Story Archives 2012

You have Drake, Lady GAGA, Rick Ross & the list goes on...
pimping people who use wheelchairs,
you have Deaf Hip-Hop artists fighting among themselves,
you have sighted artists calling themselves blind,
you have developmental disabled Hip-Hop artists taking shots at each other
you have hearing Hip-Hop artists using sign language,
you have people with disabilities using ablest words,
you have disabled men hip-hop artists dissing women, queers and everything/everyone
you have isms running rapid so much that there isn’t one Deaf woman Hip-Hop artist.....

Welcome to minstrel Hip-Hop
Acting like the other
Black faces are now sitting in wheelchairs
Throwing up sign language
For the camera
Doing the butt with a cane
Just to get a little piece of fame

Hip-Hop charities
Jerry Lewis break dancing
Step right up
Take the stage to get heal
Autism Speaks
While Black artists tap-dancing
To rake in the money

Strings are attached like puppets
In their lyrics, dissing us
From gangster to hyphy
Used to take it now they give up, their music
The hard work is done damn that is so slick
Now it’s ingrained
Sit back and watch them go insane
Tear into each other for very little
Stepping on their own people

At the end of the day
We don’t have anything to say
Smile on our faces cause we got paid
Lights are off can’t sleep
All alone we can’t escape

By Leroy Moore
3/23/12

I am not Deaf but I’m disabled
I ride a bike more like a trike
I could have been shot by police
Like Roger Anthony

Thought he was drunk
Same excuse different person
Didn’t have time to explain
Shot not in the leg but in his brain

I was only stopped by police
On my three wheel bike
Poepoes tried to snatch me off
Black & Disabled while ridding

I could be dead like Roger Anthony
Would people take a stand in my community?
Or would it be another online story
Here today gone tomorrow

Listen to Krip-Hop’s Broken Bodies PBP Mixtape
Then you will found there are many Roger Anthony
With all kinds of disabilities
Killed, profiled and abused under police brutality
Disabled brown bodies outlined in red police tape

2012 Black History month
Started with a shooting of an autistic youth
Spring has sprung with the shooting of Trayvon
In 2002 it was Donovan
Years go by but this shit goes on

I am many Black disabled young men
Who fills up funnel homes every Sunday?
While preachers beg for an amen
Wiping away family’s tears
But inside lies fear

Shouting but he can’t hear
Parents call police for safety
Ends up in tragedy
Flavor Flav
911 is no joke
They got young boys in chokeholds

Every morning as I get on my trike
Roger Antony cross my mind
Thinking could this be my time
As I peddle to my nine to five
Living in the shoes of many Roger Anthony

By Leroy Moore
3/24/12

.
"How many of you like skittles and iced tea?", Rudy Corpus called out to a beautiful group of children and adults of all colors, generations and sizes who were part of a crowd of over 100 people stood together on the steps of the plantation (Po' Lice Dept) @ 850 Bryant st

in SF as part of a "Scream-Out" for justice (cuz sometimes speaking up aint enuf) for Trayvon Martin and Ramarley Graham which took place on Monday, March 26th @ 12:00 noon, co-sponsored by POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE and the Idriss Stelley Foundation

Trayvon Martin is the 17 yr young African descendent man who was killed by George Zimmerman, a "neighborhood watch captain"  because of the lie of racism, gated communities, private security and Jim Crow southern hate in Sanford, Florida when going to the store for some skittles and ice tea, Ramarley Graham is the 17 year young African Descendent male who was sot in back and killed by Bronx Police officers. Both young men were innocent, both were considered "suspicious" by a white supremacist-biased culture who has demonized young peoples of color as "suspicious" for the sole reason of the melanin in their skin . This vague notion of "suspicion" fits nicely into a narrative that enables the mass incarceration of poor, black and brown people and a flagrantly unequal (un) justice system.

It must also be stated that George Zimmerman himself is a man of color who is so filled with the lie of internalized race hatred that he has become the tool of his oppressor, the overseer, the hitman for the white hoods.

"We got to stop profiling people,"  said Marco Scott, the uncle of young Kenneth Harding Jr, brutally gunned down by po'lice officers for not having a $2.00 Muni bus transfer. As more and more disgusting, photo-shopped, Fox news images are shown of Trayvon and fake witnesses come out of the woodwork claiming that George Zimmerman was the one calling out for help, it is important to remember  Kenneth Harding Jr, was demonized in the corporate media, after his shooting with disgusting accusations about his supposed "bad" character.

"This is not just about Trayvon, this is about all the young black and brown men like Oscar Grant and Asa Sullivan and Rahiem Brown and my son, Idriss Stelley, killed by po'lice in the US, these po'lice are modern day slave-catchers," said powerful warrior and freedom fighter, Mesha Irizarry, founder of the Idriss Stelley Foundation.

"
"We must stand up, not be complacent," said Queenandi of the welfareQUEENs and writer of POOR Magazine

"Trayvon's murderer must be prosecuted for just that, murder,"  said Vivien Thorp, welfareQUEEN and mama scholar from POOR Magazine

From the welfareQUEEN's of POOR Magazine to Kevin Epps and Jeff Adachi from the The Revolutionary Communist Party to Labor Black and Brown, we all stood on the steps of that plantation, in solidarity with families in Florida marching today, and all of us refusing to take the hate, the lies and the brutality of this  unequal UNjustice anymore.

Click here to join 900,000 people who have already signed our petition calling for justice for our son Trayvon.

Inspirado por el son de los pollos

Vinieron por nosotros como alas 4:00am de la mañana

antes que cantara

el gallo

para llegar, y sonprendernos…..

Pero se les olvido que la gallina que pone los guevos

y cria a los pollitos

también tiene pico.

aunque no cante

cuando sale

El sol…

si Canta cuando sale el opresor.....

Y el caldo de pollo que hacia con

Nosotros,

le avisamos, a su mero mero, que aprenda a comer puercos,

porque nosotros ni los huevos les vamos a dar a los

culeros

Y siguiran siendo reveldes, insurgentes algunos los llaman zapatistas

Porque la Resistencia y la perra hambre, es la que pario a estos indigenas

Ha estos reveldes

Que sean tapado el rostro,

Para que nosotros

Podramos verlos

Y dejaron de pedir y rogar con palabras

Y dejaron que las armas Hablen por ellos, por que las palabras y los dialectos

Se los ha llevado el viento…

Muteado Silencio

BENEATH

March 29, 2012

Image: Plans for the Vallejo waterfront

At the worst time of Chris Bennett's life, he “just needed the right medication and someone to make [him] feel like a human being.” At that moment he was houseless in Vallejo, recently released from nearly thirteen years in the criminal punishment system, addicted to methamphetamine, and torn apart as a survivor of police abuse and childhood abuse. He had been sleeping in a friend's storage facility, working to find income. He says his parents would “feed me under the garage door like a dog.” Going through an ordeal like that was the worst time of his parents' lives, too—wanting to help their emotional and volatile son, but not able to work through all the layers of systemic problems just by themselves. In Vallejo, it seemed like there wasn't anywhere for Chris to get in safe relationships: with friends, family, state health institutions...

Now, over a decade later, Chris does have people in his life that make him feel like a human being: his wife and kids. Chris' wife Sue, with unstoppable determination and wisdom, helped Chris get back on his feet and raise their family together. “He was self-medicating. He didn't know what was wrong and he didn't know how to get help. So we needed to find different things that could help ourselves,” says Sue.

He, like a lot of other folks without access to reliable mental health resources, had suffered a lifetime of being blamed for the strong emotions he felt, teachers calling him too crazy or too unstable to function, a lifetime of limited options for understanding his strong emotions. Without support, he floundered in school and at home, becoming a survivor of neuro-normative oppression and trauma. So he worked on the street, creating underground economic strategies to support himself, but getting criminalized for doing what he needed to do to survive.

The City of Vallejo not only lacks basic resources for poor and houseless folks, but also keeps the cycle of trauma active by regularly bulldozing houseless camps, illegally sorting through people's tents and carts, throwing their stuff on the ground, and actively seeking to criminalize and incarcerate people in the name of "cleaning up the waterfront." Meanwhile, there is only a single temporary housing facility in Vallejo: a hundred beds administered by a private Christian organization with strict rules. People who choose to sleep there must also cook and clean, attend various meetings, wake up by a certain time, and be back in the facility by curfew. In addition, folks are not allowed to bring in animals, many of whom are the closest family people have. People are often deterred from staying there for that reason.

Now that Chris and Sue have figured out a mental health plan that works for them and their kids, they are working to help other people who experience houselessness in Vallejo. Doing something about the cyclical and systemic abuse of poor people with emotional or mental “irregularities” has become Chris' life mission. Out of a house inherited from Sue's parents, they have built a vast operation to respond to requests from folks living in houseless camps by the waterfront and other parts of town. Their efforts are amazing: healing, humanizing, and fierce.

When Chris was locked up, “I wanted to help troubled teens,” Chris recalls. “But it's a lot bigger than that.” After being released from prison eighteen months ago, when he had been clean for four months, he was driving down the street and noticed all the houseless people down by the water. “I started walking to the camps, talking to people, a lot of them I knew from when I was homeless. I wanted to start making them meals, especially when it was cold and rainy.”

When he did start cooking, Chris says “the way it made me feel in my heart” kept him going. “Cause in my past, I was a very violent addict. Of course my medication helps a lot, but [this work] has opened my heart up and I think I am a better father and husband, and it makes you realize how lucky we are.” Sue and his daughter Kelsey started helping, too. The family agreed to cut back on expenses and use some of the disability benefits that Chris gets so they could take food and other necessities to people living in the camp.

Now they buy or collect donations of necessities from the community, enough to bring everyone two meals a day, seven days a week. “I can do a lot with pinto beans,” jokes Chris.

In their visit to POOR Magazine's Community Newsroom, Chris and Sue reiterated that it's about making human connection and poor people claiming our humanity for ourselves. “These are people, and sometimes they just need an extra hand,” observes Chris. They need basic stuff like socks, shoes, feminine hygiene products, hand sanitizer, and tooth paste. It makes a difference, to afffirm that people's bodies still matter—their survival and health still matter.

Chris and Sue want to take their food and supply donation further—to challenge the po'lice abuse of houseless people in Vallejo, and to push the City to provide better health resources for those who can't afford them. Chris asserts that the abuse (the bulldozing, the tent searches) “is illegal and it's bullshit. It needs to go public so it can be stopped.” It's especially unjust and irresponsible of the city “to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on beautifying the waterfront with palm trees, but we can't do nothing for the homeless?”

An understanding of how the system abuses houseless people and addicts, makes them feel like their bodies are not worthy of care and keeps them houseless on the margins of survival, drives Chris to share the blessings that have met him lately in life—the support and interdependence of Sue and his kids, as well as the house they inherited. At it's heart, this project is about sharing resources as an act of reasserting and celebrating our collective right to survive. If they hadn't inherited the house, they “wouldn't have the finances to do what we do today. Something so horrendous like a death in the family has turned out to be a godsend to so many other people...Life has blessed me in so many ways, and that's why I say this is my calling. I got shot four different times, and did thirteen years in the state penitentiary, and survived. Because all along I've had a higher power that has me doing what I'm doing today.” Chris brings the beautiful interdependence that his family has shown him, back to the houseless community he is still connected to, even after finding stable housing.

Chris and Sue are looking for support to get the city to provide physical and mental health resources for poor and houseless people. They need basic advice and information about how to get this project going. They will also accept supplies to be used by houseless people in Vallejo. Call this number for questions about donations: (707) 384-1399.

HOODY
______

Normally,
Whenever fog rolls in from the bay,
It devours the city whole,
Sudden temperature drop,
Everything turns grey,
Vibrant colours fade
Inside a cloudy, frigid mass-----

That's the time
I reach for my hoody.
Sliding it on
One sleeve at a time
And finally, the cowl
Covering my bald head in warmth.
Fastening up the zipper-----

Today,
I wear my hoody
For a different reason:

I'm in mourning.
For a boy I never met.

He wore a hoody, too.

For the last time-----

The watchman's pistol
Hot from firing
The watchman's mouth
Dry from lying

Casting himself in the role of victim
Screaming "self-defence" in the faces of cops
No charges
Moments after
Premeditated chase & attack
Moments after
Tuning out
Words of caution
From the police
Telling him to
Stand down
More than once-----

Yes, the watchman's protected his block
From an apparent threat to him:
A wandering boy armed
With a cellphone
And a bag of Skittles.
The watchman's gun,
When drawn,
Was also a blade,
Able to cut
An average human lifespan
Down to seventeen years.
Yes, the watchman stood his ground,
As Florida law suggested, making
Walled Twin Lakes safe
For White privilege-----

One Black father
Loses a hero.
One Black mother
Has an empty bedroom
Where her son used to be.
One Black family
Moves to defend
One of theirs
From double murder:
First, by the watchman.
Now, by the press.
First, his body.
Now, his rep.

The Amerikkkan South
Has no respect for Black life.

Today,
I wear my hoody
Because I'm in mourning.
For a boy I never met.

He wore a hoody, too.

For the last time.
________________
W: 3.28.12
[ For Trayvon Martin--1995-2012. ]

"We didn't privilege the land over the sea, our ocean is as important as our land" Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, Tongan writer,  artist and teacher who is working on her doctoral degree, was quoting Epeli Hau'ofa, from his beautiful article on Oceania, entitled: Our Sea of Islands, at a talk of Pacific Island Scholars on the campus of of UC Berkeley.

I and the POOR Magazine/FAMILY project youth, family and poverty scholars, Kimo, Tiburcio and Ruyata were invited to listen to a talk by Pacific Island Scholars Fuifui and her sister Loa Niumeitolu, a Tongan American poet, writer and community organizer on the ways of Pacific Island peoples in resistance to the maps and charts and systems created by settlers and colonizers and empires throughout the centuries.

"We didn't have the opportunity to name ourselves," Loa went on as Fuifui paused. There presentation was, like their scholarship, a flow of words and thoughts and ideas and indigenous revolution that moved through the small institutional classroom like a spirit, a wave, a flow.

"The word epistemology means what you believe," FuiFui explained," Pacific Islander epistemology is where we stand, how we acknowledge our ancestors, where we came from."
 
As they both spoke, sung, and read  about the indigenous liberation that is Oceania, my mind was carried away on a dream sequence. I was with my mama. Not my tortured, always scared and destroyed by too many tools of colonization and racism mama, but my dancing with the ritmo (rythem)  y (wind) viento mama,  the wind of the Caribbean ocean where her Arican/Taino people were from, or the soft water of Hawa'ii were she was "adopted" as an adult by a loving Hawaiian/Filipino family and for first time in her life felt love and safety and belonging.

"We are the Oceans," they both said and then began a prayer song. The song didnt belong in that little dry room. ANd yet it did.  It busted open the sterile grey doors, the solid windows, the florescent light bulbs with every note. and with it came a healing.

As someone who had to drop out of formal institutions of learning in the 6th grade ( due to my mama's and mine poverty and houselessness) only to enroll full-time in the school of hard knocks where i graduated with a Ph.D in poverty, I constantly question the arrogant absoluteness of the institutions of akkkademia, the raping, stealing and fetishizing of anthropology, the dissecting and studying of ethnography and the researching, pathologizing, violence and demonizing of Western psychology, psychiatry, and medicine the mapping and charting of geography. I thought of the ways that all of these disciplines privilege themselves as the only valid forms of learning, teaching and knowledge creation, often demeaning or otherizing the teaching and learning and sharing of our ancestors, our communities and our land.

The ways that these disciplines, led by western/euro-centric belief-taught academics, un-checked and un-restrained, decide and determine what literacy and valid languages and legitimate forms of research and knowledge are. But today with Fuifui and Loa, something shifted in me, up to today, I had completely rejected the idea that we as indigenous peoples in resistance should even step inside these institutions filled with so much herstory of colonization and theft and destruction.  "It is important for us to be here, in these institutions, bringing ourselves and knowledge and our epistemologies," Yes, i thought, it is important because with your spirits and cultures and souls, you are re-making the institution around you and making it, of you.

I thought of my fellow sistah n brotha poverty scholars, Jewnbug, Muteado, Philip, Myron, Ruyata, Vivien, Bruce, Charles, Joe, Queenandi, Leroy,  Laure and Dharma, I thought of how we have created our own bodies of knowledge with our teachings at PeopleSkool and our creation of the notion of Poverty Scholarship, and i dreamed of our upcoming  PeoplesText-book- Poverty Scholarship #101. We aren't working inside the institutions- but we are outside them, challenging them to see, listen, hear and acknowledge that there are in fact, other forms of valid knowledge creation, production and sharing are, led by youth, adults, elders, ancestors, land, water and air spirits.

"We are the oceans, they both said. And i closed my eyes and i felt a small but determined tradewind of resistance blow through a whisper. "We are the Oceans..."

Standing in line on Bryant street, on San Pablo av on Waller Street, on Polk street, waiting, always waiting, for a poverty pimp, an institution, a social worker,  to throw a overnite shelter bed crumb, a plate of food crumb or a tiny bit of cash assistance crumb, that for just that moment would ease the pain of 519 years of landless indigenous peoples theft, 45 years of my indigenous, orphan mama's colonization and loss, and 18 years of my mental destruction through poverty, houselessness and criminalization, until the next crumb must be thrown and the next line would need to be stood in. Some of this melted away on April 1st 2012.

As the people, self-determined, and un-pimped, sang, danced and chanted away criminalization pf poor peoples in Union Square by private security forces under the confusing moniker of Business Improvement Districts and then marched  to take over a building on Turk st in San Francisco, in an action called The Poor Won't be Fooled Any Longer- a small moment of those hundreds of years of capitalist confusion and loss were chipped away from my tired soul.

After my mama and me had spent years of our life in and out of shelters, our cars, motels and market-rate apartments, our street hustling was never enough to afford, I was eventually incarcerated for the sole act of being houseless in AMerikkka. In my case that meant citations for sleeping in our vehicle.

After these many soul destroying experiences of poverty and criminalization it was long journey to consciousness. The begining of our revolution started with the creation of POOR Magazine, a poor people-led,indigenous people-led grassroots org. Once we started POOR Magazine we set about trying to realize our vision of HOMEFULNESS. Sadly San Francsico, is a theoretically progressive city with alot of pimps and controllers that ascribe to the idea that your legitmacy is tied to your relationship to "established Housing providers = translation, large, well-connected and well-funded housing providers. We had approached many of these, including a multitude of philathro-pimps with our poor people-led vision. One of the other we heard, "well, its a great idea, but you don't have the building, you don't have the money, or you don't have the political will" This last one always confused me.

.

"We are meeting with the Archdiosese as soon as we can get some people to be in the house, because once we leave we won't be able to get back in," Beth, one of the folks who inhabited the abandoned building on Turk and Gough in San Francisco, spoke with me on Monday, April 2nd, "We are here and so far we are safe," she concluded.

The day before. Sunday, April 1st, the people went foreward. A building was taken back. A beautiful collaboration of Western Regional Advocacy Project, Homes Not Jails, OccupySF, Coalition on Homefulness and many more organizations s and people with PoorNewsNetwork mama, youth, elder and poverty skolaz rep-porting and sup-porting with our "without-a-bed-reporter" Bruce Allison in the building currently, moved on an abandoned building owned by the San Francisco Archdiosese. their goal was to turn it into a healing space and shelter, un-pimped and people-led. And just to be VERY clear, this kind of radical action did not begin with Occupy or anyone, Homes Not Jails (HNJ)  has been doing it for awhile, taking back abandoned properties and giving them to the people. Recently HNJ has been helping people take back their homes from Bank-pimps who have been stealing properties with their rightful owners in a series of paper trails and real estate snakkes. 


At 3:00 pm on Monday, April 2nd, POOR Magazine's Without-A-Bed reporter reported from the scene that  without a clearance order, or any warning, Po'Lice in riot gear had surrounded the building and were arresting people and harassing wombyn protestors with threats of violence.

"What amazes me is that this building was used as a mental health treatment center for low-income people," said WRAP director Paul Boden when asked to comment on the Archdiosese sending in deadly force to "deal" with the protestors. AS earlier in the day ot was also reported that protestors had attempted to negotiate with the Archdiose to no avail.

For a very few minutes in herstory, the people resisted kkkapitalism and took back a Home. Now the people were incarcerated again and none of us were housed .

For more information on the herstory of this fight go to www.wraphome.org