Story Archives 2010

HOTEL VOICES: THE REVIEW

BY

MARLON CRUMP/PNN

Tuesday February 9th, 2010

The Revolutionary Theatre project co-written, co-directed and acted by writers, artists and poets currently living, surviving and sometimes thriving in Single Room Occupancy Hotels (SRO) aka poor people housing in the Bay Area.

"The play (Hotel Voices) was riveting and inspiring it touched upon many issues in SROs ------- police brutality, community and habitability issues and the non-profit industrial complex to name a few." Statement from Nathaniel Holmes following Hotel Voices. He would then tell me how my particular scene really touched him.

Entertainment, even for just a split second, is an amnesia tool for people to briefly escape whatever problems they faced in their lives. For us poverty scholars, theater art goes without saying, as all of us wants to be seen and heard.

In 2006, Tony Robles, co-editor and teacher of POOR originally helped instrument this project, as a newsletter publication for SRO Tenants to have their voices heard. He and POORs goal introduced the notion that writing is fighting to every tenant interested to have their voice heard. Having just survived the infamous S.F.P.D. onslaught at my residence of the All Star Hotel at the time, I was thrilled to write my own story of what had happened to me.

This began my journey with POOR Magazine/PNN.

Then just last year, something even more exciting happened. I learned that this project that began as a means for us poor people living an SRO to be heard would now become a full production play! I was immediately grasped with excitement and anticipation, being an SRO occupant myself.

Much has been said, read, and misled about the living conditions and characters, of people who live in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Hotels: Filth, crime, former felons, violence, pests, etc, etc. Nothing is said are the unsung heroes, artists, survivors, thrivers, poor working class, and poverty scholars who are collectively defiant towards marginalization.

Undetermined, un-classified, and unsanctioned for negative stereotypical categorization from the corporate media persuasion, comes the silenced voices heard, FINALLY heard that is. This was achieved through a play of revolutionary art proportions. No longer silenced voices, we were.............

HOTEL VOICES!

Indeed, the voices of us SRO Tenants were not only heard, but our lives were seen through subsequent scenes. Sunday January 17th, 2010 began the launch of "Hotel Voices" a collaboration between Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Tony Robles, Tiny Gray-Garcia, and Bindlestiff Theatre aimed at dismantling the "war against the poor" machine and society's view based on blatant ignorance. This ignorance, however, became ill fated on this day.

Hotel Voices theatrically speaks to and educates the world surrounding the real life experiences, and actual events (some of them life-changing) of people in poverty who reside in SRO (Single Room Occupancy) Hotels. "Poor People Housing" as defined by POOR Magazine/PNN. Our own screenplays were single-handedly prepared by us, foretold by us, re-lived and physically re-enacted ONLY by us poverty scholars:

Catalina Dean, Bruce Allison, Ruyata McGlothin, (a.k.a RAM) David Elliott Lewis, Nightmare Joey, Thornton Kimes, Victor Nelson, Robert Weber, Joseph Bolden, Charles Pitts, and yours truly, Marlon Crump. In addition, Tony Robles, Allan Manalo, and "Tiny" Lisa Gray-Garcia, each of us had a significant role in this play.

Institutionalization/incarceration intro with a harmonica theme, infamous illegal po-lice room raid, finding solace soulfully and collectively through music, thwarting a pest annoyance and bad news with a song, paying homage to an unsung hero and heroes, frustration from an S.S.I check delay, and uncomfortable housing, a racially motivated attack prompting a "police response" pursuit of justice from a tenant, an ungrateful food service scenario, a prisoner of video games, a spoken word piece combating cops a child protective services.

All of the above acted, re-enacted and rigorously rehearsed for four months.

In bringing forth entertainment alongside of the possible sorrow internally felt by those who would see the play, two characters were created: "Super tenant" (Tiny) and "El Bed Bug", (Charles Pitts). Super tenant's role was to be a conscious character to SRO Tenants reminding them of their rights, while El Bed Bug is a villainous conqueror who discourages them from believing otherwise. A created character met aphorized as symbol of modern day marginalization of housed poor people.

The Jefferson Hotel, an SRO itself with a historical background, located in the San Francisco's Tenderloin District was the play's destination. Downstairs in its basement was where everyone seated. A mural art painting of SRO Hotels (by Charles Pitts, and Silencio Muteado) was fastened over the wall on center stage. The shifty weather of rain and wind would not be a barrier for people who're anxious with anticipation for the play, on this Sunday afternoon.

After people poured in for the show, they were all greeted and welcomed by Tony Robles, and Allan Manalo, director of Bindle stiff Studio. Following both of their opening addresses, all of us involved in the play appeared, dancing to a 50's "Doo Wop" theme, in a single file exiting fashion.

Then a spotlight shined on "Super tenant" and "El Bed Bug" who stood back-to-back. Both characters took turns addressing each other, in a cross-examining fashion wearing self-made costumes, out bursting their purposes to the crowd.

"Change must come from within first and from within comes my music and poetry." Nightmare Joey started off the performance, with a narration of his entire life of incarceration, institutionalization, and going forward with a positive outlook on life. Tuned through the musical means of his harmonica, equipped with his poetry are heard with his words, "Touch thyself first, and others can be touched. And hopefully, we can touch all touch each other and be uplifted by sounds and words."

The macabre musical theme to "Dark Shadows" coursed through the crowd, as Tony Robles narrated a brief intro of my upcoming scene. It was here that I re-lived October 7th, 2005, the night where members of the San Francisco Police Department illegal stormed into my room, guns drawn. For the purposes of education and healing through theater art, I was really thrilled for this re-enactment.

The manner of the appearances of the cops (played by Thornton Kimes and David Elliott Lewis) became somewhat of a "tragic comedy" as a roar of laughter followed. I was not offended by the audience's reaction though. My eyes stood cohesive with theirs, and the collective curiosities carried in their minds. I offered a poetic explanation to the obscene scene they had just witnessed.

"What crime, what crime did I commit? They committed the crime of robbing my rights. My rights were gone up like smoke.......................smoke from their unfired guns.

The lyrics to the Blues hit "Stormy Monday" was sung by Nightmare Joey for his scene. He was joined shortly thereafter by me, and Bruce Allison, in our real life portrayal of his neighbors. The three of us played in unison, illustrating to everyone that we were tuned away from life's everyday problems.

"El Bed Bug" appeared in Victor Nelson's scene during a narration by Tony. After Victor is "bitten" by him, El Bed Bug begins to casually prowl around a seated center-staged Victor. The choreographic form by El Bed Bug is ingenious, and entertaining. It was as if he were bringing animation into a motion picture. El Bed Bug and a letter of bad news from hotel management fail to ruin Victor's day. He relieves himself of both problems, with a song that sends cheers to the crowd.

Souls of the dearly departed (especially those in poverty) often go ignored, and/or even acknowledged in most places, including SROs. Robert Weber, resident of the Senator Hotel addressed that painful reality to the forefront. Marcus McCaine, a respected man in the community, was known to have a loving heart, and served in the military. The entire cast of "Hotel Voices" circled silently behind Robert, and stood for a moment of silence in paying our respects for those that passed.

In role call fashion, names of the deceased were called, with Tiny and Tony concluding, with the names of poverty heroes, Uncle Al Robles, and Mama Dee Gray.

The vocal energy delivered from the interaction between Catalina Dean, and Super tenant led to a near ear-deafening applause following Dean's scene. As Catalina sat center staged, unsure of her tenant rights, she is met uplifted by the "powers" of Super tenant to self-empower. They both begin to agree on everything wrong with the affordable housing complex, the entire system it's structured upon, and exchange the same sentiments for immediate change.

Reluctant Social Security check delivered in Publishing Clearing House style. An inadequate room rental from an obnoxious slumlord (Nightmare Joey) witnessed in Bruce's scene showed road showed no exits to prosperity, or even no peace of mind. He expressed such experience yelling, "I paid $200 for a f@#$%ing room, where the springs stick me in the ass!"

Confronted with the immediate threats of racism and death on two forefronts, with strikingly similar sequences. Joseph Bolden stumbled on these terrifying ordeals one night at his hotel. One by a mentally disturbed white man armed waving a knife, with a racist rant, "What are you looking at, blackie?!!"

The other is when two po-lice officers (me and Thornton) screamed at him, with trigger-happy tendencies. (Though Joe posed no absolute threat, and actually called for their help.) "Get your hands up! Who are you? What's in your robe? What did you call us for? A clear established example of blatant racial profiling in Joe's and my scene renews the reasons of why we at POOR practice NO po-lice calls in our community.

Unreasonable, sarcastic, arrogant, and even at times disrespectful, is what describes the true characteristics of the average politician to their constituents. Charles Pitts portrays a tenant who learns that another (Catalina) is robbed of her money, from a conman/case manager (Nightmare Joey) and help is beyond her reach. Un happy about what he has learned, the tenant seeks the aid from a local politician, named "Mr. Yearly" (played by me) who totally ignores the tenant's request to take action.

"The Hotel Iroquois. A clean functional structure occupying the rough edges of a vibrant multi-cultural community. A community populated by recent Vietnamese, Muslim, and Latino immigrants. A community also home to gay, transgender, African-American, the young and hip, condo owning yuppies, Hells Angels, artists, prostitutes, consuming subcultures; a houseless community of urban outdoorsmen, and so much more."

Narration by Nightmare Joey

David Elliott Lewis portrays a man of Christian beliefs, who is part of an outreach organization that feeds the poor. His quest to feed the needy is challenged by a recent immigrant woman from Nigeria (Catalina) one day at the Hotel Iroquois. She demands more than her equal share from him. The woman not only demands more servings from him, but she questions his own judge of character after his prayer for "deliverance from evil."

"Street fighters, ready, set, FIGHT!"

This particular scene was quite un-usual at least it was for me in playing a video game character. The two characters (Charles and Thornton) were portraying a couple of video game players; while me and my partner (Silencio Muteado) played the actual video game characters of "Streetfighter."This story was about how one game player sought to keep their video game desires afloat, by constant money borrowing, while the other does not. Unusual, yes but very fun, nonetheless.

A poem presented from Ruyata Akio McClothin a.k.a "RAM" titled "Police Raid Day" detailed a brief description of resistance towards po-lice repression from his mother. Defiant from threats of CPS (Child Protection Services), and a po-lice officer's attacks on her humility (as a woman) causes her to stand her ground. "F@#$ you, pig! Take me to jail!"

Super tenant and El Bed Bug came face-to-face, in what would be the last time. Super tenant tells him that poor people were going to take back their land and resources. "Its over, we have won!" As El Bed Bug gestures to Super tenant that he does heed her words, the entire cast of "Hotel Voices" appear on the stage, staring at him sternly. Faced with overwhelming odds, El Bed Bug flees from all of those he has (and/or has tried to) oppressed, in a circle of solidarity.

Mama Dee, in the spiritual guise of a pigeon cooed from outside of the hotel basement throughout our last remaining rehearsal weeks.

Her message to all of us was that she was here with us...............in the spirit of POOR.....................in the spirit of "Hotel Voices."

"There is more than one way to teach political consciousness. The revolution can also come through Hollywood bling, performances, storytelling, poetry, and art." Legendary words from "Mama" Dee Gray, Poverty Hero, POOR co-founder, mother of "Tiny" Lisa Gray-Garcia.

this is a test.

Debajo en Espanol

Our family of POOR Magazine poverty, race, migrant, disability, youth and indigenous scholars hold in our collective hearts the pain of Oscar Grant’s mama and all the mamaz and daddys and tio’s y tias, y abuelas y abuelos who have lost children to the culture of deadly force, abuse and murder called the Police in Amerikkka.

Brother Oscar Grant, along with Ayana Jones, Idriss Stelley, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, their families and so many more victims of Po’Lice terror are honored on our altar of ancestor heroes in resistance at POOR Magazine. We send our prayers of healing and deep love. And with the utmost respect for the mama and families, we also stand in solidarity with many thousands of families and community members who are collectively screaming Enough!. No more killing of our babies, racial profiling and harassment of our communities No more lies about protection, and service. No MORE po’lice terror EVER!.

So is a world without para-military occupying soldiers, rooted in white supremacy, trained to kill, armed with weapons of mass destruction and sworn to loyalty to each other's protection above all else, possible?

For the masses of corporate media propagandized, born and bred into the cult of independence, institutional and structural racism and the bootstraps mentality it might not be.

US dominant culture works hard to separate and alienate our elder’s scholarship and traditions from our youth’s minds, our cultures out of and away from our communities and our ancestors teachings crushed and replaced by lies of wealth and privilege for all. We are taught  that our own personal happiness is of the utmost importance, that everything needs to happen immediately, and simply and our happiness is tied to how much we have and own not how much we know and how many people we are caring for.  We do nothing as a society to truly care, protect and hold our women and mothers and children so there is NEVER abuse of a woman or a child by someone so lost in their own struggle and or addiction that they perpetuate violence on the people they love.

Can we envision ourselves collectively, interdependently, dreaming and holding our ancestors teachings?

How does this happen. It begins with us breaking through the hypocrisy of our own lives on the daily. Recognizing our own impulse to resort to po’lice calls in situations of struggle cause it’s easier and faster to solve a “difficult problem” But of course it’s much deeper than that

As an indigenous people-led, poor people led, family created, arts organization, launched by a landless, indigenous mother and daughter in poverty POOR Magazine practices ancestor worship, eldership, care-giving and interdependence with a mandate of no Po’Lice calls ever. We have implemented a Community Council process based on our indigenous teachings which includes a meeting of all peoples involved in a conflict meeting for as long as it takes to hear everyone’s perspective with ground rules of respect and love and care-giving and inter-dependence.

And this process is always lengthy and messy and sad and strange and revelatory and beautiful. It’s not perfect, and always extremely difficult. But why shouldn’t it be. Why would or should solving human personal and organizational struggles ever be easy.

As a mother of a young child, and a survivor of both domestic violence and child sexual abuse, I am most concerned about how women and children aren’t protected in this society and I realize that we have much to learn about caring and protecting all of Creator’s peoples.

POOR Magazine’s Community Council is only one humble, in-organization example of people-led accountability, there is much to learn from other people-led accountability projects such as the Audrey Lorde Project , Alwaysasafespace and CUAV, as well as revolutionary concepts and ideas from groups like Critical Resistance and Incite.

But it really begins with re-thinking all of these things and the ways in which so many of us have been informed, taught, racialized and lied to about the notion of  safety and security itself. And how security has been equated with guns and walls and batons and tasers and then this concept of so-called security is used by multi-national corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater to make money on the backs of our fear and our desire for a simple answer to that fear.

Finally it is most important to remember that we are people, with culture, spirit, love and care and protection hard-wired in us. We must work harder, think deeper, dream bigger, love stronger to care for each other inter-dependently. Always.

En Espanol

Our Indigenous Peoples Media Coordinator Our Indigenous Peoples Media Coordinator, Mari V. went to Denver with a group called the Visionaries that is doing a community project with the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Denver. She along with Marjorie Davis, and Louis Chapoose (White River Ute) held Art and Spoken Word workshops. The Spoken Word Workshops are based on POOR Magazine’s curriculum of the Slam Bio. The youth also recorded their poetry pieces and make a spoken word CD.

Slam Bios are short versions of a poet’s biography

Hayley Long, 9

Poetry Purple,

Sweet N Tangy

Fluffy like a teddy bear

Smell like a pretty flower perfume

Dog with baby cats

Ladybug

Playful Mind

Small town

Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Mexican

I live with my mom, 2 brothers, and 1 sister

My room has two beds.

My bed has Winnie the pooh stuff on it.

I struggle with making friends.

Malik Turner, 11

Black and red

Smooth as polished wood

Smell like axe cologne

Taste like mixed berries

I'm hunting like a tiger stalking his prey

I am from Denver where everybody loves me

I come from a comedy family where everybody loves me

I struggle with math because sometimes it's hard

Also, I struggle with my dad drinking alcohol

Michael Churchill Jr.

Red

Soft as a teddbear

Smell like axe cologne

Taste sweet as sweet tea

Lion in the forest

I'm from a group of people that always love me from Denver

I live with my mom mostly and my dad helps me on the way and they both love me dad lives in an apartment, and my mom lives in a condo

I struggle most with my grandma smoking around me all the time

Jenessa Walgren, 5

Blue
Soupy
Smooth
Flowers

Brown Dog

Nebraska

Big Mountain

Workers

Muesum

Saying Echos in the Tunnels

The only word I remember saying is Gracias from my Dad.

My house is white and blue.

It is heater house.

There are 3 rooms.

My room is filled with Toys.

My grandma, mom, aunt and dad.

I like elevators.

I struggle with learning to ride my bike.

WELFARE BLUES:  A.K.A. WHAT DO I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE?

Part 1

YESTERDAY

‘''For us old bleeding-heart liberals who were on the streets in the 60's, the idea that Lockheed, of the military-industrial complex, would be in charge of welfare is out of somebody's nightmare fantasy,'' said the director of the JOBS program in a Northeastern state.  Then he begged not to be identified, ''We may end up working with them,'' he said’

--From a 1996 New York Times article (“Giant Companies Entering Race To Run State Welfare Programs”)  by Nina Bernstein

I first navigated the deep, murky, living-body-choked waters of San Francisco’s Welfare Whirlpool in 1989, though there was more walking than swimming.  You go to 8^th and Mission Streets to sign up for a Welfare General Assistance, or G.A., check.  I went to a check cashing place near 20^th and Mission Streets to get that check because my last name begins with the letter K.  EVERYONE did Workfare, sweeping streets.  I met other street sweepers, and our boss, at 5^th and Market Streets.  That is barely scratching the surface of that deep, living body-choked Welfare Whirlpool, 1989 or 2010.  

Does anyone remember when food stamps were paper?  I do, but the beginning of the EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) plastic card era was 1990, when Texas billionaire Ross Perot’s then-$12+ billion Electronic Data Systems company was fighting with various other small and large opponents (including Lockheed!) for the right to change the way poor folks get their crumbs from the Welfare system. 

Darwin Deason of Affiliated Computer Services, Inc (ACS), with the help of IBM and the State of Maryland, invented the EBT card and beat Perot out of a five-year contract to computerize L.A. County’s food stamp program.  ACS zig-zagged in and out of this swamp, getting out of the electronic welfare benefits biz until 1994, just before Bill Clinton pulled a fast one on the Republican Party and everyone on Welfare in Amerikkka.

ACS teamed up with Walter Patterson, director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services when Clinton was Governor.  The company didn’t think there was much demand for EBT cards, etc., but so many states were getting into the cost-cutting-of-welfare-budgets bandwagon it was clear there really was money to be made…

TODAY

Would you like to know about the confusion, craziness, waste of effort, money and time that is the San Francisco Welfare System?  The SF Coalition On Homelessness recently thanked supporters for helping dramatize the quote “Amazing Runaround”, unquote--the struggles homeless folks go through to get access to shelter beds.  Everyone in the Welfare system goes through an Amazing Runaround rat race every day.

When you check a box saying English is your only language you should never get an insert in Welfare Snail Mail asking if you need an interpreter.  Waste of paper and money?  Check!

A bigger waste of money and time?  Make people spend time solving problems already dealt with once, problems that almost got them kicked off Welfare.  The Computer, It Wrote Me A Letter, is the title of one of my poems.

How to waste even more money, paper, and time?  Mail lots of people notices telling them to meet with a man who knows less about Welfare and what it does and doesn't do than they do, pay him to tell us, the real experts, what is what and that we're going to get more mail identifying the real expert, our employment specialist case monster, for the next round of Welfare Games—the very employment specialist case monster I've already met during an earlier round of confusion, inside-out appointments for this and that...the employment specialist case monster who already knew she couldn't work with me yet because my Welfare therapist counselor has had the real power to make my case move fast or slow through the system for a while (or, at least, that was how it looked to me...).

I've met the employment specialist case monster more than once.  The situation could have been less crazy, but neither of us has the power to shrink this circus to less than 3 rings.  If reading this litany of looniness makes your head hurt, hey!  I lived it.  I'm still livin' la vida loca—The Crazy Life.

Part 2:  System? System? Do We Even HAVE A Steeenkeeeng System?

The other times I’ve been in the San Francisco Welfare system, I endured less craziness and got back on my feet—though I admit to settling for what I call “just any old job”.  That isn’t a good thing to do, especially if you don’t have the advantages people with money have—double especially if you grew up middle class (me) but didn’t get the Horatio Alger American Dream Hard Work-a-Mania thing really truly thumped into you so you believed it and lived it and made it work for you.

If that was what my parents were teaching me by example, I was watching a different channel.  Just any old marriageable guy/person, the nuclear family, divorce.  I mean, c’mon!  Oprah wants us to Live Our Best Life!  Have you noticed that the poor don’t get to indulge in all this stuff people with access and money do? 

We’re told, by the experts, “do what you love and the money will follow!”  Repeating the phrase “Do you want fries with that?” has never been my idea of doing what I love, especially since not much money’s gonna follow me around doing that.  I was asked, once, by an employment specialist my second time through Goodwill Industries, if I would consider getting a fast-food job so that I could have some money coming in while I looked for something better.

I said no.  I’d rather be homeless again, and start over from scratch--again.  Working full time in the fast food world, in the food world in general, is mostly a young person’s game to begin with, but combining an on-your-days-off job hunt with personal stuff like buying food, doing laundry, having a life?  Um, no, I want something better than that and I want the damned experts to help me get there!  Is that so much to ask for?  Apparently it is, but they didn’t ask me that question again.

And, anyway, I stumbled across POOR just after getting caught up in the system again, so the vision of “What Do I Want To Do With My Life?” (the title of one of Po Bronson’s non-fiction books, one of two I like a helluvalot) has changed “somewhat”.

So, this time through the system I only had to endure 5 weeks of PAES (Personal Assisted Employment Services) GEPS—I don’t know what that acronym stands for, except for several hours of boredom one day a week—instead of 12 weeks, but the choices offered at the end amount to the same thing always:  start looking for work immediately or choose the pathway to getting the system to pay your way through a relatively short school training program to pick up a new skillset and go after something better (you hope) than what you did before you needed to use the system again.

I tried St. Anthony’s programs and found myself in a sort-of honor system two hours one day a week geographic data entry training program unlike anything I’d ever tried to learn.  We were supposed to have a classroom to ourselves, with a door shut between us and relatively normal levels of noise, but somehow that room was always not-for-use, even though it was empty when we left.  We endured much noise, including one mass invasion of people going on a tour of the building, because of being in an open around too close to the front desk.

My original plan was to sign up for St. Anthony’s “A+ Certification” program (which turned out to be via City College) in computer hardware maintenance and repair.  I was talked into the other program until the City College thing happened in Spring 2009.  I never got a case monster, I mean manager.  I was so frustrated with the data entry thing I quit, and later found out no one had me listed as even interested in the City College thing.  So much for one of the 500# canaries of the local non-profit eco-system!

After doing PAES Workfare for the Coalition on Homelessness (I was startled to find them on the alternate workfare list.  The COH?  Doesn’t the city hate them?  Yes, but there they were…) I got into RAMS, INC.’s counseling/therapy services—I had chosen that option, with the intent to go after some advanced computer training (computer graphics like Photoshop, and web design or webmaster stuff) available through their HireAbility/iAbility program. 

San Francisco budget cuts killed the iAbility program the summer of 2009.  Though iAbility was resurrected, it only offers basic computer skills.  Been there, got that.  I got involved with HireAbility anyway that summer, partly out of boredom and wanting some extra dollars in my pocket.  Minimal dollars.  HireAbility trains people to be janitors, baristas, helps with more general job hunts, and pays piecework rates for work done on-site in a warehouse.

There was another option, going through the State of California’s “Department of Rehabilitation” (DOR) to get to City College or some other thing like, say a massage school or some other program.  Budget cuts made me wait for that, until DOR got someone to replace someone who was laid off or fired.  Are you feeling that headache déjà vu from Part 1? 

Part 3:  Road Trips

RECENTLY

Poormag had barely been in its new space when I started watching a PBS series that took young Americans and Australians on road trips to try to figure out what to do after college.  “Career-wise”.  One man said something pretty wise to the Aussies:  he had no clue what he wanted to do, to be, until after turning 40.  He zigged and zagged, made mistakes, had a lot of jobs he hated, but managed to figure out what he wanted to do after all that.

How many employment experts in America watching that had heart attacks?  The Welfare System People want us to take tests, stick us in boxes with ribbons tightly tied around our throats, mark us down as successfully employed (“Want fries with that…?”), fire and forget, rinse and repeat, the wheels of the bus go ‘round and ‘round—and other ways of saying the same thing.  I briefly thought that warehouse work might be my thing, but temp agencies and, ultimately, Goodwill Industries, cured me of that.  Who wants to be in one of the bellies of the beast, just another wad of chewed cud, endlessly swapped between the bellies spitting out all the stuff we are told we need?

Of course, that narrows down the choices, decisions, and what-not. 

Part 4:  Rat, Race--Just Another Rat in the Race Going Nowhere (a.k.a. Book Him Danno!)

NOW

Slowly, DOR got somebody new, and RAMS, INC., dumped a bunch of us folks on that person.  Later, I found out that my case monster, I mean manager, Christine Randolph, is new to the game of social work.  It took a while for her to get to me. I met with her two or three times face-to-face. 

She needed to find out if DOR could even take me on through this program, meaning “how screwed up is Thornton Kimes?”  Not screwed up enough to be on SSI (possibly debateable…), but was I screwed up enough to get on the waiting list?  The head shrinker thought so, and that interview happened faster than I expected. 

After that Christine asked me to do research on what I wanted to do, and then asked me to narrow my list to the top 2.  I did both, and heard from her that she had to talk to her boss about a Yes or a No.  I never heard back from her on either Yes/No.  Communication broke down, and became a frustrating game of Phone Tag, among other things.  

Part of the communications breakdown was some strangeness going on with my Poor People Phone Service through AT&T.  I was getting charged for someone else's phone calls, or someone hacked my identity.  I never did find out which.  I did cancel the service.

Christine wanted me to go back to HireAbility! 

I was really confused about this, especially because the person I was supposed to talk to at HireAbility sounded like she was expecting to become my new case manager and I would have to start all over from scratch with something I knew wasn’t for me.  I protested, and the communication breakdown turned into being thrown under a bus, being kicked out of DOR’s program. 

My RAMS, INC. counselor/therapist suggested (along with other people going to bat for me) getting the employment specialist—Tamara Yalgolnitser, based at the unemployment facility at Mission and Chavez Streets—to help.  Christine visits/visited that building every Wednesday, thus there was more than one good reason to go this route.  I got what everyone in Welfare calls a “Remedy”, usually a one-time appointment arranged to try to solve a problem.

I should have known better.  Many people in the Welfare system, who run into a problem (or problems) with what they are trying to do to get out of the system, get blamed for the snafu (officially, it’s never the case managers’ fault.  Never), they pay the price and have to do what the case managers tell them to do (or take the least nasty of, usually, two choices) to fix what’s broken.  I and my RAMS, INC counselor/therapist hoped for more, but what I got was Tamara playing by the Welfare systems’s rules,  which don’t allow for much, if any, flexibility. 

“By The Book” means having the attitude that everything was my fault.  By The Book meant that Tamara said that this chain of events meant that obviously I was not ready to work and that some kind of going-back-to-the-drawing-board action needed to be taken.  RAMS, INC. disagreed, especially since Tamara seemed to want them to start over with me.  My time with them is supposed to be ending, things are up in the air and I didn’t go to circus school to be a juggler.

Rat, race, just another rat in the race, sniffing the air, wondering if I can climb over the wall and go somewhere else.  Been here and there, done that.

Various people need to here from you if this “irks” you as much as it does me.  I’m not the only person getting hosed.  I’ve spoken with other people in the same boat, being asked to do things that don’t make sense—because if they do THOSE things…why do they even need DOR??????  The Gav.  Gavin Newsom.  San Francisco’s Mayor.  The Human Services Commission, the Board of Supervisors, the State of California’s Department of Rehabilitation--they need to hear from people. 

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The empty buildings stood, eyes covered in plywood glasses, cast down. Their clapboard, stucco and brick arms, bound by eviction, foreclosure sale and demolition notices.

A small group of poverty and indigenous scholars from POOR Magazine, bleeding internally from our own wounds of eviction, landlessness, budget genocide, racism, po-lice brutality, incarceration and violence arrived in Detroit on a hot Saturday in June to attend the US Social Forum and Allied Media Conference.

We drove silently through almost-empty streets to arrive at our tiny rented rooms encased in what seemed like a protected, pre-gentrified zone of silence created for the nearby Wayne State University students. We rode past thousands of dreams deferred, homes and jobs had, then lost, businesses and communities built and un-built, peoples removed, displaced, dismantled and there never-more.

“We are realizing a community not defined by Ford, Chevrolet and General Motors, but by the people, ” General Baker, a union leader, community revolutionary and long-time Detroit resident spoke about the history and present of the post-capitalist city known as Detroit. He and the powerful elder revolutionary Grace Lee Boggs addressed hundreds of organizers and poverty skolaz from across Turtle Island and beyond gathered to celebrate a community rooted in peoples struggle, not corporate thrival.

Detroit, called dead and gone by corporate media who define life by the existence of thriving capitalism, corporation – funded employment and rising property values. Detroit, home to the “Detroit rebellion of 1967” , Detroit Summer, Invincible, and the Grace Lee Boggs Center. Detroit, land of people resisting as community, not defined by corporations.

“We provide direct services, counseling and vouchers for hundreds of African-American, Vietnamese and White fisherman whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the BP drilling disaster,” said, Tap Bui from MQVN. a New Orleans non-profit launched in the crisis of Hurrican Katrina. POOR’s poverty skolars, media producers and cultural workers came to meet with, teach with, and be with other folks struggling with the corporate poison of their homes and economies from BP oil in the Gulf, indigenous peoples struggling with the lies of border fascism and resistance of tribal soverignty in Arizona, Peru, Canada and Mexico and mamaz fighting the lies of welfare deform in Wisconsin, Detroit, New York and California. We dreamed with other poor people led revolutionaries from Picture the Homeless, National Welfare Rights Union and El otro campana del barrio in New York and many more who all came to offer workshops and presentations at the US Social Forum.

We also brought our own forms of cultural work, scholarship, art and education on poverty, race, linguistic domination and resistance in several workshops and performances throughout the week.

But in the end, we met with Detroit, a post-capitalist city of humble conscious peoples re-finding themselves as humans capable of their own created economies, care-giving, and people-based labor, that actually works to care for all peoples and pachamama. We spoke with empty streets, and closed up stores and abandoned homes and closed parks and open lands and expanding weeds and living museums.

Underground Railroad as theatre

“We provide living tours through slavery by appointment,” The first day we arrived in Detroit we came upon the Underground Railroad Living Museum which was housed in the First Congregational Church of Detroit. When I first heard about their fascinating “tours” , I was nervous, and had no idea what to expect, how is it right, I pondered, for me to go through this and respect the ancestors and the herstory of oppression and destruction. Was it enough that my melanin-challenged,-looking like my colonizer father self, was the daughter of an African-Boricua-Irish Mama in struggle who had dealt with the post-traumatic slave syndrome and the many fallouts of race and class oppression in Amerikkka. Did this qualify me to go through this life changing experience. I wasn’t sure..

All hues of our POOR Magazine poor people of color contingent arrived to the day of our appointment with anticipation and wonder in our hearts. “Wear these,” one of the docent actors in the theatre piece handed each of us a band to wear on our wrists that said simply, “SLAVE” we clipped it on and the river of metaphors for each of us began. A video on the herstory of slavery and kkkolonization started to play and two by two we were led out of the room into, literally, an underground series of trails and rooms, led by an all volunteer group of actors who helped us empath with the blood-stained history that is slavery in the US.

In the end it was one of the hardest and most beautiful things I have ever been led through and I would recommend it highly. It was not a “tour” through slavery, but rather a piece of very revolutionary peoples history told through popular education theatre by a small group of dedicated volunteers.

We spoke with the beautiful and spirited Elaine Watts, teacher, care-giver and guide after the tour about the work of the 1st Congregational church of Detroit, led by one of the first African Descendent female pastors in Detroit, Lottie Jones-Hood, herself a survivor of substance and recovery who in addition to the Underground Railroad project, launched the amazing Babes Program, an education and arts project for children of addicted parents.

Taking Back Land Through Art

“This art is medicine,” said revolutionary artist and sculptor Tyree Guyton of the Heidelberg Project of Detroit. Everything and everyone we met with in Detroit were powerful and important, but our trip to the Heidelberg project was nothing less than life-changing. “I am speaking for Him, I am channeling the Creator’s gifts for all of us to see and feel,” Tyree concluded in a conversation with POOR reporters and solidarity board who landed on his street on our second day in town.

One of POOR’s goals with this journey to Detroit was to do research for POOR’s HOMEFULNESS Project, a sweat-equity co-housing model for landless, indigenous families in poverty which includes art, education and micro-business and is a model of self-sustainability. In this search we found ourselves back where POOR had begun.

POOR Magazine featured Tyree’s beautiful re-visioning and re-birth through art of his post-capitalist, abandoned neighborhood in our 1996 issue of POOR Magazine Volume 1 entitled: HOMEFULNESS. This magical place contained messages for all of us, pages out of each one of our lives, out of each one POOR Magazine’s literary and visual art and resistance media.

Dr Dee is In

My Mama Dee, who passed on her spirit journey in 2006, hasn’t sent me a sign for awhile, and when she does, it often includes her ironic sense of humour that saved both of us through so many years of pain and struggle in our lives of poverty together. She had a pointed message for us at the Heidelberg Project.

In the middle of one of the beautiful mixed media art installations on everything from addiction to child abuse scattered throughout a two block area of abandoned houses was a sign that stated simply Dr. Dee is In. I knew my mama was with us on this trip, but I didn’t know til then how much she wanted me to gleen from this magical place of displacement, art, public land and community.

The Last Blessing

Finally, it was the end of our journey, the day we had to return to our temporary locations on Pachamama, the plantation, as my fellow welfareQUEEN Queennandi Xsheba calls them; our underpaid or once-in-while jobs, our budget kkkuts, our Single Room Occupancy hotels, criminalized neighborhoods. Po’lice terror, public and private non-profit philanthro-pimped housing, all by-products of the many systems of capitalist oppression that keep us endlessly chasing our own tails, and turning our pain and landlessness into products to be case mis-managed, our neighborhoods and bodies endlessly speculated on, deconstructed and dismantled. Our lives centered around what we didn’t have and what they didn’t want to give back to us. Scarcity models defined by the man who stole our resources and land and cultures only to funnel us into his education systems ghettos, jobs and prisons.

“You know Tyree built a home for his mama right next door to his on that street in the Heidelberg project where they still live to this day.” While in rite-Aid in Detroit, the last skoolin came from a young woman working behind the counter of the local drug store,

In the US we are all conditioned on the capitalist notion of independence which demands separation of families from their elders, children from their parents and youth from their cultures. Demands put in place covertly through land use, formal education, Non-profit industrial complex and the capitalist driven workforce.

The companion message is the fake dream of a job and a career, which most of us are conditioned to believe should be our guide and shape our lives, yet these aren’t jobs that make our children eat better, learn to read or fish, farm or make art, our families love each other, our elders or our bodies healthier or Pacha mama cleaner or happier. Our work as mamaz and fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers aren’t honored or considered, our abilities to grow our own food, build our own houses, or comfort our folks, practice our traditions, honor our ancestors, take care of our elders. These aren’t considered “legitimate” forms of labor, or real forms of work.

One of the key aspects of POOR Magazine’s poor people-led.indigenous people led message is our deconstruction of the roots of capitalism and our constant real time practice of a different world- a world that practices intergenerational education, arts love and inter-dependence, love like the Malawi people that believe if I have met you I am responsible for you, that if one person accumulates wealth and keeps it just for themselves something is wrong with that person, or like almost all indigenous peoples believe and practice, no-one lives alone and isolation and alone-ness are not barometers for sanity, like they are in this twisted society. Tyree practiced these acts of love and care-giving with his community, neighborhood and family. In Detroit. In a neighborhood purported to be abandoned, destroyed and lost.

Going Back.. Back Back to Cali Cali…

“Whose to say that the weeds are not the roots and the roots are not the weeds…” Al Robles,

poet, community organizer and POOR Magazine board member We drove in silence to the airport. Again we passed the empty homes, silent neighborhoods, and shuttered businesses and yet this time I saw something else. The empty buildings looked different, they seemed to sway and move in tandem with the wind, their plywood glasses covering their resting eyes while they thought and considered and dreamed. Their wood and stucco skin was massaged by the weed fingers of their mother, Pacha-mama, mother earth, her leafy arms whispering dreams of liberation from corporations, real estate speculation, and endless gentrification. Her rain bathing over their dusty crevasses with the water of real change and land reclamation not rooted in capitalism ownership.

To watch Part 2 of POOR Magazine in Detroit on PNN-TV: Click Here

To Watch Part 1 of POOR Magazine in Detroit on PNN-TV: Click Here