Story Archives 2015

Editors Note: Heidy is a student-mentee in the Revolutionary Youth Media Education(RYME) summer program at POOR Magazine

The Ugly Laws In The 21^st Century

By: Heidy

From the late 1860s until the 1970s, several American cities had ugly laws making it illegal for persons with "unsightly or disgusting" disabilities to appear in public. Some of these laws were called unsightly beggar ordinances. Better known as * The Ugly Laws.

They pretend it ever happened. The first appearance of the ugly laws were in San Francisco Ca, the Bay Area. Even thought they deny the ugly laws ever existed they're still evident in the Bay Area.

The Berkeley City Council is has proposed multiple example of modern day ugly laws which they call- "regulating behaviors in the streets of the city". To the oblivious person this seems like a great thing, the council is trying to make the streets safer. They don't realize how many people this law is screwing over.

A recent proposed ordinance which was heard at the city council meeting of June 30th plans is targeted for the homeless only. The proposal would ask the city manager to look into the possibility of implementing ordinances prohibiting unpermitted cooking on public sidewalks, panhandling within 10 feet of a parking pay station and deploying bedding on sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.. . It also includes recommendations to consider extending youth shelter hours beyond the winter months and ensure the availability of public restrooms. They are regulating the size of their belongings. The measurements are 16 in. x 18 in. which is ridiculous they're making it so small. This information is provided by Bob Offer-Westort from Side Walks Are For Everyone (S.A.F.E.)

Pauper Laws try to help poor people, but in reality it forces people to live in shelters. It works perfectly with the city ordinances. Since the city is building more shelters and prohibiting all of these things that poor people will be forced to go to the shelters, which just make the people who own it rich. It a perfect combination for the poverty pimps.

As a young Honduran migrant I'm concerned my people that are migrating and dont have a place to live will fall for this vicious cuycle of explotation.

(Post-script: the City Council meeting of June 30th was shut down by the people who, led by Mama Vivi T of POOR Magazine and hundreds of other angry Berkeley residents yelled SHAME and made it impossible for yet another anti-poor people law to be instituted in this so-called progressive city)

referece: *The Ugly Laws By Susan M. Schwek

Editor's Note: Timothy Yeargin is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation correspondents who contribute to Poor Magazine notes from the inside, a column of planation resistors who needs your help to get justice.

This is about young men and older men who seem to forget about others who were left behind. Our children, our mothers always told us about running around, not having a job nor thinking of our children. But some of us said, "Mother, you don't know; just stay off my back." Sometimes your sisters or brothers would ask , "When are you going to have some time for us? " Now when you go to jail or prison, whom do you call, your mother or your wife? But when you were out, you didn't even care! Now your family and children are saying, "But what about us!" But most of us say It's going to be alright. I will be out soon, but you never show. What about us! Again, some of us say to our sisters or our baby's mothers, "Send me some money." You know how it goes. But your sister and your baby's mother is saying that your children need some shoes and some new clothes too, so they will not be able to do it this month. Then you get upset, not thinking about them, but thinking of yourself. What about us! Do you even care?

 Editor's Note: Anthony Robinson Jr.  is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation correspondents who contribute to Poor Magazine notes from the inside, a column of planation resistors who needs your help to get justice

The Black man “had no rights that a white man was bound to respect.” – U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Dred Scott

Dred Scott is buried about a mile down the same road from where Mike Brown was murdered.

The same mindset that allows a police officer to summarily execute an innocent, unarmed Black person in the street is the same mindset that allows an officer to plant evidence and lie on the witness stand. It allows a judge to appoint a knowingly incompetent defense attorney, and it allows a prosecutor to withhold evidence, use false evidence, to overcharge and to discriminate with impunity.

What is at stake is the most important civil rights issue for generations to come: the value of Black life in america and the massive incarceration of Blacks and other people of color.

A people can only expect to live well in a society according to the rubric of how they are valued by that society.

While it is tragic to witness another Black man in america shot by the police, it is even more tragic to witness a people so in denial about their value in the society that they fail to recognize the symmetry in the modern forms of lynching that have become acceptable: instead of hanging “niggers,” they gun ‘em down – and leave their bodies on display for hours.

While it is tragic to witness babies being torn from the arms of mothers who are carted off to prison because the state has not sanctioned their means of providing for their families, it is even more tragic to witness a people so in denial about their value in the society that they fail to recognize the analogous Willy Lynch separation of mother and child in order to break the family units and instill a divide and conquer stratagem, where generations to come will be content with being separate in their cultural identification but equal in the brutalizing torture endured by the society in general.

United against police and prison abuse, and imprisonment itself, formerly incarcerated people, the advocates of Sin Barras and activists from around the Bay came to Santa Cruz Jan. 24, 2015, for the Cages Kill-Freedom Rally. – Photo: Lori Nairne

While it is tragic to witness the effects on our children of laws that are passed which make it easier to prosecute Black teens as adults than to prosecute policemen for gunning down innocent Black men, women and children, it is even more tragic to witness a people so in denial about their value in the society that they fail to recognize that the value of their children – from a societal perspective – is no different now than it was during the tragic death of Emmett Till.

While it is true that Blacks have endured a lot of tragic moments in America, especially those living the gallows of the ghetto, it is even more true that Black people in america can look forward to even more of these tragic “raisin in the sun” moments, as these killings, stalkings, entrappings, incarceratings etc. are just effects of the problem and not the cause. Until we as a people, as a community, as a society get serious about dealing with the cause of these tragic moments – the value of Black life in america – we can look forward to more Oscar Grant “incidents,” more Trayvon Martins, more Mike Browns.

It is interesting how we have been organized and mobilized behind these tragic effects, yet few movements and organizations have had the audacity to organize and seek solutions to their cause. This is partly due to the fact that the people most aptly attuned to address the cause – Blacks in america – unfortunately have helped to perpetuate the cause against themselves. (See my “Two slaves for the price of one” articles – Parts 1, 2 and 3.)

There is a narrative that has been smuggled – like slaves on a cargo ship – into the cultural subconscious of america that says, “Black people, as evidenced by how they live and interact with each other, don’t value their own lives, so why should we?” We are confronted with this narrative in america daily through the institutionalized tools and state sanctioned oppression deployed against us at will – police shootings, beatings, incarceratings.

As I sit here reading the December 2014 Bay View paper, it is interesting that despite having a Black president, Black people still must put the emphatic symbol of their agitation on a T-shirt that reads: “#Blacklivesmatter.” A protest navigating through the wilderness of a question, a self-reflective question staring back from the mirror of reality, waiting for the gaze of a people who can’t look forward because they are too afraid of losing looking back.

Ferguson was not a new lesson or protracted politics revealing the reactionary mathematics of the government. Ferguson was a prophetic reminder of the saying, “A people who refuse to learn from their history are forced to repeat it.” In a cause and effect relationship, there’s even mathematics applied.

We need to orient our thinking and calculate our steps behind this premise: If the value of Black life in america is the cause, then the organized state sanctioned oppression inflicted upon Black lives every day in america is the effect. The police seizure of property and “justifying” their actions by writing the theft into the law is the same as the police seizure of an unarmed Black life – which they see as nothing but property – and justifying it just the same with their “justice system,” deeming it a justifiable homicide.

In a country where district attorneys are trained to lead witnesses, overcharge for crimes they can’t prove, plant evidence, and win without regard for the law in service of protecting the law, how is it that District Attorney Robert P. McCulloch could not sieve an indictment from the grand jury even on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter of an unarmed Black man with his hands raised in the air? The value of Black life in america, that’s how!

“I understood the problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality education – the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.” – Michelle Alexander

The three social cues that reveal the value of Black life in america to an unapologetic populace are mass incarceration of Blacks and other people of color – and the laws that target them – lack of access to quality education and the senseless killings of Blacks in america. These three social cues, if perpetrated upon any other race in America, would solicit a national crisis, but because they are perpetrated upon Blacks, there’s barely a whisper.

The sad part is the reality that even amongst Blacks, there’s barely a whisper – as if our voices and struggles have become confined within the margins of other people’s expectations and valuations of us. How are we as a people not mobilized and organized through indignation to at least become conscious enough to see our organs, i.e., our families, communities, churches and every cultural medium through which we act as political instruments exercised to gain us power by the only means practical, the value of Black life in america.

“Mass incarceration is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the civil rights movement.” – Michelle Alexander

Through mass incarceration they have taken back all of the rights gained for Black men and women through the civil rights movement. With all the motives and policies that disenfranchise felons from not only their own communities, but society at large, it is more than interesting to note that the same exclusionary tactics that boxed Blacks out of society in the Jim Crow era and Reconstruction era seek the same end now, legalized in the prison industrial complex era: discrimination in hiring, housing, education and voting are now accepted again as long as Blacks (“felons”) are biting the bullet.

Through mass incarceration they have taken back all of the rights gained for Black men and women through the civil rights movement.

By convincing him that he has no value, the prison industrial complex targets the Black man’s ideals and social cues, forcing him to register such a low estimation of himself that he takes as his portion the state sanctioned oppression which the law in its humanity accords to him.

“In a landmark decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, Ruffin v. Commonwealth, issued at the height of Southern redemption, the court puts to rest any notion that convicts were legally distinguishable from slaves. For a time, during his service in the penitentiary, he is in a state of penal servitude to the state. He has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being a slave of the state.” – “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander

After speaking in New Orleans, Michelle Alexander speaks with Dillard University student LeQuan Woods as she signs his copy of her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” – Photo: Naomi Martin, Times-Picayune

For those of you that support the prison industrial complex’s institutionalization of massive incarceration of Black men and other people of color, you are aiding and abetting the legislative plantation owners’ continuation of the system of slavery through the penal system – the first system sought to control the newly freed slaves by placing them back into the conditions of chattels with the commonly utilized legislative pen as the bullwhip – a condition that became meticulously sewn into the fabric of america to such a degree that the unapologetic populace, even amongst people of color, have sat back and marveled at the parallel “prima facie” systems of slavery built into the prison industrial complex – for example, working long hours for little or no pay.

And Blacks and other people of color not only work for these plantations, but they seek employment in these plantations with such destitute and deplorable conditions that a lot of them are lulled back into a system of slavery not only by the physical and logistical parallels of slavery, but also by the parallel expectations that slaves had of themselves based on the low estimation plantation owners had of them.

“Black men in the U.S. fortunate enough to live past 18 are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of humiliations. Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortunes that lead so many Black men to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison; it required only a minor psychic adjustment.” – George Jackson

Best-selling author George Jackson always maintained his dignity, smiling even in chains.

Their laws, their policies, their capital, their modus operandi has targeted our men, women and children and communities for too long. We have been auctioned off and placed in stocks in america for too long.

The value of Black life in america is the pressing issue. How many slaves will have to be freed at the point of this exhaustive pen before we realize that in all of these “incidents” they are targeting our existence with impunity.

We have allowed them to become so comfortable with targeting and policing our communities that Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley had the audacity to introduce a plan under “The Justice Reinvestment Initiative” to build satellite prisons in poor Black communities and call it “community corrections.” Prompting the ACLU Sentencing Project to report, “The Justice Reinvestment Initiative, as it has come to operate, runs the danger of institutionalizing mass incarceration at current levels.”

Unfortunately we have already reached that point in america where the mass incarceration of Black men and other people of color has become institutionalized not only in the fabric of america, but in the collective subconscious of the American populace. Although it is a fact, statistically, that 70 percent of the crime in america is committed by whites, Blacks and other people of color make up over 70 percent of the prison population.

They are targeting our existence with impunity.

As expressed by one Alabama planter, “We have the power to pass stringent police laws to govern the Negroes. This is a blessing, for they must be controlled in some way or white people cannot live among them.”

“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its Black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington D.C., our nation’s capital, it is estimated that three out of four young Black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.” – “The New Jim Crow”

Enslaved Africans work the cotton fields.

As Blacks and other people of color in america, we are facing the eruption of a moment of truth so connected to our future existence in this country, that if we fail to stare down the effects of our reality and face the cause (the value of Black life in america), then we will be deservedly remembered as the race which polluted the air of humanity by supporting the institutionalization of mass incarceration.

Harriet Tubman, who freed hundreds of slaves, always regretted the fact that she could have freed thousands more if only they knew they were slaves. The NEW underground railroad and The Free Alabama Movement refuse to march forward with the same regret. We understand that for those of us affected and targeted by mass incarceration, it’s our turn to act. We have to leave the crops in the field.

“When the innocent, mentally ill and the guilty are enslaved under the same oppression simply because the system deems you expendable (the value of Black life in america) then I recommend that you’d better resist too, or else you will suffer the most ignoble fate known to humanity: dying as a slave of old age. It is far better to die fighting for your liberation, freedom and honor that it is to live a life of service and docility, constantly enduring abuse by your master.” – Spokesperson Ray of Free Alabama Moment

I would ask the reader to please keep an open mind to your own measure of courage and ability to abolish this institution of massive incarceration of Black men and other people of color. The most difficult part of any revolution is convincing people to boot up and take that first step, but this is also the most enduring.

The prison industrial complex is using your labor, your votes, your taxes, your silent consent to promote and perpetuate the system; therefore, if you cut off your labor, re-align your votes, and demand that your taxes be used to free rather than enslave people, you will shut down the system’s vital organs. Everyone affected by the institutionalization of mass incarceration, whether by profit or liability, has a pivotal role to play in the abolition of this enslavement.

I would ask the reader to please keep an open mind to your own measure of courage and ability to abolish this institution of massive incarceration of Black men and other people of color.

Anthony Robinson Jr.

The first step for many of you reading this will be to re-evaluate your perspective on crime and punishment and your superstitious beliefs in the justice system, determining what psychic adjustments or hallucinations you have made to accept a system more devastating than apartheid.

Hitler bought insurance policies on biological property – the soldiers. When that money was gone, he insured prisoners, and he put a lot of people into prison. The United States of america is copying Hitler, putting people in prison and bonding them.

The U.S. has amassed huge amounts of money based on mass incarceration and warehousing of slaves. In the beginning of 2014, California added hundreds of new “laws” to its books – on top of the thousands of laws already existing. Why is america in such a race to enslave, entrap and incarcerate?

“Before democracy, chattel slavery existed in america.” – Michelle Alexander

Through the prison industrial complex and institutionalization of mass incarceration, the Corrections Corporation of america and other mega-corporations have found a way to profit off of their favorite pastime – chattel slavery.

When history awakens from its slumber to recite to God the accounts of man, will america’s blurb read, “a society so indebted to the whores of commerce that they sought to enslave men rather than free them.”

Send our brother some love and light: Anthony C. Robinson Jr., P-67144, TCCF MC-67, 415 US Hwy 49 North, Tutwiler MS 38963; Anthony is a California prisoner held in a private CCA prison in Mississippi. His series, “Two slaves for the price of one,” is being made into a movie that is expected to be released this year.

Strange Fruit

The cherry blossoms
with a bullet in its pit
because its roots have been watered
by the muffled screams of slaves hanging
from its branches …
A child plants a prayer
in the garden of his mother’s mind
next to his father’s broken dreams;
she raises him on bitter milk and cold cereal:
a meal she deems fitting to prepare him for the world.
I sometimes wonder if Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant
are in heaven writing an epistle to the people on the same bullet?
I imagine it would read:

To the Black and minority people of revolutionary merit,
our communities have become the death blossoms
that the power structure in america uses as rationalizations
to parade its paramilitary and institutionalized
mass incarcerating agendas to wipe out a colorless class …
Colorless in regards to any political hue that would give
us the power to paint our visions with the vibrant expressions
of self-determination to act in our communities and in the
world as productive contributors to the will of humanity.
Remember, our lives were taken with the consent of state
sanctioned jurisprudence under the watch of a Black president.
We wanted our lives to be more than a few sad songs and photographs
pasted onto the collective subconscious of the american people.
We see the true people of merit organizing, protesting, marching …
We’ve tuned in so much to the rhythms of the people’s heart
for change that we threw a concert in heaven so that we could
watch the angels dance.
Some of them hadn’t cut up in a while.
We are tired of dancing, but we’re noticing that the music
is getting louder. Please, don’t let them stop the music;
now it seems we can’t rest without it.

Sincerely, Trayvon and Oscar

The cherry blossoms fall from their stems willingly
in order to be free of the noose.
Falling with the determined strength to live free,
they plunge into the soil similar to slaves overboard cargo ships
plunging into the ocean with the purest memory of freedom in their hearts …
Black and minority people have been pitted against so many
antagonisms and contradictions that it is hard for us
to recognize the value of our seed.
Maybe it is more important for us to remember the source from which
our water is gathered: inner strengths like love, faith and determination …
Yes! We are proudly recognizing that we are strange fruit
in america – strange because once we blossom into the people
we are meant to be, only God will recognize our names …

– Anthony Robinson Jr.

How To Reduce Incarceration In The Barrios

Mass incarceration is an epidemic within U.S. Borders. With 2.3 million people today locked away there is a need to find a solution OURSELVES to reducing this browning population. Today's U.S Federal prison system is a majority Raza. (What's more, state prisons are quickly following this trend as the Raza population continues to rise.

In California today there is well over 100,000 people incarcerated and if we look to the states Security Housing Units (SHU' s) we find that the majority of those housed in California's SHU' s are Chicanos. The SHU has been described by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as “cruel and unusual.” It was in the SHU where history was made in a non violent hunger strike showing that we are not the “worst of the worst” after all. It can thus be said that in California Chicanos are feeling the brunt heel of incarceration.

Today the barrios have been criminalized and are the targets of drug sweeps, gang sweeps, Ice sweeps and the only thing missing are Tamale sweeps. Young Raza are in danger of going to the pinta or the morgue anytime they leave the casa. The days when a jefita could tell her hijos ride their bikes in the streets all day without worrying. Video games have been a blessing to many.

When we look at incarceration in the barrio we can quickly see that it is a plague that is more dangerous that any disease or drug that we may have encountered. Sure the barrios have crime, which can mostly be better described as poverty crimes. The barrios like any other community has it's share of drugs, alcohol, social ills must we not look to the roots of these problems?

THE CAUSE OF INCREASED INCARCERATION TODAY

Chicanos like anyone else don't exist out of thin air, we interact with the natural world that we live in and adapt and develop accordingly. We are survivors who attempt to deal with challenging circumstances in an even more challenging world. Often times it is the fact of us being in survival mode living hand to mouth. Many do not get the leisure to think deeply, to theorize and find creative ways to tackle our most pressing issues like incarceration.

The 1960's and 70's were the highest peak of the Chicano Movement and their was a heightened consciousness in the barrios. Rather than learning about the latest drug or crime, Raza were learning how to rise up and what Migra Terror was all about. The Chicano Movement was targeted like other social justice movements at the time and in it's place drugs and Lumpen organizations filled the vacuum.

Of course we need to get to work in the Brown community and install positive alternatives for our youth. We need barrio communities that work to install pride in the people and cultivate a new cultura where we re- connect to our history of inter-dependence that has been a part of not just Chicano culture but Mexican culture and of consanguineous culture, but it needs to be a revolutionary culture not the played out individualist way of doing things.

Today's society promotes an individualist approach and fosters behaviors which do not correspond to who we are as Raza. Our barrios need a new generation of activism where cultural events and workshops on community organizing are as popular as today's drug king pin.

Having spent the majority of my life incarcerated, I have spent a lot of time thinking about ways to combat incarceration in general and for the Chicano nation in particular. What me and some comrades have been discussing is not only do we need people on the outside to increase progressive work in the barrios is a more intense way, but gente need to also look to the prisons as well as prime target areas. We need to understand that in today's society prison life is often glorified in the barrios and to our youth via the corporate media. Shows like “Orange is the new Black”, “Lock up” and other such shows make a farce and trivialize our national oppression. They have attempted to create a prison chic for our youth and in some ways it has taken root.

We know much of our youth are influenced by people in prison so our real victory in reducing incarceration will be when we transform people in the pintas who will be released to the barrios at some point. If prisoners hold such influence on the youth, then it will be prisoners or ex prisoners who will be the key in reducing incarceration.

THE KEY IN REDUCING INCARCERATION

Transformation prisoners will come from the work of conscious prisoners on the inside educating our peers coupled with outside activists and progressive peoples helping to build that bridge between our two communities. But we need more collaboration and participation from both sides of the fence.

What we know is “rehabilitation” is not being provided by the prison or the state. We know this because in recent decades MOREA prisons have been filled and MORE Chicanos have been placed in these tombs also known as solitary confinement in the SHU. We are facing more of the “new greaser” laws that have been unleashed on Raza in California for us who rehabilitate ourselves. On a small scale this can be done by us building our independence institutions both in the pintas and outside of these concentration camps. This would consist of people's committees, liberation schools, our own press and youth brigades that operate these forms of people's power. On a large scale we also know that to totally transform the relations surrounding the economy in society. This would be correcting the lopsidedness between the haves and have nots.

ARE PRISONERS SALVAGEABLE

Many in U.S. society, including many within the Chicano nation have given up in prisoners or never saw any potential in these imprisoned social skeptics wrong. Indeed, if we look to prisons we find some of the most brilliant leaders in the struggle for social justice in U.S. borders in the last century have seen inside of a prison cell. Being in prison in the U.S. does not hold any stigma to me, having been persecuted by an oppressive entity like Amerikkka is actually an honor. Being further tortured in one of its control units likewise shows that something in my actions will put me on the right side of history.

The idea of prisoners as a potential progressive force in our community is understood when we grasp that incarceration in the U.S. is mostly applied for social control where it is poor people targeted and stuffed in these prisons more than the rich.

Prisoners have demonstrated the ability to develop consciously even under such a brutal form of national oppression. Perhaps we are pushing new boundaries here in U.S. control units as far as learning how much a human being can take and how much they can grow under extreme forms of settler repression.

What we are learning, the imprisoned Lumpen, is that struggle transform a people, it awakens us. But anywhere in the world when an oppressed people have begun to lift the boot off their necks the oppressor has found ways to smother this resistance and we expect this as well.

Conclusion:

Reducing incarceration in the barrios will come from our own efforts. When we begin to practice people's power and rebuild our nation, only then will we rehabilitate the people. Building on our momentum on the “end hostilities” inside and outside of prison and finding ways to build on it, as well as new modes of cooperation between the people will help to cultivate this transformation. For those out in society, finding ways to reach into the pintas and help nurture the imprisoned Chicano Movement which is in it's infancy, will be the key to reducing incarceration in the barrios.        The End

Jose H. Villarreal

The Community Wins By Tibu

I was evicted more times than I can count for my whole life. I never really realized that there was someone deliberately causing my family to move all over the place and that there were other people like me who dealt with the same thing. These families are among those people who I can relate to.

The cool morning air hit me like a wet washcloth, cold and unyielding. As we came upon the alley that was Natoma St. I realized when I got there that much misfortune had befallen that house of the 512 addresse. Most of the house's paint was peeling off and most of the wooden railings of the buildings did not have nails holding them in place.

The owner of the house sold it to a real estate agent named Evan Matteo part of the Big Tree Properties Inc. He then started passing out three day notices like they were candy on the day of Hallows Eve. “this city is not prioritizing the needs of women children and elders” said Tina Shaft, Member of a powerful activist group called the MIGRANTE organization.

For two long years the tenants fought for to stay in the house But finally retrieved the house from the clutches of Big Tree .Today we were there in celebration that the community finally won.

A Communities Victory

By: Heidy

On July 7^th there was a protest celebration in San Francisco at 521 Natoma. The celebration was about the victory of the family not losing their home. “To celebrate victory for the family stability in Natoma.” was their goal for the celebration said, Rudy Corpus from the United Playaz. The fight was important because “keep families in Natoma. The people in this neighborhood stabilized” Explained Rudy Corpus.

The building was sold and had received a new landlord and he issued a three day eviction notice, so the families living in the building decided to get together with the community and take the problem to court. Evan Matteo the landlord with big tree properties tried to kick out the family.

The Filipino community members are supporting 'Just Cause' Eviction Protections 2.0. If it passes it could benefit the tenants in many ways. For example They need to discourage unnecessary evictions and stabilize rent increases.

Tina Shaft from the migrante organizers community was there speaking on the celebration. She made a very important point, “San Francisco needs to recognize that they can't live without the working class people.” The city can't progress with only the rich people.

I also learned about Tenants In Common. It describes a co-ownership where each owner is free to choose who will inherit his/her interest. But in practice, tenancy in common, tenants in common, and TIC, are commonly used to describe narrow sub-categories of the wide TIC world, leaving the uninitiated confused about how the various types of TICs relate to each other

I am very happy for the family and the Filipino community for keeping their people in San Francisco. It really is a communities victory.

We attended a celebration today on July 7, 2015 in San Francisco at 521 Natoma. They were celebrating their victory of their fight to make sure that the families living there doesn't lose there home. “Our goal is to celebrate victory for the families being stabilized ,” said Rudy Corpus from the United Playaz organization.

The building was sold and had received a new landlord and he issued a three day eviction notice, so the families living in the building decided to get together with the community and take the problem to court. And fourtunately, they won.

When we got there the street was very narrow and was surrounded by very old homes that look as unstable as a table with two legs. Just by one look you can feel the mistreatment in the air.

While there I had the opprtunity to interview Rudy Corpus, and when asked why their fight was important he said, “It was important because we wanted to keep families that's been here in this neighborhood, stabilized.”

Tina Shaft who is a part of an organization called Migrante stated, “ It's all about access.It's all about access for better education for the youth and better jobs for the working class.”

She also states, “Immigrant families deserve a place to live...this city is not prioritizing the rights if women, children, and families.”

I left there with the mentality that the landlords should be held accountable for what's going on and the stress they have caused on people.

I also learned about the Tenants in Common otherwise known as T.I.C which is basically a “joint ownership of property without rights of survivorship in which each owner owns an undivided specific percentage of the property ,” and when the owner dies their estate goes to whoever they left it to in their Last Will and Testament.

I commend the community for their strength, compassion, and undying love for each other. I think that what they are doing will benefit everyone in the future because there is no power stronger than the power of the people and the community.

“SORROWS AND HOPE”

Hope and determination prosper

amidst the solidarity of concrete and steel

shrouding the humility of people

The warm sun rays

Void within the cold stone cave

Contradicts my inner peace

Reflections protruding from nature

Kindness and rage in perpetual dance

The essence of life's joys and sorrows of death

The end

Jose H. Villarreal

Editor's Note: Timothy Yeargin is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation correspondents who contribute to Poor Magazine notes from the inside, a column of planation resistors who needs your help to get justice.

Has the time you have done in prison as a father really helped you? Are the people of society addressing our issues here in prison? I do pray that society understands that some of us fathers are really trying to change for our children. Is crime the only way for some of us this day and time? No, but sometimes being poor causes us as fathers, sons, and brothers to make bad choices in life just to survive. But now as a father, I have had time to really look inside myself and know that it wasn't about me. It was also about my family that I left behind. We all as human beings were fed the wrong mind food because of listening to men in the streets of poverty. Yes, some of us listened to them. At that time they were all we had. Most of us were poor and looking for a way out so we could help our families. Some of us, are products of our environment that made us this way. Now let me say this to those who read this because the attitude some of us as fathers have didn't come from how we were raised. Some of us without fathers listened to other homies and looked up to them. Yes, those who did have a father  found out he was never there. When he was, we never got a chance to talk with him. That's why some of us were raised around bad influences without knowing that it was osmething that you and I thought good turn out to be so bad! Now, let me put it another way, so we all can understand. Our brains are computers which take in good and bad things. When we as young teens see our fathers doing wrong or our older men selling drugs and making money, we want to do this too. Not all of us, but some of us fell into this trap in the streets. But now as a father, a brother, and an uncle, I have to make the right choice for the little eyes that are watching you and me.