Wait!  Since the late 80’s I’ve been protesting, advocating etc on police brutality against people with disabilities however today is totally different.  I am use  to reading and advocating for Black/Brown adults with disabilities but today our Black/Brown youth with disabilities are the growing cases of state violence in schools, on the streets, in group homes, locked up in jail, mental health facilities and even in their on homes when the police are called to "help" but a lot of times end of dead or abuse.  

In the 80's and 90's I've volunteered and worked in non-profits of people with disabilities and worked in recreation, summer camps, after school programs to I.E.P. to respite to big brother programs but in this climate of state violence isn't it time for new disabled youth/young adults programs that helps all disabled youth not only avoid state violence but to bring healing, a voice, advocacy and artistic avenues to young disabled victims of state violence?  In 2000 I wrote the article, The Blood Of Disabled Youth and poem Buried Voices (below) speaking about the abuse and killings of/on disabled youth.  Now it is 2017!

Has there been studies, cultural work, activism on state violence toward youth with disabilities especially poor/Black/Brown youth with disabilities by youth themselves?  Are our movements, cultural work and activism from police brutality to the school to prison pipeline to police in schools to institutionalize living leaving out disabled youth??

Everybody changes when they have kids or are around kids however it seems like our disability community has done very little when it comes to state violence against youth with disabilities not only activism but providing programs after the targedy.  Is it time to update what the disability non-profit industry provide to our youth?  Is it time to really challenge youth programs in general on this topic?  

One thing is clear and that is state abuse haven't stopped matter-of-fact it has only increase in the last five to ten years especially police brutality and abuse at schools...

Remember in late 2016, when there was an spike of cases of brutality cases against Black/Brown youth and young adults with disabilities from police and school resource officers.  Headlines like these are increasing daily even now in 2017!

1. Autistic teen gets beat up by cops in the Bronx Troy Canael

2. Mom Regrets Calling 9-1-1 for Help After Police Showed Up and Tasseled Her Nonverbal Autistic Son. Miguel  Torruella

3.  Autism Is Not A Crime’: Transit Police Beat St. Paul Teen During Arrest

Marcus Abrams

4. 11-Year-Old Autistic Student Charged with Felony Assault Kayleb Moon-Robinson

5.  A ten year old autistic Black girl was pin to the ground and handcuffed by school police for climbing a tree.

6.  Black teenager autistic girl tased at a Hip-Hop concert while having a grand male seizure.

These are only a small view of the bigger picture of police brutality that has been on the backs of Black/Brown youth with disabilities with very little or no reaction from mainstream movements, media etc..  

So where are the services, cultural expression, activism, support and media for the above disabled youth who were victims of police brutality?

With the increase of not only the act of state violence but policies that target youth who are poor and of color that leads to abuse by the state on the streets and in lock down facilities, the time is over due to really change or increase radical youth programs that deals with state violence by and for disabled youth and young adults especially Black/Brown/Poor disabled youth and young adults.

 Sadly my 2000  poem, Buried Voices is still relavent today in 2017 burt I ask like I did almost seventeen years ago, “is anyboddy listening, does anybody care?”

Buried Voices

The next generation

Is being plucked off one by one

On the streets, in schools and in prison

Little ones snuggled

In small coffins

Buried voices have many stories

Voices from down under

Crying for their mothers and fathers

Had a lot to say but no one bother to listen

Buried voices speaking in harmony

Tossing and turning in the grave

They want their justice

Hunting the soulless

Young spirits creeping in the minds of the old and wary

Their hit list is endless

Years of abuse

Caught up in the system

And can't get loose

Black, young and disabled

Always been labeled

Home was not stable

Elders set in their ways

They want to lock us away

Can't teach old dogs new tricks

Christopher, Seth and Dion

Blacks disabled boys can't grow up to be Black disabled men

I'm one of the chosen few

Buried in mainstream news

Buried in the community

Can't breath, can't hear, can't see

Layer after layer

Ism after ism

Wrapped up like a mummy

Buried voices are singing in the cemetery

No rest for the restless

They are voicing their short and painful history

Buried voices rising with the sun

Young disabled corps walking the earth

Talking back and heading north

Now everybody is scared

Running in fear

Cause judgment day is here

Parents, teachers and politicians

Listen to the voices

They demand your attention

Buried voices

Are always with me

They are in my head guiding my pen

I write with the blood of disabled youth

I'm their agent

Writing and speaking their messages

And they told me to tell you

Many are still in pain

Bullets and fists falling down on them like pouring rain

Poems can't bring them back from the dead

Do you hear that, buried voices want me to speak the raw truth

This poem wants you to think with your heart first then your head

The truth hurts

But it also heals

We need to get real

But I feel the tension

Every time I mention the reason

Why I wrote Buried Voices

(This article, Blood of Disabled Youth, was published in 2000 under Poor Magazine)

What the hell is going on? Can you answer me? First, it was disabled adults of color. Now, disabled youth of color are under attack in schools and on the streets. Do you hear that? Disabled youth are yelling and crying for help and attention. Are we going to go on like everything is o.k.? Well I'm here to tell you everything is not O.K. The next generation of disabled leaders won't be if we continue our silence on the street violence and abuse that has been a reality to many.

In November of this year (2000) I came across three cases in San Francisco mainstream newspapers dealing with street violence, rape and physical abuse of disabled youth. All three cases have similarities and differences. All three appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the victims were all disabled youth of color and all three victims were overpowered by more than one person or an elder.

The first case was the long-,awaited court case and verdict of a 1995 beating and stomping attack of Seth Woods, an African American, mentally disabled young adult. Seth Woods was attacked by five Samoan youths while walking home. After five years of waiting, the Woods family received their justice. On November 9th a San Francisco jury returned verdicts of second-degree murder, torture and sodomy.

The second case is recent and very heartbreaking. A twelve-year-old African American girl with learning disabilities was sexually assaulted at two different schools in Berkeley, CA. The first assault involved nine classmates and took place after school on October 25th. According to the news reports, a pack of nine boys allegedly dragged the girl to 11 different locations, sexually assaulting her for more than four hours. Then, on Nov. 8th, her second day at a new school in Berkeley, a 13-year-old lured the girl to a secluded area on the school campus and raped her.

I came across the most recent case when I confronted a headline at breakfast screaming "Police Probe, S.F. Boys Claim Teacher Threw a Yardstick at Him." At that moment I dropped my spoon in my oatmeal and screamed, "What in the hell?" The article said that a sixth-grade special education teacher threw a yardstick at a 9-year-old special education student. The stick hit the boy's face and caused scratches under his right eye and on his nose. Now the teacher is placed on leave, pending an investigation by the district.

The above cases are only recent cases, but this is not a new trend. In 1988 Tony G., a 13-year-old Samoan boy with Down Syndrome, was walking home with his favorite toy, a toy gun. A San Francisco police officer thought the gun was real, so he shot and killed him.

These cases are not only in California. The unbearable story of Marcus Hogg of Texas made me cry. In June of this year Hogg, an African American disabled teenager was approached by two white teens who proceeded to tie his hands behind his chair and his legs to the legs of the chair. Then the two teens placed a noose around his neck and joked about throwing the rope over the rail to hang him. Like my articles on the abuse and brutality toward disabled adults of color, the above issue has been hush-hush in the disabled communities and communities of color.

So what is the answer to the violence and brutality towards disabled, especially those of color? I have been hearing that disabled youth should not be mainstreamed with their non-disabled peers. Parents and people with disabilities fought for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and other special education laws that promote and support the rights of parents and disabled youth to receive a free appropriated education along side their non-disabled peers. We have been fighting too long to return to "separate but equal," to be locked away in institutions.

What we need in both public and private schools is formal collaborations with grassroots organizations that have the skills and experience to advocate and educate the student body and the administration.

Teachers, students, school administrators and principals can all benefit from hands-on workshops, awareness trainings and classes on disability rights, history, culture, self-esteem building, role play etc. from organizations like The Race, Poverty and Media Justice Institute that are led by disability scholars who have experienced these situations first-hand.

The issue of a lack of hands-on training is a common factor across the board, from police to teachers, on how to deal with people, students and youth offenders with disabilities. We need to look further than just training and call it like it is, abuse, murder! We can't afford to lose one more disabled youth.

RoofLESS Radio in West Oakland talking to the houseless people the REAL revolutionary the ones braving it out in the hard cold of the streets. Take in some of their knowledge and watch the RoofLESS Radio.

With photo and video journalism from ‘Washington Rise with Standing Rock’ in Olympia, WA 

Earth-Feather Sovereign and her five year-old daughter Rainbow visited my home on March 6, 2017, so I could learn more about Earth-Feather’s life’s work, and about the Washington Rise with Standing Rock event in Olympia, organized by the LOK CHANTE Legal Fund.  Rainbow played with toys while her mom and I had this conversation (transcribed below).  The talk is followed by photos and video clips of the Washington Rise with Standing Rock gathering that took place Saturday, March 11, 2017.  There are links with some of the photos to learn more about Water Protecting and Indigenous Resistance happening in Washington State.

Earth-Feather Sovereign smiles walking through a mall parking lot, while holding a yellow hand-painted sign that says, “THE DRUMS BEAT FOR MOTHER EARTH.”  She is participating in a march, and her sister Morningstar is just behind her, with other community members behind them.  In the distance a sign is held up that says “soil, not oil.”

Earth-Feather:  My name is Earth-Feather Sovereign. I’m a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes here in Washington State. Traditionally when Native people introduce ourselves, we usually introduce our parents. My father is Ernest Clark, he was a former Councilman for our Tribe.  My Mother is Deanna Marcellay, she passed away a couple years ago. I am also a descendant of Chiefs and Matriarchs. The Colville Tribe is made up of thirteen Bands, and of those Bands, I am a member of the Okanogan Band, the Sanpoil Band and Nespelem Band.  Originally the Nespelem and the Sanpoil Band were part of the Okanogan Band of the Northern and Southern regions. I say Northern and Southern regions because when the government divided the United States and Canada, they put their border between our People.  So, on my Mother’s side, I’m a descendant of Chief Antoine, he’s one of the last Chiefs of our tribe.  On my paternal side, I’m a descendant of Chief James and Chief Nespelem.  Nespelem George, his Mother was one of the last Matriarchs.  Because our Tribe, we were Matriarchal before the Europeans came, we really didn’t have Chiefs, we had Spokes Peoples, Spokesmen.  But when the Europeans came they just pretty much considered them (the men) chiefs and leaders of our People when it was actually the Women who led.

When some people think of Matriarchs they get it confused with patriarchal power.  Matriarchs are like Mother clans.  They think of the best interest of their People, with Love and Compassion, not power.  One of the last Matriarchs of our people was Que-Petsa, and she also helped to advocate between our People with some of the first settlers who came through, Lewis & Clark.  So, in saying all that, that history that I have, it’s always been my passion to advocate for the best interest of my People.

Lisa:  What’s your history with activism, and is that a word you are comfortable with?  May I call you an activist?  (in conversation after this interview, Earth-Feather identified as an Awakener, see video clip #4)  

Earth-Feather:  When I think of activism, I think of Love in Action. Because I love my Indigenous People, I love all People, all People of all the four colors.  Cuz, you know, we all have Indigenous roots somewhere.  Even the Europeans have Indigenous roots, where they used to be able to use their plants and their medicines and be close to Mother Earth.  One of the things my mom told me is that “Love is work in action.”  I grew up with my Mother.  She was a single Mother with just me and my sister, Morningstar.  When I think of starting my story I usually start with my Mother’s story or even her Mother’s Mother’s story.  

My Mother, she grew up in a dysfunctional home with drugs and alcohol, and domestic violence.  She had fourteen brothers and sisters. She spent ten years at the Tribal boarding school, where she was raised by Catholic nuns and priests.  And she endured abuse while attending the boarding school. That is some of the reason why our people are struggling today. Because a lot of our people grew up in the boarding schools. They learned a lot of toxic behaviors, and they didn’t have their parents around to teach them our traditional ways of how a family should be.  So, they took some of those behaviors of being physically abused and being sexually abused, and they either brought that home and became perpetrators themselves or ended up in relationships where there was abuse because it felt normal for them. My mom, after boarding school, she was able to go to New Mexico, where she went to art school. That was during her high school years. And then when she came back home, she met a young man and she became pregnant at a young age of 18 and she had a son. His name was Sean. She was a young Mother and was struggling to make ends meet. Unfortunately, he only lived to be five years old. He was hit by a car. That was really hard for my Mom. She didn’t really know how to be a Mother, because her biological Mother passed away when she was like, two.  And her stepmother wasn’t really a Mother to her. And then part of her life was in the boarding school, so, she didn’t really know how to be a Mother. She said to me that she didn’t know what real Love was until she had me and my Sister.

A photo taken of a newspaper with 2 photos of Native Women and children, on the lower left is Lucy George, wife of Chief Nespelem George and the photo dates to the 1930s.  The photo above on the right has a caption that reads “Deanna M Clark, an opponent of the mining agreement, with her children MorningStar, 5, left and Earth-Feather, 2, in front of their home.  The words “COLVILLE DEAL” top the newsprint.

Around the time my Mom was grieving over the death of her son, she decided to go back to school. She went to Evergreen, to get her BA in Native American studies. And she learned about the American Indian Movement. So her and her sister decided to go that way. I would say this was maybe 1975. And my Mom, she met Leonard Crowdog. And my Mom wanted to vision quest, because she felt pretty lost. She heard that people were going up in the mountain and getting ready to sundance, and preparing for other ceremonies. So, she decided to go up on the mountain. She decided to go for four days and four nights. Leonard said that usually only the men would go four days and four nights.

Usually the Women only went up for one day and one night. But my Mom, she had a desire to be up there as long as the men. Every day Leonard would see her, or bring her down from the mountain. She’d be in a sweat lodge and he would ask her, “Well, what did you see?” And my Mom said that she seen a lot of Mother Earth’s creatures, the insects, the animals. She seen the deer, she said she seen a male and female cougar. She said she seen eagles, that would always come to visit her. I think it was towards her 3rd or 4th night, there was a thunderstorm.  The thunder beings were coming to visit her. It rained, it thundered. And my Mom said she seen a vision in the clouds. Then, when Leonard came to see her, he was grateful that she was still standing strong. He said a lot of the men, they got chased down that mountain, from a warrior spirit. (Laughter)

My Mom managed to stay up there!  She said she didn’t see the warrior spirit, but she seen the thunder beings. Before that, Leonard said there used to be a heaviness in that area. Cuz that area was closeby to where they had Wounded Knee. So there was a heaviness. A sadness. He said after she was up there like that, and the thunder beings came, Leonard said it was like there was a Lightness.  To everything.  Like, her being up there helped Heal the place.  My Mom said that while she was up there that she prayed to have more children, and she prayed to the morningstar because she felt good every morning when she’d see the morningstar.  That’s why my sister, her name is Morningstar.  She remembers how close she felt to the Mother Earth, and that’s why my name is Earth.  That represents the Mother Earth, and Feather that represents the eagle.  We call Mother Earth our mother because she takes care of us like a Mother would.  She provides the food for us.  Even the animals, they eat the plants she provides, and we eat the animals.  You know?  She has the water through her veins, and we drink the water.  And most of our body is made of water. Even when we’re inside our own mothers, we are surrounded by a water substance.  

And so when we come into this world, it’s the Mother Earth that takes care of us, with our own Mothers. My Mom said she named me after the eagle, and the eagle is significant to our people because they bring our prayers up to the creator. And so that’s why when we have our ceremonies, we use the eagle feathers when we smudge. Cuz even when we Smudge, we Pray. My Mom says the eagle is really significant too because it flies the highest and sees the farthest of all the birds. So, I think that’s really neat.

Shortly after my Mom’s vision quest, she went from jumping into a sweat to going into a peyote ceremony, then going into a sundance.  So she was really spiritually strong around that time.  During her sundance is where she met Russell Means, and I’d say about maybe 12 months later, my sister was born. (laughter). My mom was with him during the AIM (American Indian Movement) trials. There was a lot going on back then. I believe that some things come full circle, sometimes we have to relive things to help us learn something we didn’t learn before. Like with the Sacred Stone camp, everything was beautiful at the beginning. Everybody seemed united. But towards the end, there was a lot of rumors going around, a lot of distrust. And, even, they were saying that the government was trying to come into the camp and look for bodies. That was scary, that reminded me of AIM with Anna Mae, and all of the distrust. So, my Mom, she had to get away from that. Her Baby was more important than dealing with all that. My Mom, she wanted a different life, you know, for her Daughter.

Lisa:  How much older is Morningstar than you?

Earth-Feather:  She’s 2 ½ years older. And so, when Morningstar was a baby, my mom met my father. My father was the youngest man on Tribal Council. They got married, and they had me. Their relationship didn’t last that long. I think it takes a really strong man to be compatible with a really strong Woman. (laughter) My Mom had too much strength for the both of them. (laughter).  But my Mom would tell me stories about Our People. My Great Grandma Christine, she lived to be 104, and she passed away when I was 14. We went to visit her quite a bit. I went from living on my reservation til i was almost four, then we moved to Portland, OR, then we came up to Olympia. So I was able to go to school at WaHeLut (Indian School) when I was an elementary school student. Then we went back to my reservation, even spent some time in Yakama. Then back down to Portland. Then to Spokane. I even travelled down to California and Arizona. And now I’m back up here to Olympia. When we lived in Portland my mom was part of the Big Mountain movement with, I believe it was the Hopi Tribe. They were trying to mine their sacred Mountain. So, my Mom, she would always bring us to meetings about that. When she went to a rally or a march, she usually kept us home, then we would see it on the news. But then when my Mom would go speak with senators, she would bring me along. I was my Mom’s baby.  I shadowed her everywhere. I was able to see her in action. See how she talked with people.  

Lisa:  I’m really liking learning about you, learning about your mom, she sounds amazing! I want to learn more about the Big Mountain resistance, I don’t know anything about that. (Read about the history of Big Mountain/Black Mesa and Peabody Coal here http://www.aics.org/BM/bm.html)

So, thank you!  So, what brought you back to Olympia? Is your mom and sister around?

Earth-Feather:  My sister is around.  My Mom, in about 2010, she developed breast cancer.  She was in remission, and when she was in remission I spent time in Arizona.  Then I came back, and cancer came back, in her blood.  And then in her bones.  So, she passed away in 2015.  We buried her back on our reservation.

Lisa:  Where is the Reservation?

Earth-Feather:  Colville Reservation.  It’s like the middle, Northeastern part of Washington state.  It’s the second biggest Tribe in Washington state.  The largest Tribe is Yakama Nation.  

Lisa:  Thank you for sharing all this with me.  I’m learning so much!  And you are pointing me in directions to learn more about the history of where I live.  So, thank you.

Earth-Feather:  Yeah, Washington state, it has 29 federally recognized Tribes and about 32, so about 3 of them, they are not recognized. They were either never recognized, like the Duwamish, or they lost their federal recognition. WE recognize them, just the government doesn’t want to recognize them. Our Tribe was one of the Tribes who almost lost their federal recognition. The government offered to pay us a lot of money if we would fully assimilate.

But, my Mom, and some of her friends, that I still look up to today, like Yvonne Swan-Wanrow, along with a few other strong Women, they were telling our people, NO - we can’t give up our sovereignty. And around that time too, they were trying to mine. When I was younger they were trying to mine on our land. I think the mount was called Mount Tolman, my mom tried to spearhead that with our Tribe to help educate others. The funniest thing is, my dad, he was on Tribal Council, and he was FOR mining. And my mom was against it. She campaigned against him. (laughter)

Lisa:  Wow. Your mom’s awesome.

Earth-Feather:  That shows how much she was AGAINST mining and FOR our People.  Now that I think back and I look at it, I mean… How can he be for mining when his own Daughter was named after the Mother Earth? Right? (laughter) I think that’s comical. (laughter)

Lisa:  And so, when did you start doing organizing?

Earth-Feather:  Well. Before my Mom passed away, she had a vision of all these programs that she wanted to start. She was on her way of beginning all these programs, that would help Heal the Women and Children. So, when she passed away, I wanted to continue my education, and pick up where she left off. And get her programs started. So, I started going back to school.  

Since I was 5 years old, I’ve wanted to be an attorney. I’m a libra and I remember my Mom told me libras make good attorneys, she sat down and explained to me what they do, and I was like, “Oh. Well I want to be an attorney!” Then I remember being 16 and sitting down with Russell Means, and he was asking me and my sister, “So what do you guys want to do with your lives?” And I told him, “well, ever since I was little I’ve wanted to be an attorney.” He was like, “an attorney?!? Oh. Well. If you were an attorney I would never hire you.” And I was like, “Oh. And why is that?” He’s like, “Attorneys are almost like the military. You go against your People.” I told him I’m not trying to go against my People. I’m trying to advocate for my People. I’m trying to HELP my People. And then, come to find out, that his Daughter who is about my age, she’s an attorney.  (laughter)  I think she heads the Lakota Law Project. So I’m hoping I had some influence there. (laughter).  

But my Mom, she moved over this way because she wanted to get her masters in Tribal governance.  Because she wanted to start all these programs.  But then she got sick and she wasn’t able to complete the program.  And so, now I’m attending college.  I’m trying to get that Tribal governance degree, and then onto law school.

Lisa:  Nice! And, you are a Mom.

Earth-Feather:  Yes.  I’m a Mom of four children.  My oldest, his name is Aztec, and he’s 17.  People say the word “Aztec” means “of the People,” or “for the People.”  I have a son, Sky, he’s 15.  His real name is Sky-Lu.  Sky-Lu (Sk’ae_L’oo) in the Okanogan language, that means “for the People.”  And my daughter Katiri, she’s 9, and she’s named after Saint Kateri, she was a(n Indigenous) healer, in the Catholic faith.  She really helped the People.  I spell my daughter’s name a little bit differently than the Saint Kateri.  Because my daughter, she’s her own saint.  

And then my youngest daughter, her name is Rainbow. And my Great Grandma, part of her medicine was the rainbow; that’s like all nature’s powers together.  So that’s my way of naming my daughter after her Great, Great Grandma.  Also, when I think of the rainbow, I’ve always heard prophecies.  And I believe that our prophecies are true, that one day, our People of four colors and of all Nations could come together and Heal.

Lisa:  That’s hopeful, I love it.

Earth-Feather: I have one child for every season. Aztec, he was born in the summer.  Sky was born in the fall. Kateri was born in the spring and then, my Rainbow was born in the winter.  

Some people too, they wonder about my last name. Because my last name is not my father’s name, and I’m not married. Recently, I became divorced, August of last year. I’ve learned that I can change my last name, on my documents, on the court documents. And so, I made up my own last name. Sovereign. I wrote an article about it, and Last Real Indians, they published it.  (Please read that article at http://lastrealindians.com/whats-in-a-last-name-by-earth-feather-sovereign/)   

Back during the Idle No More movement, my Mom was still here, we were still talking about the programs that we wanted to start. We thought that we should start one of the programs of getting our Indigenous Women together. And from there we would be able to help bring awareness of all the things that are going on with our people. It came to mind to start a group called the Indigenous Women’s Warrior Society. I started this group because, being Women, I believe that we are at the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak. But by being at the bottom, we are able to uplift others. And because our Women, statistically 2 out of 3 Indigenous Women are victims of sexual assault. That could be my mother, my sister, my daughter. And those are only the reported cases. Our Women who know they were sexually assaulted. I was sexually active at a young age. People would consider that maybe I was promiscuous, when in reality, I was being raped. Cuz I was underage. Also one out of three Native American Women experiences domestic violence. And again, those are only the Women who realize they are being abused.  I didn’t know I was being abused, because I didn’t get the crap knocked outta me. But I was being abused. There is abuse that happens physically, emotionally, mentally. Even spiritually and financially.  

And our Women are becoming, you know, MISSING. In Canada there are over a thousand missing and murdered Indigenous Women, cases that are unsolved. And in the United States, there’s no number. There’s no number yet. I believe the University of Washington is trying to gather statistics on that. Also, statistically, our People are being murdered by the police more than any other race. We just don’t hear about it as much. I believe all this is active continued genocide. Because, if there’s no more Indigenous Women, then there’s no way to continue our lineage. If there is no lineage then the government could get rid of our Tribes and kick us off our reservations. All of this is related. Some of our Women are missing because some of them are growing up in foster care. When those girls turn 18, they don’t really have nowhere to go. So a part of their survival is, that they go and sell their bodies. Or, somebody steals them and sells their bodies to some of these man camps, these oil men camps. So I believe, if you were to follow the trail of all these men camps, that you might be able to find some of our Women.  That’s why I believe our Women are at the bottom of the totem pole, and I believe that once the healing comes to our Indigenous Women, that when we start to heal from the bottom… Then the healing will work it’s way up. It’s like, when We rise, all People rise.

So I started reaching out to Women for the Indigenous Women’s Warrior Society. We have Women from North America, South America. We have Women from Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and - I forgot the European Tribe… But yeah! (laughter) Women from all over.  It’s not only Women who have their own grassroots, it’s Women who are trying to get back to their Indigenous roots. Women who are trying to bring Healing to other People and to their families. One of my first actions was a flash mob Round Dance at the (Olympia) mall and a march downtown. I collaborated with Idle No More Olympia.  It’s not only an issue at Standing Rock, of No DAPL or the XL pipeline… We have our own issues here in Washington state. We have coal trains coming through, coal going out in the ships, toward China, polluting our oceans. They want to start fracking in our oceans and on our land. They not only want to run oil pipelines but gas pipelines, through and by our Tribes. If you look up that map (of WA), we have A LOT of little reservations everywhere. And it doesn’t only affect the Indigenous people here in Washington state, it’ll affect all of Us. Because, living in the Northwest, you know, we cherish our Water. The environment we have here is different than in a lot of areas. We have beautiful greenery of trees and plants, our wild animals that everybody here loves, doing outdoor activities... It will affect everything around here, and our territory is so beautiful.

So, that brings me to another event that is happening, Saturday March 11th(2017), because there is a global call to action on March 10th.  I’m collaborating with some of the people from the Seattle No DAPL, including Matt Remle (Lakota), Millie Kennedy (Tsimshian) and Rachel Heaton (Muckleshoot), and they requested that we do a march here in Olympia.  Their event is on the 10th, and the Olympia event is on the 11th.

As I was putting the event together, I didn’t want it to just stand for Olympia. I think I made that mistake the last time I was doing my march. Because it kind of does disappoint me that everybody likes to gather in Seattle, and I see why, the community is very large. Not many people have transportation to come down here to Olympia. I feel like Olympia represents the whole state of Washington. This is where our government leaders are, this is where they make and change laws. And we can’t only be out there, yelling around, saying “we don’t agree with this.” Or just stand there saying “I’m here to protect Mother Earth.” We need to follow up by changing the laws. And making people be held accountable for their disregard of Indigenous environmental rights.  And thinking they could just throw a few thousand dollars down after they destroy our sacred sites.  You know, they need to be held accountable, and that can’t happen anymore.  And it’s really sad that president trump could just sign an executive order and try to abolish the EPA, with just the swipe of a pen.  Putting pipelines, approving the DAPL, the keystone pipeline again…  So like I said, there’s all these other companies, that are trying to come in here to Washington state.  So we need to stand up to the government.  Because what happened over in North Dakota could just as easily happen here.  So I am gathering Tribal leaders from the different Tribes, because Arvol Looking Horse said that the 7th fires were lit.  Now it’s time for us to bring that flame and reignite it in our own home territories.  We need to bring awareness. So at my event, I’m hoping that these Tribal Leaders will let us know what’s going on in their home territories.  And let us know how We could Help. And I really hope the event turns out well. We’ll also have my friend Star Nayea, she will be performing two of her new songs she just wrote about Standing Rock.  

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Description: It is raining, and after the water blessing, prayers and songs at Heritage Park, grassroots and Indigenous community members lead a march toward the legislative building.  It is raining, and a de-escalation safety team (in orange vests) support the taking of the streets.

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Description: The rain has stopped and the march continues through downtown Olympia, past banks and businesses, on their way to the state capitol’s legislative building.

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Description: The sun breaks from the clouds as The People marching arrive at the capitol.

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Description: Activator, Earth-Feather Sovereign, shares at the microphone to the many people gathered on the steps of the legislative building. She is joined by her daughters Rainbow and Katiri.

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Marles Black Bird and Morningstar Means are marching on the wet streets of downtown Olympia, right in front of the “Bank of America,” holding the light blue Tribal flag of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.  Marles holds a blow horn and Earth-Feather is behind her and many other marchers. Please watch this video statement of Marles Black Bird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lGrrnADBPM

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The march continues past the “Bank of America,” front and center are Nisqually Canoe Youth, smiling and drumming behind them are Matt Remle of Last Real Indians and other Indigenous Water Protectors and community members.  There is a tall person wearing a hat with their fist in the air.  Signs in the background read “Water is Life” and DIVEST.  Please read http://lastrealindians.com/divest-now-joint-statement-regarding-the-next-stage-in-the-fight-against-dakota-access-pipeline-by-gyasi-ross-matt-remle/ and http://lastrealindians.com/guide-to-divestment-by-rachel-heaton/ by Rachel Heaton to learn about the Divestment Movement and the success in Seattle.  

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As the march arrives to the Washington state capitol grounds, Indigenous Elders Shelly Boyd (Colville Confederate Tribes) and Larry Kenoras (Okanogan BC) greet the crowd.  Larry Kenoras wears long braids, holds a blue hat in his hand with his right fist raised powerfully.  The sun is shining on their faces.  Read more and about Shelly Boyd’s life’s work dedicated to the revitalisation of Salish languages and support the The Inchelium Language House here http://www.incheliumlanguagehouse.com/our-home

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People circle the state capitol grounds, making their way to the front of the legislative building, at the center of their walk is a huge Teepee that has been raised on the grass prominently next to the US flag and the state of Washington flag.  There is a blue construction crane in the background.  There are at least 150 people that have marched.  

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The People make their way onto the steps of the legislative building, with Indigenous community members at the top of the steps, and many People on each side.  This is a huge building, with massive Roman style columns.  At the top of the stairs are outstretched arms in gratitude and prayer, including those of Earth-Feather Sovereign, who is wearing a black sweater with blue on the front.  There are many raised fists and hands.  To the left is a huge red Salmon that was created and carried during the entire march, it is several feet long. Learn more about the history of the Broken Medicine Creek Treaty and the Struggle to fish salmon by watching the movie As Long as the Rivers Run by Carol Burns 1971 here https://archive.org/details/AsLongAsTheRiversRun

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Indigenous Elder, Elaine Sutterlict-McCloud (Chehalis) is wearing a clear rain jacket and a maroon sash that says “WATER PROTECTOR” on it, she’s holding a microphone.  She is wearing sunglasses and addressing the crowd.  Read Honoring Our Elders:  Elaine Sutterlict McCloud in the Chehalis Tribal Newspaper here https://www.chehalistribe.org/newsletter/pdf/2009-12.pdf  

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Puyallup Tribal Elder, and long time activist for Indian fishing rights, Ramona Bennett is standing with James Rideout and Jesse Nightwalker, and she has just passed the microphone to Water Protector, Roxy Murray, who says, “there are seagulls falling from the sky in the port of Tacoma…”  Learn more about Ramona Bennett at http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/bennett.htm

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The sun is going down, and ten members of the Quinalt Indian Nation are standing before the crowd, Five youth and five adults. Two Spirit and Quinalt Nation Vice President, Tyson Elliot, stands to the far right, with their right hand to their chest, and left hand holding the microphone.  Please read “Shared Waters, Shared Values” Quinault Nation Battles Proposed Oil Facilities in Last Real Indians at  http://lastrealindians.com/shared-waters-shared-values-quinault-nation-battles-proposed-oil-facilities/  

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With dusk, the event is coming to a close, the crowd is dispersing, and clean up is happening.  The Teepee rests in front of the huge legislative building, with its Western/Roman pillars of corinthean order, and huge domed top.  The Teepee, especially at this place, like the event that just happened, is a symbol of Indigenous Resistance, Decolonization, Love.  It is Work is Action, this is Hope.

Lisa Ganser is a white Disabled genderqueer artist and activist living in Olympia, WA on stolen and colonized Squaxin, Nisqually, Chehalis, First Nations land.  They are a copwatcher, a sidewalk chalker and a dog walker, and the daughter of a momma named Sam.

“We are stopping you because some of the residents feel like they were targeted because you didn’t go to their doors, so they called the police,” The Connecticut poLice officers flanked our rental van at a stoplight in the wealth-hoarding neighborhood known as West Hartford, Ct, filled with acre-long lawns and plantation-like mansions and more stolen land than the wealth-hoarders even knew what to do with . As the kkkops circled the van all of us Black, Brown, unhoused, formerly unhoused and always criminalized youth and elders seized up in an admixture of terror and anger. Visions of Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin filled our traumatized brains. We tried to stay cool. It was the last of an extremely hard, long and powerful Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Tour Through Eastern Turtle Island. “You mean we should have knocked on more rich peoples doors?” we all said incredulously. This was a new one. The poor little rich people felt targeted. Wow, we’re sorry. LOL.

Tiny at one of the lucky mansions included in the tour

Originally launched last year on (Mama) Earth Day 2016 in the stolen village of Yelamu, Ohlone Land aka the Pacific Heights and Nob Hill areas of San Francisco, two neighborhoods with a concentration of extreme wealth hoarders (millionaires and billionaires) each tour consists of a group of us Black, Brown indigenous, disabled and homeless youth and adults from POOR Magazine, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Krip Hop Nation and Deecolonize Academy knocking on doors in “rich” neighborhoods to share the medicine of redistribution and Community reparations with the residents who live there.

At every door we knock on we present the Proposal for Healing Reparations and Redistribution which includes beginning a dialogue on redistribution of stolen and hoarded wealth and/or attending a Decolonization/DegentriFUkation seminar at PeopleSkool,and/or manifesting redistribution and reparations to the launching of more Homefulness and Sogorea Te Land Trusts, two poor and indigenous peoples models of self-determined solutions to land use, homelessness, poverty and gentrification made possible because of redistributed wealth and resources.

Aunti Frances Moore launching the Stolen Land Tour in Pequot Mohegan Territory - Leroy & Melissa Moore and her family look on

“Hello, we are representing Black, Brown, 1st Nations and Homeless peoples on a Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour to share the medicine of redistribution and Community reparations,” Aunti Frances Moore, Black Panther, founder of the Self-help Hunger Program of North Oakland and poverty, houseless scholar with POOR Magazine and Homefulness spoke into the security intercom on 745 Park Ave- the first tour stop of the first tour in Lenape Lands of Eastern turtle Island aka Manhattan.

“I’m sorry you can’t come in, you need to step away from the front of the building,” was the response. Cloaked in old school butler gear replete with white gloves, little hat and gold buttons, the gate-keepers of the extreme wealth-hoarders stopped us at every door to the billion dollar condominium high-rises that line the Upper East side of Manhattan aka stolen Lenape Territory. One after the other, some of them literally ran from the front door and hid behind the grating or locked the internal locks or just boldly came out with attitude and told us, No, you won’t be able to distribute your Proposal for Healing Reparations and Redistribution  to my “residents” and no we couldn’t come in the building. Our only highlights on this gut-wrenching 1st tour was our encountering the occasional door-person of color, or domestic worker who would answer the door and smile at the concept and promise to distribute our material to their bosses, supervisors or residents.

“This kind of wealth hoarding was and is only possible because they stole our indigenous peoples territory, in this case the Lenape peoples to name one of the nations,” said Corrina Gould to one of the videographers who were filming our tour. Ohlone 1st Nations land liberator with the Sogorea Te Land Trust, Corrina joined us on the 1st leg of the tour in NYC.

“I can’t go on, its too much,” Aunti Frances stopped an hour and half in and began to break down. It was too much hate, disdain, disrespect and triggers for those of us who are already racially profiled, hated, walked by,silenced, whose bodies are already criminalized, whose struggles, already used and abused for profit, to be studied, incarcerated, tested and arrested but never compensated, never reparated. Whose ancestors bodies were used, chained, beaten and discarded so this project called amerikkklan could be built. This was a journey into our internal and external oppression which we walked into eyes wide open and yet we had landed smack dab into the pit of our ancestral trauma.

Stolen Land Tour in Manhattan - From left, Aunti Frances, Queena, Queenandi, Leroy Moore, Laure McElroy, Corrina Gould

At then, thanks to Creator, there is always Halal beef hot dogs.

As us broken, unhoused and criminalized peoples stood, huddled together in front of Central Park, munching our comfort street food,trying to shake off the multiple triggers, we watched fellow poverty, migrant and colonized border scholars rush around walking the children, animals and elders of the neighborhoods extreme wealth hoarders. One by one Caribbean, Puerta Rican, Columbian, Bangldeshi Mexican,  and African women and men led leashes and strollers and walkers, so that the parents, adult children and pet owners didn’t have to. Yet year after year our housing, our wages and our lives remain unimportant, un-important except in terms of how much work, profit or rent we provide to the wealth -hoarders or land-stealers. This is why we tour.

Community Reparations Are real. Homefulness in Philadelphia!!!

Stolen Land Tour - POOR Magazine & Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campain in North Philly

As poor, unhoused, bordered, colonized and disabled people we have all dealt personally with the lie of hellfare(welfare) crumbs, not really affordable housing, houselessness, eviction and incarceration. Everything we teach is what we live, lived through, or barely survived. It is why we conceived, launched and are slowly manifesting Homefulness in Deep East Huchuin (Oakland). It is also why we launched the tours. The concept of Community Reparations, not be confused with African peoples or Japanese peoples reparations, is rooted in interdependence, the very thing they teach out of humans in Amerikkklan. And it is what we have taught some conscious young folks who then acted to redistribute their stolen, hoarded and/or inherited wealth to us poor folks to manifest a homeless peoples solution to homelessness.  This is not a pipe dream or a good idea - we are currently doing it and so as poverty skolaz from the struggle we are also dedicated to sharing this medicine, this idea and this manifestation with as many poor folks as we can. In almost every city we visit we have a young person read their own statement of reparations. It is why we Tour.

POOR & PPHRC on Stolen Land Tour in Philly. From left, Cheri Honkala, Queenandi Xsheba, Pablo and Gaylan

Stolen Land/Hoardes Resources Tour sharing Medicine with Wealth Hoarders in the Main Line - Philly

“Making reparations as a white, class-privileged person was scary, but it was not hard. Once I was on the phone with Fidelity Mutual getting that $50,000 out of the bank, it was easy, and it never got hard. As they say, “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” Every time I have given money away, I have turned around to have more money appear. - POOR Magazine's PeopleSkool has taught me to think long-term, to live as a spiritually whole person and recognize how capitalism destroys my humanity by making me forget all the poor, indigenous people whose backs wealth is built on. As a person with privilege, it can definitely be easier to forget. But remembering is the commitment, the recognition that is reparations. When I remember whose land this is, when I remember whose backs this is built on, that is the more painful seeing and remembering that is my spiritual obligation. Reparations is the material manifestation of recognizing that I only earned this ease, this way of moving through the world, this option to forget, on the backs of others who I may never meet”.

Excerpt of a statement read by Lizzie on Park Ave at the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour through Lenape Territory.

Trump and Ben Carson’s Plan to Destroy HUD

“They are proposing 6 Billion Dollars in cuts to HUD’s budget, this will mean all of New York’s public housing will either be demolished or privatized,”  said Louiie from Picture the Homeless, who like POOR Magazine is a poor and homeless people-led organization and also co-sponsored the NYC tour and sat down with me and Leroy Moore in their Harlem offices the next day. Louie went on to describe the exact same situation that already hit San Francisco in 2013 (reported on exclusively by POOR Magazine and the Bay View Newspaper  This while thousands of dollars get funneled into the hands of non-profit and for profit developers to manage our meager bits of truly affordable housing, that is increasingly hard to even attain because the housing developers, both non-profit and for-profit make the application and credit check process impossibly hard and rigorous. Many of whose long-time poor people housing is demolished take “pay-out” a useless section 8 voucher that most landlords won’t accept and which is also on the Trump-HUD chopping block. This is another reason we tour.

Shinneock Territory aka The Hamptons

“Bring us back our stolen land, Bring us back our stolen land…..” In Shinnecock Territory we linked up with Ahna Red Fox and Cholena Smith from the Shinnecock Nation, the 1st peoples of that land whose reservation sits on the shore alongside some of the most extreme wealth-hoarders in the US whose homes are valued in the multi-millions and even billions and who not only hoard blood-stained dollars but way more homes, indigenous land and possessions than they or their families could ever need. this is why we tour.

From left - Laure, Ahna Red Fox, Aunti Frances, Tiny, Queena and Leroy in front of the colonizer museum - Shinnecock

“Most of the members of our nation are living below the poverty line and yet our people were the first people of this land and most of the people who come here to live or vacation have no idea of our existence, “said Cholena Smith, a youth land liberator with the Shinnecock Nation who we had the blessing to meet when we arrived in this terrifying town of extreme wealth.  

“Watch out, we are driving into Get-Out territory,” I warned my fellow poverty skolaz in our rented van as we rolled deeper and deeper into the winding roads of Upstate New York on our way to the Hamptons. We were already wary of what kind of PoLice engagement would await us here. Would it be like Beverly Hills and try to stop us from touring within 5 seconds of our arrival, or would we actually face arrest.

“In the last two years we have experienced a terrifying spike in suicides among young people as well as a rise in serious substance use, this is one of the problems we deal with here, it is what my organization is working to heal,“ Anna Red Fox, who works with  Blossom Sustainable Development explained to fellow tour guide and poverty skola and POOR Magazine reporter Laure McElroy in an interview.

Leroy Moore speaking with Ahna Red Fox in the Greenhouse of the Shinnecock Nation (Hamptons)

“Bring us back Our Stolen Land, Bring us back our Stolen land,” we shouted into the bullhorn in unison as we entered the Zoning and Building Department located in the Town Hall of Shinnecock.

“This is a calling in - not a calling out, Laure added. We only stood there for 3 minutes repeating our song verse and our tour manifesto which was a demand for land reclamation to the first peoples of this land. Within seconds several poLice officers materialized. While they gathered downstairs we proceeded to march upstairs, still singing, until we arrived at the office of the head poltricksters in charge. While we sang, the poLice ascended, a door opened and we were invited in to meet with two city managers of the Town.

Meeting with Hampton Town Council. Click picture to view video

“You got our attention,” they said in unison, “now tell us what you want.”

After we stated what our tour was about and that we were there to support the Shinneock Nation in their rights to equity and land reclamation, Ahna took over and the we got the bureaucrats to listen to our demands for a real conversation on land use for 1st peoples of the “Hamptons”.

Our meeting lasted 30 minutes and the town council representatives committed to a meeting and a re-framing of the use of land for 1st peoples. We committed to staying involved to hold them to their commitments with ongoing involvement and media watch-dogging. This is another reason we Tour.

The Zoning department shake-down was my personal highlight of the entire trip as we Poor, indigenous and unhoused folks at POOR Magazine have struggled for the last 4 years with the insane costs of building permits and Politrickster sanctioned hustles to get permits to build our landless peoples self-determined movement we call Homefulness. Suffice it to say, street hustlers don’t got nothing on the white collar hustlers, with their permits to build, their endless requirements for more paper and licenses and their crazy things like “an expeditor fee” to move up the “line” in the building permit process. As poor folks who are always moved out of anything we take back, we made a decision to do it within the settler colonizer laws so it can’t/won’t be taken from us. Another hard lesson we have had to learn through this process is why it’s so hard for poor people to launch building projects and why corporations have it on lock. This is why we tour.

In addition to the Town Hall, we challenged and demanded change, equity sharing curatorial leadership, land use and reparations when we were shown the blatant exclusion in spaces like the Chamber of Commerce and the “Whaling Exhibit” in the local museum, which included none of the original peoples who taught the settlers about whaling and then whose bodies were ultimately stolen and enslaved by the colonizers so they could capture their whaling knowledge.  

Shinnecock Nation Reservation - the Hamptons

Philadelphia - Lenape Territory- Mama Dee’s GentriFUKed hood

Whenever i drive down the streets of North Philly, i realize clearly why my ghetto fabulous Afro-Boricua Mama Dee was the proud, angry, beautiful poverty skola-survivor she was. Poverty there isn’t like it is in California. Not to say poverty isn’t real in California, but the entrenched sorrow, scarcity, and desperation is older, deep and terrifying. This kind of Gangsta struggle and survival is what helped give my my mama her fighting spirit to stay alive through so much trauma and hate. This trauma is also what raised me and i tried to hold on to no matter how hard it was.

POOR Magazine/Homefulness at the site of the MOVE Africa bombing

Being one of the poorest areas in the nation, North Philadelphia is also one of the most beautiful, sad and real. North Philly, an African-Puerto Rican barrio, is also facing some of the most blatant gentrification in the US. on every other block, entire blocks are boarded up and gated over. One or two doors down developers have put up signs for the future condominiums, luxury apartments and/or “art” spaces. Hipster cafes and mono-syllabic bars and gourmet restaurants line every other block. This is another reason why we Tour.

“The so-called progressives were involved in the stealing of an election here, so for the stolen land tour we also want to highlight a stolen election,” said Cheri Honkala, organizer, superbabymama with Poor Peoples Economic Human rights Campaign from Philly.

Before we launched the Philadelphia Stolen Land Tour through the part of the stolen Lenape Territory called the Main Line POOR Magazine and Edgardo, Pablo, Gaylen and Cheri from the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign sat down together to share poverty scholarship, solutions and struggles.

“They came up with this great-sounding idea called a “Land Bank” we found out later it wasn’t really what it was being represented as.” she concluded.

We went on to explain to PPHRC comrades the idea of Homefulness, They shared their recent acquisition of an abandoned building which needs a build-out and how they would love to make that possible and build their own version of Homefulness in North Philly.

From left - Laure from POOR, Cheri & Gaylen from PPHRC

The next day we gathered in the Main Line.

I knew there was such a place as the Main Line because my mama used to talk about it. A place, she used to say, where the rich people live and where people like us go to be their servants. Her mama, my grandma, a Roma/Irish immigrant worked as a domestic worker, washing the floors and only being allowed to enter from the servants quarters in the back. My abuelito, an Afro-Puerta Rican man would work to sweep their streets, if he was lucky.

Stolen Land Tour in the Main Line

“Most of the people who are homeless in Philly are women and children  I was homeless with my children, so i know how hard it is to care for children when you are struggling to keep a home,” Gaylan from PPHRC spoke at the opening press conference on a street corner in a neighborhood called Bryn Mawr which barely had sidewalks, cause I guess who needs sidewalks when you never have to walk?

POOR Magazine spreading the medicine of decolonization and community reparations

“Who are you,” The white man dressed in dockers answered the door, looking our powerful group of Black, Brown, Youth, elder and disabled bodies of tour up and down and gulping nervously  After the press conference we moved through the neighborhood, delicately moving aside the wrought iron gates, walking up what seemed like block long driveways, knocking on huge glass, wooden doors and harry potter-like door knockers.

Unlike a lot of the previous tours, in Philly we encountered the user-friendly liberal haters. They would open the door, listen politely to us and then when we left their doors, call the poLice. By the time we got to the third block of this stolen Lenape Territory, they arrived.

“What are you doing here?” One poLice car pulled in front of us at an angle so we couldn’t walk any further, another one parked behind us.. As is happened in almost every tour, they asked us what we were doing and what we were selling. We told them we were sharing the medicine of redistribution and community reparations and they explained that someone called because we said they, “stole their land,”

After several minutes they “let us go” explaining that we only one of us would be allowed to approach each door and that we needed to make sure we weren’t soliciting for money, which we explained we never did.

Commitment to the Bank of Reparations and a Philly Homefulness!!

“This prayer goes out to all of my ancestors who were stolen to build neighborhoods like these”…excerpt of QueennandiX Sheba, POOR Magazine poverty skola, teacher and welfareQUEEN leading us in closing prayer at the Main Line.  

As we huddled together back at the sidewalk-less corners in the Main Line to do a closing prayer for justice and open-heartedness of all the peoples we had just spoken to we made a direct ask for Community Reparations to some of the conscious young folks with race, class and/or formal education privilege who had toured with us for two families who worked with PPHRC and were on the brink of losing their apartments due to a rise in rent in the gentrification-ridden North Philly. As well one of our young folks involved in POOR Magazine’s Solidarity Family made a commitment to the Bank of Reparations and to helping to launch a Homefulness with PPHRC’s abandoned building, which needed to raise approximately $35,000 to do the build-out. This is why we Tour.

Stolen Land Tour with PPHRC - from left - Cheri Honkols, Pablo and Edgardo Gonzalez

PeopleSkool at every tour stop.

“Sad, exhausting, mind  blowing,crucial, and very important, connecting dots getting the word and education not not only to the rich but to the people, our people.” Aunti Frances Moore

In addition to the tours we presented poverty scholarship and the Decolonization/DegentriFUKation seminar at Wesleyan and Vassar Colleges, two huge institutions that have huge swaths of stolen Mohegan, Pequot, Lenape territory to name a few of the nations colonized and stolen from and entire degree programs built around the studying of poor peoples and indigenous peoples struggles with never so much as sharing a slice of their privilege and access. This is another reason we Tour.

POOR Magazine at Vassar

“In my activism from police brutality to budget cuts, I always felt that people in power could escape our activism by retreating to their wealthy neighborhoods.  I and other activists spent countless hours at City Hall or police stations shouting at buildings.  Poor Magazine with their Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour have taken our request to the front doors of the most wealthy and powerful from Beverley Hills in LA to Park Avenue in New York City with not to blame and shame but to offer medicine to heal what capitalism teaches us for example that we need to cumulate wealth like many houses, condos, summer homes, cars and such for oneself and at the same time walk pass a family on the street and not only do nothing but feel nothing,” - Leroy Moore, founder of Krip Hop Nation. columnist with POOR Magazine and Stolen Land Tour co-leader.

Stay Tuned For the release of Poverty Scholarship- Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth- A PeoplesTextBook which will be released this Summer The Next tour will be in the Bay Area - if you would like to join us please email poormag@gmail.com. The next PeopleSkool decolonization/degentrification seminar is in black August. If you would like to learn more, redistribute or learn anymore information about any of these projects or seminars please email deeandtiny@poormagazine.org

I travel for gigs, Krip-Hop Nation and other projects however at this time facing a lawsuit against my landlord and helping another Black disabled friend who is facing illegal eviction. So being deeply involved in POOR magàzine's East Coast Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour was more than just a project. Plus being back in cities that I grew up in like Manhattan and West Hartford, CT was hard and beautiful.

In my activism from police brutality to budget cuts, I always felt that people in power could escape our activism by retreating to their wealthy neighborhoods.  I and other activists spent countless hours at City Hall or police stations shouting at buildings.  Poor Magazine with their Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour have taken our request to the front doors of the most wealthy and powerful, from Beverly Hills in LA to Park Avenue in New York City, not to blame and shame but to offer medicine to heal what capitalism teaches us. For example, that we need to cumulate wealth like many houses, condos, summer homes, cars and such for oneself and at the same time walk past a family on the street and not only do nothing but feel nothing.

Leroy Moore with Jean Rice, one of the original board members of Picture the Homeless

New York is a different city compared to the days of the 70's & 80's when I was growing up there.  I say all the time these days and that is, gentrification have killed the notion of home!  Now a days you can't go home cause the home i.e. City you grew up in is now too expensive and looks totally different almost like it is dead with city policies that makes it hard to live in your old neighborhood.  I‘ve seen cities i.e. San Francisco and New York become cities unrecognizable with so much wealth, a whole new landscape and local laws that profile you if you are like me poor, Black and disabled man living in section eight apartment.

When I was a teenager I lived on Greyhound going from CT. to NY and the landmarks were the tall public housing brick buildings when I saw those buildings/housing complex where my friends were creating what we know today as Hip-Hop I knew I was in NY..  On the East CoastStolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour, we stopped by the new office of Picture Of The Homeless in Harlem and interviewed the new executive director and long time member Luie who told us that privatization is hitting New York hard.  He went on to say that all of those tall public housing buildings are slatted for privatization.  My heart dropped!

One of Krip-Hop Nation co/founder, Rob 'Da Noize Temple who has been living in Brooklyn all of his live and opened up a music studio is facing eviction cause the landlord wants to privatize the building.

Poverty skolaz offering the medicine of redistribution

Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour like in San Francisco, Beverly Hills now New York, Philly  to West Hartford, CT., the common factor was that the wealthy were and are protected by layers upon layers of barriers from isolation and gated off communities to security guards to police to even other poor people who are their nannies, gardeners or dog walkers and this was the reality on Park Avenue in New York and other cities on the East Coast!

As universities get bigger taking over cities in CT, NY, Philly and Berkeley and public housing from CA to NY become privatize, the question remains, where can we live, pee etc.  The Poor Magazine's Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour from West to East also have been invited into colleges and universities like Weselyn University, U.C. Berkeley, Vassar College to name a few to tell real everyday struggles through poetry, plays, songs and lectures that touches on the way that the capitalist society police us on where we can pee, where we live, who is acceptable to receive services and what we have to do to keep those services, public housing, food stamps and more.

Queenandi Xshena of POOR Magazine in North Philly

From San Francisco to Beverly Hills, LA to Philly to West Hartford, CT the police were called and came out to protect wealthy neighborhoods from what we call our medicine from the disease of wealth hoarding. From police to the media the main assumption of touring wealthy areas was nothing more than just begging and pouring on the pity.

However once people, like reporters, professors, wealthy college students and even some police officers listen and read what Poor Magazine is teaching they nine times out of ten agree and realize that Poor Magazine have taught a few wealthy people that the wealth that they do have came from the backs of others and needed to be brought back for community good, what Poor Magazine calls community  reparations.  It is powerful to listen to Poor Magazine's People School graduates who are now spreading the teachings of Poor Magazine with us on these tours in their own wealthy neighborhoods.

On this East Coast Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour, Poor Magazine went up face to face with East Coast  wealth that is different from West Coast wealth!  East Coast wealth is very intrench, cold and has no liberal costume on.  The only city that showed us any love was Philly where we got some media and some wealthy folks gave up some dollars to local poverty scholars to meet extreme housing emergency.

Our East Coast Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour hit three states knocking on doors of the wealthy and for me the South Hamptons, upstate New York was really tough and beautiful at the same time!  Being from the East Coast, I grew up hearing how the wealthy escape to the Hamptons for vacation but I never been there. I heard New York rappers boast about the bling bling of the Hamptons but I didn't know about how the South Hamptons was originally Native American land.  Now Native Americans, Shinnecock tribe has been pushed to a tiny reservation, away from the big houses with front yards that don't end.

Poor Magazine connected to the Shinnecock tribe in South Hamptons way before the tour so when we told them about the tour, they were down for it and took us around to the wealthy neighborhoods.  Poor magazine really loved the tour and teachings of the tribe in South Hamptons!

In South Hamptons, we went into a museum, the Chamber of Commerce and City Hall and in all of these places we were met with White faces professing that they are working very closely with the tribe.  This White guilt was corrected by Ahna Red Fox who was from the Shinnecock tribe .  The only place that agreed to do better collaborating with the Shinnecock tribe was the museum in which Poor Magazine agree to follow up.  Once again the cops were called on us this time at South Hamptons' City Hall.

From left - Laure, Ahna Red Fox, Aunti Frances, Tiny, Queena and Leroy in front of the Colonizer Museum - Shinnecock

In West Hartford, CT., my sister, Melissa Moore and my nephews and nieces came on the tour with us.  Ace, my niece, who is eight years old was all into going up to front doors, knocking and saying her two cents.  I was glad that Tiny's son, Tibu and Sasha had a chance to hang out again.  Sasha knew Tibu when my sister lived in West Oakland before she was force to move back to CT cause of the expensive housing market in the Bay Area.

As we head back to the gentrify Bay Area all of us of Poor Magazine are worried about our own housing situation as many of us are fighting illegal evictions, cuts in our benefits like SSI and separation of our family and friends as more and more love ones in the Bay have to move to different states like my sister in search for cheaper housing. The struggle and Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour continues.  Look out for Poor Magazine Poverty Scholar textbook, out Summer 2017!

Homeless to Yale

And Then Back Again.

On purpose.

By Choice.

Because it Makes More Sense.

Read one woman’s story of why we all should be paying attention to Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia and POOR Magazine.

Valerie Klokow

May 12, 2017

   I used to think that the worst thing

in life was to end up alone. It's not.

The worst thing in life is to end up with

people who make you feel alone.

   ~   Robin Williams  

I’m probably not going to be able to explain to anyone, including myself, how it is that being a member of a homeless community makes more sense than being an ivy league alumna (or a member of any other privileged group), but that doesn’t make it any less true. I thought about changing the last part of this title to “Because The People Are Nicer,” but that’s just being bitchy and it also doesn’t do justice to what Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia and everyone at POOR Magazine stand for and are doing. I’ve lived at 2 extreme, opposite “ends” of American society and, while at first –  prior to having “made it” to the more privileged end – I wouldn’t have even attempted to explain how the other end made more sense, I’ve always experienced, felt andknown it to be true.

I dropped out of school in the 7^thgrade, eventually spending some time homeless in California until, in my 30’s, I decided to “turn my life around.” I went, first, to a drug and alcohol treatment facility, and then to a community college where I graduated with a 4.0 and transferred, on scholarship, to Yale. I spent two years in New Haven, where I completed my undergraduate work in philosophy and then went on to earn a J.D. at the University of Connecticut School of Law. I worked for a few years in legal compliance for a large corporation and I’m currently writing grants for a nonprofit organization. I am making considerably less money today than I was when I worked in compliance and I didn’t need my law degree (or, really, even my college degree) to do the work that I’m doing. I have always loved to learn and am very grateful for every bit of my education, but the money really doesn’t matter to me; I am much happier writing grants than I was in compliance and I also have more time to spend with my son – not to mention being in a much better mood while I’m with him! My experience with POOR Magazine’s Stolen Land and Hoarded Wealth Tour has me looking… hard… though, at how I feel about participating even in this type of work. This nation was taken (stolen) by colonizers from the Indigenous peoples who lived here, and then built on the backs of enslaved and exploited people of color. Working in corporate law made me feel complicit –  because I was, contrary to what I’d believed upon having been hired to work in compliance– but the work that I’m doing now is just another cog in the same privilege-machine. The concept of charity… of nonprofit organizations and the infrastructure of this country that has created a “need” for them… isn’t something that I am happy to participate in without question.

symptom

[simp-tuh m]

noun

1. any phenomenon or circumstance accompanying something and serving as evidence of it.

2. a sign of indication of something.

3. Pathology. a phenomenon that arises from and accompanies a particular disease or disorder and serves as an indication of it.

It is my sincere hope that everyone in the United States is questioning a lot of things today. And I’m not just talking about the outcome of the last Presidential election. Donald Trump is not my President, and more importantly, he isn’t the problem. Donald Trump is a monster that we have created and focusing on him is a surefire way to feed the privilege-machine and keep it rolling but, again, he is not the problem. The fact that this particular individual was elected to hold this office is a festering, pus-filled symptom of the problems of savagery and greed that caused colonizers to believe that they had a right to 1) take the land that is today the United States of America; and 2) kill or displace all of the rightful owners of that land. Trump is an insignificant man who is an inevitable, later-stage symptom of the barbarity and inhumanity that plagued the privileged citizens of the newly colonized nation when they enslaved human beings and he is a blinking, flashing, neon-lit symptom of the arrogance, ignorance and apathy (I’m being kind with the use of this last word) that is causing privileged citizens of the United States of America to continue to believe – or, worse, to simply accept it, unquestioned, as being the way things areand thereby assume– themselves to be in possession of rights that others don’t have.

In the past 6 months I’ve felt overwhelmed, inadequate, frustrated and depressed as I’ve tried to figure out how to make people who aren’t experiencing any problems take a look at systems of oppression that have been at work in their lives and their communities since before any of us were born. I still haven’t figured out how to get people to want (or even be willing) to learn more, but I do have a few ideas as to what they can do to get a better understanding, and one of them is to attend a PeopleSkool Decolonization / DegentriFUkation seminar, and to learn more about the Stolen Land Tour. The members of this tour are performing ceremonies of healing every time they offer a seminar or walk in a tour. These Poverty Skolaz are some of the nicest people that I have ever known, and my son said the same thing after we both met them a few weeks ago.

On Sunday, April 23, 2017, my 11-year-old son and I participated in the Connecticut leg (Pequot/Mohegan Territory) of POOR Magazine’s Stolen Land and Hoarded Wealth Tour. We first attended a PeopleSkool Decolonization / DegentriFUkation seminar at Wesleyan University from 1:00 – 3:30 PM and then, from 5:00 – 6:30 PM we walked with a group of Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled and homeless youth and adults from POOR magazine, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Krip Hop Nation and Deecolonize Academy as they knocked on doors in a wealthy West Hartford neighborhood to share the medicine of redistribution and community reparations with the residents who live there. For these 5 ½ hours, for the first time in almost 20 years, I felt completely at home. I have not been homeless since 1996, and the hours that I spent with the members of this tour made me feel more at home than any of the houses and apartments that I’ve lived in ever did. There is a sense of community and a feeling of camaraderie amongst the members of the Stolen Land Tour, and within moments of being in their presence, I knew that they followed the same code of honor and respect that I followed (and valued) when I was on the street. Very naïve when I graduated from law school and got my first job, I was stunned when I encountered the very different schema of respect that is employed in corporate America. Working in a nonprofit and living on the outskirts of a suburb put me back into a more comfortable respect-zone, but I hadn’t realized how “not at home” I’ve felt until about halfway through the PeopleSkool seminar at Wesleyan. The social structure at play in that room and on their tour makes much more sense – and feels much better –to me than the capitalist society that we all live in.

I was introduced to the work that POOR Magazine is doing by Reverend Cathy Rion Starr, who is co-minister of the Unitarian Society of Hartford, where I am a member. Reverend Cathy had come to know POOR’s work when she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she asked me if I’d be interested in this East Coast Tour by telling me “I don’t know exactly how to explain or describe it, but every time that I’ve seen the work that these people are doing, I think ‘Yes. This is good and right. This is something that we all should be doing.’”  After spending a day with them, I agreed wholeheartedly with Reverend Cathy’s “not sure how to explain…” comment and now, after doing some more reading of their materials, I also agree that their work is good, right, and something that we all should be doing.

The PeopleSkool’s Decolonization / DegentriFUkation seminar features a series of powerful live theatrical performances that audience members eventually come to understand are depictions of actual scenes from the actors’ lives. From a landlord’s eviction of an elderly tenant, resulting in her death a few days later… to a police officer’s forceful, physical separation of a mother and child based on their status as vendors who are living and working on the streets, these vignettes give spectators an uncensored, up-close view of people living in poverty. These scenes are “the rest of the story” of the homeless and poor people that every one of us “doesn’t see” on the streets every day. Attendees at a PeopleSkool seminar are not able to pretend that they don’t see. Anyone who sees these performances and participates in the seminar discussions will be forever changed, and I believe that this is precisely the change that is needed to meaningfully address the soul-sickness that is at the root of our nation’s problems of arrogance, ignorance and apathy- i.e. the sense of entitlement that allows some people to not understand how truly repugnant the act of hoarding wealth when others have nothing is.  

After the seminar at Wesleyan, my son and I participated in a Stolen Land / Hoarded Resources Tour in a wealthy neighborhood in our hometown, West Hartford, CT. The tour began and ended with sage and humble prayers to the Pequot/Mohegan ancestors of the land that we were walking on, and it felt very different than any protest marches that I’ve participated in. This tour feels like a ceremony, with participants bringing the gift of the richness that they have created in the community that they've built together and asking nothing in return but the opportunity to begin a dialogue on the idea of “community reparations” – of redistributing the stolen and hoarded wealth thatcame about on the backs of others and using it for community good. Leroy Moore, founder of Krip Hop Nation, columnist with POOR Magazine, and Stolen Land Tour co-leader, describes the tour as “…taking our request to the front doors of the most wealthy and powerful from Beverly Hills in LA to Park Avenue in NYC, not to blame and shame but to offer medicine to heal what capitalism teaches us – for example, that we need to cumulate wealth, like many houses, condos, summer homes, cars and such for oneself and at the same time walk past a family on the street and not only do nothing but feel nothing.” I feel very humbled to have been a welcomed participant on this tour; I was sad to drive away when it was over and I’ve thought about the experience and everyone involved every day since. My son has mentioned it, too. He wants to know when we’ll see them again. We live on opposite coasts; I told him that I really don’t know when we’ll see them again, but that I believe that we will.

The words of Aunti Frances Moore, one of the tour’s members, ring true for me:“Sad, exhausting, mind blowing, crucial and very important, connecting dots, getting the word and education not only to the rich but to the people, our people, is critical.”Yes. Getting this word and education out to the people (all of the people) is critical if we are ever going to have even a chance of stopping the privilege/entitlement machine. We are a nation split into two groups: those who are able to clearly see the problem (not the symptoms); and those who do not (and are not willing to) see the problem because they are products of (and benefit from) it. We all are capable of seeing the problem; we all, in fact, were able to see it very clearly when we were children. As soon as we began to communicate with adults, though, we learned that our “survival” (success) depended upon our no longer seeing it – or, for those who were not born into privilege, we learned that our survival depended upon our not speaking of it amongst anyone who is not like us.

So, what’s the problem? Here’s where we’d all like to think that it gets complicated, but that’s only because we’ve all been trained to not see or speak the truth about what’s going on in our society. The problem is privileged peoples’ sense of entitlement. The problem begins with the fact that the land that the United States of America sits on was stolen from Indigenous peoples, and then this leads to the fact that everything that exists today on that stolen land was built on the backs of enslaved people, and exploited people of color and poor people. All of the “success” that anyone in this country has enjoyed is a result of the systems of exploitation that grew out of these initial, barbarous acts of pillaging and savagery. The problem is that the descendants of the monstrous colonizers who annihilated everyone and everything in their path have inherited all of the spoils of their ancestors’ acts. These material spoils afforded the colonizers’ descendants with unearned power, and they used that power to write laws and develop political structures to ensure that they would maintain that power. Our nation is based on the morals and belief systems of brutal, ruthless conquerors who valued material wealth above all else. Anyone wishing to “survive” (succeed) in this nation has to agree to not acknowledge any of this; they have to agree to comply with the systems that are in place. Which brings us back to…

Homeless to Yale

And Then Back Again.

On Purpose.

By Choice.

Because it Makes More Sense.

I wasn’t born into poverty; I grew up in a predominately white, working class, factory town in the Midwest. My mother and her husband owned a small house and none of us ever went hungry. My neighbors, friends and family all believed in the American Dream, and everyone worked hard to try and give their kids a better life than they’d had. What I remember most about my childhood, though, is always wondering why no one’s actions ever matched what they said. As a little girl Ibought the whole "Sesame Street" thing about being kind, sharing and treating everyone fairly.

Come and play, everything’s A-OK…

I believed everything that Luis, Maria, Gordon and Susan said. I loved Mr. Hooper, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and especially Oscar the Grouch. I traipsed through the first 3-4 years of my life trusting that, so long as I was kind and good, everything would be A-OK. By the time I got to kindergarten I’d learned that this is not the case. I watched adults mouthing the Sesame Street credos as they behaved in adversarial, self-interested ways. I especially hated watching when they acted like assholes to kids; I was sometimes completely unable to focus for the rest of the day (or year) in classrooms that were led by teachers who were mean to poor kids, kids of color, or kids who struggled to learn. I learned about the Bill of Rights on School House Rock and, until I was 9-10 years old I believed that all I had to do was get good grades, go to law school and then I’d be able to come back and make grown-ups act like the law said they were supposed to act.

I wasn’t a quiet or a shy child. I asked, first my mother and then the other adults in my world, to explain to me why no one ever actually acted like they said that we all should, and I got really unsatisfactory answers. I spent a lot of time being frustrated, but until I was 9 or 10 years old I held out hope that I would, indeed, “understand when I got older.” I’m 52 years old today and I still don’t understand any of it. I’ve come to know that our society is based on a lot of bullshit, but I don’t understand why we’ve all agreed to go along with it. I mean, I sort of get it on a surface level. We all have been raised in a culture that has instructed us to value material things above all else. We all have been programmed to agree that it is acceptable, on a daily basis, to walk past poor people and homeless people on the street... and pretend like we don't see them. I, for one, do not understand. I don't understand how we have gotten here. I don't agree. I don't and have not ever accepted this as being the way that any of us should be living. I rebelled as a young person; I walked away from the bullshit bases of power and privilege that I was being indoctrinated to build my life on.

The emperor is not and has not ever been wearing any clothes.

As a young child I realized that I didn't have any power; I knew that I couldn't change anything around me and I felt angry, confused and... increasingly... frantic in a world that didn’t make any sense to  me. As a pre-teen I discovered alcohol and other substances that made it less uncomfortable and painful to exist in the unacceptable reality that is our society. At 13 years old I struck out on my own because I couldn't stomach it any more. I couldn't "behave;" I absolutely was not willing to act the way that I was told that I was supposed to act – I refused to "be a good girl" and just be quiet. I rebelled and my rebellion damn near killed me, but it didn't. I am still alive. I am still here and I have opted to not base my life or my worth on material possessions. I spent one day a few weeks ago with Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia and the members of the Stolen Land Tour; I did this on purpose and by choice because it makes sense. The research that these Poverty Skolaz have done on models of self-determined solutions to land use, homelessness, poverty and gentrification made possible through redistributed wealth and resources makes much more sense to me than capitalism ever has or will. The work that they are doing is something that I am paying attention to and it is something that I will be contributing to in any way that I can.

After my story was featured on a 2002 "Graduates Overcoming Obstacles" episode of the Oprah show, I received emails and other communications congratulating me. One that I will never forget said a lot of things about how horrible my life must have been prior to being accepted to Yale, and in conclusion, this email said "But thank heavens you got out! You made something of yourself and you got out."

No.

I was not nothing prior to attending Yale.

I was not nothing that needed to be made into something. I was not nothing and, despite other peoples' attitudes and behaviors, I was not even invisible. Prior to my attending Yale I was the same person that I am today. Please think about this the next time you don't see a homeless person on the street. Please think today about Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, POOR magazine, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Deecolonize Academy, and Krip Hop Nation. The work that they are doing is good and right. The work that they are doing is what we all should be doing to begin needed change in our nation today. Plus, they're really nice people whose message makes a lot of sense.

“Mr A, Mr A, this is your case-mangler, we are here for your daily,weekly hourly room inspection ,” Covered in face mask, latex gloves and waving a mock pesticide spray bottle, I, playing a character i created called The Case-mangler in POOR Magazine’s 2017 production of Theatre of the POOR  yelled through the “door” on the stage at poverty , disability, elder Skola Bruce. This play, like all of the Theatre of the POOR productions at PeopleSkool, is based on our real lives, our real experience, our real trauma. This is what happened to Bruce when after years of homelessness and languishing on endless groups of waitlists he got a tiny 5 x 5 room in a Single Room Occupancy Hotel (SRO) in the tenderloin district of San Francisico. And although it was billed as “housing” it was really a kinder , gentler, poor people jail. With ID checks, no guests after a certain time and an endless list of rules to contain the rowdy poor “residents’. But above all, one of the worst “rules” was and continues to be the constant and unbridled room and apartment inspections of his not at all private space.

Privacy is a privilege
For any of us houseless and formerly houseless folks who have lived in any public or privately “funded” poor people housing ( or any kind of aid for that matter) we have been subjected to incessant inspections of our yards, our rooms, our cars, our bodies and our children. In the SRO or project based section 8 units, these inspections are constant and focused mainly on the “disease” as it is called, of “hoarding”. It actually has a number attached to it and is listed in the encyclopedia of the empire - The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual)which has created an official diagnosis for this “disorder” and like all of the disorders listed in the DSM is now used to criminalize, fund, organize and stereotype poor people who supposedly “suffer” from it. the mere act of poor people having access to privacy is seen as a privilege we are not deserving of.

The odd part of all of this, is there are literally millions of people all over the world struggling with the CONfusion, violence, isolation, poverty, structural racism and classism, greed and resulting trauma of a global post-colonial reality, and even more specifically the disease of Western hetero-patriarchal capitalism. In other words there are a lot of people with this “disease” but most of them don’t get called sick. It is a class and race based “illness” and the ones who get “diagnosed” with it are us poor folks.

The Rich are called Collectors
Rich people are called archivists, collectors, stock-pilers, museum curators, buyers and owners. Having two or three or nine homes, condominiums, vacation getaways, more pictures than you can fit on your wall, in your home or in your office, four, five or 15 luxury vehicles, planes or boats, designer shoes you never wear, clothes you never try on equipment you never use and/or literally billions of dollars they could never possibly need to survive. They are rarely, if ever, called out for their capitalist sickness of hoarding, never forced out of their housing, threatened, inspected and/or harassed, but rather they get complemented on their ability to archive or collect or buy more and more things, and  dollars and stolen land. They are held up as examples of capitalist success and their class based sickness remains hyper-normalized. 

On the converse if you are poor, you do not have the privilege or the “right” to have “too” many things or actually pretty much anything. No matter how important our things even are. Once our lives are deemed dependent on the state we have no right to the precious. How dare we collect mementoes, art, archives, papers, or anything deemed not absolutely necessary by a litany of people now “responsible” for our lives, housing and survival, or as i affectionately call the army of our saviors: The case manglers, poverty pimps, anti-social workers, or poLice who believe they are necessary for our daily survival.

Now its true that sanitation and cleanliness is an important part of health and safety and its also true that many of us poverty skolaz who are “saved” by the system from our lives of homelessness suffer from extreme depression, struggle with serious trauma, psychological disabilities and the long-term effects of post-traumatic slave syndrome, capitalism and colonization. We sometimes keep or get things to replace all the people, family, loved ones and/or children we have lost or who have been stolen from us.  Normal things like momentos, family photos, cards or old toys were long ago lost to the multiple evictions, displacements, foreclosures and/or incarcerations people like me and my mama suffered with throughout my childhood. So we might begin to collect picture frames or batteries or like my tortured, traumatized mama, literally hundreds of pairs of socks and pill bottles. Due to our trauma we lack organizational skills so we just make piles of things on top of more piles of things. A part of what is happening to a lot of us at POOR Magazine like Bruce and his beautiful partner Kathy, in their “affordable” housing units in GentriFUKation City. Both are disabled elders, with trauma of homelessness and ableism and endless harassing inspections.

The insane, hypocritical cycle of this process, is that the few of us who get off the street into housing, end up facing homelessness again, almost immediately once we are in housing, due to the poison cocktail of DSM fueled patholigizing and criminalizing of our behavior and actions and living spaces and the battery of anti-poor people laws that support the criminalizing and even the so-called advocates who more often than not encourage folks to sign stipulated judgements to vacate, thereby supporting the non-profit housing developers they work with, All of which results in us being on the street. again.    

Hoarding When you have no roof at all…
The collections, belongings, products of poor workers/recyclers, unhoused folks who haven’t been lucky enough to get access to a roof ( or who are back outside again) don’t even get the “privilege” of an inspection, rather our belongings and our bodies are constantly and immediately viewed as trash, blight, a mess, dirty, unsanitary, dangerous and unsightly and whisked away daily, weekly, monthly, hourly by a society and a system that refuses to allow poor people to even be seen, muchless be human. Hence the constant “sweeps” and the use of the word “sweep” to describe the removal of unhoused peoples from so-called public streets. These violent acts of race and class based removal happens everyday in San Francisco, Oakland and everywhere where this lie of public and private space and use of this already occupied indigenous land rules. 

Touring the Real Blighted Hoods
This is why POOR Magazine and the Sogorea Te Land Trust launched the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tours through the other kind of “Blight”, the other hoarders. Challenging and sharing the medicine of redistribution and something i developed called Community Reparations with people never seen as suffering from a disease. Lifting up and sharing a different way of being with people whose actions are never questioned, whose choices to keep hoarding, exploiting, acquiring, and owning are not only unquestioned and un-pathologized but complemented, enabled and encouraged. From gated communities in Pacific Heights to the Shinnecock Nation in Eastern Turtle Island ( The Hamptons) where the extreme wealth- hoarders acquire acres and acres of stolen indigenous territory only to put a house on it. No food is grown, no peoples are housed, no ancestors are honored. This is the blight of poverty and scarcity and capitalism. And the shared belief that this is ok, that this is normal, that this is success is actually frightening to me.

Trauma Support Healing Groups at Homefulness
For us unhoused and formerly unhoused poverty, disability, migrant and indigenous skolaz at POOR Magazine barely surviving the loss and trauma of so much we hold each other in ongoing healing as we try to build a poor people-led movement to land liberation and housing.  In this process one of the most important parts of this movement work is the creation of the Peoples Agreement which each member of the Homefulness/POOR Magazine Family had to write and co-create over a three year period, a document which remains a living document, moving and shaping and changing each time we see another manifestation of our collective trauma. One of our many innovative ways we try to build in the healing is through the creation of a trauma - support therapy healing group to process the collection of belongings and its relation to our collective living and build. As well as we will eventually launch a redistribution store for all the things we don’t need that we might acquire.

As the daughter, granddaughter and descendent of so many broken poor, indigenous and colonized women who have collected little tiny broken things to fill the places of so much broken and stolen from them I do this work and teach this medicine to heal  through a new, non-punitive frame-work towards our collective healing. I don't blame the wealth-hoarding 1%-ers anymore than i blame myself or my family of unhoused poverty skolaz for accumulating, collecting, desiring of collecting or desperate with the stuckness of it all. This is the lie we are all taught in a capitalist system. And it might take 530 years to unlearn. But toward this end i share this frame to change the way folks view the process of accumulation and its class-based criminalization with the idea that there is another way to be.

As well, please see this as a call out to the hard-working advocates to consider inviting me and other poverty skolaz from PeopleSkool in to your organizations and centers to teach advocates different models to hold the trauma of poverty in re-housing unhoused folks and finally an invitation to as many people as want to walk, co-lead or join us in the next Stolen Land/Hoarded Tour through Miwok Territory (Marin County) as we share out this medicine with the people who no-one ever views as "sick".

We all suffer from this disease called capitalism. Let’s all heal together.
 

To join , co-lead, or walk with us in the next Stolen land tour thru Marin County email us at poormag@gmail.com. To find out more about the next peopleskool for folks with race and class privilege which will be held in Black August 2017 email us at deeandtiny@gmail.com

UN-Habitat, The UN’s human settlements program, states that the number of people living in slum conditions is now estimated at 863 million, which was only a couple hundred million less in the 1990’s.

 The Shack Dwellers Movement or Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a political group dedicated to the betterment of the urban poor’s living. They strive to organize “a society where everyone counts and where capital and the state are subordinate to society”

AbM was started 2005, in Durban, South Africa, and spawned from a road-blockade meant to protest the selling of land promised to shack dwellers.

Since then, the movement is still going strong with thousands of active members and supporters. But, it doesn’t change the fact that their communities are sometimes riddled with brutality, harassment, and arrests from police and other locals parties.

Marcus Garvey believed in black nationalism which encouraged black people to be separate from European society to maintain their identity. He has Inspired many people to excel and fend for themselves without “the white man’s help”. Which is quite similar to AbM’s ideology regarding the government.

Some of the criticisms the group has been that they don't listen to the authority of the city and that they are violent. AbM’s responded saying, "We have never called for violence. Violence is harm to human beings. Blockading a road is not violence."

Abahlali baseMjondolo to this day continues to fight against unethical evictions and other issues that oppress shack settlements. It understands the post-apartheid struggles, & I think Shack dwellers’ Union empowers the impoverished to take back their country from the oppressors. It’s one critical example of a society that will show the rest of the world how to run one better.

References:

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Jamaica-hailed-for-role-in-anti-apartheid-fight_15633822

http://africasacountry.com/2013/03/marcus-garveys-africa/

http://www.lancerlibrary.org/heroes-of-the-apartheid-in-south-africa.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_nationalism

to this day continues to fight against unethical evictions and other issues that oppress shack settlements.

https://www.cordaid.org/en/news/un-habitat-number-slum-dwellers-grows-863-million/

Just to start off, Philadelphia is one of the most racist states in the U.S now. Imagine how racist it was in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. The Mayor, then one of the most racist people alive former police commissioner Frank Rizzo was supporting and urging on the brutalization of black people all over Philadelphia. That is the reason why MOVE was started to state that black people and people of color can fight for their rights.

The belief system of the MOVE Organization is based on the writings of John Africa known as “The Guidelines”,  MOVE are deeply committed revolutionaries the way they honor their father and founder John Africa is they chant, “Long Live John Africa!”

The way MOVE contributes the revolution is they show an alternative way of living and introduce it to the world. They put out a template that other revolutionaries could see and do good things with.

MOVE was founded by John Africa but he was not their leader. They led themselves and they did not have one person leading them but all of them made executive decisions. They also didn't have to depend on the government for things because they made their own food, clothing, shelter etc.

John Africa was one of many people who started and later continued MOVE. There was also MOVE 9. MOVE 9 are 9 people who were arrested in a military attack on the MOVE household. This was August 8, 1978. This attack. Led by the Mayor and former police commissioner and before that officer Frank Rizzo. The brutally racist man who hated all people of color.

Police squadron’s filled the house with tear gas while the MOVE members who were at the house at the time were hiding from them in the basement. The MOVE members were not doing anything wrong in fact before the Philadelphia police force stormed their house they were just hanging out. They weren’t even having anything important like an event or a secret meeting. They were just being a family.

The police proceeded to pump 40,000 gallons of water into the basement with 40 fire hoses from the Philadelphia Fire Dept. It got so bad that the MOVE members had to hold their babies and animals above their heads so the children and pets wouldn't drown while MOVE was. When they tried to escape the house they were riddled with bullets from the police department that killed two of their members.

They were forced to choke on the tear gas and avoid the water that was slowly filling up their house. Nine of the members that escaped that were not killed from the bullets were brutally beaten by the police and then arrested. Those nine members were MOVE 9 who I might add, are still in jail today. The MOVE 9 are Debbie Sims Africa, Janet Holloway Africa, Janine Phillips Africa, William Phillips Africa, Delbert Orr Africa, Michael Davis Africa, Charles Sims Africa, Edward Goodman Africa and Pam Africa. They have been in jail for 39 years. Pam Africa was released in 1992 and is still fighting for the release of the other eight.

MOVE is a strong believer of Garveyism. They maintain their own food and business without relying on the white man to solve all of their problems. The government and clan members believed that MOVE was a cult and hated them. I believe the reason why they hated MOVE was because they were afraid of them. They do not want to see black people stand up for themselves and fight for their rights.

My opinion about MOVE is that it is an amazing liberation movement that encourages black and brown people to fight for themselves.