Story Archives 2000

by RAM/PNN

Since the time I was nine I have had regular suicidal thoughts. I started smoking marijuana regularly when I was fourteen. I smoked as a way to stay alive and to stay focused on the things that mattered to me in life. I smoked to be happy and get rid of my negative internal dialogue. Smoking also helped me stay away from hard drugs and excessive alcohol. Currently marijuana is my only positive outlet for daily anxieties about my past. I don't want to let go of my past, but I need a positive and productive way to deal with it and continue towards a healthy future.

In San Francisco and all over California the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has threatened to close Cannabis Clubs. This horrifies me because I need safe access to marijuana to help deal with my depression and my emotions. I am now the father of two daughters and I am constantly trying to move ahead in my life. I want to be as positive a role model for my daughters that I can. I want to create a home environment where they can come and stay with their father and feel a stability and consistency that I never really had.

Growing up in a trauma riddled environment I had to constantly remind myself there was light at the end of the tunnel in the distance that I couldn't even see yet. One of my first memories when I was only eight years old has stayed vivid in my mind.

"Take you're ass in the living room NOW!" My father's voice boomed through the house almost knocking me over.

It was all basically over a bill that was either not paid or paid a little late. I came home from school one day to my parents arguing or better yet pops yelling at my mom who was sitting on my bottom bunk weeping like a child. He was screaming at the top of his lungs about something I did not understand.

"Boy, take your ass in the living room now, before I whoop you too."

I sat there not knowing what was going on only hearing the screaming and screeching of my moms voice feeling helpless and powerless. I thought to myself as I heard my mother's cries, there is nothing I can do and how could my father do this.

Thinking back on memories such as these in my life, I end up with waterfalls running down my face. Marijuana calms and relaxes me so I can process and deal with these memories without the desire to do something that would end up hurting myself. Although I use marijuana for emotional support for some people with illnesses such as HIV and cancer medical marijuana offers an alternative to heavy medications or acts as a supplemental treatment. Many rely on marijuana to stay alive.

As Reverend Randi Webster recently said during a visit to POOR Magazine, "If Cannabis Club dispensaries close, I am worried that I will have to attend many more funerals."

I don't want to buy marijuana off the street risking jail or even worse. I also don't want to risk being sold laced drugs or running into old people, places or things. I don't want to risk starting my old habits again. I need 'safe access.' I know many people are in my position.

Jewnbug from POOR Magazine said, "350 Divisadero Cannabis Club saved my life. It's a place where I can medicate and incorporate artistic expression."

Similar to Jewnbug and many other people who have had to deal with trauma, marijuana helps me focus in all parts of my life especially in music, poetry, and acting. Marijuana helps me through the trauma of my past and present and keeps my mind positive.

California and the eleven other states that have compassionate use laws are being intimidated to end safe access. The DEA has sent letters to property owners who rent to dispensaries in San Francisco- and all over California- threatening them with property seizure. The San Francisco safe access community has unified behind a resolution to include the landowners in the city's sanctuary status for medical cannabis. The Board of Supervisors vote was postponed until Tuesday, February 26th. Axis of Love is calling for support at this meeting. The safe access community is calling for Mayor Newsom to join with Mayor Dellums of Oakland in support of the resolution.

The resolution sets the tone for political resolve and directs action from all local and state legislators to oppose intimidation measures lodged by the DEA against sick, disabled, and dying Californians seeking medical cannabis as a treatment. So far, San Francisco has been resilient and no medical cannabis co-op has closed its doors because of the DEA intimidation. The resolution was introduced by Supervisor Chris Daly and co-sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Jake McGoldrick, and Tom Ammiano. The Harvey Milk Democratic Club, the San Francisco Green Party, and local patient advocacy Group ASA SF have endorsed the resolution.

I fear that if people who are in need of medical marijuana like myself, and other people who are sick and/or disabled lose their safe places to medicate we will be subject to the streets, violence, more police harassment, and other drugs. I fear, like Reverend Webster, that if Cannabis clubs are forced to close there will be many more funerals to attend.

RAM's second POORPress Publication, Another Broken Heart Mended is about the trauma Ruyata went through as a child which lead to his drug abuse and his recovery. For more information on his book or to order a copy please call 415.863.6306.

by Tendai R. Mwanaka

The blowing wind

Is like a fog

Obscuring our rising sun

And this is the desert

The desert of our desert

And distant people

Are always our enemies?

Unless if they throw

Sand into the air

For the hand

That throws the sands

Does not hold a sword

And this is where

We were born

And we permit ourselves

To know nothing else.

by Joseph Bolden

Folks, if you’ve read my work you know the topics I write about run the gambit from stressed out poor families to senior citizens being kicked out of their homes to asteroids hitting Earth, our eventual evolution into Q–humanity or Quantum-like beings with near God/Goddess-like control over the cosmos.

Here’s an example off the top of my head:

When humans learn how to take apart, repair, and reconfigure the very strands {molecular strings}farther down beyond our DNA structure we may just become The Q.[Mr. John de Lancie's character on S.T.T.N.G. and the Voyager series.]

When and if we become Q’s how does one commit the unspeakable act of suicide when no toxic poison, radiation, disease, or accident can harm or kill us because our biological imperative prevents this. This would be the psychological equivalent of the Federation’s Prime Directive… Do No Harm To self, other Q’s, q like beings, Human’s, Vulcan’s, Romulin’s, Klingon’s or other lower sentient beings.

Now, I know many of us are thinking that way, right? That’s why I must constantly monitor myself so my columns don’t turn into whacked out scenarios like the one above. I’m thinking this fiction/factual bleed is telling me that something in my destiny stuff that has to be faced. I hope some of you readers snail mail me to give me suggestions on how some of you faced the same crossroads. What was your decision when your personal crisis arrived?

P.S. If any of us survive to actually become Quantum Humans and can travel back to the good old late 1970’s to 2000's era, please look me up by reading my mind and others’ minds sometimes. I wouldn’t mind learning the ways and rules of Q-life, which might take a few hundred to a thousand years to learn. But if you have the time I can at least be a persistent if slow learning student.

I may be slow but when I get it stays got. The same goes for Alchemists, Wizards, Witch’s, Time traveling mortals or Immortal’s, Alien’s, and pure mental entities with a soft spot for struggling sentient beings like myself.

I really don’t want to die[fate shmate]and do this over and over to get it right.

Until next time Live, Love, Learn, Evolve.

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

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Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

by Alexandra Cuff/PNN Community Journalist

"What gets done in the dark gets brought to the light," Javelyn Wood’s plaintive voice sailed through the phone. Despite the tropical air seeping through my bedroom window, I got chills listening to Javelyn, one of Beatrice Sloan’s 45 grandchildren, who was relating to me the horror story of the abuse of her grandmother, eviction notices, and the theft of the family assets.

Music and children’s laughter poured through the receiver as Javelyn went on to explain that her situation was "just making me more determined to help my gramma get back what she lost and what they took." Javelyn’s daughter Jayla sang a Christina Aquilera song in the background as Javelyn continued: "Where’s the money? It’s all in the paperwork, they know they are doing wrong. They don’t care, they didn’t think anyone would pick up on what they were doing. They thought they could keep taking from people." When Beatrice was put into Conservatorship, her family was convinced that her county-appointed conservator, Alfred Fischer, now owned the family estates.

Well the Sloans certainly picked up on what they, Alameda County, were doing. Scott Sloan patiently explained to me, "I filled out a police report last week because I was paying rent to Alfred Fischer when it was supposed to be to ‘Beatrice Sloan in care of Alfred Fischer’." The Oakland police are investigating criminal charges against Fischer and 11 other employees of Alameda County for fraud and elder abuse.

"Dark" describes the events that Alameda County has been afflicting on the Sloan family. "In the dark" would describe the way in
which these injustices have been carried out. Against the odds of poverty and of being a single parent, Beatrice Sloan worked
full-time as a dishwasher for thirty years during which she bought and maintained four houses, affording a home for herself and
her large extended family. The result of providing for her family through toilsome restaurant labor, she became ill and was
abducted along with her property, by the County Guardianship Program in the county of Alameda.

When she was placed into The Excell Nursing Home, a board and care facility in East Oakland, two of her properties were
consecutively sold - without the consent of the families living in the houses and without for sale signs indicating the pending sale - to apparently cover the exorbitant cost of the nursing
home. In May, her son Scott Sloan who lives with Javelyn and Charles Wood and their 4 children, received a 30-day eviction
notice without reason. Thanks to support and advocacy by POOR Magazine, DAMO and other agencies, the Sloans got a lawyer and the first eviction was dismissed on August 5th. Although the dismissal was cause for celebration, the Sloans were not in the clear: "We knew they’d come back with something else. We don’t sleep too easy," Javelyn admitted to me on the phone. On September 27th, they received the same eviction notice again but with the date from May whited out.

I sat in my bed with interview notes, past POOR Magazine articles about the Sloan case, and information about Conservatorship from the NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) website. I was confused about all the aspects of exploitation going on. This story is not only about unjust eviction and gentrification but about elder abuse and fraud. Beatrice is now in the Willowstreet rest home after the Sloans raised hell to get her out of the Excell. When they visited her one day at Excell, they pulled the
covers off to discover a rotten smell indicating the neglect Beatrice has been a victim of. When Javelyn made an attempt to have her grandmother’s situation looked into and to complain about conservatee abuse, she was threatened by Alameda County that she was to be investigated for welfare fraud. When she contacted her case worker, the worker didn’t know anything about it. The threat was made without just cause in an attempt to
intimidate Javelyn from pursuing justice for her grandmother.

Beatrice Sloan was originally put on an LPS (Lanterman Petris Short) Conservatorship which can happen if the court believes
that you are "gravely disabled" which means having a mental disorder that keeps you from being able to provide food, clothing
and shelter for yourself. (At this time, Beatrice was not only providing shelter for herself but owned four homes which her extended family lived in and cared for.) The LPS Conservatorship can last for a maximum of one year at a time and can be renewed in court at the end of the year. A Conservatorship allows for the management of an incapacitated person’s affairs when he or she does not have an alternative mechanism in place to do so. The person always has the right to have an attorney present. If the individual does not want to be conserved, there will be a court hearing before a judge and/or jury, to determine their fate. These rights were never communicated to Beatrice’s family. Despite Beatrice’s 9 children, 45 grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandchild, the documents held by Alameda County reflect there is only one family member who passed away in 2001.

When the family tried to learn of where the income from the sold houses had gone, the most current of the 11 conservators
which have been assigned to Sloan’s case over the past 8 years, Alfred Fischer, stated, "It’s not in my department." While it
might not be "in his department" to cough up information about where the family’s money is, it’s apparently in his department to
collect rent from the member’s living in the remaining properties and the money from the houses which have been sold. All this time the Sloans and the Woods have been paying rent to Alfred Fischer, an ex-property manager, whose name is on the lease as the landlord. The Sloans made their last payment to Fischer in April.

Right now, the Sloan family is trying to bring Beatrice home. Javelyn’s cousin Richshalda has been through a lot in trying to
gain Conservatorship over Mrs. Sloan. On October 3, 2002, she went to court and was reprimanded by the judge for having the
wrong paperwork. The public defender rationalized telling the judge that she was given outdated paperwork and to ease up
because she is representing herself without an attorney.

In September the family filled out a police report with the Oakland Police in hope to uncover some of the duplicitous mysteries surrounding the case of Beatrice Sloan and her assets. The police officer who came to the house to listen to the Sloans’ account was the first officer they spoke with who was knowledgeable about Conservatorships. He confirmed what they already knew – Alameda County is not supposed to be selling the properties without the consent of a living conservatee and Alfred Fischer is not supposed to be collecting the rent in his name.

I spoke with Javelyn today – they haven’t gotten much information back about the investigation but investigators have contacted Alfred Fischer and the police report described Fischer as being "hostile." We are hoping that despite the fact that Fischer and the Oakland Police Department both fall under the umbrella of Alameda County employees, the investigation with be thorough and just. Scott Sloan told me that if nothing comes of the Oakland investigation, they will take the case to the FBI.

As time goes on, the Sloan family becomes more determined to illuminate the gross injustices they have been through. "We can only help people who are going through the same thing. It’s up to us." Javelyn told me, the background laughter and children’s voices still occasionally singing into the phone. "My grandma worked too hard. She’s being robbed. If my grandma was able, this wouldn’t be going on. They took advantage."

by Chris Barrett

People are dying to make towels. 45 workers were killed last week in Narsingdi, Bangladesh in the latest catstrophe involving a garment factory. 10 children were among the dead in a fire sparked from an electrical short at the Sagar Chowdury Garment Factory in an Industrial Area near the capital of Dhaka. 900 workers were on duty making towels and the situation could have been far worse considering the state of the building. Obserevers claim that the collapsible gates of the building were locked, as they were routinely, and had to be broken down by local people and firefighters. (From a report by The Bagladesh Observer, Dhaka ,Sunday November 26,2000) No number of death has been attributed to stampede, but it is assumed that many were trampled trying to escape.

This latest and worst incident of the year comes scant months after workers rallied to protest dangerous conditions following a similar fire in August that killed 12. A one-day strike was carried out by the National Garment Workers Federation in Bangladesh on September 4th to demand better working conditions improved safety measures and compensation for the families of the dead.

Over 150 garment workers, mostly women and children, have died in fires in the last 10 years in the Dhaka region. Many of these fires take places in factories where workers live in the building that houses the factory and warehouse. The 12 that died in august had no means of escape. They were on the third floor and the only staircase was out was blocked off.

Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh. If you visit the government website you will find out that the city has a history as a "Centre for fine silk and muslin". It's current standing in the garment industry is as a new player. It's economic standing as a Least Developed Country means that it must produce garments at the cheapest possible prices in order to compete with other developing countries. It competes with such third wave Asian economies as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Vietnam to undercut garment producing exports that face higher

MFA (The Multi Fibre Agreement is a set of quotas introduced by importing countries to protect their own garment industries and give them time to adapt to the racing pulse of globalisation) regulations in Indonesia and Thailand. The MFA tends to benefit retailers who search out new developing countries to exploit. Factories in Bangladesh have a competitive advantage only by being the cheapest.

Women are disproportionately represented in the garment labour forces in these LCD's. A recent research study conducted found that workers in a factory in Bangladesh earned half a percent of the sale price of Nike jackets they were sewing. The same study found that garment workers in Bangladesh could hope to earn about 3% of the hourly wage of garment workers in the U.S. The study was conducted by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development.

Factory conditions are deplorable in Bangladesh. The three tier factories that support living areas for workers are there to mandate longer hours. They increase exposure to toxic chemicals used in the factories. Most factories have one exit and no emergency exits. The exit was locked in the latest fire and the results were tragic.

The situation seems dire considering the need women have for these jobs. The families that these women support surely benefit with better medical care, education and housing accesible with money from outside the country. The women themselves don't see these benefits as they are offset by the health hazards, debilitating working conditions and imminent deaths promised in the factories. Local efforts by garment workers need to be supported through import country efforts to hold exporters and retailers accountable. Media attention is necessary as are efforts to publicize retailer histories of the clothing they sell. The Clean Clothes Campaign at www.cleanclothes.org is a good source of information on current issues

It is difficult to find mention of these fires in U.S. news sources. The New York Times had a three line mention the following day in their ghettoized world news section. Worker attempts to generate interest, like the August protest are ignored by the mainstream media, though they are the best hope for changing working conditions in the region. Sweatshop news from the U.S is also underreported. Articles on globalisation tend to have a top to bottom bias focusing largely on a monolithic US economy with its day to day health as primary focus. Stock Prices of retailers are highly reported. Labor issues in the United States are marginalized to a large degree and tend to find only local coverage, if that. Preventable tragedies among communities of women in Bangladesh are not newsworthy aspects of the world economy.

by Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe

Tiny and Mari from POOR Magazine's Indigenous Peoples Media Project collaborated with Ras K' Dee (Pomo/Afrikan) from SNAG Magazine and Cassandra Yazzie (Dine') from Four Rivers Institute to lead the Native Hip Hop workshop at the Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe located on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. The Workshop included Hip Hop writing, poetry, beat-making, film and consciousness training for young people 6-18. It was a very powerful exchange of intergenerational knowledge, culture, art and indigenous resistance on occupation, land, poverty and de-colonization. Here is some of the written pieces.

Editors Note: Last week Cassandra Yazzie was killed in an automobile crash. All of us are extremely saddened by her loss and are dedicating this issue of POOR Magazine to her beautiful spirit.

November's PNN radio and Bay Native Circle on KPFA are also dedicated to her memory and family. Mari from Indigenous Peoples Media Project has wrote an article in honor of her at http://poormagazine.org/index.cfm?L1=news&category=35&story=2399

by Staff Writer

Today, July 8, 2009 marks the 43rd anniversary of a Bennett Freeze imposed on July 8, 1966 by U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert Bennett. The freeze made poverty mandatory for 10,000 people (with countless more displaced) living on 1.5 million acres in the western portion of the Navajo Nation.

The freeze made it illegal for people to fix their homes, build new homes, have access to running water, electricity, any infrastructure and development. Elderly people whose wells ran dry could not drill a new well, were forced to drink uranium and arsenic contaminated water, denied the right to build a wheelchair ramps to their homes and repair leaking roofs and broken windows. No new housing, schools, waterlines, powerlines, community facilities. Nothing.

The ban on construction and high unemployment rate forced the area’s young people to work away from their homes and families. It also had a devastating effect on a traditional Navajo socio-economic system that is centered around raising livestock and farming. Compounded by livestock confiscation and barren fields, the people faced starvation or wage labor and federal aid.

On May 8, 2009, President Obama signed legislation to end the freeze. However, no plan for rehabilitation has been made public. For this reason, Forgotten People by and through their attorney James W. Zion, Esq. filed a Notice of Suit requesting production and disclosure of a Bennett Freeze Recovery Plan to make the plan public and see how it will or will not benefit the people of the Bennett Freeze.

Notice of Suit

The Forgotten People Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit corporation, announced today that it will file suit against Scott House, the manager of the Former Bennett Freeze Recovery Plan Task Force, the Navajo Nation, and WHPacific, Inc. for production and public disclosure of the Former Bennett Freeze Recovery Plan. Despite WhPacific’s broadside for a “Final All-Chapter Summit Meeting” in August 2008 and a promise that the “final project deadline” would be September 15, 2008, and despite President Joe Shirley, Jr.’s. January 26, 2009 announcement he would produce the plan, it has not been made public so that it can be reviewed by the victims of the Bennett Freeze.

President Shirley prematurely announced that the Bennett Freeze was “over” when the Navajo Nation signed a compact with the Hopi Tribe, and we now have legislation in place that formally terminated the freeze. What we do not have is either a plan or a program of rehabilitation to deal with the freeze, or effective involvement of the victims of the Freeze to address its severe impacts.

The Forgotten People Community Development Corporation made a formal demand for a copy of the Former Bennett Freeze Area Recovery Plan under the Navajo Nation Privacy Act on March 31, 2009. Scott House, the manager of the task force that was to develop the plan, did not respond to the demand for more than three months, so the Forgotten People CDC is bringing a suit to produce a copy of the plan so it can be made public.

Suit is initiated by a notice of intent made to the President and Attorney General of the Navajo Nation to give an additional period of time to produce a copy of the plan. The notice of suit states a claim under the Privacy Act and also states claims for access to public information under the free speech provisions of the Navajo Nation Bill of Rights and the “rule of law” and “communication with the people for guidance” provisions of The Fundamental Laws of the Dine.

The Forgotten People intends to make the plan public when a copy is obtained, with information on how it will or will not benefit the people of the Bennett Freeze.

For further information, contact: Lucy Knorr, Secretary-Treasurer (928) 401-1777

by TJ Johnston

Big Brother paranoiacs are surely not put at ease by the accounts of organic farmer and Green Party activist Nancy Oden and her expulsion from Bangor International Airport for having the temerity to question the surly attitude of a Maine National Guardsman who searched her luggage.

Oden's police state fantasies were beginning to be realized on November 2 at the American Airlines ticket counter. She waited for her round-trip ticket to Chicago which she purchased online six weeks previously (she made two similar purchases earlier in the year and in the same manner). She found it curious that the agent took a while on the computer, though having arrived an additional two hours before her flight, she chalked it up to the new post-September 11 sensibilities.

Then the agent marked an "S" on her boarding pass. Oden inquired why. The agent explained that the computer flagged her to have her luggage searched. It occurred to the anti-war activist who had an op-ed recently printed in an area newspaper that hers may have not been a random search. She asked the agent if this was the case and the agent confirmed that it was.

But it was the manner in which she was searched that riled Oden. She was surrounded by half a dozen Guardsman during the scrutinizing of her baggage. One was especially hostile. When he grabbed her arm and starting haranguing her about "what happened on September 11," Oden felt her personal boundaries compromised and gave him a piece of her mind. The Guardsman found nothing remotely threatening, save for her awareness of her rights.

Inevitably, she was detained and denied passage (according to an American Airlines spokesman, she was "uncooperative"). Eventually, her ticket was refunded, but she was kicked out the airport. The airline offered her the alternative to depart from Boston's Logan Airport but her jalopy was not up for the five-hour detour (it barely made it to Bangor). The Green Party USA Coordinating Committee conference had to deal with her absence.

Oden is still stewing over the abrogation of her civil liberties. The list on which her name appeared in the first place is a compilation of "potential terrorists" the FBI distributes to airports. Normally, known criminals would appear on the airlines' radar, as would people who pay cash on a same-day flight. Of course, neither of these criteria explains the Gestapo treatment she suffered.

If a member of a pacifist political party would be marked for searching, what does it say for the rest of us? How do we avert being labeled as a "potential terrorist" before we embark on our airline travels?

These were the questions on my mind when I attempted to contact Timothy Ahern, American Airlines' VP in charge of safety and security. My calls, of course, went unreturned (granted, the Flight 537 crash in Queens, NY might have had something to do with his unavailability).

Closer to home, I thought of contacting a couple of travel agencies under the guise of a possible holiday traveler on American. Both agencies were surprised to hear about the Nancy Oden incident. All they could offer by way of advice was declaring your carry-on luggage and refraining from packing sharp or metallic-looking objects. At least they were friendly.

Between the military-corporate collusion in "rounding up the usual suspects" and the hassles inherent in holiday travel, I might as well ride Greyhound this year.

by Joe B.

Male Complexity Pt.1

Ok, Male doc’s were and continue to be wrong when using male bodies as end all/be all as women suffered from complaints male gynecologists had little or no idea of comprehended.

Its slowly being corrected.

I’d say over corrected giving women an exaggerated sense of superiority, we know the symptoms as may men still act as if their Gods/Goddesses gift to the female race we know because it still with us.

Women for the longest time at least two or three decades now believed after gaining power on their own that they are not the superior sex.

Yes, you mature, are stronger emotionally, can in the throes of emotional turmoil think rationally unlike most men, verbally better at speech and use hemispheres of their brains as men us either on or the other.

Of course feminine trump is always bringing life in the world.

Though it is now know not all women able to conceive children have natural mothering instincts as with men who’s seed can contribute to making babies are father materials and men can nurture some better than the mother’s that gave their child life.

Yes it seemed not long past women seemed to invade men’s cherished turf basketball to the boardroom and sacred male bastion of "men only social clubs" where men used social contacts to improve their business aspects.

Women have the same its call it "Networking" though its a girl’s ‘uh, excuse me Women’s Sisterhood socializing younger or the contemporaries up the corporate, political ladders.

I know it was a shock to most woman that some men don’t mind being home, watching, enjoying their son’s and daughter’s while they worked.

At first it chafes being in unfamiliar territory of diapers, P.T.A., explaining sex and protection to both son’s and daughters plus temptation of other stay-at-home mom’s; his wife’s friends dropping by unannounced sometimes doing way more than help their hapless friends hubby with his small charges.

Just because a guy’s at home without a job caring for his children makes him no less a man.

It’s opened up many men to what women still continue to go through - the "having it all theme" of late 1970’s early ‘80’s rang hollow to many women scrambling to be both career woman and mother.

Men saw these contradiction tried to warm them but speaking in dominant male language most women didn’t or couldn’t listen, had to prove things to themselves, the world at large and until cancer rates, job burnout take their toll only then did women begin listening.

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by Barbara Huntley-Smith

Writing the words and preparing Graphics for the Posters we would take to the protest planned for the National Association of Broadcasters to be held at the Mascone Exhibition Center, was a once in a life-time learning experience for me. Having some perception of the importance for the industry of Micro Media to remain a vital thriving source for disseminating the concerns of the voiceless; I would on September 21, 2000, experienced first-hand the reality of Poor’s “Mission Statement.” “Low income people never get heard in the mainstream media.”

With signs in hand, The Poor News Media Contingent left the office hyped for our morning of protest. We boarded the Mission Street Bus and we were off. Our Instructor and Mentor Lisa, had briefed us on the morning’s activities prior to this day, but took us through an impromptu rehearsal. As the bus raced us to our destination, anticipation rose within me. Here I was going to be part of a National event. The implications are staggering in that, until two months ago I was Anonymous. Arriving at our destination before exiting the bus, the performers from Los Cybrids, Members for the Billionaires for Bush and Gore, the people with whom we would join forces were crossing the street. Together we began the theme of the morning’s action, as the Performers took Anna’s slogan for their theme: “National Association of Brainwashing.”

The skits were effective, and all of Poor’s News crew were given access to vent their venom against the NAB. The Presence of Micro Media was outstanding. I was interviewed by two Micro Media organizations, and one of the NAB’s affiliate, the Chronicle.

At the end of the protest our Dynamic Co-Director of Poor would push the envelop. Marshaling her news crew she invaded the eminent domain of the exhibition auditorium of the NAB, our assignment, “get registered.“

As the crew marched behind our Fearless Leader we were given instructions where to obtain the registration identification. After several attempts we were there. As we waited in line, it was brought to my attention that the Poor group was being monitored. Important-looking employees were huddled together trying to determine how to eliminate us from receiving a Pass. As that scene was in progress, Anna was given an assignment to take photographs of any important scenes. One of San Francisco’s Finest would be her Subject. This imposing looking African-American Policeman got irate at having his picture taken. He then began to throw the weight of his office, while trying to intimidate Anna by calling for his supervisor. At that curtail moment, in stepped Civil Rights Attorney and Advocate Martha Bridegam to the rescue. She effectively countered the Police officer’s argument and in the end had him apologizing, and inferring that it was all a misunderstanding. While this drama was unfolding, our Dynamic Leader was embroiled in a process I will call:

“put up or shut up!”

She was forced to prove the validity of Poor Newsnetwork on Line for the NAB Brasses. It was the best piece of irony for one of our news crew, our beloved “Joe.” Very particular person about anonymity, it was his face that was printed off the Internet....Gotcha!...Gotcha! Amid all this action, it was obvious there was a stall for time. Minutes later we would learn the purpose of the stall was to enable the Keynote speaker Colin Powell to deliver his address without interruption. The perception was, since we were demonstrating, we had ulterior motives, which they have decided would be malicious. When it was announced that Mr. Powell’s speech was concluded, the secretary worked tirelessly to get us out of their sight.
One obvious observation I made inside the auditorium was, the absence of “people of color” as viable representative. What was obvious was the presence of African-Americans, manning the service posts. I wonder, could that obvious display be due to the fact that the keynote speaker was a man of color?

I walked away from the Moscone Convention Center with a new admiration for the news media with whom I am affiliated. I am more convinced than before of the need for Community News media, and the importance of it remaining a vibrant, thriving part of the lives of the voiceless.