Story Archives 2000

by Staff Writer

Communities from up and down the West Coast will converge in San Francisco to demonstrate our immense energy and BE THE CHANGE this administration needs to do what is right. Shoulder to shoulder we will take the necessary steps to win affordable housing and civil rights for everyone! For two days we will organize, dance, evoke the vision and spirit of MLK, Jr. and grow the movement for social justice.

January 20, 2010 marks the one-year anniversary of the Obama Administration. He came to power through a powerful grassroots campaign movement. That movement – driven by hope and change – has foundered on business as usual in DC.

We do know that change can come quick, just look at the +700 billion of taxpayer's dollars that went to bail out Wall Street. What did those most in need get? $1.5 billion in Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing funds! The change barometer reads: little to no change.

Organize or Die!

What are the consequences of these priorities? 39.8 million people living below the poverty line (17 million people in “deep poverty”), a 26-year high unemployment rate, 46.3 million uninsured people, and 49 million people who face food insecurity. Homelessness is up 12 percent in cities across the country.

In response to this growing crisis, many local governments and business improvement districts have created programs that force growing numbers of poor people out of gentrifying or neglected neighborhoods and into jails.

From anti-homeless loitering, sitting, and sleeping laws to immigration checks at health programs and public schools to arrest histories in public housing and employment, we must stop this pattern of oppression and demand our human rights. It's quite simple: organize or die!

by Leroy Moore/Illin n Chillin

A leading Muslim jurist of Spain in the twelfth
century, Ibn Hazam, advocated that disability should
not be an impediment to becoming a leader. And indeed
the history of Islam is full of people living with
their disabilities who have served their communities.
For example:

Akbar The Great was a king of but he
had dyslexia and could not read or write.

Abdullah ibn Umm Maktum, a blind man was put in
charge of the city of Madinah by Prophet Muhammad more then ten times. Every time the Muhammad left town he relied on Abdullah ibn Umm Maktum to run the city.

In the last ten years, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, was a
spiritual leader, teacher and founder of Hamas. His
ideas and leadership sprung from his involvement with
the Muslim Brotherhood religious organization.
He was the second most important Palestinian leader after PalestinianAuthority (PA) President Yasser Arafat. Sheikh Ahmed Yasin was killed on March 20th 2004 by The Israelis Airforce.

Although many Muslim scholars have written that the
Quran offers very little on disabilities, the Quran
outlines example of inclusion, and because of that
Islam is welcoming, opening and accessible to people
with disabilities. The insight on the role of people
with disabilities within the Muslim faith, the Quran
and Hdith Prophet Muhammads Tradition, recorded
statements, includes at least one example of the
practice of inclusion of an individual with a
disability in Muslim daily duties. The story of
Julabib tells how a physically disabled man who was
one of the Prophets companions fought in battle. The
Prophet saw Julabib as his equal. The Prophet granted
Julabib the right to marry.

In addition to the teachings of Quran, some
contemporary Muslim scholars have given their
interpurtation that the Muslim faith is inclusionive
of people with disabilities. . Sheikh Isse Mosse
wrote in his article, Disability: An Islamic
Insight, (Islamic Council of Victoria website, 2002)
that Islam sees disability as morally neutral. It
is seen neither as a blessing nor a curse. Clearly
disability is therefore accepted as being an
inevitable part the human condition. It, disability,
is simply a fact of life which has to be addressed
appropriately by the society of the day.

The above examples of how disability is viewed in the
Muslim faith and history can bring together the life,
struggles and activism of Sheikh Ahmed Yasin in an
Islamic disability paradigm if the above practice,
theories and faith are really carried out in today's
society. Many disabled Muslims today would argue that
the day to day reality doesn't match their teachings
of inclusion.

However if we only follow the practice and teaching of
inclusion in the Muslim faith and way of living, it
gives a disability platform for the reader to look and
study the life and work of Sheikh Ahmad Yasin of
Palestine in a disability scholarly view. The hows
and whys of the growing power and leadership of Yasin
have been tossed around in the media since his
assassination on March 20th 2004. On many written
accounts by reporters about Yasins evolution of his
revolutionary activism and his thinking of the
Palestine people have linked his rise in status to his
personal experiences of his youth. For example, the
stripping of the land in the Israeli war of
independence of 1948 thus living in a refugee camp,
his football injury that left him a quadriplegic at
age 12 and the injustice of the justice system that
imprisoned him twice in his early fifties. All of
these experiences have formed what Yasin was.

In 1984 and 85 Gill Sedan, a journalist, also talked
about Yasins disability as one of his key components
that placed him as one of the most powerful figures in
Palestine in her March 22nd, 2004, article on
Cleveland Jewish News.com detailing her interview with
Yasin. She wrote, Yasin was a classic example of an
Islamic leader who derives his political power due to
his disability- like the Sheik Omar Abdul Radman, the
blind Sheik from Egypt now in prison in the US.
Although Sedan didnt go on to explain how Yasin used
his disability as a tool to power, we can come to the
conclusion that his disability like his poverty drew
him closer to his people and gained their trust.

Many reports concluded that the 2000 break down of the
peace talks and outbreak of new Israeli-Palestinian
fighting, Hamas and other groups were linked to an
upsurge of suicide bombings. These reports go on to
say in 2003 in response to suicide bombing, Israel
intensified targeted killings of militants and
declared top Hamas leaders marked for death. In
one recent article from www.Reuters.com wrote that the
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie accused the
United States of giving Israel the green light to
assassinate Hamas leaders. The focus solely on suicide
bombings and violence of Hamas from the Israeli
government and armed forces has put a target on all
Muslims from ordinary civilians like the killing of a
deaf, mentally disabled man, Sameer Sady Sababn, in
GAZA to the assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yasin.
Their disability didnt play a role in their killings
just the fear of Muslims and Hamas has triggered
Israelis military, to shoot without questioning
leaving even the disabled in the crossfire.

Also we, as advocates, scholars of revolutionary
movements and disabled activists have to remember that
Yasin was a true advocate that didnt filch on his
stands of a free Palestine, and independence from
foreign influence through economics. As a true
revolutionary he knew his days were numbered so he
worked to put his plan in place on what to do after
his assassination. This reminds me of the late
hip-hop artist & poet, Tupac Shakur, because he also
knew his days were numbered and he was up front about
it in his messages in his music. Yasin also worked
tirelessly on the poverty that has stricken his land
and also gravely increased his poor health. Yasin was
quoted many times in saying that freedom is earned,
not granted on a silver platter and that which is
taken by force can be only recovered by force!

Whatever the controversy that hangs over Sheikh Ahmed
Yasin of being involved with the execution of suicide
bombings, his work and how he did it as a disabled
Muslim at that time must be studied by disability
scholars, revolutionaries and activists all around the
world. How did he, as a disabled young man in the
early fifties, get into college, became a well know
and highly respected preacher and then formed a
militant group, Hamas? It also tells us a lot about
Muslims Brotherhood and their acceptance to have a
disabled participate who is in a leadership role.
Hamas at the time of its creation was the strongest
political rival to mainstream Fatah movement of
Palestinian leader Yesser Arafat. Many only know the
arm struggle and suicide bombings that has been linked
to the Hamas by the US and Israeli government. Very
few have given recognition to how the Hamas provided
an effective social welfare system of schools, clinics
and hospitals that provided free services to
Palestinian families that Shaul Mishal and Avraham
Sela points out in their book, The Palestinian Hamas,
Vision, Violence, and Coexistence.

The fear of suicide bombings has lumped almost all
Muslims in one category for Israeli army and law
enforcement even disabled ordinary Muslim civilians.
The case of Sameer Sady is a good example of the fear
of Israeli army on Muslims and the assumption of being
a suicide bomber. On March 17th, 2004, three days
before Yasins assassination, Israeli army shot Sameer
Sady Sababh in GAZA City. According to Islam Online
News Service, Sameer, a deaf and mentally disabled
man, was walking home from work on March 17th when
Israeli troops ordered Sameer to raise his hands. He
just stood there stunned, silent and scared but it
didnt keep the soldiers from shooting him and then
caring his body into a Palestinians house where they
proceeded to set the house on fire. An eyewitness
told IslamOnline, I told one of the soldiers who
speaks Arabic, Sameer was Deaf. They ordered me to
shut up, then shot him in the legs, belly, chest and
head. Then the soldiers dragged Sameers body into a
Palestinians house and set the house on fire.

In both cases Sheikh Ahmed Yasin and Sameer Sady
Sababah were Muslims accepted in the Muslim faith and
the Hamas movement but were only seen as dangerous and
connected to the violence in Palestine. Although at
the time of their death both were walking home unarmed
according to witnesses, Israeli military say both were
involved or planning to execute suicide bombings. I
wonder what would the Shariah (Islamic Law) say about
the killing of Sameer and the assassination of Yasin
and other disabled Muslims? As I read the Quran, I
look outside and Im scared of this world!

by Leroy Moore/Illin n Chillin

As we move into our 4th performance year, SinsInvalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility raises the bar for creative expression around embodiment, sexuality, disability, race and queerness, striving for an intersectional political framing in its community building on and off the stage.

October 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 2009 marks the date for our Sins Invalid shows at the historic Brava Theater in the heart of the Mission district in San Francisco. Artists with disabilities who are people of color and/or people from LGBTQI communities are coming from close and afar including our own West Coast, the deep South and across the pond from England.

This year SinsInvalid will reflect the truth that our bodies, your body, all bodies are magical, and to bring it home SinsInvalid’s Artistic Core has juried a breath-taking show for you, including these artists…

Aurora Levins Morales, a nationally known writer whose work has been widely anthologized and taught. You may recognize Aurora’s name as a contributor to the groundbreaking 1981 collection This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Her work will be in collaboration with John Benson’s Kinetic Sculpture. John also created an alternative show space simply called “The Bus.” Subject of many print and web articles, two film documentaries and three radio interviews, the bus is a mobile music and art venue that has done two US tours and about two hundred shows.

Mat Fraser, one of the United Kingdom’s best-known disabled performers. Mat’s work includes televised documentaries such as Born Freak, his study of freak shows and disabled performers in history, Happy Birthday Thalidomide, and Unarmed and Dangerous.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, a Worcester-raised, Toronto-matured, Oakland-based queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. Leah is the 2009-10 Artist in Residence at UC Berkeley’s Poetry for the People program and the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, North America’s only touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performing artists. Her one-woman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured nationally.

Todd Herman is a co-founder of Sins Invalid and is a Project Advisor. His visual art works often explore relationships between documentary images and poetic texts, and range from a newly released book of photographs about marginalized communities in Kathmandu, Nepal; to films, books and art exhibits that look at connections between birth, memory and mourning; to video productions examining aspects of disability, sexuality and eugenics. His video work will be part of a collaboration between Artistic Director Patty Berne, performers seeley quest, Ralph Dickinson and myself.

Tickets are available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com and for cash at the door on a first-come-first-served basis.
$15-25 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. Please Note: Show contains explicit content

For more info:
510-689-7198

info@sinsinvalid.org

http://www.sinsinvalid.org

by by Ka Ponda

My body had convinced my mind that a hot meal and a peaceful
environment would soothe the exhaustion caused by the rigor of the grueling
day. The aroma from a nearby restaurant titillated my palate as my feet
labored down the red, brick path. Suddenly, out of a recess, the sound
of a distressed voice pierced my left ear. Inhaling my cigarette, I paused
to listen to its cry. It was the impassioned plea of a man asking if someone
could help him through the maze of people on the bustling downtown San
Francisco street. Before I could reply, the thunder of a menacing voice
pierced my right ear, "Vacate the premises immediately!!"

I was perplexed as to why the men in blue had directed the glower of
their bigotry at my, for no apparent reason. I then asked, "Why must I
vacate, since I just stopped?"

"Because there is no loitering here" they yelled back to me.

The person for whom I had stopped revived his courage, grumbled some
inaudible gibberish and departed like a bandit. The wind chased the ruddy
ashes of the cigarette to the edge of my lips as the nicotine particles
slowly tumbled to claim their place amid the other debris on the street.
After a quick dialogue of barbs, I tossed the butt of the spent cigarette
and thought it wise to move along. 

"Why are you giving me a ticket?" I asked, incredulously.

Using the ticket as his dagger, the man in blue retorted with a wry
expression, "For littering, have a nice day!"

1997

The morning hinted of
a nice day.

It was the kind of magic in the air that only a crisp day in late December
could produce. I deposited my paycheck and withdrew funds from the bank
and started on my way to work. As I walked east on Golden Gate Street in
the direction of Stockton Street, I stopped to talk with a former co-worker,
Ronnie Eagles. We talked in front of the building out of which Mr. Eagles
had still been employed.

As we talked, a voice blared, "Hey John, are you still on parole?" It
sounded like the hue and cry directed toward an habitual criminal or some
low-life individual and not a civilized person attempting to communicate
with another person.

We turned to see a haggardly,
bleary-eyed person sitting in an automobile staring straight into my eyes,
seething for an answer to his question,. I calmly informed the person that
my name was not John and I had never gone to prison. He then demanded that
I come to his car and show him some identification. He had not shown me
anything representative of an official of the law, nor was he in a San Francisco
Police Department uniform. Since I had just come from the bank, I had no
intention of opening my wallet to a person inside a car behind the steering
wheel with the motor running. As Mr. Eagles and I stood, the two men stormed
out of the car in a frenzy and barreled toward me. I had never seen these
two men in my entire life and was baffled that they pretended to have known
me and wondered about their intent. Once again, I reiterated to them, "My
name is not John, and I have never in my life been in prison." 

One of the two men flashed a badge as he aggressively moved towards
me. When I saw his badge I realized that I had been arbitrarily singled
out for harassment and that my rights, guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment
to the Constitution, had been violently trampled upon by these two agents
of the law. I asked Mr. Eagles to walk inside the office building and get
the staff attorney, Judy Appel. Mr. Eagles returned with a video camera
and documented the incident. He stopped recording and went inside, again,
to get the director, Paul Boden.

The two officers handcuffed and crammed me into the front seat of their
small car while Messrs. Boden and Eagles were coming out. The car was not
designed to transport a six-foot person in handcuffs as I was in a contorted
position during the trip.

At the police station, I was asked to be seated on a metal bench while
still wearing handcuffs. I informed them that I had a bad knee due to an
operation for torn anterior cruciate ligaments and that it was aggravated
by the position in which I had been during the trip in the small car. They
forcibly shoved me onto the metal bench and then began jeering me as though
I had been brought in for some heinous crime. The sergeant, who had no
knowledge of what had happened or why I was there, chimed in with a ludicrous,
stereotypical comment that he was going to send me back to prison, as though
I had already been in prison. 

After they had checked my records, they removed the handcuffs from my
wrists and released me. I called my employer, J. Boragine & Associates,
and explained what had happened and that I was in no physical condition
to report to work. I went to the emergency room at San Francisco General
Hospital on Saturday, December 20th, and was provided with treatment.

by Javier Guiterrez/PNN

I have worked para muchos anos (I have worked for many years). I have done anything and everything just to feed myself and my family- now I am tired. I sell my labor on the street – hoping that at the end of each month I will be able to send money home to my family in Mexico, and put poco dinero away for another time, another place. There is only one problem, the new police chief, Greg Corrales of The Mission Police station has decided "to clean up" el’ Mision. What he means by that is to clean up agente pobre – the poor people. Since he has been at the job he has been "cracking down" on flower and Tamale vendors, (mostly elder mujeres), day laborers like me and homeless people who sleep on the streets. That is why we will have no feliz dia del padre.this year…that is why we had to speak up.

‘Tenemos que ser Unidos’ (We Must Be United), "We have to lose our fear, we have to stand up for our rights, Daniel Rosas, a fellow day laborer spoke outside of the Mission Police Station on Friday, June 15. Over 50 day laborers came to the station to present the police chief and Mayor Willie Brown with a handwritten father’s day card

We have held repeated meetings, marches, speak-outs, and individual talks, to express our views but the Mission police station continues to ticket us and our potential employers for minor traffic violations and they refuse to strategize around alternate methods of ensuring traffic safety. That’s why we have decided to appeal to the Mission Police station one more time and then to take our demands to the person to whom the police are accountable - Mayor William Brown.

"We are not against the workers, we think they are fine, we just want them to have their own place.." Mission resident Joe Pacoro told another reporter from PNN in an interview after the laborers had left the Mission to visit the Mayor.

"The program they have now doesn’t work, it’s a %100 failure, if they took a building that’s being offered to them out on Bayshore they could have a big roomy place, it’s a great building" , stated another mission resident who openly supported the policies of the new police captain . "the police chief is doing a great job"

When asked what they thought of the new building that The San Francisco Day Labor Program had secured on Cesar Chavez Blvd they replied, "It’s a Whole in the WALL!!"

We asked a representative from The SF Day Labor Program why she thought the Mission residents called the new building a whole in the wall, she replied, " Because they want to move the workers out of the area, they want to get rid of us, that’s what this whole thing is about" She went on to relate a police "set-up" that took place a few weeks ago where they told the workers to move to another area and then proceeded to load them into a police van and arrest them, " Chief Corrales openly stated that he did that blatant set-up just to teach the workers a lesson"

"The Chief is doing a great job, he just doesn’t want the workers to get run over, he wants them out of harms way" one of the Mission residents proclaimed when told about the police round-up.

When we arrived at The Mayor’s office later that morning we were told that the Mayor couldn’t speak to us today because he was muey occupado
(very busy) but his press secretary would present our card to the mayor, and that he would be happy to meet with some of us on another day, many of us decide to wait for as long as it takes….

I have worked para muchos anos.. Now I am tired, I only hope that we will be listened to, that we can be left alone to work, to feed our families, only then will this be a Feliz dia Del Padre.

by Staff Writer

Unity government is a watercolour government
It is a government that’s home to
Ministers and ministries without power
Like coded storylines of untested identity
Within the within is the same, only smaller here
It is its absolute refusal to doubt itself
That hustles us along to our hazardous fringes
Little by little, the big black lies
Strangling the music of our hopes

It is the oppressor’s music ruminating in
The vestiges of our now clogged minds
Stories of false hope bound together
In stoic controversies and contradictions
By two actors seeking out unearned recognition
Leading us astray is this liberal hypocrisy
Just a dialectical change

Hope in Zimbabwe is knit with lives lost
And plaited into a pattern of suffering
Hope afraid of unbraiding the past
Waits for others to undo the knots
The unmaking of our old pains
Whose intricate designs and clever joints
We have mistakenly re-knotted again
Hope acts the fool here, don’t see
Or we don’t want to believe what we are seeing

In Harare north, they still swim in harmless pools
Designing for our dreams
We swim in hunger drenched streets of Chitungwiza
Here they only listen for our voices of dissent
For if they hear us they would kill us with their guns
So we now talk silently like the empty skies
Our very bones hears the sounds of our silent weeping

Each night the empty plates from which we eat
Will be the fields from which you will harvest
New harvests without the words “silent diplomacy.”
And at night we crash into nightmares, thinking
That this deck of misfortune that we have re-created
Would keep shoving us to keep fighting
For the horizons are still ours
But we wish the sun would soften a thousand times over

Unity government is just what it is
Or pieces of what it should be
It is the way you live within it
That makes it unworkable for you
As if it’s a map you can read only once
But feel like you have read it many times
Because you cannot forget it
Whether you want to, or not

It is stinking masks of skeletons full of odour
It is a street-named “government of national unity.”
On a broken down stage called “Zimbabwe.”
It is like bits of old jokes without the laughter
But snarls like jumbled half-bars of remembered music

It is just an illusion, a dilution process
So let’s not shift our minds in reverse
Let’s not fall prey to this new resurrection
A master’s rendition, a repetition of 1987
Just another history waiting to be re-written
Through another trough of empty spaces of time.

by Staff Writer

Washington, DC--Native American leaders in the emerging green economy
traveled to our Nation's capital to lobby representatives, network,
and work together to demand good and green jobs, careers, and
communities for Indian Country. Representatives from the Navajo,
Acoma, Oglala Sioux, Ojibwe, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations
participated in the Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference in
Washington DC this week.

"We are here to ensure that Indigenous communities and Nations will be
a part of the emerging green economy", says Jihan Gearon, Native
Energy Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network and member
of the Navajo Nation. "More so than mere participation and
tokenization, we are here to ensure that in this emerging economy, our
communities truly benefit and lead. There are numerous opportunities
in Indian Country to do so".

The Navajo Green Economy Plan is one such example. The Plan would
generate hundreds of green jobs across the Navajo Nation and support
local, community led, owned and operated initiatives such as small and
large scale renewable energy development, green manufacturing textile
mills, weatherization projects, weavers coops, traditional and organic
agricultural markets, and green jobs training programs.

"With millions of federal dollars ready to be distributed across the
country to support green jobs, we are prepared to support our local
community and in doing so lead the Nation in creating sustainable and
just societies", says Kelvin Long, member of the Navajo Green Economy
Coalition and the Navajo Nation.

Native American lands, as well as Indigenous territories worldwide,
have been historically and systematically targeted for fossil fuel,
coal, oil and gas development, which has resulted in the
contamination and depletion of water, land and community health".
Solutions to energy independence and climate change in the U.S., such
as nuclear power and clean coal, pose the threat of exacerbating these
negative affects.

"Green jobs must not include jobs for industries that will drag out
the use of dirty and unsustainable energy", says Petuuche Gilbert of
Acoma pueblo in New Mexico, a community affected by uranium mining.
"In this new economy, we must break the cycle of being marginalized
people and forced to choose between economic development and
preservation of our culture and lands. We are against renewed uranium
mining. Nuclear is not green".

Tribal lands have an estimated 535 Billion kWh/year of wind power
generation potential, about 14% of U.S. annual generation. Tribal
lands also hold an estimated 17,000 Billion kWh/year of solar
electricity generation potential--4.5 times total U.S. annual
generation. As Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth
and member of the Ojibwe Nation points out, "The reality is that the
most efficient, green economy will need the vast wind and solar
resources that lie on Native American lands. And we are prepared to
lead".

by Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia/PNN

The blessings began the moment i walked in the magical path winding me through ropa y colores, jugetes y arte - each calavera whispered to me about rios and tierras stolen, remembered and dreamed about by indigenous peoples across pacha mama.

I was led into the palace of art y musica y ceremonia known as Corazon del Pueblo- House of the Heart- by mi hermana in struggle and resistance, fellow welfareQUEEN, Vivian Hain.
"You have to come tiny," her eyes shown as she spoke about coming to the store, a special kind of shine, Women, mamaz, revolutionarias, listen to each other when we see that kind of shine in each others eyes, because we know that our companeras have seen the light, the light of resistance, hope and power for our silenced peoples that we all seek on the daily.

As i walked down the path - color flew at me. I had been wondering lately where my mama dee was hanging out. My mama dee, an African-Boricua- Taina- resistance fighter who passed onto her spirit journey in March of 2006. As i followed the colors, i knew.

"We are here to celebrate the ribbon cutting of this beautiful space, we are here to celebrate our mothers, our children, our ancestors, we are here to celebrate Ethnic Studies 40 Years Later: Race Resistance and Relevance being held at San Francisco State University this week." Dorinda Moreno, life-long revolutionary, poet, teacher, mama and grandmother who had been one of the original folks leading the fight for ethnic studies at SFSU, led the circle of blessings through a ribbon cutting at a new room in the back of the store dedicated to Danza Azteca classes and other events in the beautiful store owned and operated by another powerful mama and teacher, Josefina Lopez.

Elders and speakers, ninas and babies filled the space with more color and music and then when i truly thought i had seen and felt everything to feed and care-give my soul, when i thought i had tasted every gift pacha mama and the ancestors had to give me today, the room became silent. People spoke in hushed tones, with a look of disbelief in their eyes,"That's pancho villa's son, Ernesto Nava, that's him, he is here!"

An elder wearing an old-skool sobrero de vacuero walked down the magical path where all light and color and cloth and sculpture dwelled. People whispered, "he is 92 years old".
As he stepped through the small entrance he looked up and before i could say anything he shook my outstretched hand, "Mucho gusto," I whispered through a breath of awe. His eyes shone with dreams still being done and work still being worked.
 

Other members of our POOR Magazine family were celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day and the deKKKolinzing of KKKillerolumbus at Berkeley's Pow Wow so in the middle of a serenade by mujeres mariachis myself and Vivian stepped out of the magical space back into a slightly brighter, slightly richer International Blvd, determined to come back as many times as we could, to keep dreams being dreamed, art made and ancestors properly honored.

To take your own tour and create your own magic go to Corazon Del Pueblo at 4814 International Blvd in Oakland. or call 510-532-6733

by Judith M. Hansel

Parts one and two of this series explained how the US government cheated me out of $24,500 when I paid cash for a house that had been in a USDA homeownership program. This program is authorized by Title 7 USCS C.F.R. 1955.116. I learned, after purchasing the house, that the required repairs had not been made. The house was not in “decent, safe, and sanitary” condition as required by the regulation.

My first response consisted of writing letters to the local, regional, and federal USDA offices. Every reply to my letters denied wrongdoing. Senator Kohl suggested that I obtain a low-cost government loan to repair the house.

To protect my investment, I obtained three mortgages over an eighteen-month period that totaled $23,000. I decided, after a Black Hills Vision Quest, to stop paying the mortgage in order to get the fraud issue before a jury.

The Complaint arrived via Sheriff’s deputy in December. The Case Number is 91CV189 stamped as received by the Clerk of the Court in Waushara County Circuit Court located in Wautoma, Wisconsin. I Answered the Complaint stating the issue of fraud and filed third-party complaints against the USDA, my attorney, my divorce attorney, the Realtor and Union State Bank.

In January, the bank filed a Motion to Dismiss my Answer. Judge Wolfe agreed
stating that I had “too much extraneous material.” She also dismissed all my third-party Complaints even though the USDA had not filed any papers. Judge Wolfe said that she knew that she had to provide “substantial justice” so she gave me ten days in which to file another Answer.

The Answer that I submitted was the only possible Answer that I could write. To submit another Answer would be to agree with Judge Wolfe’s statement that there was “too much extraneous material” in my Answer. So I did not write another Answer to the bank’s Complaint. I did appeal Judge Wolfe’s decisions and orders to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals on the basis that they violated my Constitutional right to a jury trial on anything worth over $20. (Seventh Amendment).

Before the Court of Appeals reached a decision, the bank filed a Motion for Summary Judgment. That Motion was granted; the decision stated that the Judge had “tried” the legal issues. Of course, this was a lie and I appealed Judge Wolfe’s actions to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.

In July, the Sheriff held a public sale of the property and sold it to Union State Bank. I had no intention of cooperating with the Sheriff when the bank took possession, so in September I held a “Going to Jail Sale” and advertised the event in the local paper.

I sold all my furniture and all the improvements I had made to the house including: the mailbox and the post it was on, the TV antenna, the in-the-wall air conditioner and the fence. Under Wisconsin law if a contract is signed under fraudulent conditions, the contract is null and void. Basically, I had no legal right to improve the property just as the bank had no legal right to issue mortgages to me.

On October 1, the Court issued a Writ of Assistance to the Sheriff that expired on October 9. On October 9, the Sheriff arrested me and transported me to jail using that expired Writ. I was jailed for six hours and released on my own recognizance. (Case 92CM114). I filed a Motion to Dismiss based on the fact that no one had read my rights to me. In response, the DA dismissed the charges against me without prejudice, which meant that he could re-charge me anytime that he wanted.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals in Madison, Case #92-0522 upheld all the Waushara Circuit Court’s decisions. I then appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court under the same Case Number.

I was waiting for a decision from that Court when I read that, in Wisconsin, a person may not be removed from a property in dispute until all legal remedies had been exhausted. So why wasn’t I living in the house?

I needed to get these issues before a jury and thought that the easiest way to do it would be to get myself arrested. So I went to the DA and an official of the bank and told them that I would be on the property that afternoon. No one came to arrest me, so I went back to the DA and asked him why I wasn’t arrested.

“We won’t arrest you for trespassing,” he told me.

What could I think up that would get me arrested, but that wouldn’t send me off to prison for life? I bought black paint and a paintbrush and wrote slogans on the house that did not flatter the USDA and Union State Bank. The next time I was in Wautoma, I was arrested outside a grocery store. I was, however, allowed to drive my car to the jail parking lot. I was charged with a felony, damage to private property, Case Number 93CF007. While in jail over the weekend, my gun was confiscated from my car, violating the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. In Wisconsin, guns may not be confiscated until a person is convicted of a felony.

In March, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision upheld the Wisconsin Court of Appeals and the Waushara Circuit Court’s decisions. I filed a request for a Writ of Cetiorari with the US Supreme Court, Case Number 92-8419.

In April, I attempted to get the prosecution of me for the house-painting crime transferred to the US District Court-Eastern Division in Milwaukee. Judge Goodstein denied my request and labeled his decision a civil case when, in fact, it was a criminal case. (Case Number 93-C-34l).

On May 19 I was scheduled for a jury trial. Finally! Judge Karch arrived and interrogated me for over an hour on points of the law. He said that he was going to dismiss the jury since I was not ready for trial. The truth probably was that he thought I might win!

He ordered me to leave the Courtroom and wait in the hall. Outraged that I had been denied a jury trial AGAIN, I left the building. The next day I was arrested and jailed. This time they did not tell me the charge or give me copies of the Warrant. In the afternoon at my arraignment, the Judge set a cash bail of $2,000. I refused to raise it. The Judge then ordered me to sit in jail until I raised the money. I told him I would stop eating.

On May 25, the Court held a hearing. The Judge offered to set the bail at a $2000 signature bond if I would see a private attorney while I was in jail. I agreed. The Judge also ordered a Mental Competency Evaluation to be done by the Director of the Winnebago Mental Institution on June 22 in Oshkosh. The next day, Patrick Seubert, an attorney in private practice in Neenah, Wi., visited me. When I told him I wanted him to hire a psychiatrist for a second competency evaluation, he told me he didn’t know how to do that. And, he added, he would become Guardian of my affairs after the Evaluation.

On June 9, I received the denial of a Writ of Certiorari from the US Supreme Court.

My legal remedies were exhausted and I knew that the outcome of the Mental Competency Evaluation was already decided, so what could I do?

I went to Canada.

by Dee/PoorNewsNetwork

The San Francisco Department of Human Services (DHS) began implementation of SF Board Supervisor Newsom’s draconian Proposition N (Care Not Cash) even before the July 1, 2003 implementation date by serving eviction notices on people who are in long-term case managed programs like the SF shelter Next Door. (The rationale for this is that under Prop N, shelter beds are supposed to be prioritized for folks on SF’s CAAP program –welfare- and therefore not available for anyone on SSI, or the working poor - see Racial and Economic Cleansing #101
for more info on this issue)

While this economic genocide is waged on poor San Francisco residents, so-called liberal democrats like Nancy Pelosi who say the following; “We give unequivocal support and appreciation of the Nation to the president as Commander in Chief for his firm leadership and decisive action in the conduct of military operations in Iraq as part of the on-going Global War on Terrorism” and support the Bush administration budget which spends 80 billion to support the war on Iraq, Homeland Security and Airline Bailouts.

More money for the war means less money for the states and cities – social programs to support housing and health education programs, etc. Please join POWER, POOR Magazine, The Coalition on Homelessness and other poverty rights activists and poor folk in fighting this racist and classist proposition, see below for info on an upcoming action....

UNITE TO FIGHT AGAINST SHELTER EVICTIONS

Say No to Expulsions and Exclusions in the San Francisco Shelters

The Department of Human Services in San Francisco has hatched a plan
to hijak the shelter system as part of their plan to set up Prop N
(the cuts to assistance for the homeless initiative). They plan to
force homeless county assistance recipients into the shelter and
expel the non-assistance recipients who are immigrants, seniors,
workers, and people with mental illnesses or other disabilities. All
of this just to turn a profit. Come stand with POWER to say No
Expulsions, and No Exclusions! We Demand Shelter for All!

March, Rally, and Press Conference

Thursday April 17th, @ 4 PM,

Meet at the office of the Coalition on Homelessness

468 Turk St. @ Larkin

When Newsom and the tourism industry poured thousands of dollars into
their lie campaign for Prop N, they were full of promises. Sure our
checks were gonna be cut, but in the place of our wages we were going
to housing, food, and services. Now that July is just 2 months away,
the truth is coming out that Prop N is nothing more that $59 and a
shelter bed. Last week, Next Door (the city's "care facility") made
all of their residents sign eviction notices stating that no one
could remain in the shelter after June 30th. (notice then revoked
one week later) Why? Because DHS's big care plan is to force all
homeless CAAP recipients into the city's over-crowded shelter system
and charge them $300 rent a month, while forcing all immigrants,
disabled people, and working poor folks out into the streets. That's
not care, that's discrimination. Trent Rhorer even said that they
hope the new system will be so worthless and difficult that they
expect over 80% of to just quit the program and fight for own
survival on the streets with no assistance at all. That's bullshit!
Are we going to continue to let these politicians make their wealth
off our poverty? Hell no! Now is the time to fight back!

--

People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER)

32 - 7th Street

San Francisco CA 94103

415.864.8372 - phone

415.864.8373 - fax