hammering on the mountain

And his hammer was striking fire

He drove so hard til he broke his poor heart

And he laid down his hammer and he died

He laid down his hammer and he died

He laid down his hammer and he died John Henry was a black railroad worker who the legend has it died working on the rails in West Virginia

Rivers large and small, wide and narrow.. winded through the land that we passed, carrying life, time, dreams, and resistance. In these rivers and forests of immense beauty and devastating struggle, my Mama Dee came forth, her tears that I cry often for--her struggle as an unwanted, abused and tortured mixed race child living in poverty and later as a poor single mother of color who became disabled and houseless with me her daughter, and later my struggle to care for her when she was unable to work followed, then, by my ongoing struggle to raise a child while struggling with houselessness, her struggle is my struggle, the struggle of all of our mamaz and children, entwined, threaded, with the struggles for land.

It is for my mama and all our mamaz and daughters, daddys and sons, grandmothers and grandfathers that POOR Magazine has launched the Homefulness Project, a sweat-equity co-housing project that distributes equity to landless families not tied to how much money they have access to. HOMEFFULNESS includes a small farm and intergenerational, multi-lingual school and several micro-business projects to support economic self sufficiency for poor folk moving off the grid of budget cuts, corporate gentrification, Slavemart (Walmart) and (Safeway) Slaveway food poisoning, english language domination, the non-profit industrial complex and poverty pimpology.

And then our magical tour bus of change arrived at the West Virginia Historical Society, which contained a powerful exhibition about the New Deal and the towns of Allendale, Preston and Daily, three resettlement communities for unemployed workers created by Eleanor Roosevelt in the time of the severe depression and the New Deal when millions of US residents were living without food, housing or jobs. Each resettlement community included a farm, carpet factory, furniture factory and a school. Omigod, I dreamed, what a truly revolutionary way for that much talked about stimulus money to be used in the 21st Century for our current poor and landless families.

This is Chemical Valley, said pastor Amanda Gayle Reed a fifth generation native of West Virgina, about the land around the Camp. At a community bbq sponsored by the Leadership School I met Pastor Gayle only to be terrified by more corporate poisoning. She continued,"the levels of MIC (Methyl Isocyanate, the chemical released in Bhopal, India in 1984 that killed more than 3,800 People) from the Dow chemical plant buried in this valley are higher than they were in Bhopal, India when they had the explosion, we have shelter in place warnings all the time because the chemical levels here are so high."

I have been to the mountaintopDr. Martin Luther King Jr

On our final day at the institute my son and I talked about the power of resistance of our elders and ancestors that came and fought before us like Dr. King and John Henry, Uncle Al Robles and Mama Dee, as we gazed upon the land. We meditated on the words of Dr. King, our teachings this week and our own lives as a poor, landless family in resistance in the US. And finally we reflected on one of the messages that were proven this week at the Institute which we teach on often at POOR Magazine--the connections between all of our shared struggles for land, food, freedom and voice in South Africa, New Orleans, Mexico, West Virginia, Oakland, Guatemala and beyond,now, we thought, lets work to keep the revolution of truth-telling and cross-movement mobilization flowing so we can continue Dr. King's walk up all of Pacha Mama's ailing mountain-tops.

We are the keepers of the mountain

Love them or leave them

Just don't destroy them

If you dare to be one to.. Larry Gibson, fighting the removal of his families mountain by Massy Coal

To support the families in struggle to keep their land contact Larry.gibson@mountainkeepers.org or call 304-542-1134

For more information on the Poverty Initiative program go on-line to www.povertyintiative.org

by Thornton Kimes

“It’s about the gentrification of all aliens
Humans and abroad
They look different to us but I bet we looking odd
About how humanity can just put you in a place
Even where there is no space
And even out of there
They still got chased…”

--District 9 Notes by Ruyata McGlothin

Sometimes I think Peter Jackson is God. I read “The Lord of the Rings” before going into high school, but didn’t really understand it until Jackson started directing the movies and I re-read the whole thing. Tolkein may or may not have understood eco-consciousness, but his Ents sure as hell did, and the Hobbits got theirs back when the Fellowship of the Ring returned from their adventures.

Jackson has struck gold, again, with “District 9”, an original science fiction dystopian present/future movie, a story about aliens crashlanding right in the middle of one of the most infamous poverty-stricken areas on Earth—South African shanty-towns (and places like Lesotho, which I think are still classified as “countries” inside South Africa) which, despite the “end” of Apartheid, haven’t disappeared into economic prosperity for all. Which happens to be true, as well as brutally displayed on the big screen.

There is so much to talk about here, whether or not you like/love science fiction/fantasy (my first love in reading, along with superhero comic books…which I can’t afford to buy anyway…). District 9 reminds me of “Alien Nation” (A. N.), the movie (1988) and the tv series (1989), but the D-9 aliens, nicknamed “Prawns” (replace that with “Wetback”, “Nigger”, “Redneck”, “White Trash”, “Fag”…) aren’t as cuddly and human-looking as the stranded A.N. ex-slaves.

One of the “Alien Nation” aliens became a cop, teamed up with a human. There have been numerous novels written based on video games, tv series (Star Trek, for one), etc. In one “Alien Nation” novel, SLAG LIKE ME (“Slag” was the nasty slang term for the you-know-who), a Black journalist became a Slag via plastic surgery—and was discovered to be a black-skinned human by a White racist…who murdered him.

Simple motives for devastating events like murders tend to generate unintended consequences and ricochet through peoples’ lives like old-school steel pinball game balls.
The last hit between the eyes in SLAG LIKE ME is a public poll, published in a newspaper and yakked about on tv, that reveals that Humans think “Slags” are, well, White People…because they look like White People.

The “Prawns” crash-land and their mother-ship hovers over Johannesburg, South Africa, for 20 years before the events of the movie begin. Anti-gravity anyone? The alien mothership and the alien ghetto have been getting on everyone’s nerves, and encouraging the local crime bosses to ever greater outrages, so the authorities decide to move their uninvited guests to “District 10”, much farther from the city and, at least on tv, “cleaner” and not chaotic.

So you get the idea nobody would hire one of these guys to be a cop. The lie-of-the-budget-cut that POOR Magazine frequently talks about, poor folks given only crumbs, forced to fight other brands of poor folk for the limited supply of crumbs, and then forced to endure things like San Francisco Mayors and California Governors dissing us and slashing the crumbs into ever smaller pieces…comes out brilliantly, and with a subtle visual twist of the knife—a poor Black South African talks to the television news media about hating and fearing the Prawns, because they steal their stuff and then kill them…as a Prawn digs through a dumpster behind the person being interviewed.

The aliens have human names, we never learn any others (echoes of American slavery). Did humans just decide this didn’t matter, or is there some other reason for this unanswered detail?

“Bad News” Bruce Allison, elder scholar and so much more at POOR Magazine, also saw District 9. “People were walking out of the theater, acting like they were looking for ‘Star Wars’, or maybe they’d left their brains at the candy counter,” he said in a conversation with me. “District 9” isn’t “Independence Day”, though I enjoyed that movie. It turned the aliens into the eco-nasties, instead of little ol’ us struggling with self-inflicted global warming, but did anyone notice?

District 9 forces you to take time to understand whazzup. A fictional documentary with bursts of “real life” events as the eviction/gentrification of the Prawns gets rolling, awkwardly and chaotically, the construction of the characters and how much we develop any sort of empathy, dislike, or hatred for them, is as skillfully done as in Slumdog Millionaire.

The Prawns’ language makes it even harder to identify with them. Imagine my shock at discovering how much I did as the movie went along, and the various heroes and villains get under your skin in so many interesting and disturbing ways. I even learned to like and/or respect the man appointed to “lead” the effort to move the Prawns (a man you could trust to maybe do your plumbing, or file your income taxes, but--), a character who I think is the best definition of “fictional love/hate relationship” I’ve so far encountered.

Walking a mile in someone’s shoes, or traveling light years that way, is a staple of magic realism and science fiction. Think Kafka and the man who became a cockroach. There are science fiction tales that take Kafka’s cockroach for a ride on that boobytrapped bus in “Speed”, but few better than this one. If it is difficult for you, the reader, to wrap your head around someone wanting to be a different sex, how about being forced to change species?

You think he’s the perfect man to take the fall for his boss when things inevitably go wrong, but when this gentrification-on-steroids goes bad, it becomes what POOR Magazine staff writer Vivian Hain calls “Wrongology”. You think he’s a really shallow,
evil person, then you find out he isn’t, then you find out he can be a good guy and a bad guy and somebody seeming to lose his mind so thoroughly he doesn’t believe he’ll ever find it again.

If Peter Jackson never makes a “District 10” sequel, that’s okay with me. The reverberations and what-came-next ruminations will be rattling around in my head like dice for a long time. The only thing currently moving in any sort of perceptible forward-like direction in my life is POOR Magazine and POOR Press—DISTRICT 9 came along at a good time, doing what art is supposed to do, kick (insert appropriate name or pronoun) in the metaphorical ass.

Ruyata’s poem does the same thing:

“We didn’t create them yet and still we put them up
In South Africa
After they torn down shanti towns
For the World Cup
How one of us slowly became one of them
And just how his value depleaded
All down to one limb
About change, and how ready for it we aint”

by Leroy Moore, Darla Lennox, Maria Palacios, Zilwood, Tiny

Its X-mas, and we'r stressd yes, cus we'r the financially weak Brits/_But at least students wont be outside the University handing me Leaflets/__And Pointless flyers/ for "great" bargain buyers/ _Taxi Hires/and free drink coupons that you cant use cus there liers/_But it's that time of year t...hat always tiers/ __Where Mass corporations enslave december/ _"Holidays Are Coming" is now Coca-Cola's Agenda/_and the meaning of Xmas is to get pissed up on the Bender/_and stuffed with that Turkey so Tender/

Zillwood from London, England (Christmas 2009)

by PNN Staff

PNN Courtwatch staff was disturbed by the recent story of a very poor mother accused of felony child neglect by Idaho county officials;

Excerpts from Associated Press Article

May 31, 2001

…SANDPOINT, Idaho – Six children, believed to be armed, refused to leave their rural home and instead released a pack of dogs on sheriff’s deputies who had arrested their mother, authorities said…

…Officers were concerned yesterday about a boy who had taken a leadership role at the house.

“It’s not worth a confrontation with a 15-year-old who believes he is protecting his family,” Jarvis said. “We are trying to talk him down.”

The children, ages 8 to 16, would not respond to calls from social workers or law enforcement officers. They were being told over a loudspeaker they would be fed, housed and taken to see their mother if they would come out, Jarvis said…

…“We know there are six children in there and guns in the house,” Jarvis said. “The kids are trained to use the guns.”

More than 20 dogs have been running free at the scene, he said.

“They hunt; they pack like wild animals,” he said. “They took down a moose a little while ago.”

The home lacks power, water and heat. The children essentially have been caring for themselves for the past year, Jarvis said.

The incident was set off by Tuesday’s arrest of the children’s mother, JoAnn McGuckin, on a warrant charging felony injury to a child. Authorities believe McGuckin, 46, is mentally ill. Her husband, Michael McGuckin, died May 12 after a long illness.

Deputies lured JoAnn McGuckin from the house with grocery money Tuesday. She was taken into custody after going to a store with a deputy who had brought the cash.
Deputies returned to the home to get the children and put them in state custody, but one of the boys ran to the house and yelled, “Get the guns,” Jarvis said. He said the children then let the dogs out of the basement…

Excerpts from New York Times Article

June 2, 2001

…[the family] had been living in squalor in recent months as their father lay dying in the house and their mother sank into what the authorities describe as paranoid schizophrenia…

…The mother, JoAnn McGuckin, 45, has a court-appointed lawyer representing her. In the meantime, a lawyer from Sandpoint, Edgar Steele, who represented the Aryan Nations in a trial last fall that resulted in a $6.3 million judgement against the northern Idaho white-supremacist group and its leader, Richard Butler, said he had been authorized by JoAnn McGuckin to speak out.

“These kids are not neglected, abused or unloved,” Steele said. “These are poor people. Their real crime is to happen to be poor and living in north Idaho.” Steele blamed the county government for having moved in to arrest the mother and for “harassing” them by pressing her to pay off a tax bill that had mounted to at least $5,400 over the years.

The McGuckins’ financial troubles date back as far as the 1980s, when the local sawmill owned by McGuckin went out of business. The family went into bankruptcy as well.

“This is a very close-knit family whose greatest nightmare for years has been that the government would come and take their property and take their kids,” Steele said. “And that’s what’s happening.”...

PNN Response to McGuckin Family

To: JoAnn McGuckin- PERSONAL

From: Dee @ POOR Magazine

Re: YOU ARE A MOTHER!!!YOU ARE A HERO - DUE TO THE SIMPLE FACT THAT YOU HAVE GIVEN LIFE TO SEVEN CHILDREN!!!!!

Dear Ms. McGuckin,

This is our second letter to you and your children. What we are hearing in the news about you is making us very angry.

The news reports say your children have been taken into “protective custody” and given to three families.

The children are reported to be healthy and well – yet you are in jail for “felony neglect” – FOR WHAT??

We as a society are guilty of “felony neglect”- we and your neighbors, townspeople, and the judge that handed down that charge.

Where was that judge and townfolk when you were struggling to care for your ill husband through his death while also caring for your children?

They are guilty of “neglect” for not supporting you emotionally when your husband passed away.

That judge is not aware of your struggle or is just a plain misogynist.

You are a mother!! Instead of a criminal sentence you should be receiving an award .

Seven children- all healthy; they are all so desirable that three families want them.

Well, how did those kids become so desirable – because you and your husband- and especially you- cared for them and raised them well.

County Social Workers in child Protective Services for the most part are trained to blame the parents and remove the children from the parents.

All you need is some time, crisis counseling and an in-home care provider and some financial support – food stamps, rent subsidy, an attorney that believes in parental rights and perhaps some training in computer technology or another field that you might like and could make some money in to help support your family.

You have been carrying a very heavy burden and yet your children are all well. I am a social worker and a therapist and I am giving you advice based on much experience in my field (and personal experience as a mother ).

DO NOT BE A VICTIM HERE- DO NOT LET THESE PEOPLE BLAME YOU– DON”T LET THEM BREAK UP YOUR FAMLY!!!

THEY want to care about your children- what about you?? They need to care for you!!

You are the children’s mother!! You gave life to 7 children. You are a HERO!!! These people did not help you in your struggle to raise these children, in your crisis, in your pain- they are the only ones guilty of felony neglect!!

Respectfully,

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

Co-editor, POOR Magazine

Lisa Gray-Garcia (daughter of Dee )

Co-editor, POOR Magazine

PS: We believe what you need first is a rest. Someone needs to donate a trip for you for 3 or 4 days to a resort. Then another trip for you and your children to Acapulco, Mexico, or any other place that has an ocean, for a week to swim, scuba dive, and build sand castles.

by Dee

When fully armed soldiers stand on the steps of government buildings in Third and Fourth World Banana Republics it is a sign that a coup has occurred

Are the fully armed soldiers standing on the steps of the White House in Washington DC signifying that a coup has taken place by the Bush Administration?

Does this image bother anyone but me - why are we letting this happen?

Has the US become a Banana Republic for the Bush Administration ? – do they want us to believe that by constantly showing us this image…?

by Joseph Bolden

Immortals,We

While sweating out General Assistance known to most po' folk as G.A.

I know, when do poor people have time to think of eternal while working in the now?

Its not I think of it all the time but it's the darn applied science of the everyday that draws me to it.

Knowing that if it were a few centuries past or even five decades I'd be long dead of pneumonia, kidney, or lung disease without todays medical science.

Every country has myths, legends of long lived and eternal women, men, boys, and girls.

I've been thinking of this war begun by we-know-who.

Monies made by international corporations and individuals.

That this person will leave office with the country a debtor nation instead of formally ending it before a new President takes office.

Humans have always had wars the very first one and the other against other humans.

Death stalks us, has won mostly, though were making inroads from heart, brain, death, and cell death on the molecular level (remember that word molecular).

Humanity has woken up from its death’s only dream to the awakened reality that we a species can if not defeat it all at once can at least create inroads all over its domain.

I have thought we're great at devising ingenious ways of killing ourselves in ever larger mass numbers. Why not be as ingenious in saving ourselves equally?

Let's challenge the unknown and I don't mean peace the undiscovered country of peace--I mean that other unexplored, undiscovered country of life extension, immortality, and eternal life!

If researchers, scientists, student undergrads, and graduate students from around the globe could work placing their theories, data, hard sciences, all the old and constantly updated new findings patching all the complex mechanisms of aging, reversal, rejuvenation,
slowing, retarding, stopping of the aging processes of-in human.

That would be the greatest all out war on the one enemy all humans face every second of our lives.
Recently I saw a show in the wee hours of the morning about Nanotechnology: The Science Of Small and the ways which the science could be used or abused.

If there are stringent safeguards and nanotech improves it would still scare those who still have vested interest in death for example churches, funeral bus, or people still death oriented.
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, roughly the width of three or four atoms. The average human hair is about 25,000 nanometers wide
From www.crnano.org/basic.htm#questions
Along with genomics, cloning, cyberneitcs, and stem cell sciences could possibly coble up the first steps of shoe string immortality for all humans.

We've proved we can die for many causes dear to us now let us show how we can live for far causes we cannot as yet conceptualize.

Let us redesign ourselves for the better. And as for our Gods and Goddessses; they too may continue or not--it is up to our strivings, mental abilities--be the species that can live anywhere, travel, far, and eventually meet other travelers or make different independent species from us seeding the cosmos if we are truly alone.

It is up to us to take on this last battle and though we may never be deathless--we that chose to--can live, love, learn, and be whatever we chose as time permits.

And for those thinking this is total gonzo whacko just sit back, watch, age, and die don't worry about being part of the ongoing uplift improving of humanity.

Everyone has the choice of being a part or sitting back and letting things ride.

Send comments to telljoe@poormagazine.org or jsph_bldn@yahoo.com. Also, listen to Joe play those "Bolden Oldies"
on www.liberationradio.net

by Tony Robles

I’m at work sitting across the desk from my co-worker Solo. His eyes are tired and watery. He leans back in his chair awash in the overhead florescent light. “I want to go back home”, he says. He speaks of the tsunami that hit his homeland on Sept. 29th and the image he saw of a slipper floating on water on TV. Four 15-foot waves triggered by an undersea earthquake hit the island of American Samoa, waves crashing into everything in its wake a mile inland. We sat and watched the images together, images of wrecked boats, cars, destroyed houses. The reports indicated that the tsunami had destroyed all low-lying areas and struck too rapidly for a full evacuation. He pointed out places he knew, like the local fishery and parking lot. “I want to go back and help my people”.

I met Solo a few months ago. I remember when he walked through the door for the swing shift. I thought he was Filipino. He was about 6 foot 2, 220 lbs. I’m Filipino. Sometimes I wish I was 6’4”, 220. We work as security guards at an apartment complex in the city. Our uniforms are the same—jacket with fur collar, polyester shirt, badge and shoulder patch with some kind of Celtic symbol. We worked a few days when I asked him, “What are you?” “I’m Samoan”, he said. Some of the residents at the complex tell him he looks like the wrestler known as “The Rock”. That makes him laugh. I don’t respond. We spend our shift communicating on a 2-way radio. Lots of static on that radio.

A couple weeks ago I was drinking coffee. The TV was on and the coffee fumed as the images passed over the screen: people in water, neck deep; children and elders hovered together on buildings, people wading through mud and debris; elders and mothers looking up to the sky amidst the destruction of their communities, their homes. Typhoon Ondoy hit the Philippines on September 26th bringing a month’s worth of rain in just 6 hours. Manila was covered in water. I’ve never been to the Philippines. My grandparents left our indigenous homeland in the 1920’s. I speak no Filipino but I feel Filipino. I recall my cousin saying to me, “You couldn’t make it in the P.I.”. He used to be in the Navy.

Solo sits across from me, the light reflecting on a desk that cannot hide its scratches. We take our break in the guard office. On the wall to the left is a map of San Francisco; in back is a map of the world.

“Eat” Solo says in a way that reminds me of family. He brings food in Tupperware containers: ham, pineapple, chicken, rice and fish. “Eat” he says again, gesturing for me to take as much as I want. The way he shares is food is Filipino. He lets me take a helping first. Then he serves himself. He then walks to the soda machine and buys drinks for both of us. I tell him he eats like a Filipino. He puts the rice in his mouth and we share our laughter. I wonder if he thinks I laugh like a Samoan.

“Back home I go fishing”, Solo says. With a spear and snorkel and flashlight”. He talks about catching lobster and fish. He says that when the fish are caught, he first shares it with his neighbors, then brings the rest home to his family. Solo is from a big family of 8—5 boys and 3 girls. To share is part of Samoan culture. “Back in Samoa, if you walk in front of another person’s house, they call you in to eat. We are a sharing people, a giving people. In Samoa, people respect the elders, here they don’t care”.

We finish eating and walk around the apartment complex we are hired to guard. It’s time to close the swimming pool. Many folks in the pool are young, many are white and from Orange county, among other places. They sometimes sneak into the pool, their form of entitlement. We tell them that the pool is closed. Through the trees we can see the moon. Solo looks at the blue water of the pool. “Back home in Samoa, the water is deeper than this”, he says.

Solo works 2 jobs. He’s tired much of the time. He sends money back home to his wife. His other job is doing security at a hotel. He sees young girls, drunk, late at night during all night parties. Where are their mothers, he asks. Back home in Samoa, the young do not leave their parents. The families stay together.

Solo came to the US 3 years ago from American Samoa. His uncle is pastor of a church in the city. Solo came to help with the church. He is the Sunday school coordinator, plays guitar and serves breakfast to the elders in the congregation (oatmeal, hot bread and cocoa rice). He loves to sing. His baritone is rich. He’ll sometimes sing that old song, “The Green Grass of Home”. I asked him why his homeland is called American Samoa. He paused and said he didn’t know. There are 2 Samoa’s he says, Western (Independent) and American Samoa. Sometimes he and his friends ponder the question but those moments come and go. It is a legacy similar to the Filipino experience: colonization and displacement from lands. American Samoa is considered an American territory (it is the size of Washington DC), land that was divided between the Germany and the US. There was an indigenous resistance movement to the colonization but was suppressed by the US Navy. A committee was sent to “investigate” the status of American Samoa, a committee made up of the same people involved in the overthrowing of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

We sometimes sit in his car and he’ll play music from back home. The songs are in Samoan and praise the creator. I went home and found a Samoan radio station online called, “Showers of Blessings”. I think of the downfall in the Philippines, one month’s worth of rain in 6 hours. The music is beautiful like the music in Solo’s car.

We go back to the security guard office and sit at the desk. We talk about the typhoons that have hit the Philippines and Samoa, and Indonesia. He wants to go back home more than anything. On the radio a commercial for the California lottery comes on. “If I won the lottery, I’d take the money and rebuild all the houses”, he says. His family moved to high ground on the island. Many have died. The airport was shut down and roads and communication have been severely damaged.

He told me the story of an old woman in a wheelchair. The younger one’s were trying to move her to safety. The woman told them, “Leave me, just go. I know that it is God’s love. That water is God’s love touching me”. A field supervisor for the Security Company that employs us, also Samoan, told me that the Samoan people survive because of their love for and faith in God. Big people, big heart, she said. We sat for a while, not saying anything. Then we got up and went on our patrol.

To help our brothers and sisters in Samoa, send your contributions to POOR Magazine, 2940 16th Street #301, San Francisco, CA 94103

by Brother Y/PNN

Apparently the devious one is at it again.

The deviant one being none other than devious Nevious the San Francisco Chronicles

Resident master of misinformation or should I just say liar?

No matter how you slice it the truth is seldomly anywhere near Nevious.

His latest pack of lies is once again directed towards the residents of Golden Gate Park

Located in the scenic and as of late classist section of San Francisco known as the Haight.

Well as I have stated on many occaisions thereis a reason they call it the Haight,the hate!

Anyhow in the devious ones latest rants he still attacks the needle exchange and in the same breath admits that there are not nearly as many stray needles due to the valiant effort of the volunteers of this organization.

Further more he continues to label the neighborhood recycling center “an a.t.m. for the homeless.”

Who is it that he is trying to impress anyhow, a bunch of bigotted intolerant 5 year old’s?

Because after all even the average 8 year old knows that in order to withdraw money from an a.t.m. money must be deposited in the bank to begin with.

The homeless in G.G.P. and impoverished recyclers in any part of the city have paid their “dues” or made their “deposits” in general time and time again in every way possible.

Not very long ago recyclers could not receive the full deposit price of bottles or cans but instead had to settle for pennies on the dollar for payment because recycle companies circumvented the California deposit law and made payment by weight not volume.

The poor recyclers must dig through the garbage of others and come across only God knows what to reap a meager wage that will afford them a meal or 2 at Mcdonalds

[again the devious trips over another of his lie’s only to speak the truth] and or alcohol

and or other drug at least according to Devious

Imagine that people having a strong enough work ethic to feed themselves and pay for their own vices!

Can you say independence?

Last I checked all paper U.S. currency states “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private”.

To put it another way what people do with their money is their own business. [as in mind your own business! And incidently one of the great slogans of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 step organizations that help people overcome substance abuse problems is “live and let live” In other words mind your own business! If you don’t like it call your sponsor and by the way before you call your sponsor be sure to mind your own business!

The thing that is the most obvious to me is inspite of the fact that the Chronicle is in the red they are still able to pay the deviant one enough money for him to follow each and everyone of the recyclers around to see what and where they eat as well as what their particular vices are!

Unfortunately the fact that Nevious and other intolerants [they are such unfortunates!] forget about or choose to ignore is that upto 30% of the homeless in San Francisco are disabled American Veterans,many of whom “killed for their country”were willing to die for it and suffered many physical, emotional and mental injuries post traumatic stress disorder not being the least of them

Yet according to Nevious {and apparently mayor Gavin Newsom who just recently pushed a bill through to make it illegal for anyone beside big business recycling companies to sort through recycling bins on the street in San Francisco] shouldn’t have the right to hustle up enough money to get the images of death burning and bombed villages temporarily out of their minds.

The big whopping lie that Nevious tells that probably not be obvious to the average square is his claim that during a recent stroll through G.G.P. is dozens of people running up to him offering to sell him marijuana and crack.

According to him when offering “nuggs” or “nuggets” this is slang for crack.

The only similarity between crack and “nuggets” is they are both listed as schedule #1 drugs. How utterly unfair for the poor nuggs! After all nugges is jus a slang word for marijuana buds, so named because oft times the many faceted bud nodules resemble gold nuggets! Remember this is San Francisco where the gold rush began.

Don’t take my word for it though look it up for yourself on wikapedia.

After you do don’t mind your own business, tell Nevious to take a hike somewhere far away from Golden Gate Park though, seems like everytime he walks through there he sticks his foot in it!

‘Nuff said

Brother Y!

by Lester the cat and Dee

I know about pigeons could go in a cook book, along with all of the other
tasty things that I’ve eaten.

Hands tells me secretly, “Why don’t we invite those pigeons over for
dinner sometime soon?”

“Good idea,” I tell him.

The reason I’m writing about pigeons is that this guy named Joe sent
me something that he wrote about pigeons taking over the world (not with
us cats around, someone should tell him). This Joe wrote to me and Hands:

“Pigeons and cats mostly run Planet Earth!” Human’s destructive
capacities are their own traits. Let the humans believe that they’re in
control, stumble on to discoveries that we drop in their minds. Their
hidden control continues: These are Birdview, Pigeon mind(s). Are
You Sure That What You Think Is You Or Are They P-Minds?”

And he also sent us some photos- I’m including a few. Don’t notice if
they’re a little spotty: me and Hands had a little trouble with our spit
the day that we looked at them. We had a drooling problem for
some reason.

As soon as I finish this column, which is now, I think I’ll send this
guy Joe a Hands-written invitation to dinner with me and Hands- for him
and for his pigeons. We’ll talk Joe (humor him) into going out
and taking many more rolls of film of many more pigeons, lots and lots
of pigeons. We’ll give him categories: most beautiful pigeon, most happiest
pigeon, and so on- whatever takes him the longest.

Meanwhile me and Hands will amuse ourselves, discussing with the pigeons
this plan for taking over the world, and how “Pigeons and cats mostly
run Planet Earth”, and the Delicious Dinner we will make OF, for,
I mean, the pigeons that this Joe guy leaves with us.

by Staff Writer

Who is Poor?

Living in a hotel

Latinos,

men,

little child,

sadness in their face.

I am

I am Peruvian

I am happy being who I am

I am not poor, nor rich.

I am strong

when I see some injustices going on

I do something about it.