Story Archives 2011

The PNN "Reality" TV Shows were created in PeopleSkool's Revolutionary Video & Theatre Class of Winter 2011

The PNN "Reality" TV Shows were created in PeopleSkool's Revolutionary Video & Theatre Class of Winter 2011

All PNN "Reality" TV Shows were created in PeopleSkool's Revolutionary Video & Theatre Class of 2011

The PNN "Reality" TV Shows were created in PeopleSkool's Revolutionary Video & Theatre Class of Winter 2011

All "Reality" TV Shows were created in PeopleSkool's Revolutionary Video and Theatre class of 2011

The PNN "Reality" TV Shows were created in PeopleSkool's Revolutionary Video & Theatre Action Class of 2011

From Removal to Reparations......From Houselessness to HOMEFULNESS…
From indigenous lands stolen to budget crumbs thow-en-
From  affordable housing in name only to rights to a roof by any means necessary…
From the cult of independence to the Revolution of inter-dependence…
From poverty-pimped housing po-lice to
Revolutionary equity for all Realized…!!!!.

After 500 years of removal, GentriFUKation, Anthro-Wrong-ology, akkkademik studies and philanthro-pimped capitalist compromises, and consumerist destruction POOR Magazine's family of landless, indigenous elders, ancestors, mamas, aunties, uncles, fathers and abuelitos, daughters and sons will be realizing the revolution that is Homefulness.  Its first resting place/its first creation space is located at 8032 MacArthur Av in Oakland

How did this finally happen?

Revolutionary Change Session launches true Change......Crumbling the Myth of The Gift — Deconstructing Donor Denial & Dismantling The Non–Profit Industrial Complex... One Outcome at a Time

Launched on Juneteenth of 2009 the POOR Magazine Revolutionary Change Session was a moment in herstory, a poor people-led/indigenous people-led teach-in for conscious folk with race, class and/or education privilege who were interested in exploring. implementing and practicing truly revolutionary expressions of giving, equity sharing and change. 

At this herstoric event poverty, in/migrante, race, elder, youth, disability and indigenous skolaz presented curriculum on the kkkriminalization of poor peoples and public space, local and global poverty, ableism, welfare, border fascism/false borders, systems abuse, underground economic strategies, po’lice brutality, profiling, globalization, gentriFUKation, indigenous removal and more.

At the culmination of the Change Session we launched the Declaration of Interdependence and the Manifesto for Change – two documents birthed in the hearts, minds, and revolutionary eyes of Mama Dee, Tiny, Ken Moshesh, Joseph Bolden, Lauren X, Maria Lopez, Kimo Akaha and other indigenous, landless poverty scholars existing in doorways, on street corners, in welfare offices, in SRO hotels, in shelters, in HUD housing and in cars.

The Revolutionary Change Session birthed POOR Magazine’s Solidarity board

POOR Magazine’s Solidarity board was formed by conscious young folks with different forms of race, class and/or akkkademik privilege whose perspectives were skooled by Poverty Scholarship at the Revolutionary Change Session and other teachings, action and prayer that grew from that space. From this skooling each  became interested in POOR Magazine’s analysis of reparations and resistance and began to work on decolonizing their resources. Click here to read excerpts of the solidarity boards personal reflections on race, class and akkkademik privileges in family, society and self.

Two years later, POOR Magazine’s solidarity board gathered enough of the blood-stained Amerikkkan Dollaz to facilitate a “purchase” of stolen land on Turtle Island to begin the healing of our mama (pachamama) to begin the healing of our communities suffering from the violence and pain of poverty, racism, budget genocide, paper trail theft and GentriFUKation, to begin the healing of our children and our families, ancestors and elders through equity redistribution, dekkkolonization, prayer and ceremony

To be clear, POOR Magazine the organization, is still Po', we only barely get by on donations by you, our families and ancestors and friends support to do the revolutionary poor people-led education, media and art. But for the first time in our herstory we have the access to create/realize a poor people-led/indigenous people-led take back of stolen land to move off these grids of plantations, po'lice, poverty pimps, corporate and government control to true liberation. 

To ask permission, to cleanse, to pray, to meet, to heal…

In the ways of our ancestors first we must walk softly on our (Pacha)Mama and in this East Oakland  community, where many of POOR Magazine’s family members have been gentrified out of, or currently dwell houselessly or in different forms of at-risk housing, we must introduce ourselves to the land and the peoples of this intentionally blighted,  scandalously speculated on, po’lice brutalized, and long ago forgotten community in poverty and ask permission in ceremony to build the Revolution that is HOMEFULNESS.

The 1st HOMEFULNESS site includes sweat-equity co-housing for 4-10 landless, houseless/landless families in poverty, as well as a site for PeopleSkool, a multigenerational, multi-lingual school based on an indigenous model of teaching and learning, POOR Magazine peoples media center, Uncle Al & Mama Dee’s Social justice and Arts cafe and tierra madre garden where we will hopefully grow food for the whole community. 

The process to dream and build HOMEFULNESS will be a community-led one with indigenous scholars, lived scholars and formally edukkkated scholars respecting and working together to create a re-mix of design, sustainability and off-grid self-determination.

Celebrate Inter-Dependence Day With Your help, Your time, Your Prayers, Your Equity

In 2006 the landless mamaz and babies in poverty of MamaHouse launched Inter-Dependence Day - a day to challenge the myth/cult of independence promoted by Amerikkkan bootstraps lies that work to separate and deconstruct  indigenous and cultural practices of sharing, love and care-giving. The Inter-Dependence day of art, action, care-giving and revolution seems like the perfect way to begin a relationship with this land and community - So please save the date- Saturday, July 2nd and get involved.

For folks who are interested in supporting this powerful poor people-led equity revolution that is HOMEFULNESS, please consider making a revolutionary donation or becoming a monthly revolutionary donor.

For folks with indigenous, or learned knowledge of architecture, building or skills with constructing or time or thoughts please let us know if u would have time or energy or resources to add to this project.

For gardening, farming or land-cleansing skills please let us know if u can help

For folks who would like to perform, have a table at and/or help with the upcoming Inter-dependence Day Ceremony – please contact us at poormag@gmail.com

Revolutionary worker scholar I am--that's what POOR Magazine calls me--and I am out of work again. You might remember an article I wrote a few months back where I spoke of the non-profit organization in the city that gave me the boot after a year of altruistic service to my fellow man and woman. The organization is still there--in fact I saw the woman who fired me. She came through the front door of a donut shop on Market Street. I darted to the rear of the donut shop like a mouse. All the verbs and adjectives and expletives I'd saved for a chance meeting with this woman disappeared. I waited for her to leave. She took her time. Some revolutionary worker scholar I turned out to be.

Funny thing about being unemployed is that I keep running into the people I used to work with--people I helped get jobs. I see them on the streets. To be honest I try to avoid them but I can't escape 100% of the time. It's not that they are not pleasant, good, personable human beings--they are but they ask me inevitably if I have found a job yet. I tell them no and they start telling me of positions that might be available. They take out napkins and wrinkled business cards, scribbling on them with pens low on ink. One fellow gave me the phone number of a friend who runs a towing service in South City. "You'd be good at it" I was told. "Be good at what?" I asked. "Towing cars" he replied, incredulously. This was a guy I had helped get a job as a janitor in a church. He was cleaning the toilet in the house of the lord and giving me a tip for a job in hell. I took the number and tossed it.

Despite my ducking and dodging and meandering ways I ended up finding a job at another non-profit organization (a temporary assignment). My title was vocational rehabilitation counselor in a job-training program serving people with various mental and physical disabilities. On my first day I walked into the bathroom. Inside was a Chinese guy at the urinal with his pants down at his ankles letting it go. He stood with his hands on his hips staring at the ceiling whistling that US Marines tune:

From the halls of

Montezuma

To the shores

Of Tripoli

I turned around and walked out thinking, my God, what have I gotten myself into? My job was teaching job skills to the participants--about 25-30 of them--some of who were monolingual Chinese speakers. My co-teachers were young, in their 20's, and I wondered if they had ever been fired from a job. We covered various topics such as job interviewing techniques, skill assessment and how to make a good impression at a job interview. I would be at the front of the class, giving my bullshit lecture, drawing from my bullshit experience that really wasn't bullshit at all. I would watch the reactions of the participants. Some of them--no, most of them would doze off. I didn't take it personally though. I just figured that these folks were tapping into their subconscious minds; perhaps they were cultivating solutions to the world's problems such as houselessness, police brutality and world hunger. Rather than rudely and abruptly wake them, I watched as they dreamed.

The job-training program included hands-on work in the warehouse where participants sorted through boxes of mosaic tiles destined for hobbyists who use them to spice up bland picture frames or make coasters for frosty libations. I watched as the workers counted mini tiles that resembled cheez-it crackers into cellophane packages. Some folks weighed the tiles and others heat-sealed the cellophane packs while others stuck labels on cellophane packages. The division of labor was concise and everyone did their jobs. On occasion, a worker or two would break into a fit of laughter out of the blue. I would watch these folks from the corner of my eye, laughing inside. I caught the eye of a fellow in the midst of a laughing fit; I smiled at him in a display of laughter solidarity. He quickly lost his laughter and asked me, "what the hell are you laughing at?" I turned away and tried to walk with a supervisory gait (which generally means, without grace).

The workers were paid piece rate. Some had not worked in decades and some had been in the training program for a decade.

Initially I was told that I would be filling in at this program for a woman on maternity leave. My job was to end upon her return--which was scheduled for December 24th, Christmas eve. I began to enjoy the job and the people I was around. The guy I saw in the urinal on my first day whistling the US Marines anthem turned out to be a pretty revolutionary guy. He blurted out the following one day in class: Just because you were born in America or have a job in this country doesn't make you better or your work more valuable than anybody else's. I thought, here's a guy with some balls; how often do you ever hear that on a gig?

Another participant of the program going by the name of Big Mack approached me and asked me if I were a client. I told him that I was the new trainer. He then asked me if I liked old school music. I answered in the affirmative and he reached into his pocket and produced 3 cassette tapes. He told me of his side business making "mix tapes". "Yeah man" he said, "I got the stylistics, Blue Magic, Switch, Bobby Womack, all that shit". He offered me a deal--3 tapes for 5 dollars. He had that look in his eye that told me music was his life. I signed up for 6 tapes. He informed me that the other tapes might take a little time to produce because he is buying a new cassette player to replace his broken one. He told me what songs he was going to put on that tape and I could taste that music as he spoke. It didn't matter that I no longer listened to cassettes or I hadn't owned a cassette player in years--it was in his eyes, the music of life. He asked me to loan him a dollar for cup o' noodles. My tapes are pending.

I spent some of the classroom time reading poetry. I read Langston Hughes, Bukowski and a little bit of Raymond Carver. It was hit and miss. Sometimes the poetry went well and sometimes folks dozed off. Some of my coworkers probably wondered what poetry had to do with a job-training program. It had everything to do with it. Making a poem is the hardest work of all. All those cellophane bags stuffed with poems; all those heat sealed bags filled with poems; all those punch presses punching out poems--what a beautiful thing.

One funny thing I remember were the stickers that were used on the cellophane packages destined to hold those mosaic tiles. The stickers were small, like the kind you see on bananas. They read: Made to be broken. I got into the habit each day of putting that sticker on my chest above my heart (and occasionally on my forehead). My co-workers laughed and I'm sure the clients thought I was crazy. I sat among the workers, some laughing to themselves, some swaying and rocking back and forth. I fit in like a puzzle. Never had I known such peace at a job.

Christmas Eve finally came. I was summoned to the boss' office and told how much they liked me and how they wished they could retain my services. The woman who I filled in for had resigned but due to the budget crisis at city hall, the organization had been forced to eliminate the position.

I bid everybody farewell. I never got my mix tapes and to be honest I never would have played them anyway. What I got was something better: laughter and poetry and true revolution on the job with folks who supposedly had mental/physical disabilities. They were among the most sane I've ever met and on a job that's rare to find. I left that place with my discharge letter and my final check. As I approached the door for the last time I peeled the "Made to be broken" sticker off my chest. I went outside.

The Protest

We left the San Francisco City College Mission Campus at 12 Noon, heading up Highway 80 to Sakkkramento.  We took sleeping bags--our plan, if everything went in our favor, was to have someone rush them into the state capitol building at the last second.  Along with teachers, college and high school students went to the protest.

Two protesters had already started the action when we arrived, so the California Highway Patrol (CHP) was already on high alert.  People were also posing with the massive $100,000 bear sculpture that Arnold Schwarzenegger bequeathed to the hallway outside the Governor's office. 

Six p.m. came quickly.  Two other random acts of demonstrating about budget cuts happened before we officially got going.  Zero hour came.  This poverty skolah is large, and can sneak more stuff in than a skinny person (including a CA Teachers Association banner...).  It is forbidden to bring banners inside the capitol building.

Let me explain why I gave the teachers union an "F".  The union, which called for the demo, began forcing teachers to leave while the official protester teachers were threatened with fines. 

"Education should be free!"  "K to PHd should be free!" were two of the protest chants.  I believe I saw the same camera man 12 times as we marched past the statue of Eureka, a goddess on the state seal.  The Highway Patrol began telling us we should leave, it was our last chance to leave freely before being arrested.

We began a teach-in.  I was sitting listening at first.  I asked the students: "Who wants a free education at any of the state's colleges?  That isn't a myth--it was real when I was your age.  It was real during the Depression!  Charging a 1% tax on any corporation, partnership, or person that earns $1 million or more a year would not hurt anyone and make college/university educations free again.

The Highway Patrol gave us 5 minutes to leave or go to jail.  The citation they gave me cites "602Q PC: Failure to leave a state building".  The situation began to feel like a Woody Allen movie ("Take the Money and Run"). The senior officer present made sure his CHP officers were as non-violent and polite as possible.

Why Do You Have To Get Arrested To Get Decent Health Care?

Sitting on the ground outside the CHP station was hard for me.  I was given a chair--other Po'Lice departments haven't been that courteous and nice, treating protesters like cattle. 

One student had food and shared it.  The CHP officer managing the students cut her plastic cuffs and said he was happy to let her do that as long as she (wink-wink) didn't escape custody.  One of the teachers said some of the officers have kids the same age and understood how to behave with them.

There was a Sacramento Po'Lice officer present who wasn't so nice.  A CHP officer showed up with a drunk yuppy who was driving a BMW.  The drunk guy was rude, as was a Sacramento Po'Lice officer who happened to be there--the CHP officers on duty at the station weren't.   

I started out in plastic cuffs, graduating to metal ones (which I, and most people would prefer to wear if circumstances require them...) so I could go the bathroom.  We were taken to see a nurse, as everyone arrested by the CHP does.  My foot was infected from cuts that happened earlier in the week.  The nurse was very concerned when she saw this.

She ordered the CHP to take me to a hospital and have me released.  I was taken to UC Davis.  Why do you have to get arrested to get decent health care in Amerikkka?

I was at UC Davis for six hours before having my foot looked at and treated (in a brand-new hospital).  I was given an antibiotic shot and two different pills.  On the way to downtown Sacramento I called Tiny.  I took Amtrak back to San Francisco and slept for 16 hours. 

"I just want to make sure that we are taking into account other policy priorities"
San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener

A 5/11/11 San Francisco Bay Guardian editorial asks the San Francisco Board of Supervisors not to wreck the city's historic preservation process.  San Francisco has lost a lot of its historic buildings in the name of 'progress'.  Seattle destroyed a classic old movie theater in the downtown core so a giant Nike Town (since closed...) could replace it, and there are countless similar stories about GentriFUCKating destructions everywhere in Amerikkka.

When POORMagazine began working on the first GentriFUCKation Tour, we wanted to ferret out the stories of the places the tour would visit--the anti-herstorical mostly single-word-named supposedly ultra-cool-chic invader restaurants no conscious economic justice-minded person would be caught dead or alive in.

Worker-skolah Tony Robles knew the herstory behind one location, knew who lived and worked there before it became something...other.  We sort-of knew one or two other stories, but the Redstone Building's history is the only place on the first GentriFUCKation Tour that is truly deep because so many people have fought, and are still fighting to preserve it.

Finding the stories about other places on the tour was an exercise in great frustration.  Elder skolah "Bad News" Bruce Allison and I trekked to City Hall and the downtown branch of the San Francisco Library.  The library staff couldn't help because the deep herstorical info we were looking for was forbidden to us by Federal law.

City Hall's paper records weren't much better, and the electronic versions had only one potentially useful avenue to pursue--but there were so many possible documents to look at I quickly realized it might take days we didn't have just to figure out if one address on the Tour list had been through some particular adventure in urban planning, defenestration, who-knows-what...or not...

Herstory, history, San Francisco's got story, we all have stories and we damned well should be better at recording it, preserving it, giving more than (Scott Wiener) lip-service to it.  The book and tv mini-series ROOTS generated an explosion of interest in Black American family histories (and Dr. Henry Louis Gates has done some truly fascinating work with PBS series' AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES and FACES OF AMERICA, tracing some families back into slave trade times). 

The Mormon Church has also become a major player in the movement to know one's family tree.  The internet has many ways to find that kind of info, mostly for a fee.

My relationship to my family's history has been an arms-length kinda thing.  I knew one set of grandparents and met another chunk of family when my father re-married in the 1970's--but, aside from his having a Kimes family tree book going back to some medieval "Baron Von Kime" I didn't (and still don't) know diddly and there weren't any details on the actual lives of the people on the branches of that tree.

You try googling Baron Von Kime.  I did.  Um...

I didn't really understand the importance of herstory, personal or institutional, when I was young.  That, along with anything else parents think is important for their children to hold dear, has to be worked into the family's psychic dna, someone has to care that younger generations know what is the what of the family.  I vaguely knew my maternal grandfather knew some big batch of people he regularly visited.  Before I could get really interested in that, he was dead, so I never did find out if those people were relatives--or just old buddies.

I learned in my 40's that my mother had the kind of upbringing you'd expect of a first-half-of-the-20th-Century white woman, with the added funk of being a sickly child and an adult with back and other physical limitations.  She told me once her family spent time around Princeton University and saw Albert Einstein out walking one day.

Interesting stuff I'd have loved to have heard, more than once, at a tenderer age, with more details--or just more.  More sense of a family with historical roots in this country, instead of just living in it.  How many other people out there have a similar story to tell of not knowing much about who their people are/were?

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Mayor should unite to create a herstory/history preservation effort that makes it easier to know who lived or worked somewhere that is now or will become a supposedly cool new place to be seen to eat, get drunk, buy $100 shoes, or...twitter.

Many people would love to have a job doing that kind of meaningful cultural work.

Urban myths hold secrets only revealed
by hidden cameras mandated by the state
while also underneath lies a vast underground so cruel

Our families can try to remain hidden in body armor
or venture forth with no weapon but trust,
a mission possibly ruinous
hiding in oceans swirling in hate propelled by
imagined flippers until we disappear
or to stay behind in smoking ruins, blacking out

There is no chance without maps, our only weakness denial

As for survivors we fathom these waves chancing on treasures
or a fetid corpse

There is little nourishment but hard tack left by others
who have drowned

Their fouled compasses left revealing lost chances,
in communal ruin.

Will you venture forth to stand your ground?