June 17, 2014

I heard a young girl crying hysterically outside of my home, which kicked my maternal instincts into overdrive as I rushed to her aid. "They shot me with them BB guns!"

And before I could ask who, I saw 3 young boys tripping away from the scene attempting to flee. I caught up to them and asked where their parents were. "They're not home," is an answer I've heard before, but it did not get them out of a educational tonguelashing as I reminded them how dangerous it was to shoot pellet guns at other people—And at a GIRL!?!?

"Don't you know that the po'lice is killing ya'll behind those real-like guns?" After getting on the young boys' cases, I commanded that they take those pellet guns inside, and quick!

The spike in BB gun-related deaths is rising to an exodus level in the black and brown communities across the nation. Children like Andy Lopez, DeAunta Farrow, Noe Rojas, Michael Jones (who was shot 17 times) and countless others have been murdered by po'lice for possessing "real-like" BB guns, and many times the justification of these murders is the same old "kid was pointing the toy gun at officers" excuse.

Therefore our children receive no justice. BB guns are easily accessible from popular stores like Walmart, Big 5 and Sports Authority. They're known for selling them, making money hand over fist, and the types of BB guns on display are looking more and more real.

Why are these companies allowed to keep making these types of real-like weaponry when people, young and old alike, are being killed by the po'lice? If it is not the young boy who gets killed playing target practice, it's the adult who was fatally wounded at his home for having a fake gun at HIS Halloween party. No blind eye to those who utilize these toys to engage in criminal activity, either way we in amerikkka have a serious problem on our hands, and the lust for weapons and bloodshed is not a new subject here.

In Amerikkkan society, guns and violence are glorified in "history" books, TV, video games, po'lice terror and (C)rap music, but our children's blood is being spilled all across the country because the images they see and are taught become the reality they will emulate. Elder accountability plays an important role because we must teach our children to not repeat the cycle of violence against one another. Every time I see kids of color playing with pellet guns, they are always shooting each other while calling each other the "N" word, and it is sickening when the grown folks think its "cute"... No child looks "cute" in a casket due to miseducation and po'lice terror.

As a reporter and supporter of the hood with a duty and responsibility to bring awareness to the people, I urge Mamaz of color to cease the purchases of these deadly toy guns for our children.

The po'lice are killing our children over these toy guns and no one is held accountable, not the people who make these fake guns, nor the police who are shooting us. Another point I want to put out there to the people is I have witnessed children without supervision and guidance run amuck in the community shooting and seriously injuring one another, including a 3 year-old girl! This type of genocidal training is the onset of future black on black crimes and without discipline and elder accountability this poisonous cycle continues. 

Daryle Washington is a father, a native San Franciscan and a hard working family man. He is also a victim of a racist employer who has jeopardized his ability to provide for his five children. According to Mr Washington, he is not the only one mistreated by this employer, Recology Corporation of San Francisco. There has been a pattern of poor training leading to the physical stress of long hours and injuries for garbage truck drivers, and the emotional distress of racial jokes and remarks (low-lifes and monkeys) as well as nooses placed in full view of Black employees. Mr Washington is speaking out on these injustices not only for himself but for the other employees subjected to this abuse. The racism evident in the company misbehavior appears to be at worst intentional, at best tolerated by management and the employees are expected to put up with it in order to keep their jobs. Here in his own words is Daryle describing his experience while being interviewed by Poor Magazine's 'street newsroom'.

Clearly Daryle is able to detail a pattern of harassment of employees of color, in particular Black employees, from improper training and racist jokes to nooses in the workplace and lack of time to recover from on the job injuries. Having lost family members to Klan activity in the South, he is both personally and historically aware of the extent to which some people will go to punish Black people who stand up to the system. Here are some closing words from Daryle:

As of today I have stopped action by DFEH & have obtained a right to sue letter & I'm moving forward with that. As of June 17th I have not received any money from Recology or their insurance company Corvel Corporation since April 17th. It is only by the grace of God that my landlord has not kicked me out on the streets & without loving family & friends I would have had many hungry nights. I am the father of 5 children & all I want to do is provide for them. I want justice, not only for myself but justice for the rest of the Black employees at Recology that have to work under the pressure of wrong & injustice & having to live in fear of losing their job if one speaks up. I want the City of San Francisco to investigate what's going on, since Recology is contracted to pick up San Francisco's garbage. I want a call to action to interrupt services until they make changes & correctly deal with the racial issues going on. How the company in the past & present treats some so-called minorities is not right & they need to be held accountable for it. Open up the books and let's see how many have not been given fair & equal treatment.

"We are hiding out in our own house with no water, " Shelah a 15 year youth and poverty skola whispered on the phone to me. She went on to tell me she and her mama and 9 year old brother were one of thousands of poor families who had their water service cut off in the last few months by the Detroit Water and Sewage District

Since spring, up to 3000 Detroit households per week have been getting their water shut-off – for owing as little as $150 or two months in bills. This is the Detroit facing water privatization in which upward of 150,000 customers, late on bills that have increased 119 percent in the last decade, are now threatened with shut-offs. Detroit organizers estimate this could impact nearly half of Detroit's mostly poor and black population – between 200,000 and 300,000 people.

Privatization is the US kkkorporate answer to everything, and to Detroit, like Chicago and New Orleans and Oakland and hundred of other US cities, this means the private corporate theft of all of our public resources including schools, parks, streets and housing, As us poor folks know the result is we end up water-less, housel-less, street-less and park-less- gentriFUKed out of our own neighborhoods, schools and communities and shuttled into the biggest private corporation of them all Plantation prisons,

This is nothing new, us poor peoples are always getting our so-called public utilities shut off. When me and my Po' single mama were dealing with our life-long poverty and about to be houseless in Oakland all of our utilities were cut-off. The first thing that happened was my mama was afraid CPS would find out and mark her as "negligent". This is part of the deep criminalization and catch 22 that poor families face all the time, causing us to not even seek so-called "help" for fear of more theft, removal and criminalization.

"My friend was put into foster care after her water got cut off" Shelah whispered. She and her family were one of the many families who are now at risk of seizure  by Children'a Separation Service, because after they take everything away from us poor folks, then they threaten to take our children. "Thats when we went into hiding,"she concluded.

Grassroots organizers have been fighting back.

A coalition of grassroots groups like Detroit People’s Water Board, Food and Water Watch and Canada-based Blue Planet Project issued a report on June 18 that contained the testimony of people who were affected by the service shutoffs and said they were given no warning. which they submitted to the United Nations naming these shut-offs as a violation of human rights- the UN answered back.

"Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights,” the U.N. officials said in a news release. “Because of a high poverty rate and a high unemployment rate, relatively expensive water bills in Detroit are unaffordable for a significant portion of the population.”.

The public water system, a prized resource worth billions and sitting on the Great Lakes, is now the latest target of the private devil-opers – and these mass water shut-offs of our peoples homes are a way to make the so-called public utility more attractive in the lead up to its privatization.

As Po' folks our so-called public resources are always under attack, our so-called free lives who were used, stolen and exploited to build this stolen land they call amerikkka are always at-risk of eviction, displacement, gentriFUKation, death by po'lice terror and/or incarceration. This is why us poor and landless stolen and diasporic Afrikans, criminalized, false bordered, indigenous and po folks at POOR Magazine are actively creating an international model for poor people-led change we call Homefulness in Deep East Ohlone Land (Oakland) where we take our stolen resources back, self-determined by us and teach descendents  of stolen wealth hoarders to redistribute their families stolen and hoarded blood-stained dollaz.

This is what we at POOR Magazine call Community Reparations. And this model needs to be practiced across the United Snakkkes of Amerikkka and the world so these violations of our human bodies, our communities and our land will cease to occur.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLES IN DETROIT!!!

June 24, 2014

Seattle and San Francisco are both raising their minimum wage. In San Francisco, the average studio will rent for $1,0000 to $2,000 per month. Seattle has similarly high rental rates. Considering that, $15.00 per hour is not that much of a raise.

The money that a minimum wage worker earns goes back into the community. 95% of the income goes to little ma and pa stores and little ma and pa restaurants. That means the neighborhood will improve through business taxes. Each time you buy something, besides food, you pay sales taxes. The more money goes into sales taxes, the more goes back into the city coffers, which will then in turn stimulate job growth in the community.

The benefits to the community of higher minimum wages may be offset by inflation and the years-long delay of the $15/hr wage increase. In Seattle it's a seven-year delay, and in San Francisco it is three. Most workers I've talked to are looking forward to a raise. Alas, they do not know they are being conned. The city fathers are being brainwashed by the Chamber of Commerce to delay the wage hike. According to the Chamber, the City will become a ghost town after the wage increase. This is a mythology. The mythology is that they will lose money, but they will actually make more money with a wage increase than they will lose, for reasons described above. Half the people that are raising the minimum wage are greedy people in the pocket of the Chamber of Commerce.

On the Federal and State level the income tax will be increased in both San Francisco and Seattle. More job opportunities stemming from higher income taxes will cut the population of homeless people, if they use my example. This will also distribute the wealth among the rich and poor alike. Ten percent is a fair profit margin. I would love to get that on a stock certificate. Any shareholder would love something like that. If it is good enough for the average shareholder, it is good enough for the company head.

In Seattle they have another catch besides the delayed minimum wage increase. They have instituted things like training wages, where an employer can hire a person at a training wage, pay less at that wage, and lay them off two days prior to the end of the "training" period. California does not have this so this can not affect San Francisco. The wait staff in Seattle can have a starting wage below their minimum wage and employers can claim that their tips will make up for it. That is a bold-faced lie. Some business are trying to skirt the issue by charging extra fees and putting them down as a labor tax. The Seattle Airport is using this mythology by charging 99 cents as an additional labor tax, visible on receipts, to make the workers out to be villains. With the help of the mainstream media (who don't want to piss off any major businesses), that myth of villainous unions and workers is being supported. They will not lose any revenue, and these people are in a fools paradise. Most workers are not out to steal anything.

The same mythology was supported when San Francisco raised the minimum wage to $11.00 per hour. Hooked the cost of living of the Bay Area into the raises of the minimum wage. The jump from $7.00 to $10.00 did not turn San Francisco into a ghost town like the Golden Gate Restaurant Association was crying about. During the Great Depression, the City of San Francisco had a smaller unemployment rate than the rest of the county due to small businesses. This was not a utopia but a very good survivalist community with strong labor and strong businesses working together.

Mayor Lee of San Francisco, as a flunky for big businesses, sold this City down the river by giving tax breaks to large corporations instead of giving tax breaks to small business that needed more security than corporations. In Seattle, the so-called Socialist that came up with the $15.00 raise were no more Socailists than Richard Nixon was a Quaker. Like any other politician, he watches his back. That is why he slipped in his 7 years: he wanted business money in his next campaign. In my case, I would have said let's raise the salary to $15.00 per hour and businsses would have a freeze on their costs. They could not raise their cost more than 10% to cover the raise. May the devil take the high ground. Thank you and I am sorry I got on my high horse..

In the rear view I am looking. I see my grandmother cooking. I see the moist parchment of her hands and fingers holding the ginger, slicing; its fragrance on her hands, dipping into the river of my mind, warming the belly. In the rear view the city skyline sits on the skin of a postcard set aflame. I look in the rear view. Buildings stand side by side like a police barricade surrounded by the troubled reflections off the bay. In the rear view I see my grandfather, his shadow filled face covering features that were once so clear and recognizable. In the rear view the postcard is a razor lashing the face, slashing the roots, leaving invisible marks. I look in the rear view at the postcard city inhabited by skeletons and painted ladies doused in vinegar. I see my grandmother again. Her hands are moving across the skin of an onion. She slices with one stroke. I look into the rear view. The edges of the postcard are dull and can no longer cut into me. The fragrance of grandma’s story is on my skin. Tears form in the creases of my eyes. I look in the rear view, the city getting smaller as I go forward. My eyes glide across the face of the rear view and finally slide off and take in what’s in front of me.

Editors Note: Kamau-Aka-Brandon George is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation prison correspondents. He is a poet writing from behind the razor wires at the Nottoway Correctional Center in Virginia. 

Phoenix

Like a beautiful star viewed from a distance, obscured by the light years that separate the world from her brilliance and her from their ignorance Beautifully encrypted with a celestial image all eyes at attention yet no one gets it, it's a lonesome existence so she bottles her light inside. White zinfandel bottles that provide a place for her  pain to hide. More than once in a while opening her "wine" eagle spread on any bed she finds rest from the rocky hills she climbs. Climatiz  cries that tear tears from her "I" not mere tears but spirit drops that metamorph into bright embers warm enough to spark life but too hot to sustain the enigma of her aspirations not mere tears but latent promise that evaporated on hotel pillow cases leaving traces of her yearning soul remnants of her internal erosion seeping through as the bottle she hid in bursts open leaving exposed what she fought so hard to keep closed she implodes and from the ashes of implosion she's born brand new. Like A Phoenix.

Editors Note: Kamau-Aka-Brandon George is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation prison correspondents. He is a poet writing from behind the razor wires at the Nottoway Correctional Center in Virginia. 

Impervious

God Blessed this skin of mines it wasn't made for cameos on commercials for oil of olay this skins rough the Bastard child of tempered steel and alligator hide the canvas where suffering chose to sketch its greatest Muriel its life time achievement colored with blood dabbed from lacerations.
God tests this skin of mines skin blanketed in leopard printed bruise that blossom on my epidermis like violet and blue pansies witnesses to their attempt to hex what God Blessed. So, God touched this skin of mines endowing every cell with strength, beauty, and resilience to endure each strike, every blow and when the darts pierced too deep God healed this skin of mines from black and blue speckled symbols of rejection and hate rolling off the tips of unbridled fire threatening to destroy what God gave. Beautiful, Bronze, Brilliance this skin that God made.
       Impervious!
 Cause God Loved this skin of mines.

Editors Note: Kamau-Aka-Brandon George is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation prison correspondents. He is a poet writing from behind the razor wires at the Nottoway Correctional Center in Virginia. 

Virtue

If beauty had a first name, it would have to be Nneka for what could be more beautiful than a mother whose love is so supreme it destroys all elements that threaten the growth of her child? If purity had a face, it would be like one of a new born for what could be more pure than new life sent to awaken slumbering dreamsand aspirations while endowing us with the audacity to hope in a despondent world? If power had a pair of feet one would certainly be connected to the ankle of the strong-willed sista who juggles two jobs, school, and motherhood, all while never stopping to complain about having to fill a void that shouldn't be there while the other foot would undoubtedly be caught up in the stride of a determined brother who denying any association with the proverbial "Box" they try to limit him to, cuts through circumstance like the light of a lone star through an impenetrable dark. If patience had limbs they'd be attached to torsos that envelope hearts that reach through hands that heal but will just as soon slap the stupid out of you when need be and if love could be born anywhere at all, the flirtatious grin shared between life - long companions would be its MECCA. Sprouting life nurtured within a pair of new eyes, discovering new hands that grasp not for the wind but for Gods promise open arms that embrace, not hate but the love that molded them and an emboldened tongue that speaks, not to curse, but to impart Gods Blessing.

“Love trumps grief.. May mothers love be awakening and love trumps grief…” Love Balm for My SpiritChild

I sat in the darkness at the Brava theatre watching the play Love Balm for My SpiritChild holding parts of my heart in my hand. My first reaction to the poetry, art and talk-story of mamas who have lost their children to police terror like Oscar Grant and Kenneth Harding Jr was to cry and then to scream and then to run, but then finally, to just be silent.

Ray of sunshine so we don’t fear the night…Love Balm for My SpiritChild

I realized I didn’t need to scream or cry or run because the play  was a beautiful poem of prayers, screams and voices that collectively held the unheard memories and unfelt tears and un-known stories of thousands of mamaz like me and my sister comrades at POOR Magazine who have lost their babies to the wite-supremacist lie of security and state-sponsored violence we are all taught to follow in amerikkka.

“I began thinking of this production when I went to Rawanda and witnessed their way of dealing with the genocide,” The visionary creator of the production Arielle Brown spoke to the audience along with the cast and the amazing Uncle Bobby (Cephus Johnson-Oscar Grant’s Uncle) at a post-production talk-back with the audience.

When Arielle spoke about the indigenous practices implemented in Rawanda when the country realized they needed to move outside the standard colonial court system to process the brutal genocide of the mid-1990’s when an estimated million peoples were killed, it was a flash for me. All of us police terrorized, incarcerated, bordered, profiled and criminalized family members who make up POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE instituted a no Po’Lice calls mandate since our inception in 1996 and our model for this was the same ancient community justice implemented in Rawanda because we knew that the kangaroo kkkourt system of no-justice and police abuse was one of the systems us poor and landless peoples were trying to move off of.

The play which has been work-shopped under the fine directorial leadership of Edriss Cooper Anifowoshe since its original version  is tight, fast and smooth like a prose poem with dance or what they call a choreo-play, with the beautiful element of spiritchild-dance by Dawon Davis, choregraphed by the mad skills having choreagrapher Jose Navarette. Every move by Davis was a prayer, a whisper, a painting, a poem worked in tandem with the mamaz All the actors are seamless, walking through the play with the power that mama revolutionaries like Ayodele Nzinga and Cat Brooks carry into protests everyday against the murder of our children.

There is so much revolutionary, urgently needed medicine in this play. It was as much about healing through story-telling, healing through screaming, healing through voice-bringing, healing through consciousness building not only for all the mamaz, daddies, uncles, aunties, friends and communities who have lost their babies to war, violence, po’lice violence but to all the peoples who don’t think they have to care, who have long ago given up and responsibility for their collective role in this violence.

Every year POOR Magazine re-ports and sup-ports alongside destraught families and revolutionary mamaz and daddyz like Mesha Irizarry, Denika Chatman, Anita Willis and Uncle Bobby to fight, give voice to and scream for justice for their children. This play is a collective response of power beyond anything we could ever do and should be witnessed by all families who have lost their children, but also by teachers who call security guards on our black, brown and poor children, by people who institute racist neighborhood watch programs and politricksters who create legislations like gang injunctions and stop and frisk, by judges who ajudicate against our poor, back and brown bodies, by war-mongering peoples who think bombing anywhere in the world is ok and finally, even the gangsters in blue (police) themselves who have long ago become machines for the state and lost their humanity/logic in the great vortex of amerikkkan in-justice

And like Ayodele Nzinga said in the talk-back which spoke volumes about the resistance of this play, “Don’t let the powers invested in our destruction win.” Ase! 

Love Balm for My SpiritChild plays at the Brava theatre through July 20^th – Run, don’t walk to see this medicine. To purchase tickets on-line go to this link