Story Archives 2018

​more justice, more joy

To Day I Transform in My Transition of My Oposition ……..

Yesterday I PRAY ………………..

Today I MEDITATE……………………………...

Tomorrow i CRY …………………………………… long AND hard ………………………………..

The Re-Birthing OF ME ……………………………….I'VE Reached the BETTER BEST OF ME  From the LOWER level …………………………………………………………………………..

In THIS Moment  i AM WOKE …… ...My frontal lobe tub some call PINEAL GLAND has Unleashead THE UNTAMEABLE ……………………………………………………………..

You EXIST …………………………..

The Illusion in the DECEPTION is COLD……………………………………………………………… Alluring ……………………………………………………………….

THE warmth of the lie chokes you up FO-FILLED  …………………………….. And INTRIGUED By the SMELL Of SWEET Folly ………………………………………………………………………….

Deception ………………………………………………………………………………………………….TRUTH

EMOTIONS ……………           ……………………….. ………………..                SPIRIT

Morals  , Marals        ……………………………………………………………….          EDUCATION

INTELLEGENCE …………………………………………………………………………   SLAVERY

FREEDOM ………………………………… GHOST ……………………………………  EXIST

TEARS DRYED ……….. OXYGEN IGNITED MY FIRE ……………………………..  

YESTERDAY I CRIED  ... TOMORROW I PRAY….. TODAY I MEDITATE Ase Aho Amen TAMED ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Be Love. So much things to say right now….. Got surrounded by the police for being Black in a white neighbourhood. Smh. I’m sad and irritated to see that fear is still the first place police officers go in their pursuit to serve and protect. To the point that protocol supersedes their ability to have discernment. Many have suffered and died in moments like these. That’s a crazy reality check. Give thanks for life and the ability to stand our ground. We are stronger together. Use your voice collectively”- @iamdonisha

Donisha Prendergast, Granddaughter of Reggae Great Bob Marley, artist Komi Oluwa Olafimihan and film maker Kelly Fyffe-Marshall were all detained by Rialto police after a racially motivated police call came in from a neighbor who falsely accused the women of burglarizing the Airbnb rental they were checking out of. After attending the Kaya Fest in San Bernadino the 3 women, accompanied by a white female photographer were packing up their belongings and taking the property out to their car when a white neighbor called Rialto police saying that they were “suspicious” and “stealing stuff” from the home they rented. The other reason was supposedly the women did not smile or wave to neighbor who made the call.

This allegation was enough to send several police cars and a helicopter out to the scene. When Donisha showed proof that she and the others were guests checking out of the place the police still were not satisfied until she got ahold of the owner of the house over the phone.

After being held “lawfully captive” for several minutes they were set free to go but the scars from “nigger branding” will not be forgotten.

Ms. Prendergast and her friends are taking legal action against this matter for there are some crimes committed against the women like racial profiling, being falsely accused in a manner that could jeopardize the reputation or cause serious injury or death- it’s just a hate crime police call altogether. The person who made the call should be held accountable for this action because bottom line someone could have not only lost their freedom, but lost their lives for no reason other than being Black.

Airbnb’s senior advisor Laura Murphy sent out a letter to the Mayor of Rialto as well to the police department condemning the biased treatment of the women and the way the situation was handled.

I have always condemned the history/ourstory/continuedstory of the (false) Superior/Inferior Boss/Boy Yassuh/Nawsuh gotta kiss butt -or be lynched relationship between Black folks and Wite folks to begin with. This is TRUTH that you could not look a wite person in the eyes when you HAD to answer to him. You could not look at him-ESPECIALLY at his woman or you would  face a middle of the night death sentence from the KKK. IF you REFUSED to lower yourself to please “ol massa” you got lynched. IF you did not give up your wife/daughter to him for wicked pleasure you got lynched! IF you read books you got lynched! IF you didn’t laugh in a barrel and “massa” thought you were laughing at him, you got lynched. IF you were BLACK and was accused of ANY crime against wite power, innocent or not, you get lynched! It is 2018 and we are not kissing any butt in order to save our lives or freedom. “Suspicious” is the word for “Black” and if that wasn’t the case then why wasn’t the wite photographer mentioned? Why didn’t the call say “4 suspicious women” but just 3? Because every since Black People been brought here, against our will might I add to Amerikkka we have been “suspicious” that’s why!

Well I went down to the rich man’s house- to take back what he stole from me- take back my dignity- take back my humanity…..

There we were - the unhoused, the evicted, the displaced, the disabled.Black, Brown, Indigenous, Poor white, youth & elders on one accord, all colors, all nations, all cultures, all ages, all abilities- cause that’s what poverty looks like in this stolen indigenous territory the colonizers called the US.

“We poor mamas are marching on Washington DC because poverty is violence against our babies, our elders our families and if you stay silent you are part of the problem,” said Tara Colon, Puerto Rican/Mexican mama of five from Philadelphia and PPEHRC co-founder.

The 2018 Poor People’s March on Washington was originally launched by impacted poor, houseless and formerly unhoused people from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) 15 years ago. Poor folks walked from Mississippi to Washington in honor of the 35th anniversary of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968. The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is a truly poor people-led movement, which like POOR Magazine is walking for our own criminalized lives, our struggles and our own self-determined solutions.

The War on the Poor is in full effect from Frisco to Oakland to the Philippines and Iraq- but now the soldiers are social workers, poLice and Poltricksters creating deadly legislation and contracts , Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, Po Poet, houseless mama and author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America

“In St. Petersburg Florida, the Palm trees have more rights than homeless people,” Shay, a unhoused resident of Florida and  a poverty skola as we call it at POOR Magazine, meaning someone who has struggled with poverty and/or homelessness, continued her report of extreme criminalization of unhoused people in her town, “it’s illegal to lean against a building  while homeless, basically it’s illegal to be alive in our town if you are homeless,”

Shay and Tara,  along with over 100 unhoused and formerly unhoused poverty skolaz from Florida to California, all experiencing different forms of deep criminalization of our lives, began walking on June 2nd from the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philly, where rates of homelessness, evictions and police harassment are on the rise.

We are the poor people, walking for ourselves, cause we don’t need corporations or non-profiteers to speak for us, we can speak, teach and build for ourselves, we just need people to stop pimping us.

The march through occupied Lenape territory ( aka Philly ) and later on to Maryland was a metaphor for our struggle as poor folks. We would depart intentionally blighted poor people of color neighborhoods like Kensington and gentriFUKed North Philly where my Afro-Boricua, disabled and later houseless mama was born and is now literally being seized by Temple University for student housing and a new corporate sports stadium, and then move onto wealth-hoarding neighborhoods with huge swaths of mama earth used for lawns that don’t grow food or house people, but just sit there as a testament to the sickness of wealth-hoarding and land-stealing- something POOR Magazine has been highlighting in our Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tours Across Turtle Island,

“Maryland is the 2nd wealthiest state in the US - we rate number 2 in the most homeless people in the country and we are the oldest state in the US,” said Rev. Annie Chambers, Black Panther elder revolutionary from the Spiritual Love Ministry who this poverty skola had the blessing of sitting as she described another problem that plagues poor folks, the intense poverty pimping and non-profiteering of poor people that happens in Baltimore where she is based doing liberation advocacy and truly poor people-led organizing.  

From Oakland to Oklahoma, poor, disabled elders, children, families are in an emergency. In Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley where myself, Leroy Moore, Bilal Mafundi Ali and Youth Skola Tiburcio from POOR Magazine are based, there are an ongoing series of Po’Groms on poor people as Bilal Calls them and our homeless, disabled bodies, are being violently "swept" by Mayors from San Francisco to Santa Monica, like we are trash- our elders and children are being evicted by speculators and we refuse to continue being criminalized, displaced and terrorized, we Poor people have innovative solutions like First they Came for the Homeless in Berkeley & Homefulness in Deep East Oakland. People need to hear our own poor people-led solutions, " which is also why all of us unhoused and formerly unhoused mamaz and uncles at POOR Magazine founded Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness, which is one of the poor people-led solutions we are lifting up in this march.

Across the nation, unhoused and poor folks have minimal or no healthcare, with hospitals like Georgetown Hospital, who are mandated to treat us dumping our houseless and disabled bodies out of the back doors of ambulances and leaving us to die in parks.

“This is where all pastors and congregations should be, in the streets with the lost, the last and the least,”  said revolutionary Pastor Keith Collins from the Overcomer Church in Philadelphia

Migrante Raza families who cross these false borders not being seen at all, incarcerated in detention centers and shot cross colonizer borders not to mention becoming the highest rise, next to elders in the homeless population across the US and facing increased multi-layered racist profiling resulting in our deaths, like Mayan, indigenous father Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat who was killed in San Francisco, for being houseless in amerikkka, because a resident got scared of a peaceful houseless recycler who did nothing but be Brown and Unhoused in these stolen streets.

“We are the new and unsettling force that King spoke of in 1968.” said Galen Tyler, PPEHRC member,  

"Yes, we the poor are marching, speaking for ourselves: the homeless, residents of Puerto Rico robbed of their land and culture, people in recovery, the disability community, the ‘welfare queens,’ the ‘deadbeat dads,’ homeless veterans, the hustlers, young and old, immigrants, the criminals, the ‘undeserving’ poor, black, white and Brown. We will march for our lives and when we arrive in Washington DC we will construct Resurrection city and Reclaim our future for generations to come, “.said Cheri Honkala, PPEHRC founder.

Side by Side

chair frames and baby toys,

jackets, toothbrushes coffee cans and pillows

wrapped up in paper made of memories… Tiny Po’ Poet

“We are marching to Washington to get our Reparations, said youth skola Tiburcio, 14 years old, formerly homeless youth poverty skola from Deecolonize Academy and Homefulness, built with Community Reparations from wealth-hoarders redistributing their stolen and hoarded or inherited wealth.

From Sacramento to San Jose to San Juan, Puerto Rico, public housing units which housed literally thousands of people are being destroyed by neoliberal and now racist Trump policies, doing things like tripling the rent on poor folks who already barely have enough to pay for our lives and our rents. These anti-poor people policies are being implemented by Trump directly following the selling of public housing leases to for-profit housing developers under Obama with a program benignly called RAD - reported by the SF Bayview and POOR Magazine and barely even mentioned by mainstream or independent media, resulting in the evictions and relocations of thousands of elders and families into nothing and as reported by comrades at Western Regional Advocacy Project (wraphome.org) this is the just the icing on the scarcity model cake, for us perceived as the undeserving poor.

“Us Poor folks are going to HUD on Monday to meet with Ben Carson, to prevent widespread homelessness,” said PPEHRC founder Cheri Honkala.

The cycle goes around But the kids of Poverty & Disability organized Without foundations who have roots of cycle of abuse The children of Poverty & Disability Marching to D.C.hand and hand with their knowledge, art and music Proud and loud "

Excerpts from Leroy F. Moore Jr's poem Poverty & Disability

Took Back what he stole from me- took my back my dignity - took back my humanity - under my thumb under my thumb ain’t nobody gonna walk all over me…

From Rebel Diaz to Infinite Skillz and the Po Poets Project will be part of the line-up of hip hop artists and cultural workers performing in Washington DC at Resurrection City starting June 9th through the 12th. POOR Magazine's poor people-led media project RoofLEss Radio will also be broadcasting from the march at this link For More information go to economichumanarights.org. or the facebook page here

“We are surrounded by Black Cops”, said Leroy Moore, with POOR Magazine and Krip Hop Nation about the 15 black cops who surrounded us houseless and formerly houseless mamas, uncles, children, and elders from the Poor People’s March when we walked humbly into the Washington DC office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demand our housing back.

“We are here to meet with Ben Carson,” we all said.

We poor folks, most of whom are on Section 8, living in public housing and/or no housing at all- paid a visit to the Washington Dc headquarters of HUD on Day 12 of the Poor Peoples March from Philadelphia to Washington DC only to be surrounded by poLice officers (all of color), blocking us at the door when all we asked for was a meeting with the housing director, Ben Carson who is fulfilling the neoliberal and neoconservative dreams of dismantling poor people housing as we know it.

“HUD changing their own door locks to keep us out is a perfect metaphor for the ways poor folks are locked out, swept up and treated as though we are trash, when we are evicted from our public and private housing and end up on the streets,” said this reporter/poverty skola, Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, about HUD actually sending locksmiths to the front of their building to change their main entrance locks.

After a tense stand off at the HUD entrance we were all told that one of us could get a meeting if the rest of us left the building. We figured this was another politrick, but we complied in the hopes that at least we had a slim chance of actually getting a meeting. So as we all filed out, Cheri Honkala, marcher and founder of Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign in Philly, stayed inside the building, determined by any means necessary to, “get a meeting”.

"We sit down with McCormack and Baron all the time," said a smooth talking HUD Public Relations (PR0 officer. While we were waiting "outside" HUD's PR person walked outside ostensibly to "answer" our questions. When I asked him about the destruction of poor people housing as we know it aka the benignly named RAD program- which sells the mortgages of public housing buildings on the private stock market to for profit banksters like ING and Citigroup and gives the management over to for profit and non-profit housing devil-opers and me and we at  at POOR call the E-RADification program, he claimed complete ignorance about how it was rolling out in San Francisco, one of the 5 demonstration cities who struggled with it first before they unveiled it on the whole of the US.

"So you are aware that the RAD program reneges on HUD's guarantee to provides housing for the poorest among us and demolishing buildings all across the country building buildings we are not able to get back in," I asked.

Evading the question, he looked away and then came back with, "Well in Baltimore tenants have a right of return written guaranteeing them housing when demolitions happen,"

"You mean like the Hope IV right of return which which meant no hope and no return."

"Well i don't know about all that, but i know what we have in Baltimore" As he was popping his Brooks Brothers Collar, i was thinking to myself, that's not what I heard from poverty skolaz in Baltimore and then said, "So that's not what i have heard about Baltimore, and I know that in San Francisco the housing devil-opers McCormack and Baron are trying to sweat out Plaza East residents by never replacing their broken appliances and plumbing and heating and making it impossible for them to getting any recourse or justice," at which point he revealed the sick, sleazy relationship between corporate for profit and non-profit housing devil-opers and how they talk "all the time" and then walked away from me.

Sadly, after pretending to take Cheri up to a meeting they just escorted her to the back entrance and when she refused to move they arrested her. “People are afraid of us organized poor, " said Cheri Honkala as she was being dragged away from her disabled sun Guillermo and all of us by poLice agents of the state at HUD.

“They are selling off all of our public housing,” said Louie from Picture the Homeless speaking to PoorNewsNetwork when we did our Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour about just a part of the ongoing destruction by HUD of all of our poor people housing, a story POOR Magazine poverty skolaz Tiny and QueenandiXSheba released in 2013 in the SF Bayview.

A Real Poor People March

From San Francisco to San Juan Puerto Rico- we Black, Brown, Indigenous, Poor White, disabled, children, adults and elders all took part in this powerful poor people-led march to highlight and manifest poor people-led solutions to our crises of evictions, displacement, incarceration, criminalization and brutal anti-poor people-hate that are increasing across this stolen indigenous territory. ( Read Part 1 here)

After our first day getting poLice called on us for Sitting While Unhoused in amerikkklan on the porch in Philly- the poLice presence and harassment continued throughout this herstoric march. We walked past wealth-hoarder and land stealers in Oxford , Penn, to Baltimore, Maryland. The police harassment us marchers got were an example of the micro-abuses that happen everyday in amerikkka to unhoused and disabled people of all colors.

In the march they manifested as churches that “let” us stay in their basements waiting for us to leave at the crack of dawn. Or posted up in their church lobbies like we were going to steal something- not sure what, maybe a basketball hoop considering we were in the gym sleeping on the floor.

And then we arrived in Washington DC- the rich white mans house to take back what he stole from us - like our theme song sang by Tara Colon’s beautiful daughter throughout the march reminded us. and the beautiful crazy was on.

“We have a permit, “ said poet, drummer and revolutionary Pastor Bruce Wright from the Florida chapter of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign to the park police as they began an onslaught of harassment of us unhoused folks when we arrived to build Resurrection city on Dupont circle in Washington DC, a few blocks from the (Rich) Wite (Mans) House.

“Our Permit was revoked,” said Cheri Honkala to all of us. After a two hour stand-off between park ranger police and us unhoused and formerly unhoused black , brown and white people who built the historic Resurrection City in Honor of the 50 year anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King’s march on Washington, our permit was revoked for no reason at all. We weren’t causing any trouble, we weren’t fulfilling any racist and classist stereotypes about poor folks. We were just sleeping while houseless in this stolen territory.Just like the multiple other unhoused folks who slept on the perimeter of Dupont Circle and were continually harassed every day by park police for the duration of our time there.

At POOR Magazine/homefulness we houseless and formerly houseless black, brown and indigenous people learn from our teachers, elders and ancestors that parks like Dupont circle park and Golden Gate Park are a lie in the first place, just a way to sanction the stealing of land from 1st Nations people. That “heroes” like John Muir was just a sanctioned gangster who created documents that claimed ownership on huge swaths of stolen indigenous territory on Mama Earth, locking it up and calling it “public” but never really intending it to be for “all” the public. Which is why revolutionary poor folks like Auntie Frances’ Self-Help Hunger Program is harassed for serving food, for living, sitting and standing, planting trees while unhoused in amerikkklan. Whose attempts to put a porta pottie in gentriFUKED Driver Plaza in North Oakland is stymied by poltricksters and hipsters alike, and Corrina Gould, 1st Nations Ohlone /Lisjen Land Liberator and co-founder of Sogorea Te Land Trust and Homefulness Elephant Council member, has to fight so hard to save another sacred site, this time the West Berkeley Shellmound, from more desecration.

So there we were, the actual poor folks trying to honor, lift up, seize and manifest Dr Kings Dream- the one excerpted, sliced and diced and used over and over in propaganda in public relations campaigns for Airlines to Parades and we were threatened with arrest, displaced and evicted. Another perfect metaphor for the treatment of lives and bodies of houseless people across the US.

“These are the purveyors of the American Dream, which for all of us poor folks, black and brown folks is the american nightmare,” said Revolutionary Pastor and fellow marcher Keith Collins, outside the Poor Peoples March ’s last stop, the Chamber of Commerce, which as Cheri explained was the real power behind the Rich white Mans House.

And as poverty skola comrades at Western Regional Advocacy Project (wraphome.org) and POOR Magazine Wesearch  teaches us, the Chamber of Commerces in every stolen city in amerikkklan are the backers and promoters of the Business Improvement District (BID) which is one of the reasons us poor folks are “swept” off of the sidewalks like we are trash.

This march was a really real representation of 21st century poverty and included some amazing mamaz, daddies, youth, elder and disabled skolaz providing rides, support vehicles, back up food, blankets, air mattresses, tents, love and medical support, like Lisa and Leon Richards and their fabulous daughter and photographer Eva Cristo, and all their fierce and beautiful children, Tara Colon and her suns and daughters and granddaughters, carrying us with their beautiful singing voice and support, Julia and her sun Jeremy, Cheri and her Sun Guillermo, and Ondre and "T" and Robert and POOR's mentee Josie, and Eddie Somerset and his amazing brother Gaylen and Pablo and Curtis and Sha and Steve and me and my Sun Tiburcio and Bilal and Leroy so many more...

“This beautiful march was life-changing for me, thank-you all for your hearts and love,” said “T” one of the powerFUL unhoused poverty skolaz from St Petersburg, Florida who marched with us through thick and thin and spoke at our beautiful closing circle and prayer on July 12th.

“We all know this fight isn’t over, and we as poor folks need to be leading our own fights and our own liberation,” said Pastor Bruce Wright.

For more information about the poor people march on Washington go to economichumanrights.org. For more information on one of the templates of poor people-led housing we po folks call Homefulness go to www.poormagazine.org/homefulness.

Photo credits: Jason Bosch, Eva Cristo, Tiny, Tiburcio

[image description:  sweet photo of 30 year old Black Loved One Charleena Lyles smiling and wearing intricate hoop earrings, she has long eyelashes and is wearing lip gloss and a hat.  Photo courtesy Katrina Johnson]

Black, Disabled, Mother, Sister, Lover, Cousin, Daughter, Niece, Neighbor, friend, Poverty Scholar, and Loved One, Charleena Lyles, called 911 for assistance from her Seattle/Duwamish home on June 18th, 2017. Charleena had survived many things in her lifetime, including intergenerational racism, domestic violence, and the criminalization of being on the radar of CPS (“child protective services”). She loved and nurtured her four children, one of whom is Disabled, with Down Syndrome. Charleena navigated Poverty and struggled to find affordable housing for her family, having never truly felt safe at the Brettler Family Place apartment where she resided. When white poLice officers Steven McNew and Jason Anderson showed up to Charleena’s apartment in response to her call for help, they misused information about her, which they could have used to support her. Those kops knew she had mental illness and that she was a trauma survivor, they knew there were children there, they knew Charleena was their protector. Instead of providing care, access support, or the help that Charleena requested, Seattle poLice officers McNew and Anderson shot Charleena Lyles seven times, violently killing her in front of her children, whose lives are forever changed.

“We never called her Charleena,” says Charleena’s cousin Katrina Johnson. Katrina is one of a group of young Black Matriarchs at the center of this justice struggle, including Charleena’s sisters Monika Williams and Tiffany Rogers. Katrina explains that Charleena’s name is pronounced with a hard CH (not “sh”): “It’s CHarleena like charcoal,” she says. “And for us, it was always Leena, or Leena Boo. She was the life of the party. She was lively. She always had this huge smile on her face. She was very giving, so like if it was her last, she would give it to somebody, regardless of if she had anything left. Above all of that, she was a Mom. Leena loved her kids,” says Katrina.  

Katrina continues, “We used to run around together, do stuff, hang out at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue when we all lived out there. She lived with my Grandma and we lived with my stepdad.  We used to go down to the community center out there. She loved listening to music and going dancing. Those are some of the things that I'll always remember.”

Calling poLice into your home should not result in your own death.

“My first cousin Leena called for help, to report a burglary, and instead of getting the help that she needed, she took seven bullets to her one hundred pound frame, in front of three of her four Kids. Her youngest Son laid in a pool of her blood. That’s what I think happened to her. That’s what the medical examiner told me. I believe my cousin was murdered. I believe they did not have to use deadly force. I believe that the killing of mentally ill people has gone on for far too long. It is time for some things to change,” says Katrina.

Charleena had called poLice in the past, to report assaults she had survived. She repeatedly had asked kops, kourts and The System for survival assistance. She followed through on filing restraining orders. “I feel so scared for my safety, and I just got out of the hospital from having our 6-days-old baby boy, and I had a c-section. I think he ripped my stitches open,” Charleena wrote in a petition for an order for protection.

But the poLice criminalized her instead of supporting her. In response to a recent domestic violence call, in early June 2017, Seattle poLice actually ended up arresting Charleena, and then flagged her address - and her - as being problematic, instead of in need of access support or de-escalating. Charleena was jailed for two weeks, then diverted to mental health kourt after that arrest. She was released literally four days before Seattle poLice returned to her apartment and killed her, using previous documentation of their interactions as justification for using deadly force.

Months after her killing, an “investigation” into Charleena’s death found that her killing was “justified,” and that the Use of Force followed the training, that poLice “feared for their lives.” The System protected the poLice, instead of Charleena, and blamed Charleena for her own death. Neither of the poLice officers that killed her would be held accountable.

[image description:  Charleena and one of her kids are blowing kisses to the camera, this is a selfie taken by Black Loved One lost to poLice violence, Charleena.  Photo courtesy of Katrina Johnson.]

Lies and inconsistencies in the ever-changing poLice narrative.

“It makes me wonder, what lengths will the poLice go to?” asks Katrina Johnson. “The poLice said that Charleena had not left her house 24 hours before her killing. I know for a fact that was a lie, because her sister Monika had a birthday party in the park for her daughter. Charleena and all of the kids were there, and our family was there,” said Katrina.  

Katrina continues, “I know that when the family was shown the footage, I know they kept saying that a person walking down the hallway was Charleena, but it was not, that was her daughter. So, that was a lie. I know that the time stamps did not line up, so it was like pieces of the tape were missing, and they couldn’t explain to us why. They STILL haven’t explained that to us. We are still waiting for a response, and that was probably seven months ago that we asked about that.”

The poLice claimed that Charleena had a number of knives, though they never said “put down the knife,” at any time on the audio from her killing. “I still don’t understand the whole knife thing,” says Katrina. “I do not, and my family does not believe that she actually held a knife. I’ve never seen an officer, dealing with a person with a weapon, that never says ‘put down your weapon.’ So that leads me to believe, since he never said that, that she never had one. You know I asked the medical examiner, and people like that, if it was possible, since they found a knife in her pocket, is it possible for her to have had the knife out and then put it in her pocket?  And he said ‘No, that wasn’t possible.’”

The poLice reported that there was also one knife found by the door. “The other knives were in the kitchen,” says Katrina. “I’m not sure where anybody else keeps their knives, but I keep mine in the kitchen.”  

“We are talking about two 250-pound-plus men, one five foot three one hundred-pound Woman, and a little steak knife, even if she had one, and these guys have on bullet proof vests and all that… I’m still trying to figure out, how does this happen? Even if she had a knife, which we do not believe, it still doesn’t make any sense. In the poLice officers’ report, he said ‘I had an out. I could have left. But I was worried about the kids,’” says Katrina.

“If that officer was ‘worried about the safety of the kids,’ how is it possible that BULLETS were going to help the safety of the kids? I mean, I’m no rocket scientist, but I do have a degree. And this just does not make any sense. Knife or not,” says Katrina.

[image description: in pink sidewalk chalk and hearts are written REST IN POWER Charleena Lyles, Leena, Leena Boo.  there are flowers and petals in the hearts. Photo POOR Magazine]

[image description:  outside Charleena’s apartment, a huge daytime vigil is held.  There are children and adults there, candles, flowers, photos of Charleena and notes written by community members.  There’s a poster with a drawing of Charleena that says CHARLEENA LYLES, #sayhername Black Disabled Lives Matter, Black Mothers Lives Matter.  Photo POOR Magazine]

Her family is still reeling from the loss, and can’t rest until there is justice.

[image description:  selfie of Black Loved One lost to poLice violence, Charleena Lyles, her hair is black, straight and long with bangs that graze her eyelids.  Photo courtesy Katrina Johnson]

“Many of us are still numb. Half of us are in disbelief. Some of us can’t even grieve because we’re still fighting for justice,” says Katrina. “We are still so worried - okay, what’s happening with the kids, what is this going to look like. I mean, we just haven’t had time to grieve. We are highly traumatized right now.”

“I know for me, I have to keep going. I cannot rest until I get some sort of justice,” she continues. “And the justice is not going to come in the form that the officers are going to pay or go to jail. Because, I was told, even before the investigation was over, that that wasn’t going to happen.  That no officer would be charged with her killing. So, getting justice for me is getting accountability, getting laws changed, so that other people aren’t dying in egregious ways, the way that my cousin was killed.”

“People with mental health issues, or people that are in a mental health crisis, should not be condemned to their death because they have crisis. If you are not equipped to handle people that are in the middle of a crisis, then you should stand down, until you can find a better way, instead of putting bullets in people. My cousin deserved to BE ALIVE. WE MISS HER. Our lives are all forever changed.  None of us will ever be the same again. Seattle will never be the same, because of what happened to her. It wasn’t just our family that lost somebody, it’s a whole community lost somebody that day.”

[image description: nighttime vigil for Charleena Lyles, there are dozens of candles lit and many flowers and petals are lovingly placed around a portrait of her, outside her home where she was killed by Seattle poLice.]

{image description:  a sweet snapshot of smiling Momma Charleena Lyles and her daughter.  They are wearing summer attire, there’s a children’s stroller in the foreground, and the big blue sky is behind them.]

After a long tiring battle of the surviving Black Women in Charleena’s inner circle fighting to protect her kids, Katrina reports with gratitude that Charleena’s children are doing well right now.  “All four of them are together. That’s what their Mom wanted, was to always have her kids together."

Black siblings, their lives forever impacted with the violent loss of their 30 year old Mother.  As a part of the poLice investigating themselves, after her death, Charleena’s body was tested for drugs and alcohol, and her body was drug and alcohol free.  One of the seven bullets that riddled her body, entered her uterus and grazed her unborn fetus.

BLACK LOVED ONE AND MOTHER, CHARLEENA LYLES, SHOULD BE ALIVE.

Please join the family, friends and community of Charleena Lyles on Monday, June 18, 2018, for a public gathering in honor of her life, from 3-8pm at Warren G. Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115.

The Charleena Lyles One Year Remembrance, Reflection and Healing

will host spoken word, offerings and performances. Please attend and bring love.

facebook event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/197075477785698/

Please visit the Sins Invalid’s Disability Justice Statement on Police Violence in Memory of Charleena Lyles, including a free download of the Charleena Lyles charcoal portrait poster by Vilissa K. Thompson, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, and Micah Bazant: http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/sins-invalid-statement-on-police-violence-republished-in-memory-of-charleena-lyles-rest-in-power

STOP KILLING BLACK DISABLED PEOPLE

BELIEVE BLACK WOMEN

BLACK DISABLED LIVES MATTER

BLACK POOR LIVES MATTER

BLACK MOTHERS LIVES MATTER

ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER

SAY HER NAME #sayhername CHARLEENA LYLES #charleenalyles

This article is being written on June 12, 2018, the 17th angelversary of the death of Black, Disabled, Loved One, Idriss Stelley, who was killed by SFPD in a bipolar manic episode.  La Mesha Irizarry is Idriss’ Mother, and is the catalyst for me to write these articles.

Lisa Ganser is a white Disabled genderqueer artist and activist living in Olympia, WA on stolen Squaxin, Chehalis and Nisqually land.  They are a sidewalk chalker, a copwatcher, a Poverty Scholar and the Daughter of a Momma named Sam. Lisa is currently on house arrest.

Edited by Nomy Lamm, Sins Invalid.

From CPS to ICE- the Separation Nation didn’t begin with these Incarcerated Babies

The Violent Separation Nation  didn’t begin with this generation
with these babies
or their incarceration
The Separation Nation began with the theft of Turtle Island
and the humans who lived here and thrived on it

It continues today with the Confusion of age grade separated schools, Special Edukkkation and racist classist Child Separation SErvices
predating on poor parents and parents of color

With people being encouraged to leave their peoples, languages, spirit
and cultures of who made them
with disabled children drugged against their human nature
with indigenous children ripped, violated, stolen and abused from their families and nations

African children stolen from their mamas - so poltricksters and wealth-hoarders could hoard and amp up their profit-making machinations

With mamas on HEll-FARE being considered Unfit and Cut from their babies
because of poverty and the profit of the Charity industrial system
the savior complex and the lie of best interests of the child

for the System that gives monies to foster care and state run homes
rather than poor mamas, poor families just trying to live and thrive
with little to be alive

Please stay focused family on what matters now -
how this time of the hatchet man for the aristocracy
CON-FUSinG us all

stay focused on the false borders
the false evictions
the buying and selling of our misery, bodies, Mama Earth
and all our generations

“Please don’t take my baby….” Cosmo cried to the CPS anti-social worker.. from 1998 CourtWatch article by Dee Garcia - POOR Magazine Vol 4 MOTHERS

As we grieve, show up, demand and scream for the freedom of these incarcerated babies - please don’t get confused by the blur of this present genocidal history. Take a refresher course with me through the violent herstories that built this stolen land - and continues to assist in the realization and manifestation of the most important aspects of what i call the Separation Nation.

From the beginning- under the lie of discovery- colonizers “finding” something that was never lost aka indigenous land and peoples on Turtle Island and beyond, the message, the narrative and the story has and will always be.. “Everything you do, have done and continue to do to raise your children, care for Mama Earth and honor your spirit and ancestors, is sick , broken , aberrant and evil and therefore we have the not just the right, but the mandate to take, exploit, steal and kill your children, your land and your bodies.

The cult of rehabilitation, of fixing, saving, teaching and changing “for the better” for the “best interests of the child” for the white-ness, for the “success” model has always been the way. And lest you think that all changed in modern day reality, think again. Now the only difference is people think they have “choices” and yet, most of society in the US have all been brainwashed, and what is happening to migrant babies is just an extension of the lie of CPS, poLice, colleges 8,000 miles away from your parents, the cult of angst, perpetrated by media and everybody and the idea that if you leave, separate, destroy, and most importantly forget everything and everyone who made you loved you and cared for you, you will be better, stronger, smarter, and most importantly, more successful, within the definition of wealth-hoarding, land-stealing success amerikkklan style.

We believe this without question, it is why we sink thousands of dollars into institutional schools thousands of miles away from us to “send our children away to college” it is why people support and fund the foster care system to care for poor children instead of helping parents raise their own children with well funded and free child care, cash aid, food aid , etc. It is why elder ghettos are a multi-million dollar industry, It is why we go to other countries with weaponry and bombs to “help” read “save” the people under attack. It is why we believe that the buying and selling of mama earth makes us safe and the calling in of armed guards to deal with emotional , physical and violent situations make us “safe”.

We are all caught in this illusion and only when it becomes so violently obvious like now, just like the Japanese internment camps and Nazi’s, the genocidal "boarding schools" for indigenous children and the past of the enslavement of people can we really see its full agenda in play. Actually this current incarceration is a logical progression of everything the settler colonizers stole this land with and so i ask people to please stay focused, to buckle down - to understand and overstand that migrante warriors like POOR Magazine’s own Ingrid Deleon and Gloria Esteva from Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia have been writing and reporting on the separation and criminalizing and terrorizing of migrant families have been going on for years behind the concept of these colonizer borders. 

That the myth of the orphan and the ripping of children from their mamas arms happened in the genocide called the Vietnam war by white anti-social workers and wealthy global south Stanford University educated social workers  ( see Daughter of Danang for reference- one of Mama Dee’s required reading at POOR Magazine’s PeopleSkool ) it is why us welfareQUEENs at POOR Magazine reported and supported on the Transubstansive error ( as Black psychology teaches us) of Daniel Moynihan going into black single mother headed households and pathologizing every family, deeming them “unfit” and broken, and therefore criminalizing their lives and forever locking in the already racist, classist US hell-fare system.  

It is why the first lie giant saviors like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey perpetrates on the children of the (African) continent is that we “need to open schools” for the poor children of Africa.

It is why thousands of children were stolen in Haiti after the earthquake to feed the ever hungry “schools” of the euro-saviors.

it is why the first thing the kkkolonizers aka missionaries did in the Philippines ( and so many other island nations) were to build colleges to educate the indigenous consciousness out of the people they “found” in the Philippines. Colleges that remain there today and feed the aristoKrayzy with more and more brainwashed, colonized peoples of color.

It is how the beautiful black children could be run off a cliff a few months back by white foster family who were considered “better” than their own biological family.

It is why Iris Canada, a 100 year old Black elder could be evicted from her home of 40 years by the campaign manager of Bernie Sanders.

It is why my own mixed race, unprotected Mama Dee was almost killed in a rich white woman’s foster home that was deemed by the state to be “safer” for her than her indigent, single mama.

it is why my mama pulled me out of institutional schools rather than lose me to CPS who deemed my mama unfit because she was disabled and unhoused.

Yes we all must fight for the release of these babies And recognize this is NOTHING new and so as we fight, remember to not get lost behind this defensive struggle against this current evil. To make the connections and fight for support for poor families and food stamps ( just ended in New Orleans !!?)  and transform these multiple, criminalizing scarcity models out of the deserving versus undeserving poor into actual supportive models. To look, as we do at POOR Magazine’s PeopleSkool, at the ways we as colonized people support/enable this system, our own separation and this 21st century colonization, even when we think we don’t.

To help build actual reparations and decolonial models of self-determination for poor and indigenous people by redistribution of your privilege and access, (like Sogorea Te Land Trust and Homefulness) your inherited wealth or stolen land, and most of all to fight. live and work for the abolition and decoloization of all these colonized borders.

To read the work of Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia click here. To find out more about the next session of PeopleSkool click here

Grieving mother ... today faced with my own cross to bear. I'm realizing more and more that the hell that God speaks of may be the very personal experience that one relives here on Earth. I had the opportunity to Bear Witness a 18 year old young man transition out of here by train. His life was taken. I didn't see it personally but the tragedy has hit the news in the hoods neighbors family and friends of Miss Christa Holloway. Her son Victor is a great ancestor now ...

I haven't known Christa long maybe all of under 2 years I met her through Tanika blue who brought me to Fadeelah Granny's house  And the 1st Person To Greet me Warmly Was Christa Warm and Sweet so Genuine and then i was Re- introduced to the Gang Some Knew me Some Knew of Me. However who would have thought we would share this extended inherited family experience parallel. Young mother like me she is in her first trimester the first 3 months of coping with her son's death ... and another piece I am inspired to speak on the element (words) ... do we in fact need to utilize words and the reason why I skip to that is because this mother will find herself arms up needing to be armed up and prepared for all of the words that will hit her yet. Pierce her like bullets. She like me and so many other mothers will then be forced to make a decision on how connected or disconnected one should be when it comes to words...  and lately words can be so cliche often used for evil vs. Good. And so my heart goes out 2 anyone who personally feels like they don't have to die to experience what hell actually feels like.

 

I believe it's not subject only to fire I believe he'll is any form of torture... I miss my son Torian Dajour Hughes. I Swear i do and so this brings me to the Cross i mentioned i was to Bear... Every day i pick it up to put it down to wake up to pic it up in the morning remembering his name the fact that he existed and he belongs to me BUT the pain is far too much to bear on this cross Which is My Mind & This 98 pound body Is