Story Archives 2013

In the largest, creaky-est, most beautiful Victorian house on the block of a suburb of Detroit, resides the most beautiful Puerto-Rican, Filipina, Japanese, and White family. Each member of the family locks themselves in their own room.  The silence and loneliness in a house that is a home to 9 people is unnatural- frightening even.

Sounds like no one is home. But, we are all home- with me in my big, empty room, sitting on my bed, sobbing, using any sharp school supplies in my room to pierce through my skin of my stick-thin arm.  Wanting to control the pain on the outside cause I wasn’t able to control the pain- the cycling self-deprecating thoughts on the inside.

“One of the ways abusers gain control over their victims is by isolating them.  It is often one of the earliest signs of a domestic violence relationship.”  Perpetuators control their victims this way.

Not only that, “One in three adolescents in the U.S. is a victim of physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner.”  That was my reality- at 15 years old.  With my then boyfriend-17 years old.

But I thought it was okay because that is what my mom said.  My dad treated her worse.  She was stronger cause she endured mistreatment longer.

We didn’t know that capitalism forced us to disconnect us women of color from each other.  Made us feel like being in relationship with white man (who colonized our brown bodies) made us more successful. Or that the cycle of violence in families are often passed down from generation to generation. 

I didn’t know that. And I was fast to blame my own mother.  (Mommy-what I still call her, at 27 years old)  Why did she model that it was okay to date a white guy that treated us, women of color inferior?  Why wasn’t she there to support me when I needed her the most?

Clearly the men were committing the abuse, but the deep pain I felt inside was from my own mom. Because she was really me too.

There is an urgency to immediately decolonize our own minds. 

I just need reframe the questions to-

What can we do to heal from the pain from these patriarchal white supremacist systems?  How can we (my mom and I) feel closer and rebuild our relationship??

It is a revolutionary act-challenging the cycle of isolation and bringing my beautiful family together. Talking about issues without the resentment brewing inside, as we sit in our rooms alone.

As Tiny Aka Lisa Gray-Garcia from POORmag puts it:

“Colonization destroyed women of color, Our mamaz, internalize and perpetrate pain, depression and anger on their own poor bodies of color, bad-food- eating, unexercise-getting bodies. And then we, their daughters, are encouraged by the same colonizers, and Euro-centric, western belief systems who destroyed us and our indigenous ancestors.   We’re tryin to survive and resist Capitalist lies and teaching ourselves back what was stolen from us. It isn’t easy. Inter-Dependence Never is.”

As a woman of color I Leontyne Smith am apart of the Women’s Resource Center in San Francisco and it helped me gain a knowledge of myself and the history of other woman. I as a human believe feeding into the positive energy this

 I wanted to break a lease that I had had for thirty years for an apartment that had come to be my home. I was paying 200 hundred dollars a month and I was totally out of work due to a back injury. My back was injured doing homecare for residents of SROs. That work was really hard, and felt incredibly important, but over the long term it merged two of my vertebrate together making it near impossible to walk, work, and in effect to pay the rent. I was becoming homeless. I had no money in the bank to pay the rent, and seeing that, these professional looking bureaucrats came out and said, aloofly giggling, “Mr. Allison, for being a good tenant we are going to let you off your lease.” I could see in their eyes that they were looking for higher paying renters.  They would be able to charge 1000 dollars a month;  They laughed at me. I felt like a complete failure. This was the moment I became like the thirteen thousand other people presently homeless in San Francisco, many of whom are elders, just like me.

A week later, I was living on a bus as my new residency at night because it was the cheapest thing I could afford that was warm. It was unknown to me about the shelter system that you may or may not get a bed. From there it came to me that I was homeless. I decided to join a group called homes not jails, and I got unorthodox housing squatting in the marina.

Of the ten thousand homeless in the city and county of San Francisco, counted in the 2010 census, the majority are transgender youth (that had been kicked out of their homes because of their family’s religious beliefs) and elders. Both of these groups are the lowest priority for shelters due to care not cash because they do not make a profit for the shelter industry. Transitional gay youth often do minimum wage jobs or under-the-table-work (including sex work) and so they are not prioritized for a bed in a shelter. Social security gives the average elder $800/month but the average SRO costs $600/month in rent. This poverty scholar has been through the housing ordeal a couple of times. Because rent is so high, people as old as 70 and 80 are sleeping outdoors. Most people who are using the shelter system spend six to eight hours every day trying to find a bed. Most people sleeping on the street are arrested and charged with 647J, a state law against illegal lodging on public or private land.  They can be put in jail for up to three months.

I am presently out of the homeless factory (housed for being a pain in the neck) and am now housed in an apartment. In my house, I’m able to cook three meals a day, and can bring as many guests as I can fit in my apartment. I don’t have to follow SRO rules where they limit you to three guests at any time. I hated that I had to use backdoor techniques and contacts to get housing when other people who have been waiting for years - but knew nobody, and played by all the rules - are still waiting.

Homelessness should not even be an issue, given the number of vacant units in San Francisco. There are 30,000 vacant units that could be used as temporary housing for the homeless. It takes a condo building an average of two years to fill up. The average cost of a condo unit is $1,000,000. The empty units could be used as temporary housing until they are rented or bought. The cost of providing shelters could be used for healthcare, and more low-income housing. That would be $10,000,000 that the city could re-allocate to other social services. My vision for the future is to stop the factory of homelessness.

I want to see permanent housing for all and re-entered rent control. To do this, we may have to get rid of the Ellis Act and Costa-Hawkins and it will bring rent control back to a community that badly needs it.  

Home…my house.  From the time I can remember, it always was just normal, like something that’s natural…. something that’s just suppose to be….That everybody lived in a HOUSE. This is what I reminisced on when we were finally all loaded up in our little green Pickup truck…my husband and I…..but we had no where to go. It was midnight and we finally finished getting the last load of our belongings from our cute little 1 BR apartment into a nearby storage facility.  We had suddenly become a part of the statistics of the homeless population in San Francisco.  

In 2005 there were approximately 5,642 people homeless in San Francisco. In the late 60’s there were hardly any.  This is a statistic for just one city here in America, San Francisco, CA.  What about the homeless statistic in the other 50 states, 100’s of cities and towns in those states.  What caused this nationwide trend of people from the comfortable relaxed era of the 60’s to gradually becoming people becoming HOMELESS.

Remembering back when I was a child and being product of the “BabyBoom” generation I grew up in somewhat small town in Pennsylvania.  The neighbor up the street, down the street, across the street was your momma, your dad, your friend…. And everybody was your neighbor and everyone lived in their own HOME!….People were peaceable, content, life was simple and people were relaxed… probably because everybody lived in the comfort of their home.

As time passed on, some wondering minds began to capitalize on the contentment, simple and relaxed life of people who lived comfortably in their home.  These wondering minds began to come up with technical ideas of processing more things that would speed up and complicate man’s relaxed environment and once he got them hooked on their new found concepts; these wondering minds began taking it to the extreme because of their greed.  These innovate technical inventions may have been designed to enhance man’s productivity but because of the concept getting into the hand of greedy “powers that be” they have used it to extract excessive fees and costs. etc. These greedy “powers that be” line their pockets with more money that they take away from the people who once lived a peaceable, contented relaxed life who were accustomed to living in the comfort of their own home. Because of greed the rents are too high….people can’t afford to buy nor rent them and people are NOT AT HOME.

These wondering minds that capitalize on these devices at the expense of the average people are aware of the impact they make on robbing poor people…but they don’t care.  They lured people with free cell phones but then lock them in contracts and charge them enormous amounts to “talk”.  Once the bill is so high the poor have to make a choice to keep their phone on, or pay their cable bill, or put food on the table.  The food wins out and the bill gets behind, the credit gets effected and the spiral decline in their credit takes effect.  Trying to keep up with all the face paced and newest technology, the poor get lost it it’s whirlwind.  The prices go up and their income goes down.  When the lack of money starts effecting the rent/mortgage payments, sooner or later, they’re put out on the streets.

The Homeless are PEOPLE.  I can reflect back on when my husband and I were left outdoors and homeless, we were careful not to appear to any one that we were nothing more than any other average person. It was an awful feeling of loneliness not to have a place to rest your body that we could call home.  It was an awful feeling not to have a place to be able to privately take a shower in a place we could call home.  It was awful having to weather the outdoor climates trying to keep either warm or cool and not having a place we could go for comfort that we could call home.

This situation could happen to any person as we found out ourselves and therefore offer a suggestion for a solution to help homeless  “People”. Why won’t  the local city governments open the doors of the many vacant idle buildings all around town and house “People” who have become Homeless because of the economical expansion that has caused them to be pushed outside  of their financial reach to the point they have been put outdoors of their home.  Everyone has a story, everyone situation is different.  Everyone who wants and needs to be housed would have shelter. The Homeless are not a numbered statistic… The Homeless are People.

          My body ached as my dad’s enormous shining black minivan turned the corner: a glistening cockroach scampering across the street. His anger spread across the air-conditioned space between us. That tongue that was made to curl into Yiddish instead spoke the stoic, unromantic language that is English. My name left his mouth a hiss, a curse word, a spit on the street. He whispered, “Your brother needs you right now and you’ve been gone. The day after my daddy died when I was 20, I asked my grandfather to come upstairs to look at my coin collection. He was old and in grief and I should have known better.  He had a heart attack on those stairs and died later that day. I’ve never forgiven myself. And you will never forgive yourself if you don’t start taking better care of your brother.”

            My father’s father immigrated from Belarus to the US in the 1920s along with a huge movement of other Eastern European Jews fleeing the pogroms, the anti-Jewish violent uprisings. Because I never met my grandparents or great-grandparents on this side of my family, I have to fill in much of this herstory on my own. But I do know that assimilating into white gentile US culture was brutal for my family. I imagine that my ancestors from Eastern Europe knew how to sustain multi-generational homes and take care of the elderly and the sick. They were poor: brick layers and tailors and farmers. I’m sure they didn’t send the sick or the elderly into nursing homes like we wealthy and middle class folks do in the US. My family also internalized much of the scapegoating and xenophobia and turn this oppression against each other. We are very critical and brutal with one another.

            My upbringing would have seemed quite foreign to my ancestors, I imagine. I was raised in a competitive, individualistic US culture in Marin County. Never in my schooling did anyone mention how to take care of sick family members or of the elderly. It was assumed where I grew up that you send away the sick and old. I was always encouraged to think about my own future as an individual, never as a family unit. This is what Tiny calls the “Cult of independence”- the normalization of individualization and separation from family in capitalism. I’m learning that some people actually think of themselves as part of a family unit- it’s signified in their name, the way they distribute resources and spend time with their family of origin. There is a vast amount of un-assimilating into white US culture that I need to do in order to relate to this collectivist mindset.

            When my brother got sick with cancer at the age of 23, even our money, white privilege and health care could not save him. Nothing in life could have prepared me for this experience; and yet, with the individualistic indoctrination I received in this country, it was hard for me to face taking care of him fulltime. I had just graduated college when he became acutely ill. I was terrified of him dying or never fully recovering. My parents unraveled so quickly and I could no longer recognize anyone in my family. I got scared and turned to independence for sanctuary. I got a job in a restaurant and created a social life for myself. This independence was deliriously delicious, addictive, invigorating. I got high off of escape. I wanted to be anywhere in the world but with my family. Anywhere.

            You could say this conversation with my father in his cockroach-colored car began millennia ago, before Jews turned white or American and when families only were separated because of direct violence. Jews know a thing or two about betrayal among family members. Joseph, an important Jewish figure in the Hebrew Bible, was sold into slavery by his brothers because they were jealous of him. Even after such a brutal betrayal, Joseph later brings his family back together and repairs the severed ties. He not only forgives; he transcends the cruelty enacted upon him and creates unity.

The cost of this individualistic pursuit was my father’s rage, my brother’s sense of betrayal and ultimately strained many relationships in my family. I’m still figuring out how to mend these relationships now with the incredible void that my brother’s death created. We are all struggling to see past the grief and reach out to each other for connection, instead of using the cult of independence to avoid the hard conversations, the painful apologies and tumultuous path of forgiveness.

I knew that the pills the nurse was holding were the wrong ones.  But she kept insisting I take them.  A gurney was waiting to take me upstairs for more tests.  I swallowed the pills and climbed onto the gurney.  They wheeled me next to a room where a woman kept saying “no” in a loud, pleading voice.  I asked a nurse what was going on.  She explained that a woman was having a very painful procedure on her foot, and could not tolerate pain killers.  As I felt my blood pressure drop, I heard her cry out “no. please!”  This was my experience of the American health care system.
      My experience was not unique.  Health care in this country is in crisis.  Studies show that A quarter of all patients are harmed during hospital stays.  A common cause of hospital death is giving people the wrong drugs. Twenty to thirty percent of all procedures and tests are unnecessary.
   And this is just the average.  Studies have shown that the worst American hospitals treat twice the number of poor and elderly African American patients as the best ones.  And these hospitals have twice the rate of death from Pneumonia, which is generally preventable.
  How do some people wind up in the relatively good hospitals and some in the very poor ones?  One can not find out which hospitals, doctors, specialists or surgeons are good by going on Yelp, as people now commonly do for restaurants or hotels.  And even the good medical personnel have a code to not reveal the bad ones.  You can't tell by how they act.  Often, the worst doctors have the most pleasant personality's, and thus are loved by colleges and patients alike, despite their poor safety records.
  So people usually choose there hospitals by default.  They go to the closets place that takes whatever insurance they have. if any.  And this is how the poor and minority patients wined up in the worst places.
   I live in the Tenderloin district, and my insurance is medi-cal.  Perhaps that is why I wound up lieing on a stretcher, blood pressure needlessly drooping, listening to  the screams of a woman whose consent was being violated.  As, in a subtler way, had mine.

            I have never been good with dates, but this is one that I will never, ever forget. Involuntarily, I find myself re-visiting the crime scene and going through the evidence, applying non-attachment, while allowing myself to experience the emotions and let them go. Buddhist theory at its best, real life situation at its worst. That morning, I opened my eyes to sheets the color of the most bitter, deep crimson red wine anyone could ever taste. Today I wake up in a different bed, in a different city, exactly a year from that morning when I met and became best friends with a side of myself that I never knew existed; the side of me capable of experiencing intense, almost polar emotions. Today I realize that, along with one more woman every 9 seconds, I too experienced at a bruised skin-deep level what the system knows as domestic violence. I am a dot, a pixel that makes the graphs accounting for perpetrations of violence a tiny bit bigger...  every 9 seconds.... a bit bigger... 9 more seconds, bigger, bigger...

            I don’t know if knowing that I am not alone, that this hasn’t happened only to me makes me feel better, or it makes my stomach turn inside out. 1 in 4 women has experienced or will experience domestic violence in her lifetime; an estimate of 1.3 million each year. Women ages 20-24 are at the greatest risk of non-fatal intimate partner violence. Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police and out of those that are reported, most don’t get prosecuted.  Domestic violence against immigrant, undocumented women has an even higher incidence rate… check mark, check mark, check mark … Yes, I am part statistic, part human. I am a part of those statistics that are counted for, and I am  a part of the underground statistics that no one will ever hear, just like millions of other women undocumented as myself, who don’t report or follow up the case because of fear of deportation and a lack of information about our rights as victims of domestic violence.

            When I woke that morning, a spasm of fear ran through my body, mixed with chaos, confusion and a lack of memory. As I stood up, wondering where my partner had gone and whether or not he was the source of the wine-resembling puddles on the bed, I happened to stumble upon the one extra-wide mirror in the room. A fearful squeal escaped my lips, which abruptly ended when I realized that the scary creature in the mirror was nothing other than a reflection of myself. Tears began to wash down my face, mixing salt with bitterness and a strong taste of iron. Although I couldn’t remember the recently passed hours, a few flashes of my partner’s fists running with intention and infinite hate into my face, head and body began to come into my mind, as violent as the punches. I cried, I curled up in the corner, I stood up, curled back up. I walked from one side of the tiny room to the other, opened the window to let the smell of pain out, felt vulnerable to the air blowing inward … closed the window.  I had no idea what to do; the only thing I could think to of was to pack my belongings and leave, without looking back.

             I drove erratically, never once thinking to head toward a hospital or police station. I feared that, although I was the “victim”, they would ask for an ID, they would ask why I was here, they would find out that I am a nobody in this country, that I am not one of their citizens, that I have no rights. I feared that they would tell me they are not here to protect me. Every time I saw a police car, I felt a knot in my stomach and prayed not be noticed, not be questioned. I spent the next week or so in shock, sleeping through most of the days and nights, coming in and out of nightmares. Somehow, my body healed unbelievably fast; in my few wake moments, I deleted every picture I had taken of my beaten body, along with anything that could remind me of him or of us. When I finally felt a tiny bit more grounded in reality, my friend, who was taking care of me convinced me to file a report. I still feared being arrested and deported for being in the country “illegally” but at that point, I had decided to go back to Mexico, so I didn’t care.

            The police came, asked a thousand questions, many of them about my status and reasons for being in the country. Many questions remained unanswered, I could tell they made assumptions from my silence. They took a couple pictures and told me that, being realistic, nothing would happen and he would most likely not be prosecuted. They said that because I waited so long – nearly two weeks-, the case was weak and it most likely wouldn’t withstand in court… apparently, the blood in my eyes, the bruises and scratches could have happened in many ways, “most likely accidents,” they said. The police officers never mentioned that, even though I wasn't a U.S. Citizen, I was protected under the Violence Against Women Act. They never told me that I could actually apply for a temporary permit to stay in the country because of what happened.

Within two weeks, I was silenced twice by men that I was supposed to trust, by men who were supposed to care for me and protect me. First, by my partner who covered my mouth and choked me as I screamed and begged for help, begged for my life, begged him to stop... later, by the police officers who muted my cry for justice, for fairness, for peace of mind. That's all I asked for so I could move on and start healing.

         Maybe it was my stubbornness, or maybe it was my inner self guiding me to heal, but from that moment on, I refused to be silenced again. If these men wouldn't let me speak up, I would do it without their help. I made a self promise to speak up for myself and for all the women who have never spoken up and for those who never will. I made the commitment to break the silence for every immigrant woman who has remained in silence and to help break the cycle for all of the women who are put in the position of victims. Women who have suffered from domestic violence should not be called or categorized as victims, we are not victims; we are survivors. I believe part of my healing has come from refusing to be a victim, from refusing to feel weak and be babied for what happened. Part of the healing has come from telling and re-telling my story, from making it awkward for people and force them to listen to my voice, which simultaneously carries the voices of all those other survivor women. The word survivor carries strength, the word victim denotes weakness. One needs to be strong to survive the physical punches, as well as the punches that life brings us afterward, along our healing path. I wake up today and know that I am still not good with dates, but I also know that I am strong, that I have grown from the pain and that I will never, ever again be silenced. Every nine seconds I will speak up. Every nine seconds I will say “Ni una mas, not one more.”

To be a black poet with a severe disability is to speak from the margins of the dominant culture. You have the responsibility to be your own griot and sing your history and life experiences because no one else are going to do it for you. No one else will have your perspective of how to see the world and will have the words to make people see what you see. With out your poetic art people will be led by their own assumptions and will try to define your blackness and disability in ways that you will not want them to.

You are often a stalwart against the mainstream media who tries to ignore you or represent you as a helpless invalid who may or may not deserve government benefits or as a heroic figure who overcame your disability against tremendous odds to accomplish phenomenal feats. You give the more realistic model of a person who is vulnerable enough to share his flaws, but is strong enough to have many triumphs. This makes you an artist that adds vital information to the culture tapestry that surrounds you. You then can call yourself a poet who represent the best of all your identities and the communities that you belong to.

By Lateef McLeod

Is it humanly possible to lose touch with reality in a split second or does it happen over a period of time?

San Francisco, California is a city all to itself sitting out on a peninsula, made up of districts. Chinatown/North Beach districts is where my story begins.

Chinatown comes to life at 6:00am with meat markets and produce markets opening in preparation for the thousands of Chinese residents, spectators, tourist and the rest of us to make purchases or to window browse. At about 9:00am it's at a full swing where you can buy anything from food to travel and all in-between. The 30 and 45 bus lines are traveling along with the hustle and bustle of everyday life add the 8x and the 8bx traveling in-bound dropping off and picking up patrons along it's route.

At 6:00pm sharp Chinatown shuts down and becomes a ghost town, the only thing you can find open is Walgreen's til midnight on most nights, unless you go up and down the side streets and even then it's very few that are open for business. The lights may still be lit but it's because they're cleaning up and preparing to leave.

I've lived in this area for about six months now and it's relatively quiet after that time save the revelers on the weekends coming from the nightlife clubs and eateries of North Beach just one street over on Columbus Street. One of the highlights of most weekends though it's a sad occasion are the funerals. Very rare on a Thursday, common on Friday's and Saturday's and on some Sunday's you will hear drums beating sounding the alarm of something approaching, tourist and onlookers stand in anticipation of what's to come. The regulars keep going as if nothing is happening, then comes two officers on dirt bikes with yellow vests following them is the Green Street Marching band playing somber hymns and farewell songs as the dearly departed is displayed on an over-sized portrait held by family members in a truck sitting in chairs. The hearse and mourners follow behind. That's the usual day to day operations of this part of town.

That is until a month ago, that's when it all changed. It was a change that lasted a little more than a month. Because I don't know her name we will call her Clara Chung, she is of Chinese descent and was put out of her apartment or should I say her room at the L&J Hotel. The L&J is a run down hotel, looking at it from outside would make you feel that it is rat and roach infested. Clothes hanging out the windows, the dirty building looked as if it hasn't had a paint job in years or washed down for that matter, I realize that people don't really care as long as they got a place to stay and especially if you have a family like I do. That's how I felt after staying in shelters and drop-in centers, but I draw the line with roaches and rats it's bad enough that these hotels are highly overrated and way to expensive and to top it off they aren't even quality but then again some of these "quality" top notched hotels are bedbug centrals. So I guess you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Back to Ms. Chung, she was set out with all of her belongings. For a month we listened to her cry, scream at nobody in particular, clean and sweep the sidewalk because that had become her home, she simply had nowhere else to go. She would go on something fierce at all hours of the night, at about 3:00am she would fall asleep(I would pray for her not to be cold) but at 6:00am she was wide awake and going about her way. The police would walk past, sometimes they would stop and talk to her other times they would taunt and laugh at her but she never backed down she stood her ground. When the owner/manager tried to get her to leave she refused.

Then one morning as the sun was rising she started singing loudly and woke everyone on the block, some cursed her but it didn't matter to her she continued; some even shouted for her to "shut up" for which her response was "sorry" in a humbled tone of voice but later she would be singing again as loud as she could. Near the end of her stay she would get on her knees in the middle of the crosswalk and pray and cry. Why she chose the crosswalk instead of the sidewalk is beyond me but she did.

One day while I was down the street at the laundromat she came in and wanted to take a wash-up in the restroom, so the attendant allowed her too, then when she was finished she cleaned up after herself and then washed her clothes. While she was in there four other people including myself were tending to our laundry, one of the guys( whom I know) started talking about her and thought she couldn't understand English but she could so she knew the guy couldn't speak Cantonese she started talking about him to the attendant as a result I informed the man that "she can speak and understand English but she has the upper hand on you because you can't speak nor understand Cantonese"(chuckle).

I often felt sorry for the woman, I could feel her pain and deep within myself her fight for survival but I also sensed her struggle to maintain her sanity which she had lost. The fear of insanity was quickly over-taking her in every waking hour, day and week that she was in this condition.

Unfortunately at the end of this story there is not a happy ending, when she least expected it those same cops who had taunted and mocked her were the same ones restraining her against her will. The same manager who had evicted her for not being able to pay her rent any longer was the same one who called the paramedics to do a 5150 on her and as they strapped her onto a gurney people stood around looking and some were helpless to respond to her cries to be free of bonds that held her grip. She wailed in agony from the pain of being detached from her belongings and displaced from all that she knew and held dear, the memories of good times and probably bad times too.

After she was loaded into the back of the boxed in ambulance the manager didn't wait until the door was closed before he ransacked her belongings and carted off what he wanted from it and informed the cops that the rest was "just junk". My daughter and I looking from the window watched as the ambulance drove off down the street before turning onto Stockton Street headed for San Francisco General Hospital we also saw the manager and another man walking in the opposite direction with Ms. Chung's personal belongings in a dark colored trash bag walking out of sight and down Powell Street.

Two weeks have passed and though the street has returned to some normalcy I wonder where Ms. Chung is, is she still at General? Is she okay? Is she warm at night? Does she get enough to eat? Is she safe from harm? I don't know but every time I think of her I stop and say a prayer for her that one day she'll be restored to sanity.