Story Archives

by Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe

Tiny and Mari from POOR Magazine's Indigenous Peoples Media Project collaborated with Ras K' Dee (Pomo/Afrikan) from SNAG Magazine and Cassandra Yazzie (Dine') from Four Rivers Institute to lead the Native Hip Hop workshop at the Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe located on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. The Workshop included Hip Hop writing, poetry, beat-making, film and consciousness training for young people 6-18. It was a very powerful exchange of intergenerational knowledge, culture, art and indigenous resistance on occupation, land, poverty and de-colonization. Here is some of the written pieces.

Editors Note: Last week Cassandra Yazzie was killed in an automobile crash. All of us are extremely saddened by her loss and are dedicating this issue of POOR Magazine to her beautiful spirit.

November's PNN radio and Bay Native Circle on KPFA are also dedicated to her memory and family. Mari from Indigenous Peoples Media Project has wrote an article in honor of her at http://poormagazine.org/index.cfm?L1=news&category=35&story=2399

by Staff Writer

Today, July 8, 2009 marks the 43rd anniversary of a Bennett Freeze imposed on July 8, 1966 by U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert Bennett. The freeze made poverty mandatory for 10,000 people (with countless more displaced) living on 1.5 million acres in the western portion of the Navajo Nation.

The freeze made it illegal for people to fix their homes, build new homes, have access to running water, electricity, any infrastructure and development. Elderly people whose wells ran dry could not drill a new well, were forced to drink uranium and arsenic contaminated water, denied the right to build a wheelchair ramps to their homes and repair leaking roofs and broken windows. No new housing, schools, waterlines, powerlines, community facilities. Nothing.

The ban on construction and high unemployment rate forced the area’s young people to work away from their homes and families. It also had a devastating effect on a traditional Navajo socio-economic system that is centered around raising livestock and farming. Compounded by livestock confiscation and barren fields, the people faced starvation or wage labor and federal aid.

On May 8, 2009, President Obama signed legislation to end the freeze. However, no plan for rehabilitation has been made public. For this reason, Forgotten People by and through their attorney James W. Zion, Esq. filed a Notice of Suit requesting production and disclosure of a Bennett Freeze Recovery Plan to make the plan public and see how it will or will not benefit the people of the Bennett Freeze.

Notice of Suit

The Forgotten People Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit corporation, announced today that it will file suit against Scott House, the manager of the Former Bennett Freeze Recovery Plan Task Force, the Navajo Nation, and WHPacific, Inc. for production and public disclosure of the Former Bennett Freeze Recovery Plan. Despite WhPacific’s broadside for a “Final All-Chapter Summit Meeting” in August 2008 and a promise that the “final project deadline” would be September 15, 2008, and despite President Joe Shirley, Jr.’s. January 26, 2009 announcement he would produce the plan, it has not been made public so that it can be reviewed by the victims of the Bennett Freeze.

President Shirley prematurely announced that the Bennett Freeze was “over” when the Navajo Nation signed a compact with the Hopi Tribe, and we now have legislation in place that formally terminated the freeze. What we do not have is either a plan or a program of rehabilitation to deal with the freeze, or effective involvement of the victims of the Freeze to address its severe impacts.

The Forgotten People Community Development Corporation made a formal demand for a copy of the Former Bennett Freeze Area Recovery Plan under the Navajo Nation Privacy Act on March 31, 2009. Scott House, the manager of the task force that was to develop the plan, did not respond to the demand for more than three months, so the Forgotten People CDC is bringing a suit to produce a copy of the plan so it can be made public.

Suit is initiated by a notice of intent made to the President and Attorney General of the Navajo Nation to give an additional period of time to produce a copy of the plan. The notice of suit states a claim under the Privacy Act and also states claims for access to public information under the free speech provisions of the Navajo Nation Bill of Rights and the “rule of law” and “communication with the people for guidance” provisions of The Fundamental Laws of the Dine.

The Forgotten People intends to make the plan public when a copy is obtained, with information on how it will or will not benefit the people of the Bennett Freeze.

For further information, contact: Lucy Knorr, Secretary-Treasurer (928) 401-1777

by Joseph Bolden

Living A Life

Recently my age double five still alive.

It occurs to me I’ve missed opportunities, which may have saved my life at various crossroads in my life.

Nearly drowned at Orchard Beach at 5 or 6 years old I think a girl or young woman saved me.

Saw no bright lights, did feel calm floating around.

Volunteered for Viet Nam in 1972 or 3 at the age of 18 or 19 the usual reasons no job, leaving home,the military makes men, or to do something with my life.

Anyway I volunteered at four branches of the military plus The Air National Guard.

Was turned down because of a lazy eye

[told to drink plenty of carrot juice.]

All it did was make my stool orange and learned I liked carrot juice, cookies, and cake.

It could have been after being asked,
“What if you are ordered to shoot a man?”

My answer was “Why, what reason to do that?”

I guess that's the wrong way to answer a direct question because in the circumstances
when given an order one’s duty is to obey without question any or most orders when given by a superior or higher ranking officer.

Not being a perfect specimen because of faulty sight may have indeed saved me from that war.

Also while exercising that involves jumping up and down I may have been too enthusiastic jumping too high and across the floor.

Oh well I did volunteer so it’s one of those fateful choices that could change anyone’s life.

Before that bad times in summer camp sponsored by New York's Our Lady Of Mercy Church.

Bright yellow shirt green writing stenciled on.

Pain connected memories.

I'm fighting another kid.

With a fear churning belly, backed up for room to fight, then I’m stuck!

I had backed into a nail.
impale or Impaled! don't which is right but I couldn't move!

A wooden box or pallet turned with the nails exposed.

Couldn’t move forward, back shoots shocks of pain through me.

Not knowing this as I fought girls are screaming and gasps from other kids.

Some bigger kids and adults separate us.

Blood drips from the wood on to the ground only then did I see the bent, rusty nail as I with help was pulled slowly forward
from the wooden structure.

My blood gleams seems to glisten in the morning sun.

Little girls scream, crying,touch my back, shoulders as if they feel my pain before I can.

Red seeps from me.

I was thinking its raining feel my back wet.

Girls crying make me sad is all I was thinking.

I’m rushed to the a nurse at the infirmary.

She says its not serious but gave me a tetanus shot.

I still have a jagged scar on my back.

I'm able to go to summer camp, the new hole in my back is no big deal.

Years later when my mother, brother, and I moved I thought it was because of the divorce looking back it may also have been because of that incident.

That wasn’t the only time I was impaled.

Also speared in the throat after giving two quick, hard rabbit punches to some guy thought if funny to take my gym shorts down in public while on a grassy field as everyone was jogging outside?

I rabbit punched him, bloodied his nose.

for me its over, wrong.

The next week was his revenge as I’m speared in the throat by a shopping cart weighed down by football equipment
including two bars used to raise another bar to jump over.

The guy pushes the cart running with it, somebody yells."look out!"

Too late I'm speared in the side of my neck!

I'm on the grass holding my bleeding throat.

It looks worse than it really is.

I Bleed profusely from near the jugular vein is scary.

I always felt my voice had been changed because of that.

It is only now I’m trying to see if I have any singing voice at all.

Girls, women were and still are confounded mysteries always drawn to ‘em but not they to me so missed out on dances, social stuff, graduated danced a little.

Bummed around L.A. just when a psychopath who road the rails hunted and killed transients/
homeless now called houseless folk.

Safe in Mr. and Mrs. Joe’s church/house working for room and board in L.A.’s West End Skid row
before doing the same in The Salvation Army.

I could hear screams for help and wonder was it the railway killer or some guy getting beaten up or worse because they got caught by a gang or someone just wanting beat on someone who has less than they have knowing they’d get away clean because society didn’t care.

Was this the beginning of criminalizing transients, houseless, jobless, and youth creating or increasing more disposable people besides families or single mom’s or dad’s on welfare?

Eventually while learning a skill I did find a few women taking a chance on me.
As for the four letters word of L-O-V-E

I missed that call to me.

As an old movie line says, “What’s sex without love?
“It’s Just sex, it’s just sex.”

Better the latter if the other isn’t meant for us.

Now I’m 55, there are still places to go, visit, people to know.

I know to go forward not backup and avoid sharp objects or persons with sharp objects and really before speaking listen to women most of 'em help too few to mention have hurt me.

So what If I missed some things as a single healthy black male I count myself as rare and lucky in the extreme to still be alive at this stage of the game each day is God/Goddess given gravy.

San Francisco is where I reside for now that may change its all right change is constant.

I’ve tended to go-with-flow, not let too many things up set me.

I pray to live a long vigorous, adventurous, life have many good fem buds and guy friends as well avoiding old grim reaper, faking out Mother Nature for as long as science and technology will allow.

Did any of our lives turn out as we hoped or is it less than we dreamed?

Any comments sent to

telljoe@poormagazine.org or email me at

jsph_bldn@yahoo.com

Yes,my email,I'll try email you back.

by TJ Johnston

Big Brother paranoiacs are surely not put at ease by the accounts of organic farmer and Green Party activist Nancy Oden and her expulsion from Bangor International Airport for having the temerity to question the surly attitude of a Maine National Guardsman who searched her luggage.

Oden's police state fantasies were beginning to be realized on November 2 at the American Airlines ticket counter. She waited for her round-trip ticket to Chicago which she purchased online six weeks previously (she made two similar purchases earlier in the year and in the same manner). She found it curious that the agent took a while on the computer, though having arrived an additional two hours before her flight, she chalked it up to the new post-September 11 sensibilities.

Then the agent marked an "S" on her boarding pass. Oden inquired why. The agent explained that the computer flagged her to have her luggage searched. It occurred to the anti-war activist who had an op-ed recently printed in an area newspaper that hers may have not been a random search. She asked the agent if this was the case and the agent confirmed that it was.

But it was the manner in which she was searched that riled Oden. She was surrounded by half a dozen Guardsman during the scrutinizing of her baggage. One was especially hostile. When he grabbed her arm and starting haranguing her about "what happened on September 11," Oden felt her personal boundaries compromised and gave him a piece of her mind. The Guardsman found nothing remotely threatening, save for her awareness of her rights.

Inevitably, she was detained and denied passage (according to an American Airlines spokesman, she was "uncooperative"). Eventually, her ticket was refunded, but she was kicked out the airport. The airline offered her the alternative to depart from Boston's Logan Airport but her jalopy was not up for the five-hour detour (it barely made it to Bangor). The Green Party USA Coordinating Committee conference had to deal with her absence.

Oden is still stewing over the abrogation of her civil liberties. The list on which her name appeared in the first place is a compilation of "potential terrorists" the FBI distributes to airports. Normally, known criminals would appear on the airlines' radar, as would people who pay cash on a same-day flight. Of course, neither of these criteria explains the Gestapo treatment she suffered.

If a member of a pacifist political party would be marked for searching, what does it say for the rest of us? How do we avert being labeled as a "potential terrorist" before we embark on our airline travels?

These were the questions on my mind when I attempted to contact Timothy Ahern, American Airlines' VP in charge of safety and security. My calls, of course, went unreturned (granted, the Flight 537 crash in Queens, NY might have had something to do with his unavailability).

Closer to home, I thought of contacting a couple of travel agencies under the guise of a possible holiday traveler on American. Both agencies were surprised to hear about the Nancy Oden incident. All they could offer by way of advice was declaring your carry-on luggage and refraining from packing sharp or metallic-looking objects. At least they were friendly.

Between the military-corporate collusion in "rounding up the usual suspects" and the hassles inherent in holiday travel, I might as well ride Greyhound this year.

by Joe B.

Male Complexity Pt.1

Ok, Male doc’s were and continue to be wrong when using male bodies as end all/be all as women suffered from complaints male gynecologists had little or no idea of comprehended.

Its slowly being corrected.

I’d say over corrected giving women an exaggerated sense of superiority, we know the symptoms as may men still act as if their Gods/Goddesses gift to the female race we know because it still with us.

Women for the longest time at least two or three decades now believed after gaining power on their own that they are not the superior sex.

Yes, you mature, are stronger emotionally, can in the throes of emotional turmoil think rationally unlike most men, verbally better at speech and use hemispheres of their brains as men us either on or the other.

Of course feminine trump is always bringing life in the world.

Though it is now know not all women able to conceive children have natural mothering instincts as with men who’s seed can contribute to making babies are father materials and men can nurture some better than the mother’s that gave their child life.

Yes it seemed not long past women seemed to invade men’s cherished turf basketball to the boardroom and sacred male bastion of "men only social clubs" where men used social contacts to improve their business aspects.

Women have the same its call it "Networking" though its a girl’s ‘uh, excuse me Women’s Sisterhood socializing younger or the contemporaries up the corporate, political ladders.

I know it was a shock to most woman that some men don’t mind being home, watching, enjoying their son’s and daughter’s while they worked.

At first it chafes being in unfamiliar territory of diapers, P.T.A., explaining sex and protection to both son’s and daughters plus temptation of other stay-at-home mom’s; his wife’s friends dropping by unannounced sometimes doing way more than help their hapless friends hubby with his small charges.

Just because a guy’s at home without a job caring for his children makes him no less a man.

It’s opened up many men to what women still continue to go through - the "having it all theme" of late 1970’s early ‘80’s rang hollow to many women scrambling to be both career woman and mother.

Men saw these contradiction tried to warm them but speaking in dominant male language most women didn’t or couldn’t listen, had to prove things to themselves, the world at large and until cancer rates, job burnout take their toll only then did women begin listening.

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by Leroy F. Moore Jr

I can’t rest

My disabled brothers and sisters are dragged, shot and beaten to death

Society is scared of him..Big, black and mentally ill

Take him away and give him more pills

I can’t sleep

My disabled brothers and sisters are living on the streets

The ADA has done nothing for me
Listen to my life

Got raped in a shelter

Got robbed on the streets

Three strikes and now I’m in prison for life

I can’t rest

28 million dollars for Ed Roberts’ Campus

Can’t even get my SSI cause I have no address... Does anybody care?

Disabled youth abused in foster car..Segregated in school.. now I’m on welfare

My disabled brothers and sisters are put to rest...

On the streets, in psychiatric wards and in prison

But I feel your spirit and anger in my chest

I won’t rest..Your spirit and anger won’t rest

...We won’t let you rest

by Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe

Talia Porambo
Slam Bio

Blue

Sour sometimes

Vanilla

Soft

A big fierce bear

My Southern Ute culture is creative, and very festive

I live with my dad

He’s always being funny

My home is always warm and as spiritual as the Sundance ground

I struggle with life, like not being on time, not doing the right, and what life throws at me

Like a ball being thrown at me but I don’t want it to be thrown at me

by RAM/PNN

Since the time I was nine I have had regular suicidal thoughts. I started smoking marijuana regularly when I was fourteen. I smoked as a way to stay alive and to stay focused on the things that mattered to me in life. I smoked to be happy and get rid of my negative internal dialogue. Smoking also helped me stay away from hard drugs and excessive alcohol. Currently marijuana is my only positive outlet for daily anxieties about my past. I don't want to let go of my past, but I need a positive and productive way to deal with it and continue towards a healthy future.

In San Francisco and all over California the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has threatened to close Cannabis Clubs. This horrifies me because I need safe access to marijuana to help deal with my depression and my emotions. I am now the father of two daughters and I am constantly trying to move ahead in my life. I want to be as positive a role model for my daughters that I can. I want to create a home environment where they can come and stay with their father and feel a stability and consistency that I never really had.

Growing up in a trauma riddled environment I had to constantly remind myself there was light at the end of the tunnel in the distance that I couldn't even see yet. One of my first memories when I was only eight years old has stayed vivid in my mind.

"Take you're ass in the living room NOW!" My father's voice boomed through the house almost knocking me over.

It was all basically over a bill that was either not paid or paid a little late. I came home from school one day to my parents arguing or better yet pops yelling at my mom who was sitting on my bottom bunk weeping like a child. He was screaming at the top of his lungs about something I did not understand.

"Boy, take your ass in the living room now, before I whoop you too."

I sat there not knowing what was going on only hearing the screaming and screeching of my moms voice feeling helpless and powerless. I thought to myself as I heard my mother's cries, there is nothing I can do and how could my father do this.

Thinking back on memories such as these in my life, I end up with waterfalls running down my face. Marijuana calms and relaxes me so I can process and deal with these memories without the desire to do something that would end up hurting myself. Although I use marijuana for emotional support for some people with illnesses such as HIV and cancer medical marijuana offers an alternative to heavy medications or acts as a supplemental treatment. Many rely on marijuana to stay alive.

As Reverend Randi Webster recently said during a visit to POOR Magazine, "If Cannabis Club dispensaries close, I am worried that I will have to attend many more funerals."

I don't want to buy marijuana off the street risking jail or even worse. I also don't want to risk being sold laced drugs or running into old people, places or things. I don't want to risk starting my old habits again. I need 'safe access.' I know many people are in my position.

Jewnbug from POOR Magazine said, "350 Divisadero Cannabis Club saved my life. It's a place where I can medicate and incorporate artistic expression."

Similar to Jewnbug and many other people who have had to deal with trauma, marijuana helps me focus in all parts of my life especially in music, poetry, and acting. Marijuana helps me through the trauma of my past and present and keeps my mind positive.

California and the eleven other states that have compassionate use laws are being intimidated to end safe access. The DEA has sent letters to property owners who rent to dispensaries in San Francisco- and all over California- threatening them with property seizure. The San Francisco safe access community has unified behind a resolution to include the landowners in the city's sanctuary status for medical cannabis. The Board of Supervisors vote was postponed until Tuesday, February 26th. Axis of Love is calling for support at this meeting. The safe access community is calling for Mayor Newsom to join with Mayor Dellums of Oakland in support of the resolution.

The resolution sets the tone for political resolve and directs action from all local and state legislators to oppose intimidation measures lodged by the DEA against sick, disabled, and dying Californians seeking medical cannabis as a treatment. So far, San Francisco has been resilient and no medical cannabis co-op has closed its doors because of the DEA intimidation. The resolution was introduced by Supervisor Chris Daly and co-sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Jake McGoldrick, and Tom Ammiano. The Harvey Milk Democratic Club, the San Francisco Green Party, and local patient advocacy Group ASA SF have endorsed the resolution.

I fear that if people who are in need of medical marijuana like myself, and other people who are sick and/or disabled lose their safe places to medicate we will be subject to the streets, violence, more police harassment, and other drugs. I fear, like Reverend Webster, that if Cannabis clubs are forced to close there will be many more funerals to attend.

RAM's second POORPress Publication, Another Broken Heart Mended is about the trauma Ruyata went through as a child which lead to his drug abuse and his recovery. For more information on his book or to order a copy please call 415.863.6306.

by Tendai R. Mwanaka

The blowing wind

Is like a fog

Obscuring our rising sun

And this is the desert

The desert of our desert

And distant people

Are always our enemies?

Unless if they throw

Sand into the air

For the hand

That throws the sands

Does not hold a sword

And this is where

We were born

And we permit ourselves

To know nothing else.

by Joseph Bolden

Folks, if you’ve read my work you know the topics I write about run the gambit from stressed out poor families to senior citizens being kicked out of their homes to asteroids hitting Earth, our eventual evolution into Q–humanity or Quantum-like beings with near God/Goddess-like control over the cosmos.

Here’s an example off the top of my head:

When humans learn how to take apart, repair, and reconfigure the very strands {molecular strings}farther down beyond our DNA structure we may just become The Q.[Mr. John de Lancie's character on S.T.T.N.G. and the Voyager series.]

When and if we become Q’s how does one commit the unspeakable act of suicide when no toxic poison, radiation, disease, or accident can harm or kill us because our biological imperative prevents this. This would be the psychological equivalent of the Federation’s Prime Directive… Do No Harm To self, other Q’s, q like beings, Human’s, Vulcan’s, Romulin’s, Klingon’s or other lower sentient beings.

Now, I know many of us are thinking that way, right? That’s why I must constantly monitor myself so my columns don’t turn into whacked out scenarios like the one above. I’m thinking this fiction/factual bleed is telling me that something in my destiny stuff that has to be faced. I hope some of you readers snail mail me to give me suggestions on how some of you faced the same crossroads. What was your decision when your personal crisis arrived?

P.S. If any of us survive to actually become Quantum Humans and can travel back to the good old late 1970’s to 2000's era, please look me up by reading my mind and others’ minds sometimes. I wouldn’t mind learning the ways and rules of Q-life, which might take a few hundred to a thousand years to learn. But if you have the time I can at least be a persistent if slow learning student.

I may be slow but when I get it stays got. The same goes for Alchemists, Wizards, Witch’s, Time traveling mortals or Immortal’s, Alien’s, and pure mental entities with a soft spot for struggling sentient beings like myself.

I really don’t want to die[fate shmate]and do this over and over to get it right.

Until next time Live, Love, Learn, Evolve.

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