"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety"
Benjamin Franklin
Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder, belongs in a padded cell, along with the rest of the state Assembly and Senate. This poverty skolah has lived on social security for several years without a COLA (Cost of Living Allowance) raise. The government of Michigan wants to double pension taxes, abolish the Earned Income Tax rebate, and pass the "savings" to the state and corporations. They really want to be thought of as "business-friendly".
All inspections of dairy products (by state officials) have been cancelled, all philanthropic donations to state and local colleges and universities will be taxed, and city governments under extreme financial pressure will be dissolved by the governor and pub under corporate receivership. This is the Robocop future of the city of Detroit, MI, owned by a mega-corporation.
Imagine Detroit being renamed Blackwater-ville (Blackwater changed its name to "Xe Services LLC"..imagine Detroit renamed "Xe"...). The Controller of the corporation managing the receivership has the power to declare all contracts null and void. The Board of Directors (especially the Chair) will have feudal power over citizens of their fiefdom, acting as Barons over serfs.
Get ready, people of Detroit, for the new. improved. feudal ages. Your Barony of Neo-Detroit may well go to war with Amwayville over property and water rights. The governor, your King, will sit back and watch the end of Democracy.
Snyder was probably inspired (in part) by Sandy Springs, Georgia, which voted to incorporate itself in 2005. Incorporation isn't a bad thing, but what the leadership of the town did after that is questionable at best, even if they truly did want to reduce the cost of being a town or city in 21st Century America.
Sandy Springs signed a $32 million contract with CH2M-Hill, a multinational corporation, to perform "...all the public works, all the community development, all the administrative stuff, the finance department, everything is done by CH2M-Hill", the Mayor, Eva Galambos, said in a 2006 newspaper article written by Leonard C. Gilroy of the Reason Foundation.
The argument for doing this was couched as saving money ($32 million is just over half what Fulton County charged Sandy Springs in taxes for services rendered) and working to do the job of governance better and more efficiently. Those are good goals to shoot for, but will everyone who sees this solution to the high cost of running a city be so magnanimous? The citizens of the City of Oakland, CA, have endured years of poor management of resources, nepotism in City Hall, strong mayors (like Jerry Brown) who were more business-friendly than people-friendly, weak mayors like Ron Dellums (embarrassed by a nepotism-minded city administrator who appeared to be stronger, certainly more stubborn...), and more.
Michigan and Wisconsin are leading the way to the deconstruction of our communities--we thought California was bad!
This nightmare has a solution. Recall the entire government of Michigan. To paraphrase one of the Founding Fathers of this country, freedom of speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent, you'll be led like sheep to the slaughter. Don't be sheep.
Today I dropped by the KPWR studios, in a little room in a series of warehouses sits the KPWR People WIll Radio Studios. KPWR is an urban community web based radio project based out of East Austin what my long time compa El Capitan calls "occupied East Austin".
It was great walking into the studio hip hop playing in the back seeing my friend El Capitan on the turn tables and on the mic. His show Radio Rasquacho has been on the air for over 6 years and serves as a space for community building, music, live performance, poetry, and political expression. Its been a long time hangout space and spot for companeros over the years every wednesday night.
KPWR is a non hierarchical all volunteer collective, member driven, created, and funded. Through hard work by its collective determination and collective organizing KPWR radio still exists! The radio project has existed without private donors or any type of funding making it community led and owned and operated. Not so many years ago I grabbed the mic and had a radio show...
KPWR exists to make radio/media accessible and Free, non corporate and truly independent. It was inspiring to see that El Capitan as an artist, DJ, musician, radio personality, media maker, and provacatuer is still on the air diseminating knowledge, rythms, and energy to the masses.
Que Viva Radio Rasquacho y People Will Radio......
The past two days have re-energizing for me before I head my way to Florida, and then after that Rachel and I will rejoin again in the east coast!
When I drove up on Tuesday, I decided to listen to the voice within me and go to places that I was told to go to. I listened to God and God took me to places that i was supposed to go and saw things and was told things, and saw 3 butterflies! I just listened inside and followed. God lead me to pick certain and be in certain places and when I got home there were three hawk feathers waiting for me on my doorstep and received different financial gifts inside my mail. YES! I LOVE MY LIFE AND THE REALITY I CREATE EVERYDAY!!! YES!!!
Today, I visited one of my favorite woman elders and told her about my journey and some of the visions I have had. She joked and I joked around and talked for hours. I learned much from her and gave her some of what I received yesterday. I wanted to meet up with this other elder but that will have to wait in two two weeks when I come back from florida. I will be spending the next two weeks with my sister in Florida and I am so excited! Her is to Family, and the ones we adopt as family... Love u Sissy!
Pobre porque haci nasi. En mi tierra me sentia sola ahunque tenia a mis hijos y a mi madresita.
Pero siempre me hacia falta algo muy importante. Cuando me divorcie me quede sin hogar.
Yo me fui a la capital con el bebe. Aveces yo no comia por miedo de quedarme sin dinero! Y sin trabajo!
Yo lloraba todos los dias cuando salia a la calle con la ilusion de encontrar trabajo y nada. Pero cuando me quedaban solo 10 quetzales Dios me consedio un trabajo y me asepto una señora con mi hijo. por fin ya tenia un techo y un trabajo para mantener a mis hijitos.
Un dia hiso fiesta en su casa y yo cocine y mi bebe se fue con ella a la sala. Pero derrepente yo escuchaba unas grandes carcajadas de la gente, me dio duda y fui aver que pasaba. Me encontre con la sorpresa mas desagradable que era ver a mi hijo brracho como loquito y ver como se dibertian con el. Me dolio y me enoje tanto por que ellos le dieron cerbeza para que no los molestara y se durmiera yo me puse como loca pues el no tenia la culpa de no tener un hogar donde bibir y siendo tan indefenso y como era un bebe de tan solo un año de edad, el no sabia que le estaban dando en la mamila.
Lo abrase y le pedi perdon y regrese a la casa de mi mama. Me vine a los EEUU pensando vivir mejor y me encuentro con otra cosa igual o peor llebo un anno buscando un lugar donde vivir. Me disen: si tienes niño no te rentamos nada. Otros disen si pero tienes que pagar mas
No me haceptan, por eso yo pienso que linda fuera la vida si los pobres y las madres tubieramos un lugar donde refuguiarnos con nuestros hijos un lugar seguro donde podamos vivir en paz nesesitamos tierras y casas seguras.
Ingles Sigue
I am a Guatemalan woman, mother of of 4 kids.
Poor because that’s how I was born. In my land I felt alone even though I had my kids and my dear mother.
But I was always missing something very important. When I divorced I ended up houseless,
I went to the capital with my baby. Sometimes I wouldn’t eat for fear of running out of money! And no job!
I cried every day when, disillusioned, I went out looking for a job and found nothing. When I only had 10 more quetzales God answered my prayers and I found a job where I could be with my baby as well. Finally I had a roof over my head and a job to support my children.
One day a woman had a party at her house, and while I cooked my baby was in the living room with my boss. But when suddenly I heard some loud chuckles from everyone, I got filled with doubt and went to see what the fuss was all about. I was horrified and surprised to see my son drunk and acting crazy while they were being entertained. It hurt and I got so angry that they were giving my son beer so he would fall asleep and not bother them, I felt as though I went insane. It was not his fault I didn’t have a home—he was one year old and defenseless; he didn’t know what they were making him drink from his bottle.
I held him and asked him for forgiveness and returned home to my mom. Then I came to the USA thinking I would live better, but I find things here the same or worse. I spent a year looking for a home. They tell me if you have a kid they can’t rent you anything. Others say yes but you have to pay extra. That’s why I think it would be wonderful if poor folks and mothers would have a place to take refuge with our children. A safe place where we could live in peace, we need land and safe housing: Homefulness.
Shhhhhh listen with your heart
Brown Yellow, Red
voices of color
Rising us up from boxes
people put us in
Yes, I’m Black
feeling activist elders from all ethnic cultures
Combining communities
Through the arts
Black, Chicano, Asian, Native, Women Gay Arts Movements
From Manilatown to Motown
Homo-Hop to Krip-Hop
Koreatown, Chinatown to Chocolate City
Walking Down These Mean Streets
With Piri Tomas, Gil Scott Heron & Al Robles
Spoke political poetry
Real artists\activists
California Hotel residents learning from I Hotel legacy
Black elders strategizing with Asian elders
Robles left a foundation
Of self-reliance
planting seeds that left POOR with homefulness
collective ownership
Folk lyrics of justice by Chris Lijima
mixing with 2009 Hip-Hop by Blue Scholars
A Song For Ourselves
Burn Hollywood burn
as we write and film our stories
In post production for more than thirty years
No more ties to foundations that had ties to the economy of plantations
Untie the knots that keep our art and stories like
Manilatown Is In The Heart..
in endless production
Passing It On wrote Yuri Kochiyama
“Gave up dancing to become a revolutionary“ said Bill Sorro
When Will The Time Come? Sang Bambu
Rapping with Ten Thousand Carabaos in the Dark with Uncle Al Robles
Ted Nakamura, Trinh Minh-ha, Raeshem Nijhon
pointing their lenses on his/herstories for the big screen
Noemi Sohn, Mia Mingus mixing identity & politics of race, sex & disability
on paper in lecture halls and on protest lines
Grace Padaca serving her people and country in the Governor’s Mansion
Aiming to be the first disabled woman president of the Philippines
The smells of San Francisco
Black-eye Peas, Burritos, Lumpia MMMMMMMM
Forms a cloud of aroma around the Bay
Dissolving boundaries following your nose
Into different neighborhoods
Meeting the real policy makers cultural workers
Uncle Al's’ spirit will always be around Manilatown
Like the sounds of great jazz musicians
Echoing through the Fillmore at 2am
With Sakeone on the cheek cheek- turntables
Do you think I’m culturally 'voyeurism because I’m Black? Naw, it’s called giving respect
Remember Richard Aoki, a field marshal for The Black Panther Party
Not your average Asian, donated first defend weapons for police patrols to the BPP
Afro-Asian, Latino-Cuban, Puerto-Rican Tribes, Afro-Haitians
Jessie Jackson didn’t create the concept of the Rainbow coalition more like Fred Hampton
So I stand here in the oral tradition
Continue to learn from my elders
Beyond institutional walls
Paying respect to Al, Bill, Chris, Yuri ….
A rainbow of Revolutionary spirits in the sky going back home
Besides Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and on-going nuclear crisis, there is another problem. Where do you store nuclear waste? It takes 10,000 years for it to be safe enough to stand next to the stuff without losing your hair and/or your life.
This is not disputed by any expert in the field. There is a lot of talk about building more nuclear power reactors in this country. The industry has had many problems with the security of the sites in general, at least the terrorism fear-mongers have been yammering at us about this for years.
March 8, 2011 (three days before the earthquake and tsunami) the Nuclear Power industry sued the U.S. Dept of Energy to stop taxing it with a fee that raises $750 million a year for the Nuclear Waste Fund, managed by the U.S. Treasury. There is $24 billion in the NWF right now, which is supposed to be used for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site, 100 miles from Las Vegas, or for any other that might be created (don't hold your breath, you might need to learn to like the color blue...).
The longest-lasting governments we've ever had were the Chinese dynasties running that empire, the Egyptian dynasties, and the Roman Empire (which split into two empires...), none of them going much more than 1,000 to 2,000 years. Iceland's "Thing", or Parliament, has lasted 1,000 years. The average of more common empire-like power structures is a few centuries.
Ten thousand years is a lot longer than humans have been able to stay focused on running a government, or a religion. The U.S. Government's code phrase for a lost nuclear weapon is Broken Arrow, and there have a been a few broken arrows that have never been recovered.
This elder skolah has learned a few things here and there. The Public Library is one of them, the internet is the other. I get angry about stuff like this, especially when people challenge me on facts that are easy to prove. You don't need a Ph.D in nuclear physics to figure this stuff out.
There's only two types of nuclear power that have no waste. One is real, one is theoretical. The real one, which is still years away from being a reality, is fusion. The theoretical one is anti-matter, which will take a lot longer because it takes so much energy to produce even tiny amounts of the stuff, although scientists recently discovered that thunderstorms make the stuff all the time.
San Francisco's Navy Yard, owned by the Lennar Corporation, is a case in point. It is contaminated, and some of that contamination is nuclear--the result of sand-blasting Navy ships exposed to nuclear bomb tests near the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean decades ago. Lennar says they can clean the Navy Yard by putting a concrete cap over the contamination. There have been five previous attempts to do this, what's one more among friends and neighbors made chronically ill because of this?
The Bayview-Hunter's Point area, where the Navy Yard is, has the highest amount of cancer, still-births, and similar problems, per capita, in this country. This is a 5-square-miles chunk of the 49-square-miles of San Francisco.
Nuclear power generates nuclear waste, and what happens when you create something that dangerous? The poor live near it, the people with money don't--they don't want to, and they don't have to.
I've been reading on-line news reports about the post-earthquake/tsunami nuclear crisis in Japan, and the reaction from the Obama Administration is, well, interesting to say the least. The Japanese government says stay 12 miles from the worst-affected nuclear power plant. The U.S. government says 50 miles, preferably more.
When the news shifted to reporting about active evacuation of U.S. citizens from Japan, White House spokesbeing Jay Carney said, "I will not from here judge the Japanese evaluation of the data. This is what we would do if this incident were happening in the United States." Oh really?
This reminds me of the reaction to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, when British Petroleum (BP) and the U.S. government insisted nothing too tremendously bad was afoot, but both were forced to eat their words times after time until forced to tell us--well, um, oops, it's really really bad! Even then BP tried to downplay the amount of oil gushing into the gulf by shifting from talking about GALLONS of oil to BARRELS of oil.
I believe we are also being encouraged to think that any amount of radiation that hitches a gulf stream, or Pineapple Express storm-track ride, to the West Coast (which means POOR Magazine and a bunch of our neighbors...) and beyond ain't about nuthin' because we ALWAYS get bad stuff like particles of lead and what-not from Asia in our weather diet.
You getting that warm fuzzy feeling I'm feeling? Yeah. Please, don't forget what the experts did the last time something ginormous happened! I haven't.
With the disasters that have hit Pacha Mama in the last couple years, it seems to affect poor people the worst--from the earthquake in Haiti, to the oppression in Egypt and the Middle East, violence in Mexico and now in Japan.
I was not surprised of the little coverage devoted by mainstream media to those most affected by the tsunami in Japan--Poor people. The Majority of the people who live on the coastline of Japan are Poor people who depend on fishing as survival to eat and sell. This doesn’t happen only in Japan but in other so called “Third world countries” so when tsunamis, hurricanes and storms occur, poor people who live on the coastline suffer the worst compared with middle and upper class people who live in the downtowns or higher grounds.
Poor people who don’t work in factories like Honda, Toyota, or in the technology industries which require some kind of education, end up as fisherman or living in poor areas next to coastlines.
In a Article I read recently released by the BBC, it was mentioned how climate change will impact “underprivileged” the most.
"It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
• 75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020
• Crop yields could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia
• Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020
• 20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise between 1.5-2.5C
• Glaciers and snow cover expected to decline, reducing water availability in countries supplied by melt water
From Africa to Japan over and over poor people are on the frontlines of disasters. It is sad that even in so called independent media, little is mentioned of the suffering of our poor people, the houseless, landless, jobless the elders.
The elephant in the room that few want to confront is the Class issue. I remember hearing stories of Katrina and how people got stuck in New Orleans because they did not have a car to leave. It seems we poor people are destined to die.
Corporate media and Governments want to keep us silent but at poor magazine we resist, fight back, speak out, and shout.
By any means possible,
Being poor is not a crime
Then why get criminalized, brutalized,
For breathing
Left behind by society
All we trying do is to make a living
Is not about the color of your skin
Is about the class you belong
So I shout am brown proud
And love my poor gente
La verdad es que esto que paso duele porque nadie espera
Un desastre asi hoy hay niños sin padres, padres sin hijos hermamos sin hermanos, familias destruidas
Yo se que contra la voluntad de Dios nada se puede hacer solo les deseo que el mismo les llene el vasio que an dejado sus seres queridos y quisas esto es una señal que el hijo de Dios biene pronto y debemos de estar preparados no en lo material si no en lo espiritual que nuestro corason este limpio de maldades.
Debemos de unirnos amarnos unos con otros vivir la vida como si fuera el ultimo dia hacer las cosas mejor que nunca.
Yo solo le pido a DIOS que los bendiga los allude de esta situacion y que la paz de el sea con cada uno de ustedes
For Japan
I'm very sad because of what happened in Japan
The truth is that what happened hurt because nobody expected a disaster so today there are children without parents, parents without children, brothers without brothers, destroyed families
I know that nothing can be done against the will of God, I only wish that the emptiness from the ones who lost their loved ones will be filled and this might be a sign that the son of God very soon will come and we must be prepared not materially but spiritually clear your heart from all that is evil.
We must unite and love each others life as if it were the last day and do things better than ever.
I just ask God to bless and help us overcome this situation and may peace be with each one of you.
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
“Police should not be allowed to pick from the “poisonous tree” , said Jeff Adachi, public defender of San Francisco. Adachi went on to explain that the poisonous tree was a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. He was referring to a recent series of cases uncovered by Adachi and his staff which included evidence obtained illegally from residents of poor people housing aka Single Room Occupancy (SRO’s) hotels in San Francisco. Hotels like me and my mama, Marlon Crump and almost every poor person I know who has ever been police harassed, profiled and abused while in and/or outside of their homes, unnoticed and un-checked, for years. Until now.
"There is nothing more frightening, more scary, more terrifying than someone opening and coming through your door..........unannounced ", excerpt from Wrongful Use of Force by Marlon Crump POOR Magazine 2007
As a child and young adult my disabled mama and I lived through years of houselessness and severe poverty in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco. Periodically we scraped together the cash to afford the daily rent of single room occupancy hotels. Every night we spent inside of the SRO hotels were spent in terror of what might happen if a police officer arbitrarily decided that we were “suspects”. Sadly, this ongoing trauma happened so often it became oddly normalized.
When the images of undercover po’lice officers illegally entering SRO hotel rooms withoutwarrants, lying about their illegal entrances and then subsequently framing residents based on all kinds of “poisonous fruit” began to flood the corporate press, all us survivors of this ongoing abuse let out a deep collective sigh. I was personally reminded how much a I appreciate Jeff Adachi and his staff of dedicated advocates who have consistently spoken up for poor people and peoples of color, caught in a web of lies that leads to the apartheid-like US Prison Industrial Complex, filled with overwhelming numbers of brothers and sisters of color in poverty from colonized communities all across Pachamama.
It was almost midnight. I was in my room, preparing to leave to pick up some food from the store with my food stamp card when suddenly my door lock clicked opened The next thing I knew, I was starring down the barrels of numerous guns carried by a squad of officers yelling obscenities at me. This is an image that will be forever seared into my memory and one that still haunts me to this day. ..Marlon Crump from Wrongful Use of Force, chronicling the po’lice terror he experienced by the SFPD
“This sort of pattern and practice leads to the breach of human and civil rights of residents,” Jeff continued while explaining the many ways that the US justice system is a web of in-justice for poor people who live in SRO’s, who like all folks in poverty, living in or outside, are somehow perceived as undeserving of our basic constitutional rights to privacy.
“What should be outlawed is the practice of hotel managers giving keys to police officers just because they ask for them,”This was Adachi’s unflinching response when Marlon related his own experiences of po’lice abuse while sitting innocently in his hotel, a situation that Marlon was seriously traumatized by which launched his own healing process of revolutionary legal action, art and media that he eventually memorialized in aninfamous scene from the POOR Magazinetheatre production entitled Hotel Voices.
“They (police) are saying its only eight bad cops, but that makes me wonder how many more times this has happened to folks, and the only reason these cops were seen is because they were caught on video” Jeff went on to relate experiences in court-rooms where judges have apologized to police officers when presented with evidence like this saying to the officers, “ I’m sorry I have to dismiss this case,”
The depth of these kinds of judicial In-Justices and their subsequent impact on us Po’ folk is the reason Marlon and I launched the Revolutionary Legal Advocacy Project (RLAP) at POOR Magazine. “jailhouse lawyers outside of jail without a degree,” is our motto. RLAP is a media and education project of PeopleSkool @ POOR and is here to give folks in poverty who cant afford lawyers some legal advocacy and tools to infiltrate an elaborate system that is set up to incarcerate us. We have helped folks accused of a multitude of crimes of poverty how to be their own advocates, and through Peopleskool to make media and art to be heard and eventuallybecome educators themselves who can teach lawyers, academics and college students how to re-define the knowledge held by us poor people schooled from lived, not just learned, experience, a canon we call poverty scholarship.
“One of the most important things for poor folks to do is write and speak about their experiences, just like you do at POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE.,”Jeff concluded with deep praise for our poor people–led media, art and education projects. This was much appreciated by Marlon and I as Jeff is a powerful artist and film-maker in his own right with working-class roots.He went on to ask us if POOR Magazine could host a forum for folks who have experienced these kinds of illegal SRO home invasions.As Jeff spoke, my mind wandered to a dream of the end of poisoned fruit ingestion for us poor folks and that instead, with the help of conscious advocates like Jeff, we could actually experience the taste of justice.
POOR Magazine will be hosting a talk circle/community forum for families, adults and elder tenants in poverty who live in SRO's and have experienced Police home invasions on Tuesday, April 19th @ 6pm- Dinner and Child care will be provided . Jeff Adachi's office will be present if people want to give testimony.
@ POOR Magazine
2940 16th st #301
SF , Ca 94103
Click below link to hear the PNN radio pod-cast of the entire interview with Jeff Adachi
