Story Archives 2012

Everyday I Wake up

(Click on the link to watch the video: http://youtu.be/eovRuwBY_Hk?hd=1)

What's the first thing you think about when you wake up? Well everyday I wake up I think about getting myself out of bed and dressed like the average person but I need help. You never know or wonder how do people who are wheelchair users or have a physical disability get dressed everyday? I thought well since I'm in a position to answer those type of questions I figured why not record what I have to do to get dress and show the world. I'm very blessed and thankful that I have my family to help me out. One thing I must say is no matter my situation I like to keep myself looking handsome lol. Life still goes on and I'm sharing mine one video and one song at a time. This song and video were done for Krip-Hop Nation.

By King Kaution

Eldership, remembrance, memory, survival and struggle, all stitched together in humility and respect in Ay Nako: Writing through the Struggle, a wonderful collection of poems by Lorenz Mazon Dumuk. Reading this beautiful collection of poems reminds me why I am a poet and what the function and purpose of the poet is. In Lorenz’s work, I hear the laughter and pain of manongs, manangs, grandmas and grandpas while feeling the poet’s persistent fire, self-effacing humor and ever present mist of hope that rises from the pages.

In “Always going”, the poet laments the impersonal and fleeting nature of human interaction:

We’re all going

But never knowing

Each other

With a maturity and irony that is reminiscent of poet Oscar Penaranda, Dumuk asserts:

Don't say you know me

My reality cannot be inhabited on this earth.

Too many willing to kill a dreamer.

I know, because I watch the death to some of my hopes,

even poisoned some of my own wishes

My thoughts are looked with opens eyes

with pupils that contain no light.

I am undefined

and my soul still yearns to be written

Eldership is given its proper place in Lorenz’s poems. In “Passing the Sipa” Uncle Roy is spoken of with reverence having never been afraid of breaking bread with the youth and feeding them the wisdom of his life. The poem evoked the memories I have of my Uncle, the poet Al Robles and of his friend—activist Bill Sorro. They broke bread with the young people of the I-Hotel and left behind a legacy of struggle and wisdom that was attained from years of struggle. The honoring of elders is weaved with hopes for a better future:

You physically left a world

That still needed to be repaired,

But your spirit gracefully reminds my

Soul that I, like my brothers and sisters,

Can still make this life better

If I do not give, offer or provide

Myself for this world,

Then who will be left

To build the bahays

Our dreams long to wake up to

Lorenz honors the Manilatown poet Al Robles with the offering “Al Robles, A treasure not lost”. In the poem Lorenz remembers Robles and his iconic beard and glasses and words “perfumed with the scent of sampuguita memories:

This world painted and created

By the strokes of your poetry;

Communities built with the beat of your heart

The spirit of grandparents moves through this collection of poems, anchoring painful and funny moments alike into collective memory. The reader is called to evoke his or her own memory, bringing it alive through the poem. Lorenz’s memories grace the pages, each one a stitch in a concrete ocean which is continuously, “holding on, letting go, moving forward”. The pain of losing a grandparent to Alzheimer’s and his role as caregiver to his ailing grandmother--memories of love and moments come through with clarity and gentleness:

Grandpa, Lorenzo

My hero, not matter how much I forget,

I can always recall your love, which forever

Reconnects me with you. Even time

Itself, cannot wither that away from me

And in “My Roommate Rosita”, the poet writes of his grandmother’s dreams, shared while sitting in bed, the spirits prompting her to shout to them in Illocano:

When her dementia kicks in,

I hold her palm and rub the back

Of her head with my thumb.

My grandma smiles peacefully;

I tell her to back to sleep.

She tells me okay. I’m trusted, I’m love,

Which makes these moments well shared

The poems in this book are a beautiful act of resistance against the cult of independence and angst that is seeded in order to separate us from our families. These poems are refreshing, ringing free of academia which, for me, wrings the truth and passion from poems with an undercurrent of motives—much of which are self-serving--leaving them stiff and cold, not able to move from page to heart with the grace of humility and sincerity. The poems in this book are not encumbered by such things. The poems are powerful in their gentleness yet burn and rage with the fire of the Filipino soul that will stay with you, calling you to remember, to engage and share and stay afloat in a world intent in bringing you down, which the poet so skillfully illustrates in “Staying Buoyant”.

Then, like me,

There are those simply trying to stay afloat:

Caught in storms of unexpected rage,

Stranded, adrift, no sense of direction,

Escaping whirls of vortexes

Ready to claim us in

And always, the hope that anchors this collection:

After a deep sigh, we set

Our sails in search of better seas,

Hoping to make sense

Of this thing called life.

These poems are a beautiful collection that dance and cry out the songs of the manongs that still live in the wind of Watsonville, Salinas…all over. It speaks of the haunting history of the Philippines whose memory is cloaked in the hearts and minds of a people that live in two worlds—one here and one back home. The poems in “Ay Nako: Writing through the struggle” illustrate what the poet Al Robles meant when he said, “The best part of our poetry is our struggle and the best part of our struggle is our poetry”.

To get a copy of his chap-book email Lorenz @ Lorenz.Dumuk@gmail.com

October 22, 2012

It all started last year when Governor Brown dismantled the Redevlopment Agencies. Each county, including San Francisco, had its own Redevelopment Agency to create housing for poor and low-income people and other folks. Due to the Redevelopment Agencies’ checkered past (under a man called Justin Herman in San Francisco who displaced a lot of people in the Fillmore and Manilatown), Brown decided to cut an agency that he thought nobody would notice. He chose to cut the county Redevelopment Agencies across the state to help the budget.

What’s unknown to a majority of people: a lot of low-income housing is built from Redevelopment Agencies’ money. In the city of San Francisco there is $15 million set aside for low–income housing left over from the Redevelopment Agency. People think $1 million is not a lot of money, but to low-income people like myself it is. When the governor cut the Redevelopment Agencies, there was no way of spending the $15 million because there was nobody to distribute it.

To replace San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency, Mayor Ed Lee came up with the idea of the Housing Trust Fund. On Election Day we will vote on it as Prop C. It will build low-income housing by a two-pronged approach. One is the $15 million set aside for housing from the closed Redevelopment Agency, and the other is a 5-year scaled funding from the same people that send their money to, or invest in, redevelopment. This money comes from people who have business in redevelopment districts like Rincon-Hill, the Trans-Bay district, mid-Market, and Hunters Point aka Lenar.

This poverty skolar is going to vote yes on Prop C. I believe this proposition will help low-income families stay in the city and county of San Francisco and get at least 20 families out of shelters, permanently. It will help the elders and people with disabilities afford housing.

At this time, this is the only way that we can get money to keep elders like me and low-income families (at 30% of San Francisco’s median income, people who make less than $12000 a year) a chance to stay here and use housing instead of shelters. Shelters separate families and make people go into inadequate emergency room care, but with a house you can get Medical. It costs $500 to keep a person housed in an apartment per month, compared to $1000 to keep a person in a shelter. You do the math.
 

October 22, 2012

Opposition to Prop 35, also known as the Case Act, is growing. Sex worker groups are calling for a public forum on Prop 35 on Monday, October 29 on the steps of City Hall at 12 noon. We are inviting the proponent and funder of the proposition ex-Facebook millionaire Chris Kelly to debate us.

Prop 35 pretends to be about protecting young people from trafficking but the opposite is true. It criminalizes anyone who assists young people in prostitution -- a young person under 21 working with a friend could face prosecution as a trafficker and sex offender status for life, for giving her/him something "of value". It will increase law enforcement, which will result in more raids, prosecutions and imprisonment of sex workers. Pushing prostitution underground leaves sex workers more vulnerable to rape and abuse. Victims of violence will be deterred from reporting for fear of arrest, and for those of us who are immigrant, for fear of deportation.
Prop 35 does nothing to help genuine victims of trafficking – no housing, welfare, or other resources are provided to help victims recover and rebuild their lives. Victims get no direct funds. Existing laws on rape, kidnapping and exploitation could be used against violent offenders if there was the will to do so. Prop 35 exaggerates the extent of child sex trafficking by using phony statistics; mystifies the rape and abduction of children by calling it “commercial sexual exploitation” and “trafficking”.

It downgrades the most common forms of trafficking -- in domestic work, sweat shops, agriculture, restaurants -- by providing lower penalties for these labor victims. Prop 35 encourages corruption: police and NGOs will get the money collected in fines, giving them a vested interest in more and more arrests. It allows a massive law enforcement intrusion and invasion of privacy of the internet.

Prop 35 promotes a moral crusade by misleading the public and mixing up prostitution, which is consenting sex, with trafficking, which is force, coercion and fraud. A similar crusade against Craigslist deprived sex workers of a way to advertise and work independently.

For more information contact US PROStitutes Collective; email uspros@allwomencount.net
www.uspros.net
 

October 22, 2012

A Future for My Daughter

by Phillip Standing Bear




For many years I was under the assumption that college was out of reach for me. Once I got custody of my daughter, though, I had to figure something out.

I can’t provide a good home for Cheyanne on social security alone. But as a single father, figuring out how I could get an education was hard. Many people told me to take online courses … if I had a computer at the time I would’ve. Still, having attention deficit disorder means I have to constantly be reminded about small things, including homework. Online courses wouldn’t have worked. I had to find a way to get into a classroom or lose hope.

That’s when a friend recommended the Family Resource Center (FRC) at City College of San Francisco. FRC allowed a poor single father like me to go to school and receive access to on-site childcare as well as support. When I walked into FRC, I was instantly greeted by a familiar face; Libah Shephard, a fellow reporter with POOR Magazine, who walked me through the system and explained how I could register myself the following semester.

I don’t want Cheyanne to live the life that I did in foster care. That, for a lot of indigenous children in the system, is pure terror. To be taken away from the ones you love because your parents couldn’t pay rent, or couldn’t pay taxes or didn’t have enough food in the house to last a couple of days. Imagine… 



Philip Standing Bear is a reporter at POOR Magazine and a graduate of RYME (Revolutionary Youth Media Education).

The Only Education for Poor Immigrants

by Ingrid DeLeon

My name is Ingrid. I am a mother of four children, and a student at City College of San Francisco. I recently found out [the school] may close their doors. I do not like that idea. This school benefits everyone. If we as immigrants can learn English, we will be able to better understand one another and have more access to employment.

This school is very important for poor immigrant women workers like myself. I am not only able to learn English, but am able to improve my dress-making skills so I can eventually start my own small business. Many of us poor immigrants did not have the time or money for an education in our country of origin. Please do not close these doors, I beg you as a woman who wants to forward her life and knows many who benefit from this school.

Ingrid Deleon is a reporter with Voces de in/migrants en resistencia at Prensa POBRE/POOR Magazine.

Creating Community

by V. Park Castro

Those who know me describe me as bookish or nerdy. “Tenez que pensar,” my mom would say. “You have to think.” It was her way of recognizing that her children needed to think critically and develop intellect.

My mother raised me as a single parent. She left her homeland of El Salvador during the civil war there, ending her hope of going to college, and migrated to the United States, where she began from scratch. To learn English she attended City College of San Francisco’s Mission Campus, where she also enrolled in courses on Early Childhood Education. She did this while still providing housing, food, love and a stable home for my sister and I.

Education was at the heart of our dinner table, and City College of San Francisco was home base. It created community for my family, as it has for many others. I still walk the halls there with a sense of belonging to a community-based academic institution.

I’ve been attending CCSF since I was in high school, taking advantage of the courses that are available for public school students. When San Francisco State University became too expensive, I move back to City College to complete my general studies. Affordability has always been an issue for me, because living in poverty has always been a reality for me. CCSF is the only educational setting that I can afford. It is also the place where people who are struggling, people like my mother, are given the agency to educate themselves and achieve greatness.

Vinia Park Castro is a contributor to POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE.

Thank You for Being There

by Tony Robles



Back in 1982 I was getting out of high school and wondering what direction I was going to take out there in what the adults around me referred to as the “real world.” I was living at home and I could tell that my father wouldn’t put up with too much lollygagging in the name of post-graduation relaxation.

I was a fairly decent communicator so I had this idea that I’d like to teach people to read and write, that I could perhaps be a volunteer in such a program. My father recoiled at the word volunteer and quickly volunteered a vigorous, heartfelt and well-intentioned kick in my ass. I forgot about volunteering and found myself back to square one.

Then I recalled a guy who came to career day at my high school. He worked as a radio DJ. He paced in front of the class walking with a bowlegged hobble that made him appear as if he’d ridden a horse cross country minus the saddle. He spoke with an affected southern drawl. He was a Filipino guy but it all made sense when we found out that he worked for a country station. He told us that he started off as the station janitor, working his way up into the coveted announcer position.

I’d left home and moved in with my grandma. She told me about City College. She supported my desire to try broadcasting and encouraged me to enroll. I learned that City College had a broadcasting department with a radio station. I visited the station, looking through the glass at the announcer spinning records. I was intimidated by all the electronic equipment, the blinking lights, tape machines, etc. I finally got into the radio station but not before taking classes in mass communication, broadcast writing and basic audio production. These classes have proved invaluable as I entered a career in media. 


I became a radio DJ, a television production assistant, a radio account executive and a copywriter. The skills I obtained at City College allowed me to work professionally in media without spending thousands of dollars at a broadcasting school. I now share those same skills with writers and journalists from poor communities and communities of color — the same communities I sprouted from, in a city whose college gave me the opportunity to partake in higher education. Thank you City College for being there.

Tony Robles, of African-Filipino descent, is co-editor of POOR Magazine and a board member with Manilatown Heritage Foundation.

These profiles were written as part of a series highlighting the importance of CCSF to communities across the city. The series is part of a fellowship organized by New America Media and sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation.

October 22, 2012

San Jose voters will decide on the November 6 ballot whether to have a city-wide minimum wage of $10 per hour. If passed, Measure D will establish a municipal minimum wage $2 above the state minimum wage of $8 per hour, with no exceptions, no exclusion of tipped employees - such as restaurant workers - and an annual increase based on the Bay Area’s rate of inflation.

San Jose State University students initiated the campaign by raising money, information tabling, and holding educational events, according to Albert Perez, a recent sociology graduate and activist in the Campus Alliance for Economic Justice (CAFE J).

“We believe we can win,” said Perez, “if the swing voters come out.”

San Jose would join San Francisco, Santa Fe, NM, and Washington, D.C., in setting a minimum wage above federal and state minimum wage laws. Albuquerque, NM, also will be voting on a municipal minimum wage on November 6.

A coalition including the South Bay Labor Council, the NAACP – Silicon Valley, Sacred Heart Community Services, Catholic Charities and the Silicon Valley Council of Non-profits are supporting Measure D.

The Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, California Restaurant Association and Downtown San Jose Association are opposing the measure.

The campaign for a higher minimum wage began in the spring 2010 Social Action class taught by Professor Scott Myers-Lipton of Sociology Department at San Jose State University.

A student, Marisela Castro, had witnessed kids sneaking food into their backpacks at the after school program where she worked because their parents were not able to provide enough food at home on the $8 per hour minimum wage they earned. Incensed at the injustice, Castro proposed the idea of passing a higher city minimum wage as a class project.

Sociology student Perez pointed at the need that students have for a higher wage. He said he paid $4200 in tuition in his last semester. According to Myers-Lipton, tuition has increased 141 percent since the last increase in the state minimum wage.

The students held a rally on campus with John Carlos, the athlete who raised a gloved fist in the 1968 Olympics to protest human rights violations and went shoeless to protest poverty.

After the students collected 36,000 signatures in six weeks to qualify the initiative for the ballot, they similarly took off their shoes to walk the petitions over to the registrar of voters, according to Myers-Lipton.

Elisha St. Laurent, a behavioral science and sociology major, who is a single parent and former CalWORKs participant, became involved while she was working for $9 per hour at Microcenter, a computer appliance store. “And I had to take a proficiency test to get the job,” St. Laurent said.

“$8 an hour is not enough to live in San Jose. We pay an average of $1600 to $1800 per month in rent. San Jose is the second highest in California,” said Diana Crumedy, a sociology graduate with a minor in urban planning.

The students said that most of the opposition is coming from the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce which has been attacking the measure for its increased payroll costs to businesses and cost of enforcement to the city. The students said these are scare tactics but are worried about how much money the Chamber has spent on television commercials.

“We had canvassed small businesses downtown and they were supportive,” Crumedy said, “until the Chamber of Commerce sent out a mass email and letter that this will be a job killer and violate their privacy.”

“Our strong point is people, and the morality of how people are living when they are not making enough to live in the city,” Crumedy said.

Brooke Wayne, a sociology major with a concentration in community action, knows what it is like growing up in the South in a “right-to-work” state, where wages are depressed when unions cannot require membership dues. As an African American in Arkansas, the home state of Walmart, she also knows the corporate mentality that is not too far removed from slavery.

“They would not be fighting the minimum wage if it wasn’t affecting women so much,” Wayne said. “If it was something affecting mostly blond, blue-eyed men, it would be a different story.”

The campaign needs to raise $43,000 to send out mailers in the next fifteen days. You can make a donation at bit.ly/yesond

Russell Means, who gained international notoriety as one of the leaders of the 71-day armed occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973 and continued to be an outspoken champion of American Indian rights after launching a career as an actor in films and television in the 1990s, has died. He was 72.

Means died Monday at his home in Porcupine, S.D., his family announced on his website, russellmeansfreedom.com.

The nation's most visible American Indian activist, Means was a passionate militant leader who helped thrust the historic and ongoing plight of Native Americans into the national spotlight.

In joining the fledgling American Indian Movement in 1969, Means later wrote, he had found a new purpose in life and vowed to "get in the white man's face until he gave me and my people our just due."

Diagnosed with throat cancer in July 2011 and told that it had spread too far for surgery, Means refused to undergo heavy doses of radiation and chemotherapy. Instead, he reportedly battled the disease with traditional native remedies and received treatments at an alternative cancer center in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"I'm not going to argue with the Great Mystery," he told the Rapid City Journal in August 2011. "Lakota belief is that death is a change of worlds. And I believe like my dad believed. When it's my time to go, it's my time to go."

An Oglala Sioux born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Means in his activist prime was called strident, defiant, volatile, arrogant and aggressive. He was frequently arrested and claimed to have been the target of numerous assassination attempts.

A onetime con artist, dance-school instructor and computer programmer, Means was executive director of the government-funded Cleveland American Indian Center when he met Dennis Banks and other AIM founders in 1969.

In joining the American Indian Movement at age 30, Means later wrote in his autobiography, he had found "a way to be a real Indian."

In Cleveland, he founded the first AIM chapter outside Minneapolis, and he became the organization's first national coordinator in 1971.

In 1970, he was among a group of American Indian activists who occupied Mount Rushmore, where he infamously urinated on the top of the stone head of George Washington — an act he later said symbolized "how most Indians feel about the faces chiseled out of our holy land."

That November, he joined fellow AIM members and other Native Americans in taking over a replica of the Mayflower in Plymouth, Mass. And in 1972 he participated in the seven-day occupation and trashing of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C.

But the controversial and flamboyant activist with the trademark long braids gained his greatest notoriety at the trading post hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

The occupation of Wounded Knee by more than 200 AIM-led activists began in late February 1973 in the wake of a failed attempt to impeach tribal president Richard Wilson, whose Oglala critics accused him of corruption and abuse of power and said his private militia suppressed political opponents.

After the takeover of Wounded Knee, the historic site of the 7^th Calvary's large-scale massacre of Sioux men, women and children in 1890, the area was cordoned off by about 300 U.S. marshals and FBI agents, who were armed with automatic weapons and aided by nine armored personnel carriers.

Among the occupiers' demands were that congressional hearings be held to protect historical benefits held in trust by the U.S. government.

Before the occupation ended peacefully in May, two occupiers were dead and a U.S. marshal, who was paralyzed from the waist down, was among the wounded.

A federal grand jury reportedly indicted 89 people, including several AIM leaders, for federal crimes in connection with the seizure and occupation of Wounded Knee.

That included Means and Banks, who emerged, as a 1986 story in The Times put it, as "the two most famous Indians since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse wiped out Custer nearly a century earlier."

Their widely publicized trial in 1974 on a variety of felony charges ended after eight months when a federal judge threw out the case on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.

On the 20^th anniversary of the occupation in 1993, former South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow told the Associated Press that the fighting intensified racism, bitterness and fear in the state.

Means saw it differently, saying it was the Indians' "finest hour."

"Wounded Knee restored our dignity and pride as a people," he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2002. "It sparked a cultural renaissance, a spiritual revolution that grounded us."

Tim Giago, the retired editor and publisher of the Native Sun News in Rapid City, S.D., takes a critical view of Means' militant methods as an activist.

"I think he could have accomplished 10 times what he did eventually accomplish, which was to bring focus on Native American issues, if he had followed the path of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi instead of turning to violence and guns," Giago, who was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation, told The Times last year.

"If he had followed a peaceful demonstration like those two great leaders did, I think he would have had much more support from the American people that I think he lost when he turned to violence," Giago said. "As a matter of fact, he lost the support of a lot of Native Americans when he resorted to violence."

Historian Herbert T. Hoover, a professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota whose specialties include the history of American Indian-white relations in Sioux Country, described Means as "a force for good during the civil rights movement on behalf of American Indians."

"I don't think Russell should be remembered as a radical," Hoover told The Times in 2011. "Russell was somebody who simply wanted Indians to get their due in the civil rights period."

Means' 1974 trial wasn't the end of his legal troubles.

In 1976, he was acquitted of a charge of murder in the 1975 shooting death of a 28-year-old man at a bar in Scenic, S.D. He had been accused of aiding and abetting in the shooting for which another man was convicted of murder.

And in 1978, Means began a one-year prison term after being convicted of an obstruction of justice charge related to a 1974 riot between American Indian Movement supporters and police at the courthouse in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Through it all, he continued his high-profile activism.

In Geneva in 1977, he was a delegate to the "Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations of the Americas." As one of the main speakers, he urged the conference to recommend Indian participation in the United Nations and attacked the U.S. government.

"We live in the belly of the monster," he said, "and the monster is the United States of America."

In the mid-1980s, Means spent several weeks in the jungles of Nicaragua with the Miskito Indians in an attempt save them from what he said was "an extermination order" issued by Daniel Ortega's Sandinista government.

Means also tried his hand at national politics in the '80s.

In an attempt to bring the "world view of the Indian" to the American people, he agreed in 1983 to be Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt's running mate in Flynt's unsuccessful campaign for the presidency of the United States.

And in 1987, Means sought the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party but lost to former Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

Means' acting career began after he was approached by a casting director to play Chingachgook in the 1992 movie "The Last of the Mohicans."

A string of more than 30 other roles in films and television followed, including playing a shaman in "Natural Born Killers" and providing the voice of the title character's father in "Pocahontas."

Means' transition from activist to actor was deemed a natural one.

"Russell has always been very mediagenic," Hanay Geiogamah, who joined AIM in 1971 and co-produced a series of Native American TV movies on TNT, told The Times in 1995. "He was eloquent, capable of synthesizing complex political ideas for the press and, with his long black braids and statuesque physique, the image the media wanted to see.

"Russell was smart enough to realize that when you've got it, you've got it. He used the system … and used it well."

Oliver Stone, who directed Means in "Natural Born Killers," described him as "a renegade with one foot in both corrals, someone who has walked a crooked and strange life."

"He's a very authoritative presence with his own brand of magic," Stone told The Times in 1995. "Whether he's acting or not is hard to say."

Of his career as an actor, Means told The Times in 1995: "I haven't abandoned the movement for Hollywood. … I've just added Hollywood to the movement."

As he told the Washington Post a year later, "My life has been a life of passion, and I'm still a voice for traditional Indian people, for freedom-seeking Indian people."

Means was born Nov. 10, 1939, on the Pine Ridge Reservation. After his father landed a job in a Navy shipyard during World War II, the family moved to Vallejo, Calif., in 1942. Summers, Means would return to South Dakota to visit relatives on the reservations.

Means, who chronicled his life in the 1995 book "Where White Men Fear to Tread" (written with Marvin J. Wolf), continued his activism in old age.

In 2007, he was among some 80 protesters who were arrested after blocking Denver's Columbus Day parade honoring Christopher Columbus, an event they condemned for being a "celebration of genocide."

Asked if he was still active in the American Indian Movement in an interview in the Progressive in 2001, Means said, "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I'm alive, I'm AIM.

"We were a revolutionary, militant organization whose purpose was spirituality first, and that's how I want to be remembered. I don't want to be remembered as an activist; I want to be remembered as an American Indian patriot."

I was trying to stay out of this fight. I work for the struggle and a number of organizations in it. I have 3 part time jobs I’m barely juggling well enough to keep myself from being pushed back through the bloody and gnarled teeth of homelessness. I have family and friends and school. I suffer from anxiety, PTSD and chronic debilitating migraines. If I didn’t have access to my medication, I would not be able to function. Literally. The muscle spasms and nausea alone would keep me indoors and unable to move except to throw up for days on end. Days.

So I’m definitely in favor or legalizing it from the patient’s perspective, but this perspective keeps ignoring the other half of the coin. The half of the coin where people that can’t afford the get out of jail medical marijuana card and the folks of color that can’t access one for whatever reason it is. The half of the coin that was going to jail on the regular because they were Toking while Po’ or labeled a color or unable to smoke indoors cuz they aint got no indoors to smoke in.
I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve argued with because I’ve heard racist hAcktivists say things like…

“It’s those thug kids that are ruining the movement for us.”
And
“It’s that hip hop culture that gives marijuana a bad name.”

Even the Yes on 502 commercials are racists. Both of them feature conservative white folks talking bout how their missing out on money by keeping marijuana illegal. They cant just say that crazy sh*t though. They ALWAYS have to turn an eye sideways to communities in struggle.

“It’s a multimillion dollar industry in Washington….We would control the money…not the gangs. Let’s talk about a new approach. Legalizing and regulating marijunana.”
The new one isn’t much better. It’s this kind of stupid, blind racism that’s putting the movement at risk!
Don’t think we don’t hear you white, progressive Washington. Thugs, gangs, hip hop….we know who you’re hatin on. Folks of Color and poor folks. We know you’re barely hiding your racism and classism behind weak culture war terms. But you know what??? This issue is, always has been and always will be an issue about people in the struggle. Even if you’ve done coopted the whole damn thing.

So even though I wanted to stay out. I’m back in. I’m back in because even though a bunch of privileged white folks have totally failed to include our communities in this conversation…we have a responsibility scream ourselves back in. CUZ IF THEY SCREW THIS ONE UP…WE ARE GOING TO JAIL, NOT THEM!!!
The criminalization of marijuana is, always has been, and always will be an issue of racism. It’s not about smoking pot. It’s not about patients right. It’s about civil rights. And its about keeping folks out of jail and keeping families and communities together. So check the facts from OUR side of the coin:

* No Jim Crow law INCARCERATES MORE PEOPLE OF COLOR per year than the criminalization of marijuana.
* Approximately 15,000 FOLKS IN WASHINGTON ARE ARRESTED every year for marijuana possession…but it’s not usually privileged white folks being hauled off to jail for smoking a joint…
* People of Color are over 3 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO GET ARRESTED for possession than their white neighbors.
* People of Color are 60% MORE LIKELY TO BE INCARCERATED for marijuana possession than their white neighbors.

Don’t let the handful of dispensary owners and racists runnin’ the No on i-502 Campaign fool you either:

* I-502 does NOT give cops permission to blood test you if you’re pulled over for a DUI.
The POLICE ALREADY HAVE THAT RIGHT!!
I-502 prevents them from arresting you for marijuana possession alone if you are pulled over.

* I-502 will NOT put children at risk.
What really puts children at risk? Having their parents arrested for possession of marijuana! Incarceration breaks up families. I-502 KEEPS PARENTS OF COLOR OUT OF PRISON and at home with their kids where they belong.

* I-502 is NOT bad for medical marijuana patients.
In fact, I-502 is designed so that patients will have access to higher quality medicine that’s free from chemicals, molds or pesticides. Costs will likely decrease, which also benefits low income patients.

I-502 is OUR CHANCE TO KEEP OUR COMMUNITIES PROTECTED from unfair search, arrest and incarceration. It’s time to take our rights back!!!

So let the privileged folks Legalize it for whatever crazy reason they want to legalize it. Let the racists try to chew on their own necks for a while. Vote yes cuz of the $$ Washington will get! Vote yes cuz white middle class patients will have easier and better access. Vote yes because you have a freakin Bob Marley tshirt. Vote yes because it will save the unicorns! I don’t care what makes them vote to legalize it at this point. I just care that they do.

This is one of the few moments in time that we can actually DO something that will have a REAL effect on communities of color. We can keep 15,000 people from going to jail next year for simple possession. 15,000. Yep, vote yes for the freakin unicorns, dear progressives.

But communities of color and po’ folks….it’s time to take this conversation back. It’s time to stand up for our rights no matter WHO’S trying to stand on our backs. Get out there. Protect our folks, families and communities. Vote Yes on 502!