Story Archives 2009

by Thornton Kimes/PNN

Introduction

This a To-Do List and more thoughts on the “Who’s Budget? Our Budget!” Battle of San Francisco. This is my rant and rave about the San Francisco version of the Culture War, one or two of the ways it is fought here.

by Staff Writer

I can't claim much police mcnastiness scholarship, though that could change any time. My 1980's post-anti-nuke-protest-short-time-in-jail-prison is a bit faded in memory, except for an I-can-laugh-about-it-now brief phobia about jangling overstuffed key rings.

What strikes me hard about the death of four cops and Lovelle Mixon, who didn't want to go back to prison badly enough to kill for one last second of freedom, is video and written images. Mixon's mother, begging for forgiveness from the families of the cops, when the blame for her son's nightmare of a life of dreams crushed, deferred and defined as meaningless by his own parole officer and who knows how many other people can be placed squarely elsewhere on vastly more guilty shoulders-everyone who has ever voted for tougher punishment for crime, who refuses to hire people released from prison, and so much more.

The television news zealously did it usual thing, crushing whatever remains of Mixon's reputation, while one of his sisters vigorously defended him. I wanted to hug her for that.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran articles about what Black men and others face coming out of prison, the economy threatening to only add to the devastating three and more strikes against most if not all of them; mentioned the dueling street shrines and one cop looking at messages left for Mixon, shaking his head and walking away.

Arnold Schwarzenneger and others honor the cops, the only comfort Lovelle Mixon's family gets is from the streets of Oakland, from everyone already outraged and traumatized by Oscar Grant's shooting death, from the rest of us who know they need a lot of love too.

by Staff Writer

To protect and serve--I feel more like to persecute and arrest. Having lived in Oakland for 19 years as a young man of color, I have not had a good memory of dealing with the police and I know I am not alone. I come from a community of color who have this fear whenever we deal with the police; even when we are the victims of a crime we are afraid of calling the police because there is a mistrust and I don't blame my community. When we look at the statistics documenting all the harm coming from the police done against communities of color, it's undeniable. I feel sad of that lives are lost cause of gun violence, but donÕt romanticize heros. I feel we live a violent system, a violent society and feel sorry I am not surprised of what happened. I also feel that society has a scale method, categorizing different human beings depending on your class and occupation. I donÕt think the lives of a police officer are more valueable than any other human life.

by Staff Writer

It’s late tonight as I sit here in a quiet and homogenous North Central Berkeley with the sound of distant trains passing through, thinking about the recent shootings of the four Oakland PO’lice officers on March 21st and why it all really went down. Having survived nearly four years of houselessness, living in poverty in a dirty storefront without hot water and an outdoor toilet in West Oakland and later in public housing projects on a ‘blocked off’ 85th Avenue for 5 ½ years in East Oakland, I've experienced many unfortunate and negative encounters with the Oakland PO’lice.

I remember back in the day while living in Oakland, dealing with several confrontations of being profiled while ‘DWB’ (driving while brown or black) and being pulled over because I was driving an old ‘hooptie’ car while being a person of color. I even had the unfortunate experience of being harassed and threatened with arrest with my babies in the car by the ‘Oakland Riders’ back in 2002 just outside the old, smelly, paint-chipped, dilapidated commercial building we called ‘home’ in West Oakland.

I remember how hopeless I felt as those blue and red siren lights beamed into my blurry, dirty, kid-finger-smeared rear window like a scene out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, making me feel trapped and hunted down for simply being a poor person of color. I remember feeling my head get hot and my chest tight, feeling breathless and afraid. I remember the feeling of extreme anxiety taking over me with wild impulsive thoughts and the tempting urge to put my key back into the ignition and desperately flee out of there like a bat out of hell.

What the PO’lice, the authorities, the mainstream TV news networks and even many people fail to understand is that the daily struggle that poor folks of color like myself deal with tends to compound into a situation much deeper than what is being seen or addressed on the surface. So when we are criminalized for our circumstance, our need for survival is taken to another whole level and in the most extreme situation, sometimes becomes a matter of life and death.

What I feel is truly missing in this whole situation are the root problems of why it went down this way. From what I have seen on the mainstream local TV news networks, nothing is being said or addressed about the deep seeded adversity that poor folks of color deal with daily in communities like East and West Oakland and the on-going momentum of internalized oppression that builds up from constant profiling, harassment and criminalizing by the PO’lice within these communities--which for us is truly Close Encounters of the Worst Kind!

by Johann Hari/UK Independent

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments
would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read
this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of
more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is
sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still
picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains.
They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even
chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most
broken countries on earth. But behind the
arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an
untold scandal. The people our governments are
labelling as "one of the great menaces of our times"
have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice
on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In
the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the
idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard
that lingers today was created by the British
government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary
people believed it was false: pirates were often saved
from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did
they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All
Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the
evidence.

If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked
from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry -
you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all
hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you
slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you
with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you
could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or
years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this
world. They mutinied - and created a different way of
working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates
elected their captains, and made all their decisions
collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty
out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian
plans for the disposition of resources to be found
anywhere in the eighteenth century".

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with
them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and
subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the
brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and
the Royal Navy." This is why they were romantic heroes,
despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young
British man called William Scott, should echo into this
new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in
Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to
keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing
to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed.
Its nine million people have been teetering on
starvation ever since - and the ugliest forces in the
Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to
steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear
waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone,
mysterious European ships started appearing off the
coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean.
The coastal population began to sicken. At first they
suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies.
Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped
and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to
suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells
me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There
is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and
mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back
to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be
passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of
cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European
governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh:
"Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation,
and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been
looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource:
seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by
overexploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs.
More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are
being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local
fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a
fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of
Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there
soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the "pirates" have
emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to
dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a
"tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer
Coastguard of Somalia - and ordinary Somalis agree. The
independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70
per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of
national defence".

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and
yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those
who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in
a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders,
Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits.
We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally
fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would
understand.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on
their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch
us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London
and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes - the
only sane solution to this problem - but when some of
the fishermen responded by disrupting the
transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil
supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised
by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth
century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander
the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by
keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and
responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth;
but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a
robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are
called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets
sail - but who is the robber?

by Staff Writer

Four to one on a slant

The Govenator showed up-

But we didn’t see him for Oscar Grant

It’s funny they’ll highlight past mistakes in ones life

And have half mast flags for cops with shooter stripes 

They destroy our murals for our lost loves

But knowone desrves to be murdered

Not crooked cops or folks labeled street thugs 

by Byron Gafford/PNN Race and Poverty Scholar

God woke me up at three o clock in the morning, a typical
salutation used by Byron Gafford to greet people in the mornings.
Upon my first introduction with Byron a few months ago, I found him to
be an extremely kind-hearted and friendly man, often with a smile on
his face. The first thing I discovered about him was that he was a
passionate and creative writer. He has written over 80,000 poems and
keeps all of them extremely organized by number, day, and title. He
is a spiritual man who practices positive thinking and enjoys living
life.

On Wednesday, March 25, 2009, he was let go from his position as a
contracted security guard at the George Lucas Building B on 1
Letterman Street in San Francisco, California. Byron was culturally,
racially, and religiously discriminated against based on that greeting
to a female Lucas employee that morning.

"Every day, like I've been doing for the past seven months, when the
employees enter into the lobby I would greet them with Good Morning
and God Bless You and no one ever responded back to me in a negative
way", says Byron. "I greeted everyone the same way. I never knew that
I offended anyone and no one ever mentioned to me that I was offensive
in my greetings to any employees. My supervisors have never expressed
to me that my greetings were inappropriate".

We at Poor Magazine are exposing George Lucas in their blatant
discrimination against Byron Gafford. They have made what Dr. Wade
Nobles defines as a "transubstantive error" by interpreting his
comment as inappropriate, yet they are without explanation or notice
of his termination. They have fired him on an illogical and illegal
basis and we need to put a stop to this hypocrisy. We will not allow
Darth Vader to strike.

Transubstantive error is defined as making a wrong and assumptive
conclusion about a meaning and value of peoples by looking at their
surface behaviors. In the sixties the Assistant Secretary of Labor
Daniel Moynihan was assigned to examine the black family as part of a
welfare study ordained by President Johnson. Upon his assignment he
made a transubstantive error by deeming the black family environment
as, "broken home [that] would cause negative things to occur in the
development of children".

Dr. Nobles is a tenured professor in Black Studies at San Francisco
State University and the Executive Director of the Institute for The
Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture in Oakland,
California. He says that Daniel Moynihan made the first mistake by
interpreting their values and behaviors from his own European culture.

"He draws the wrong conclusion", says Dr. Nobles. "So the entire
time he is examining them, there was this whole notion of families
with womyn without husbands raising children, which he deemed a broken
home".

Dr. Nobles goes on to conclude that, "The mistake he was making was
that the instillation of values in the development of children is not
tied to mother-father linkage, it is tied to a system of eldership.A system of eldership does not believe in just a nuclear family to
raise children, but it is the responsibility of both the immediate and
extended families to raise them, including aunts, uncles,
grandmothers, grandfathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, and so on.
Almost like a hierarchy of eldership, all of these elements contribute
to, improving the development of children. And so you have African
American people behaving in a certain way that is uncommon and
unfamiliar to someone with a European background, and it becomes
misinterpreted and seen as broken, or wrong and less than, thus
causing a transubstantive error.

In this particular incident, the female employee of George Lucas
found Byron's morning greeting to be offensive. However, by her
placing that negative judgment upon Byron, like Daniel Moynihan, she is
committing a transubstantive error. She, as a white womyn with a
Eurocentric background, is deeming Byron's entire cultural value
system as inappropriate as he is a spiritual man and an African
American man.

The day started out as a typical day. Byron started his shift at
6:30 a.m. as a security guard at the George Lucas Building B childcare
lobby. He was contracted by Advanced-Tech Security Services and has
been there since September 9, 2008. By 6:45 a.m., he was at his post
and by 7 a.m., the building was open.

At 7:35 a.m., Byron was at his desk performing his post duties when a
Lucas female employee came into the lobby. As is customary, he greeted her politely and commented that "God
woke me up at three o' clock in the morning". A reference to his late night work schedule.
The female employee departed while Byron continued with his duties.

He continued his day and took his first fifteen-minute break at 8
a.m., lunch at 10:30 a.m., and his third break at 1 p.m. However, at
approximately 1:38 a.m., another ATS guard came and told him that Mike
Mitchell, his employer, wanted to see him. Byron went to Mike's
office upstairs, and his other supervisor Jim was also in the office.
Jim then proceeded to get out of his seat and close the door. When
they were all seated, Mike said that a Lucas employee went to the
people higher up and complained about Byron. She said he told her
that "God woke me up at three ˜o clock this morning". Byron told them
yes, he did say that. Yet without any further explanation, Mike and
Jim responded, "We have to let you go". They took his badge, told him
to leave, and told him that would no longer be an employee there,
leaving Byron unclear about the situation.

This incident is an example of cultural digression and it is illegal.
As stated under Federal Law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 (Title VII), it "prohibits employment discrimination based on
race, color, religion, sex, or national origin". Byron is an African
American man and is a spiritual man, and George Lucas is
discriminating against Byron based on his culture, his race, and his
religion, resulting in the loss of his position. They issued him no
write up or any warning, and prior to this incident Byron had no
complaints on his record.

"George Lucas is a media corporation", says Tiny, editor of Poor
Magazine. "They supposedly produce diverse media, but have judged
and decided on someone else's value system and fired him. Byron is a
writer, he is hard working, he is supporting a family".

Byron Gafford was an innocent bystander caught in a transubstantive
error and was wrongly let go of his position under federal
discrimination and without any legal justification. We need to
combine our forces against George Lucas and expose this hypocrisy
before they strike again in our community.

by Byron Gafford

A Lucas Art employee

That God woke

Me up at 3 o'clock

In the morning

That day.

With any warning

From anybody I

Didn't know that

What I had

Said to her that

She hated God

That much.

That at 1:38pm

I had to lose

My job over

Me thanking God

For waking me

Up this morning

3-25-09 like I

did every morning.

by Wendy M. Fong

I was born in Santa Clara, California and my first language was Cantonese. I think my first word was “nay,” or milk, because I used to drink a bottle of milk everyday for breakfast. I remember at four years old telling my mom I wanted to "sake phan," or "eat food," while running around the kitchen squeaking and stomping on the emerald tiles in my yellow mouse slippers. Thirteen years later, everyday conversations of "jo san, ney ho?", "sai woon," and "ho liang" became “good morning, how are you,” “wash the dishes” and “very pretty” overnight. We only spoke English. I did not realize what exactly had happened. When did we stop speaking Cantonese? I could barely even remember how to say “sock.” What happened to our language? How did Cantonese slowly disengage itself without any of us realizing that English had conquered our home?

Lori Phanachone was born in California, moved to upstate New York, and a few years ago ended up in Storm Lake, Iowa at Storm Lake High School. She is daughter to migrant parents from Laos and an honors student. Upon enrollment in the beginning of her sophomore year, she received straight A’s, including an A in English. However also upon enrollment and without her knowledge, she was classified as an English Language Learner (ELL) based solely on the fact that she listed “Laotian” as her first language instead of English.

Later that school year, Lori was given an English Language Learner test, which is used to access a student’s progress in English every year. She took the test and answered everything correctly. However, she was still never aware that she was classified as an ELL.

During the following eleventh grade year, she was tested again. In protest, Lori completed the test by filling in all C’s. When she turned in the exam early, she was forced to wait on solitary confinement for more than three hours before being excused. Under Iowa law, if a student is classified as an ELL, they are allowed to monitor him or her for a few years to track their progress. Yet the process was not clear on how a student is considered an ELL in the first place. Also under Iowa provision, students who are bound to be proficient in English are supposed to be technically accessed, but again this process was not clear on whom or not requires this provision. Although Lori did well on the test her sophomore year, Storm Lake misapplied Iowa law by classifying her as ELL because she listed Lao as her home language.

This year is Lori’s senior year, and they asked her to take the test for a third time regardless of her 3.98 GPA and high marks in all her classes— all of which are taught in English. She refused to take the test and was suspended from school for three days. They also did not give a formal written notice of the suspension. When someone is suspended, Storm Lake High School is required to give a written notice before it occurs. They have also threatened to take away her eligibility for scholarships, and participation in school activities including track team, prom and other extracurricular activities; then proceeded to revoke her National Honor Society Membership.

“The school did not access Lori's actual abilities and needs. They made no effort to test her English proficiency formally through a test or informally through an interview,” said Khin Mai Aung, Lori’s the staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). They merely based it on the fact that English was not listed as her native language on her enrollment application.

Presently the story is ongoing. “Storm Lake labeled me an English Language Learner when I enrolled without even bothering to test me. All I want is to continue my education without the school labeling me unfairly,” said Lori. AALDEF demands that Storm Lake High School remove all disciplinary action from her school records, assure in writing statements of further discipline also be removed, written clarification of Storm Lakes’ procedure for classifying a student as an ELL, clarification on how the school assessed Lori as ELL, and Lori’s status to be adjusted as a student proficient in English. “School districts need to have assessments that make sense and are based on students' actual abilities rather than broadly categorize based on blunt criteria,” said Khin.

As of Friday, April 8, 2009, Storm Lake School District reclassified Lori as English proficient and restored her National Honor Society membership. However, the other requests are still pending.

by Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, co-teacher, poverty scholar and daughter of Dee

My name is Vinnie and I make a living with this," his hands were small and Columbian--coffee brown, each finger rippled with the struggle of homelessness, racism and poverty as he carefully unfolded a 12-inch cardboard sign upon which was meticulously printed black letters stating Starvin Like Marvin. (A reference to one of the famous sayings of middleweight boxing champion Marvin Hagler.)

The indigenous circle of multi-lingual, multi-generational and multi-racial, youth, adults and elders in poverty who produce news rooted in community struggle, art and resistance known as Community Newsroom at POOR Magazine busted into laughter of joy and appreciation at the sight of his sign. Vinnie stayed quiet as his sharp, chocolate eyes scanned the room. Then slowly, tentatively, the corners of his mouth seemingly frozen in a serious stillness lifted to reveal a broad and beautiful smile. He shook his head in tandem with the laughter, and just for a miraculous second, almost unseen, barely caught, Vinnie seemed carefree.

In a powerful collaboration between The Race, Poverty Media Justice Institute (RPMJ) at POOR Magazine, Intersection for the Arts and the Mission Community Council, I and other poverty scholars in residence at POOR Magazine were blessed to meet Vinnie H, Carmen C, Jennalyn S, Rhonda C, Jon T, Carlos L, Raymundo S and many more folks that we at POOR consider poverty, race, migrant, gender, elder and/or youth scholars engaged in different forms of unrecognized micro-business (panhandling, recycling, day laborers, sex work, mothering) and survival.

Through this collaboration, entitled Mission Resistance as it focused specifically on mission based organizations and communities, folks like Vinnie were exposed to the revolutionary concept of poverty scholarship itself, launched by POOR's RPMJ, which honors and recognizes the scholarship of youth, adults and elders in poverty for the knowledge they hold, have earned and continually learn from lives of struggle.

Starting with the first magical day in March, POOR's RPMJ led over 35 scholars from several non-profit organizations such as Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, Delores Street Community Services, La Raza Centro Legal, the Iris Center and St Joseph's Center through an intensive bi-lingual media, arts and organizing workshop in creative writing basics, media literacy, media justice, journalism and poverty scholarship called The Revolution Begins with I.

Your 'I' stories of struggle and survival, to stay housed, to stay employed, to feed your children, to fight systems that are in place to support you and often do the opposite, to find shelter, to keep your families safe and your children educated are valid and significant stories, important community media, and what we at POOR/PoorNewsNetwork consider revolutionary truth media, RPMJ co-teacher and co-editor, Tony Robles explained to the Mission Resistance class on the first day.

I have struggled to be housed with no help from most of the services supposedly in place to help homeless people,Jon T, began his RPMJ I am exercise tentatively, wondering out loud if his story of struggle was valid, or was in fact even media...By the graduation ceremony of Mission Resistance 8 weeks later, he presented his story to get housed, fight eviction and eventually become permanently housed as a story of resistance and triumph.

Your stories of struggle can cause change, can be tools of change, my experience of struggle with the welfare system has helped to change legislation that works against poor parents like me,� co-teacher, poverty scholar and welfareQUEEN Vivien Hain inspired the class with her own poverty scholarship and media resistance.

�I was profiled, stopped and questioned just for being a brown man on my way to get a job,� David M, a soft-spoken young man spoke at the third class of Mission Resistance, barely looking up from his small cup of hot tea. Working three jobs just to save money for housing, David was silently dealing with homelessness and racism while receiving services from Dolores Street Community Services. In addition to the actual struggle related to poverty, David was dealing with a silent and more brutal conflict, the shame associated with poverty, a shame that inhibits dreams, destroys hope and kills spirit. By the last class, a confident and focused David addressed the Newsroom with the subject of his investigative journalism project: �I want to write about the impact of budget cuts on mental health services for poor people of color in the Bay Area,� he concluded without looking down.

Los Viajes/The Journeys - the Mission media of migration

�La revolucion comienza con migo!� (The revolution Begins with �I�) called out Guillermo Gonzalez, co-teacher of the Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia program at POOR Magazine and coordinator of the Los Viajes project at POOR Magazine, a literary and audio anthology of peoples migration/immigration across borders all over the world.

Los Viajes was the concurrent project of Mission Resistance led by POOR Magazine migrant scholars. Taught in Spanish to migrant & poverty scholars from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Laos, the Carribean and beyond, this project incorporated the revolutionary �I� curriculum as well as beautiful stories of peoples' journeys across borders and lands to help support their families and folks. Through literary and visual art, this project also introduces the UN declaration on Indigenous Peoples � a new lens on migration to migrant communities in the Bay Area and will continue with several workshops and performances until a formal release in September in tandem with the anniversary of the signing of the UN declaration on Indigenous Peoples.

�Yo soy madre inmigrante de tres hijos,� (I am an immigrant mother of three children) Carmen, one of the members of Colectiva de Mujer of La Raza Centro Legal read an excerpt of her journey to the audience at the Mission Resistance graduation ceremony on April 8th. Carmen, who is struggling to feed her children as a working poor migrant mama, added with pride after reading her work of literary art and media resistance. �And, I, am a Poverty Scholar.�

Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, poet, revolutionary journalist, poverty scholar, welfareQUEEN, co-founder and executive Director of POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork and daughter of Dee, is the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America published by City Lights. She is also the Communications Director for Justice Matters.

POOR Magazine is a non-profit grassroots, arts, organization that provides media access, art and advocacy to youth, adults and elders in poverty in the Bay Area as well as on-site child care and arts education for children through the Family Project For more information about POOR Magazine�s ongoing media, arts and organizing project go on-line to www.poormagazine.org and for more information about our education program for educators, professionals and community members at the Race, Poverty Media Justice Institute go on-line to www.racepovertymediajustice.org.