Story Archives 2015

Editor's Note: Brother Shabazz 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.

While Men And Women Weep

As they do now, i'll fight for their rights

To be free,

While little children go hungry as they do now,

I will try to feed them with the truth so they will

Never go hungry.

While men go to prison

In and out as they do now,

I'll fight to be free and stand on

The word of god!

While there is a poor lost girl or boy

In the streets,

With no where to go,

I will try to lead them

To the right way.

While there remains one lost dark soul

With no cause

And is confused about who they are

And don't know the truth,

Then i'll fight to the very end

To let them know!!!

By Brother Shabazz

AKA T. Yeargin

I am Heidy. I come from a Honduran family. Honduras is in Central America I was born outside of the U.S. therefore im an “illegal alien” as they kindly put it in the United States. I was brought here when I was 3 years old. The root cause for leaving Honduras was because of violence. I don’t really remember how my journey here was. I’m sure it wasn’t in a first class airplane.

I didn’t ask to be separated from my grandmother and everything I ever knew, to be brought to a country I knew nothing about where they didn’t speak the language and mostly importantly where they hated my kind. I didn’t ask to be brought to a country where I wasn’t wanted, where I would be treated like a second class citizen for my entire life just  based on how I look.

I do ask myself if I was never brought here, what would I have become? My journey started when I crossed the false border from Mexico to the United States. Im still on it and I don’t know when it will end. I do hope to return to my motherland without trouble. There is no such things as borders. They aren’t something mother earth made, it isn’t natural for humans to be punished for traveling to a different country.

Los Viajes, The Journeys is a book I read that inspired me to write my story for the first time. A POOR Press publication.

My biggest inspiration to write my story is a  piece I read from The book Los Viajes, The Journeys From De Chalatenango, El Salvador “The Dreamer.”  Similar to his story I do realize that this country will give me more opportunities and a chance at a better life, well compared to what I could be having in a small poor village. 

I was only two years old when I came to the United States from New Zealand. At that time I had no idea what was happening or where we were going. I just knew we were suppose to be going somewhere that will change our lives for the best.

I don’t remember much of how I came here, I just knew that one day I’m in my homeland and the next I'm in a strange place that I’ve never been before.

I’ve always thought of how different my life would have been if I had stayed in New Zealand. I even asked my mom what it’s like there. She says that the water and air is so fresh and clean and that it’s surrounded by beautiful mountains and buildings that offers some excitement in the scenery.

I also asked her why we had to come here if it was such a wonderful place, and she says because we were deeply struggling out there. My father had a problem and it impacted the way that I grew up because it made things not only difficult for me but my family as well.

I didn’t have the best childhood growing up and there are things that happened that still stick with me today, and this so called magical place that we had to come to to change our lives only made a small difference. Things are different but we are still struggling.

In a book I read, Los Viajes The Journeys by Poor Press it explains the story of a man named Solo Limu. A samoan man who came to the U.S. to help his uncle with his church. He talks about how back at home kids treat their elders with respect and show eldership while out here kids could care less about how they treat their elders. My mom says it’s something that all pacific islanders are taught to do; show eldership.

To this day I miss my homeland very much, but the struggles from my past help me to strive for a better future and make me stronger. My inspiration to do better in life is that I’ve been at rock bottom and I don’t want to be there ever again because the only way to go from there is up.

When You Gang Bang You Will Learn How Not To Show Your Emotions, So Will You Suffer Inside, Mentally.

Editor's Note: Min. King William E. Brown 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.

When you gang bang you will learn to keep your emotions in check. You will learn to keep your emotions in check because the weak will always be preyed on.

When you gang bang you can't cry in front of other people because you will be looked at as a punk, or coward. You will be looked at as a sissy, or and a little girl.

People are made to be emotional about all sorts of things in life, but when you gang bang you have to keep your emotions in check because if you don't it is a fact that you will be treated with less respect and honor by those who gang bang.

When you gang bang you are suppose to be strong and hard. If you were to cry every time something or someone your feelings, you would be treated like a weak person.

When you learn to keep your emotions in check you are teaching yourself to suffer eternally.

When you learn to keep your emotions and tears in check, you will still possess your emotions, but you will suffer and deal with them in a different way. You may take it out on others who are closest to you. You may take it out on yourself in private. Either of these ways are the wrong way to deal with your emotions.

When you gang bang you go through so much trauma, drama, and grief, but because of your lack of emotions outward, you will go through more inward, emotional mental pain.

Pain is pain, no matter who you are, we all suffer and experience pain.

Most gang bangers have so much pain and mental grief inside that they grow up angrier, and more dangerous than the average person.

If you don't wish to grow up and go through more mental anguish, and emotional pain than normal people experience, you shouldn't gang bang because when you gang bang you will have to keep your emotions deep inside at all times and when you do this to yourself, you will put yourself through more suffering than you could ever imagine possible.

If you don't wish to suffer mentally anymore than a average person suffers in a life time than you shouldn't gang bang.

Editors Note: Dr.Voodoo 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.

Young folks I'm speaking from the belly of the beast. I've done 14 years in solitary confinement hell and isolation, not only ostracize from the general population (G.P.) of prisoners behind enemy lines but

I'm ostracize from society itself and all my grassroots writings is under the watch eyes of the boogey man agents. The boogey man system of capitalistic greed and imperialism is real, and we the people's on the bottom of this well organize criminal pyramid structure system must know and understand we are dealing with a monster I call “ Boogey man.

People's power and power to the people is a reality we must create or we out, because no matter what color u are almost everybody selling their souls for a jelly roll to survive. For example, you have so called slave negroes enforcing the racist laws of the racist system to warehouse and black men and the poor population, check out that fool slave negro Clarence uncle Tom Tomas who now sit on the United Snakes Supreme Court, that negro slave ain't my brother and no good to the struggling poor masses.

I'm an Afrikan soul brother and I don't care what color you are. It's what you stand for that makes us kinfolks to give power to the people's draconian bias racist laws is pass every year to warehouse the poor population, and the one's who's enforcing these bias laws have a green light to kill us or incarcerate us with impunity because its the poor on the bottom that's being gun down and terrorized by these agent criminal thugs of all colors.

The pigs and the court system are hired guns to enforce the boogey man rule to keep us in check to start a revolution.

The boogey man system doesn't care if your black, white, Asian, Latin, radical, green peace activists, etc. because these agents will kill you or put you behind bars if one continues to go against the grain, and they believe me they do not care if your young or old.

Read the book Agents of Oppression, that terrorist J Edgar Hoover spied and used co-intelpro “counter intelligence program as a tool to crush the grass roots liberation struggles of the 60's and what that boogey man created under co-intelpro is still being used today to spy on you young folks because you are all grassroots conscious.

Yes this boogey man is spying on you all now as we write and speak to each other, and please don't get it twisted, this beast boogey man is watching you all and got you under the gun now.

Truth be told we the masses on the bottom have nothing to lose anyway but our chains, and you wouldn't believe how evil these draconian courts is prosecuting the poor population and California is the worst in the nation. Capitalism and greed is like Dracula. It's designed to suck the blood and drain the resources out of everything, this boogey man monster systems use and buy other countries and peoples like slaves, so its hard to fight this beast, but we have no choice but to organize, unify, struggle, and fight a good fight.

I'll rather stand and fight with the peoples and die before I side up with this boogey man: young folks don't sell your soul for a jellyroll because it's a good feeling when you know your on the side of the righteous and your heart will be at peace. I've been down for 22 years and my heart at peace because I'm writing to inspire your spirit to struggle and bring into existence people's power to determinate our own destiny, peace, harmony, unity, love, balance, and mathematics.

10 in SF in Need of an Asswhipping

by Tony Robles

Many people are getting whipped and beaten down in the city of St. Francis.  It is feeling more like the city of “Ain't Francis”.  Everywhere you look, there is the word change—as in a “changing city”, or a "neighborhood undergoing change".  The city is changing, the neighborhoods are changing; those words rolling off the tongue, whose tone suggests that change happens through osmosis.  Those of us who feel the changes the most—service workers, artists, seniors, working class youth, etc.--know otherwise.  Regular folks are getting beaten down by landlords, real estate agents, property managers, law enforcement and any number of bureaucratic apparatuses.  But the folks taking the beating, the ones not invited to the tech/real estate orgy, the one's who subsidize the wealthy—live in a state of fear; of evictions, of losing employment, their minds, etc.  That being said, I have compiled a list of those who I feel are in desperate need of and are overdue for an asswhipping.  The list, by no means, is a complete list, but it is a list nonetheless, of those most deserving souls who have done much, in the name of greed and insidiousness, to make life difficult for the rest of us.

1.   Airbnb—The pimps at this corporation continue to pimp out the city's housing stock while ignoring city ordinances and laws.  The boys from Cleveland have thumbed their noses at the city, refusing to disclose information on who uses their platform to offer short term rentals.  This business model has taken precious housing stock off the rental market and caused evictions. Airbnb shamelessly pimped the pride parade, taking out full page ads, urging people to rent their rooms/homes with pride. However, the vast majority of people are not registering—as mandated by the short term rental law passed last year—which is a violation of that law.  And Airbnb has taken to the billboards, asserting that they have paid millions to the city in taxes and that they allow people the means to make ends meet to remain in San Francisco.   Pimping at its most shameless.  And since City Hall appears to be the crown jewel of this ubiquitous pimpdom, I anticipate its listing on Airbnb, complete with rooms such as the Conway Suite, just a few feet away from the RonCon Rotunda, the Breed Suite (for dogs and cats) and the mustache massage area for those who want to get the kinks out (or freak on). The owners of this outfit deserve an asswhipping, along with their followers and minnions who misuse and misrepresent the word sharing.

2.   Daniel Bornstein—Landlord attorney from hell and Anton Lavey look alike.  I spotted him at the couthouse on McAllister, pacing the halls, whistling that tune, “We're in the money”. After taking that in, I surmised that Anton Lavey probably wasn't that bad.

3.   The company responsible for “The Hottest Tech Talent” billboards—It's bad enough to see them in the flesh, walking around, oblivious, stuffing their faces with bacon wrapped in hot dogs in the Mission and stocking up on artisan toilet paper but must we see their hairy, scrawny, non-descript bodies on billboards as well?  These folks are begging for an asswhipping.

 4.  SF Board of Supervisors who voted against the Mission Housing Moratorium—A mass of community folks from the Mission and beyond came before the board to testify to the need to halt or pause market rate development that is turning the Mission into a hipster outpost where murals are painted over in various shades of white.  Youth and people who don't often make it to City Hall came out in numbers, pouring their hearts out eloquently and passionately about their community and how it is being destroyed by rich people housing.  Perhaps due to wax build up in the ear canal, some supervisors didn't hear the voices and voted it down.  The message: Let them eat tortillas at Camp Campos.  If ever an asswhipping was in order...

5.   Anna Kihagi Swain—Landlord/Speculator who has harassed tenants in her buildings by      withholding mail, cable servies and making the most outrageous and fatuous claims about her tenants—such as accusing a elder tenant of selling drugs door to door.  A special foot in the ass for this saint.

6.  Real Estate companies who change names of neighborhoods as if they were changing a pair of socks or underwear.

7.   Those tight assed MF's walking around with beards and bow ties (With names like Dylan and Zach...or Zack)

8.   Annlia Paganini-Hill—This landlord used the Ellis Act to evict tenants from her Lombard Street Building.  One tenant, Elaine Turner, 88, a resident of more than 3 decades in her North Beach unit, died due to health complications brought on by the stress of the eviction. Hill is proceeding with the eviction of her two remaining tenants, who are resisting and fighting the battle in the courts.  Ironically, Paganini-Hill is a researcher with UC Irvine's 90+ Study, a study funded by the National Institute on Aging on Alzheimers with the focus on promoting “Quality and Quantity of life”.  How is evicting an 88 year old senior from her long time home showing concern for quality or quantity of life?

9.  Uber and Lyft—Airbnb on wheels, pimpin your ride as well as your hide.

10.  SF Barf—An asswhipping for trying to convince us that more market rate housing is thesolution to the affordability crisis and for also trying to convince us that they are a legitimate organization.  Who gave them a speaking part?    

19) There is a “blue light” in every computer screen that is manufactured for consumers that has been proven to cause early cataracts ( eye diseases) and reduced vision in children as young as 6 years old as well as insomnia, breast and ovarian cancer and depression
 
There is a way of taking off the blue light or reducing the blue light and yet it is never spoken about except to other rich people. ( research by Dr. William Harrison, a renowned optometrist in Laguna Beach, Calif.,said he doubts the corporations will ever reduce the “blue light” because then the corporations will have to admit they were harming us and then they will have to deal with lawsuits- i learned about this because my partner, a security guard at a rich people hotel snuck us into a rich people only health tips workshop)

20) Most poor people ( which we Po folks already know) are some of the hardest working, humble, big-hearted and generous people and may not have alot of the fake paper dollars created by the same rich people who stay rich but have more wealth in their hearts and souls and minds than any rich people ever did.

As someone who once lived in substandard constructed Section-8 project-based housing in Berkeley, California for six years, I can assure you that all so-called ‘affordable housing’ built and/or refurbished with HUD (U.S. Government Housing for Urban Development) funding for low-income communities was built with many corners being cut in order to meet the limited financial budget of the HUD funding building subsidy. This is true of the ‘Library Gardens’ apartment complex in Berkeley which was actually built in 2003, where 12 years later on June 16, 2015, thirteen J-1 Visa summer work program young adults from Ireland would tragically fall, six of them to their untimely deaths and seven of them seriously injured, from a faulty balcony. It collapsed as a result of substandard low-budget HUD funded faulty construction.

What the mainstream media is failing to tell everyone is that the Library Gardens apartment complex in Berkeley was first built in 2003, not in 2006.  How do I know this?  Well…  In 2003, I was a full-time student attending Vista Community College, which today is known as Berkeley City College, working on my Associate’s Degree in Multimedia Digital Imaging. There were many other students in my class like myself who were low-income and during this time, several of them were trying to get into affordable housing at Library Gardens as during this time, Library Gardens was being built to be project-based low-income affordable housing, not market rate housing.  

This part of Library Garden’s initial history to how it was built and funded has been intentionally kept out of the mainstream media, away from the public ear, therefore the truth has not been told about its history of when it was built.  Mysteriously, sometime between 2004 and 2006, Library Gardens silently changed hands of ownership without any public input nor notification of any sort after it had sat dormant for a couple of years until a new owner quietly acquired it.  Almost immediately, this new owner would rent to primarily market rate paying tenants and students only.

However, Library Gardens had been initially ‘quickly’ built with a HUD funded cheap, substandard construction materials with many ‘short-cuts’ made in the overall construction work to stay within its tight budget, including a low-bid construction contract with Segue Construction who has a track record for faulty construction practices, which in turn would later render multiple problems with Library Gardens, as it was initially built for low-income communities. It’s obvious that the City of Berkeley in its entirety had intentionally turned the other way on this issue, failing to research Segue Construction’s bad history of multiple problems with their construction of balconies at other properties, but then again…this apartment complex (Library Gardens) was being built for poor communities, right?

Unfortunately in 2006, after Library Gardens was bought by an out-of-state real estate developer with offices based out of both Delaware and New Jersey, calling themselves Library Gardens LLC Delaware and Library Gardens International and California (I am unable to now find their contact information online since the balcony collapse incident), with the property being managed by Texas based Greystar Real Estate Management, who specializes in renting properties at top dollar to starving students in college towns across the United States, nearly all of the rental units turned into market rate units.  Eventually, Library Gardens rental prices skyrocketed with a two-bedroom/1-bath costing $3,600.00 a month for 719 sq. ft. which forced many struggling young college students, including visiting J-1 visa international students to bunk up in these cramped over-priced apartments in large numbers due to the extremely high rent.

Since 2006, there has been minimal construction maintenance work and inspection done on the Library Gardens property although there were multiple complaints about structural problems from the tenants over the years with no inspections made on the balconies. The balconies were cheaply made with substandard construction and building materials, including the lack of waterproofing the structure around the balcony areas of the apartment complex.  

In all truth, this unfortunate tragedy could have been avoided by all means.  And, the fact that the property was virtually ‘flipped’ to become a ‘for profit’ apartment complex after remaining dormant for 1-2 years was intentional so that it would no longer be mandated to remain primarily low-income affordable housing, instead turned for profit despite the low-budget construction which would result to the balcony collapse tragedy for these young Irish J-1 visa students who most likely come from working-class families.  

And on top of that, I can only imagine that nobody has really stepped out to ensure that those young adults from Ireland who came to the U.S. on J-1 visas affected by this horrible and preventable tragic incident were informed about the ‘HealthPAC’ Medi-CAL program in Alameda County (Berkeley is in Alameda County), which is a low-cost/free State run medical insurance program made specifically for immigrants/undocumented immigrants in the United States. This could surely help those injured and their families who have been adversely affected by this tragedy to avoid being faced with astronomical medical bills for being a victim of some big real estate conglomerate’s excessive greed and neglectful practice.

Yet, let’s not forget that this apartment complex ‘Library Gardens’ was originally built for low-income communities, which only tells me as someone who once resided for six years in an apartment complex in Berkeley that also had multiple structural problems due to HUD budget cutting limitations, that our lives don’t matter as these contractual privatized real estate developers don’t truly care about our overall well-being. Instead they are only out to grab government subsidized funding from HUD to build their property development for ‘cheap’ just to later, ‘flip’ the property for a huge profit after getting rid of the low-income tenants through a ‘new owner’ along with new bogus rental contracts that include discriminatory policies intentionally designed to disqualify us.  However, in the case of Library Gardens, this horrible balcony collapsing incident has truly shed light upon the frivolous and wrongful practices in which big money real estate developers are partaking in, their lies in disguise and how we in the end pay the ‘price’.

                                                         THANKS

Image: The Mississippi state flag, complete with symbol of terror

Dylann Roof is not the first ameriklan that rolls with this kind of hateful belief towards blacks. The terrorizing of Black people by whites is deeply rooted into this country. The slap in the face regarding this situation was how society sat in awe as if this was the first time that a white man in amerikkka had committed an act of terrorism, the part that has me in awe is that no one really looks at the war against blacks and other peoples of color as an act of terrorism. Matter of fact particularly in amerikkka, the slaughter of the black man and woman was advertised in newspapers and celebrated in the form of picnics aka "pick a nigger" and certain body parts were cut off and kept as souvenirs, some even were sent to political figures as gifts. In this country "nigger barbeques" was a  spectacular event one dared not miss! The act of terrorism disguised as festivities, imagine that!

It was a way of life- the declaration of genocide upon the "savage" Natives and the Black "beasts" all in the name of so-called pure white savagery, posing as missionaries. Not only was this an act of terrorism, but another failed attempt by the wicked ones to crush our spirits by infiltrating and crossing the threshold into "God and Mother Nature's sacred spaces", and boastfully taunting "where is your God now?!?" After the terrorist act in South Carolina, it is safe to say that the same old tactics are still being used.

It is not possible for a nation to fully and truly move on from the travesties of the past without healing and retribution. How can we say that Amerikkka has improved far as her attitude towards the stolen Africans that were brought here by force when our people, still in 2015 are being subjected to the same practices of discrimination and murder?

You cannot force the sons and daughters of the confederacy to love Black people or anyone else for that matter by taking away their flags. Racist and hurtful as it is nonetheless the confederate flag is a part of a bloody history that should not be swept under the rug as if this part of history never existed. To do so means that the legacies of the masses of people who lost their lives "in the name" of the confederate flag would also be forgotten.

DYLANN ROOF'S TIRADE AND DISUNIFICATION
Roof's tirade of how he is tired of blacks committing crimes against whites that goes unpunished sounds like the same, weak excuse that klansmen have always used to justify the lynchings/murders of Black people- the typical platform of the oppressed white man. Complaining and blaming others for his own inaccuracies, that INFERIOR way of thinking has cost a whole nation its true existence and made the ameriklan look like a hero.

More disunity? There are Black people who are beautiful, humble, forgiving souls despite the hell they continue to catch on a daily, and there are black folks who are beautiful, enraged and unyielding and ready to "go there". Disagreement seems to always be the stubborn barrier that keeps us divided therefore we take our eyes off the prize of who and what the agenda is because we are too busy at each other's throats thus stagnating our own struggle but will accept an outsider to come up with solutions for us.

When an amerikkklan opens fire on a group of humble churchgoers, why isn't that considered as an act of terrorism?
 POOR MAGAZINE'S Tiny says it best that this amerikkkan terrorist is "a perfect candidate for guantanamo bay" Was Senior pastor/Senator Clementa Pinckney's work and accomplishments  a threat to the Amerikkklan way and the whole thing was a set-up from the gate?
The movie "Ghosts of Mississippi" was playing on my television while I sat in a daze with tears flowing trying to understand why are we still going through the same hells of yesterday? Why are we still being terrorized by dullusional racist whytes who for some reason feel as if we are inferior gun-toting, 8ball drinking slavemassa-worshipping beast with a lesser value of life? And the real terror is that the laws of the land is designed to ensure that Blacks and other people's of color and indigenous backgrounds. But no one has ever heard of an amerikkkan terrorist, at least no one will admit it.