Story Archives

by Joseph Bolden

Californians are going through rough times while Texans are living easy. But I don't blame Texans; that's not right, fair, or the American way.

Cali's been called the Fruit 'N Nut state since I don't know when. Mr. Dennis Tito is excluded from any criticism, afterall, he knew the risks of space travel, but knew that is could be done. Any Texans goin' to the Moon or Mars? Yes, our Fruit 'N Nut status began way before San Francisco became the state's painted lady. Like gruff multimillionaire doers and dreamers, like Texans, we have our pride. We do things up different; we're not as big a state as you, but we are as unique.

Yes, we fell off our high horse in a canyon where no one hears our calls for help. Think this affects only "those pussyfooted, lily-livered, granola eatin', holly-weird, strangely dressed, crazy idea folk up in Northern California? Think again.

Imagine, if the shoe were on the other foot. Prez Clinton is in Texas for a 20-minute talk about oil and gas with Governor G.W. Bush. Texas is feeling pressured to buy oil at ever-inflated prices from Arab oil cartels and is being gouged with higher electric bills by California's P.U.C. companies who are constantly upping heating oil prices.

Clinton says, "Keep conserving, drill along the pan handle or in the Alamo historical site, because of the rich crude oil deposits found there; transport wild horses and buffalo from their grazing grounds." He doesn't mention renewable, alternative energies. He says, "Conserve and keep paying Cali and Arkansas."

We love whales and dolphins, just as you love horses, buffalo, and the great God's country. We are different people in different situations, but we share the same country. The same situation could happen to you. Just think on it awhile. Wouldn't you feel offended at so little time being spent on problems looming so large in your state? We got twenty minutes for an energy crisis that is slowly spreading across this country.

Texas and the legendary Texans have shown what independence means. You can to do it again by developing alternative renewable energies. You are the Giants of oil, gas, and electricity. You can show our President Bush that it's time to move ahead not drift backwards.

That's enough from a transplanted New Yorker in the Flake State, but please heed my warning—alternative and renewable energy is coming quick. California is hurting now but once we're free of the national grid I don't want to hear that Texas is experiencing rolling brown and blackouts:

THIS IS A CALL TO ALL 50 STATES DEVELOP INDEPENDENT ENERGY PROTOCOLS-NOT GOVERNMENT OR STATE BASED ONES.

I hope I don't sound like a lone radical anus but it might be what we have to do. Tell me if I sound like a complete idiot.

Please send donations to Poor Magazine C/0 Ask Joe
at 255 9th St. Street,
San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA

For Joe only my snail mail:
PO Box 1230 #645 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
Email:askjoe@poormagazine.org

by Alex Cuff/PNN News Brief Editor

For over a year the body of Armando Chapal Ramirez lay forgotten, by hospital staff, and decaying in the morgue at Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne. Armando’s family had certainly not forgotten him. The hospital, "had him there the whole time down there. Meanwhile, we were suffering day and night, waiting for the worst," said Ramirez’s father, Jesus, 45, a stock clerk in Gardena.

After a family barbecue on September 30, 2001, Ramirez who had an addiction and would go on binges for two or three days every month or so, slipped out of the house unnoticed. When he didn’t return, his parents began driving around the neighborhood inquiring with several area hospitals, store owners, friends, and neighbors. Jesus then filed a missing-person report with the police.

Ramirez was brought into the emergency room at Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center on October 1, 2001. He had pneumonia in his right lung and suffered kidney and liver failure. He was reported dead on October 9th and his body moved to the hospital morgue. Standard operating procedure is to call a law enforcement agency and ask them to take a death report which then generates a report to the coroner’s office. This was never done in Ramirez’s case.

Douglas Shaffer, the family’s attorney described the event as "the height of incompetence and neglect." When the family first got the call, they thought Armando had just died. They had been searching desperately for 11 months. "It was a great horror," his mother cried, "I’d never expect that a hospital would just keep a young man all alone like that."

by Lisa Gray-Garcia/PNN

When I read with terror and disbelief about the proposed Gang Tours of Los Angeles, I was reminded of the well-meaning, neo-liberal, writer of the early 20th century, Charles Dickens, who launched a deadly media-based campaign of poor people fetishizing when he toured, surveyed, studied and reported on the Manhattan tenements a.k.a the dwellings/residences/ roofs of thousands of poor immigrants in the New York at the turn of the century. When Dickens published his report in the New York Times which became instrumental in the displacement of thousands of poor people out of New York, he characterized the tenements as deplorable cesspools. The subsequent demolitions of thousands of buildings in New York housing poor folks was for our own good, the social workers, city planners and real estate speculators told us, for the betterment of us seething, unwashed masses of poor people, unable to care for ourselves, speak for ourselves, or think for ourselves, our children or our homes.. Silenced people they were, we are, intentionally unheard , talked about, studied, gazed upon, critiqued and researched.

To be fair Dickens didnt invent poor people/indigenous people fetishizing, we have anthropology, ethnography, politicians and psychiatry to thank for that since the beginning of time. From Daniel Moynihan pathologizing , single, African descendent, mother headed households as broken, which led to the criminalizing welfare codes we welfare dependent mamas struggle with today to the poverty tours of favelas in Brazil people have been speaking for, studying on, and talking about poor people without ever really listening to us, talking with us, or properly compensating us for our images and knowledge for hundreds of years, but nowadays we have reality shows, tourism, corporate media and the non-profit industrial complex to truly progress us all into the complete and utter zoo-ifying of us poor people of color or as my fellow PNN poverty and migrant scholar Muteado Silencio says, "We are not animals in the 'hood."

And in the case of the bizarre, wrong-headed-ness of the LA Gang Tours and its non-profit organization of the same name, once again it is staffed by well-meaning advocates who aim to Save Lives, Create Jobs and Rebuild Communities, as their tag-line says. We are told by staffers and their corporate and non-corporate advocates that bus tours through gritty, neighborhoods peopled by poor youth of color caught up in violence, drugs and poverty, is for our own good. It will bring us jobs and opportunities and hope.

One of the many oxymoronic aspects of this concept is the notion, just like Dickens reported, that our neighborhoods, our communities, our corners, our schools, and our homes, are crazy, dirty, sick, disgusting and must be cleaned up, cleaned out and eradicated, hygienic metaphors about humans scattered about with impunity. And the complete and utter disregard for the fact that in everyone of these so-called, blighted neighborhoods, filthy apartment buildings and poor people schools, homes and communities, there are families and elders and children of color who are living, thriving, learning, and resisting. There are heroes, and leaders, and lecturers and healers, and dreamers and teachers, and poets and artists, revolutionaries and scholars. And it is only the people who have engaged in philanthropy pimping, colonized learning and formal institutions of helping that get honored, recognized and listened to for their heroism, beauty, power and agency.

It is the reason that POOR Magazine launched the PeopleSkool and promotes the notion of poverty scholarship. It is the reason we launched PoorNewsNetwork/PNN and a non-heirarchal form of media creation based on indigenous teachings and eldership. It is why we create our own research and up-end all forms of institutional domination. It is the reason we resist the notion that there is only one form of legitimate education, research and media production.

Try raising a child in poverty with very little money and almost no support, try taking care of an elder, or keeping your family fed, try healing outside of the western Medical industrial complex. Try eating well in the hood or being endlessly po'lice harassed, racially profiled and messed with. These things happen and they dont happen. Heroism happens, beauty happens, art happens, violence happens, just like it does everywhere.

Last year when I did a walk-through of the Tenement museum of New York, I learned that several hundred extremely poor mothers and fathers of 9 and 10 children managed to raise and feed and clothe their children with no indoor plumbing in a room the size of a closet. Try doing that. Tell me that mama or daddy isnt a hero, a scholar.

My poor single mama of color raised me alone in several of the neighborhoods slated for gang tours. In our Compton, Wilmos, East LA neighborhoods, we had gangs, which arguably were many more things than one colonized notion of violence, but we also had tamale vendors, muralists, break-dancers, poets, micro-business people, hip hop DJ's, low-rider car-art, lovers, grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles and aunties.

I started this piece by saying I had terror in my heart about the gang tours, but be clear its not terror for the poor, unsuspecting tourist, default colonizers and 21st century missionaries, stumbling and trampling over our communities and cultures as the well-meaning gang tours commence, rather, its terror for the residents of the proposed tour sites, and so I caution all of the community members, families and young people to hold on carefully to their purses, wallets, belongings, poetry, art and scholarship, cause, well, you know how dangerous those tourists can be.

by Bruce Allison/PNN

After getting the fifth degree from a security guard who wanted to know
more about me then my own parents, I got approved to go into 1095
market street. A seven story building with only six or seven companies
in it. (also the site of POOR's previous office where we were unceremoniously gentrified out of!

I walked into environmental action non-profit, Green Actions’ headquarters for an interview with POOR Magazine family friend and long-time Bayview activist and power-house Marie Harrison. I sat down
while she had lunch, we had a half hour interview about Lennar, the
nuclear dumpsite, and biohazards all of which are located in Hunter’s
Point. The area where Lennar Corporation are planning to build low income housing
has been capped five times due to toxic and nuclear leakage.

As my interviewee explains “Newsom and his Auntie gave Lennar a 3 million dollar
loan” and magically Newsom’s brother in law got a job in Lennar’s
executive ranks. This area is so toxic that the Navy has lost all
records of how much has been dumped there. It goes back to WW2 when
Fat man and little boy were assembled there, and parts which weren’t
used were dumped into the water. Letterman Hospital in the Presidio
has records of animal parts being dumped there after experiments.
According to my host she mentions that pockets of retardation in the
hunter’s point area has been high for that community. A fire started
at a former hunting lodge that the SFFD was told not to put out, for
unknown reasons. My host also informed me “Us poor people have no
place to live because of Lennar”.

This area historically was a mixed use area through WW2, you had a
Japanese fishing colony and a hunting lodge in Hunter’s Point. During
WW2 a building was there for working people, which is presently the
ghetto, this building was for shipyard workers and their families
originally and was to be torn down at the end of the war. Now it’s the
Evan’s Street/Candlestick projects, this building was only meant to
last until the end of the war.

Also, the politicians that are involved in this fiasco goes as far as
Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi on the Federal
level. On the state level there is a friend of mine called Mark Leno
who I didn’t think would be so mean and Fiona Ma who is not a friend
of any poor person. On the city level those who are responsible are
Willie Brown former mayor and Gavin Newsom. Sophie Maxwell will get touchy if you mention the name
Lennar.

The housing set aside for the people who paid money for it will be 3 ten story towers that will be put in hunter’s point
where presently low income people are living. For the working people fifty percent of the area medium
income is $100,000 for family of three. The majority of these people
have already been moved across the bay to Oakland or other places
outside of San Francisco. This makes San Francisco have the lowest
population of families that live in a major metropolitan area.

From a sixth generation native of this city and an elder, my city has
been robbed and raped by many corporations and agencies, Lennar and the San Francisco redevelopment commission as their partner in
crime. The redevelopment commission is the back door the mayor uses to
do this dirty work without leaving his fingerprints on it.

by Staff Writer

Yeah it's me Anjia the little black girl

that gets judged by my peers

Yeah I was born in the bay

but that doesn't mean dat everyday

I should pay

Being misunderstood just because

they feel that I 'm hood


by: Anjia Glover Age: 17

by Joe B.

As I read the S.F.Guardian, you know the one with the clean 'shavin, homeless 'looking guy with the bright blue eyes carrying a poster.

He reminds me of someone but I degress. It seems Sup.Gavin Newsom is looking at former Mayor Giuliani's New York Model of helping homeless folks lead better lives but as I read further SF"G" informs me of flaws in the model.

Minor flaws such as working poor and homeless people sent or outside of Manhattan in centralized areas for Doe Fund (after a unknown nameless homeless woman) Mr. George McDonald, founder, former business exective.

He said "That people have to except personal responsibility and require regular drug testing."

Also known the Ready, Willing, and Able program where men, women trade welfare benefits for shelter beds and a street-sweeping job. Sound good but look below there is a kink or two in this yarn.

Dow Fund workers are paid $5.50 to $6.50 an hour, it also charges them $65 a week for room and board.

I don't doubt Mr. Mcdonald's heart is in the right place but don't know about this $65 weekly thing which seems like a locked-in, closed-in deal.

Another thing is Centralization.

In New York with its grid upon grid streets though most of it is flat it is still spread wide.

It reminds me of Malls,Supermarkets, Warehouse Stores, and neighborhood grocery store debate - in that Malls and giant supermarkets have nearly everything you'd need or want which is fine and good execept when it does not have an item such as food, medicines, or desserts
you are fond of; they tend to say "If its not here, you won't find it anywhere."

That's a false statement because the odd little one-person grocery or family run store may have that item.

Centralizisation in New York is only works if it way out of the way of businesses, neighborhoods, the only problem is people in need of help come from all over.

Unlike San Francisco it could help but here too people being people are not all able bodied mentally alert or willing to walk, take, busses, or cars to place way out of the way when multi service centers can be even scattered to where people are.

I distrust all-in-one-places it reminds me of killing fields or grounds (pick your own metaphor's) where everyone is gathered in one place to... Die.

Melodramatic?

Think Sup.G. Newsom is looking at New York as a model supposedly to help homeless folks off the streets but in The Old Apple homelessness has increased they not seen on Time's Square but hidden away from public view.

Could that be the game plan:

1. One centrilized location peope have to go to.

2. Banned from where they cannot be seen (did I say they?)

3. High fines working poor and homeless folk cannot be paid so
jail time is impossed plus working free for the city to pay off their dept.

4. Finally out of sight, out of mind and problems LOOK Like its solved meanwhile homelessness increases but John and Jane Public doesn't see people urinating, doing number-2, or aggressive panhandling which they did in the first place
BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO PLACE TO GO BUT THE PUBLIC STREET. How come there are more homeless folk on the streets.

Try asking City Mayor's all over the country about developers, landlords and real estate co.,[should I mention the honest folk of Enron or is it End-Run?] speculators and other business cronies in both Oakland, San Franciso, New York and anywhere else the homeless population is rising.

I was thinking of an old thought picture.
Four or five men, women, or young folks are artistic they draw or can render pictures of animals, objects or humans perfectly in wood, glass, plastic, metal, clay, or using light and in ice.

They all have work spaces to concentrate, and create, then cell their works. They are hard working bonafide artisans.

Now Imagine those same persons without homes...
finding nitches to do their works but always told to move on.

The told exact same artwork mind you is worthless junk.

Are the homeless people with the exact same talents when done on the street worthless?

Decentralization seems a better model that will help more people than one huge bureaucracy getting people hung up in more rules, regulation, red tape instead of higher education, technicals skills journalism, or higher income so people become more productive.

This New York "Magic Model" isn't working and I don't think 23-28 or a hundred "Get them out of sight and mind will help unless both noprofits, business, schools, and the jail system come together to prevent a problem and create more by keeping it out of sight.

That's all I can think of maybe other folks have better ideas.

Please send donations to
Poor Magazine or in C/0
Ask Joe at 255 9th St. Street,
San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA

For Joe only my snail mail:
PO Box 1230 #645
Market St. San Francisco, CA 94102
Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

As a House-Care Watcher Professional or [H.C.W. P.]
I'm a non drug user, smoker, drinker, pill popper - drug test me
anytime. Light vacuum, no windows or laundry.
Pets have their routine - make a list of walking times, foods, and
moods. INFORM FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS, POLICE; IN FACT
INVITE THEM TO PERSONALLY SEE ME, ASK QUESTIONS
THEN NO MISUNDERSTANDING, MISHAPS OR ACCIDENTS
OF IDENTITY CAN HAPPEN.

Prices: $25 a day apartments/flats

$50 a week for 2 to 4 bedroom cottage.

$2000, or $3,000 a month depending on home not area.
$50,000 to $100,000 monthly for certain homes with
7to10 room TO BE TRUSTED EVEN A LITTLE BY THE COMMUNITY MAKES EVERYONE MORE SECURE AND LESS LIKELY TO JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS.All prices are negotiable.

by Staff Writer

Everyone survived or recovered from Labor Day?
I had my rest, helping people, visiting friends, lover's and
family out of the City.

I had a good time not thinking of work, assignments, or late night, last minute to-do things.

Then I've recieved a troubling email from a quiet, green, place called Fairfield California. Below is the whole email I
recieved.

FLASH ! FLASH! Tugboat Fish & Chips #13 - 1350 Travis Blvd. Suite 1360-B, Fairfield, CA j94533
(Westfield Shopping Town Solano) Serves excellent meals but have no in-house bathroom available to their customers who wait 10 to 15 minutes for their orders. Feel free to call - (707) 421-9228  to find out if they have corrected the problem.  Jameelya.

That's it,call is all I can say. My feeling is have a restroom so customers can clean up before, during, or after
meals. If I spend my money in an eatery I'd want to be able
to use the restroom or it will not be a place for me to frequent ever again plus word of mouth and soon it ends up on an internet site.

by Lester the cat and Dee

Hands tells me secretly, “Why don’t we invite those pigeons over for
dinner sometime soon?”

“Good idea,” I tell him.

The reason I’m writing about pigeons is that this guy named Joe sent
me something that he wrote about pigeons taking over the world (not with
us cats around, someone should tell him). This Joe wrote to me and Hands:

“Pigeons and cats mostly run Planet Earth!” Human’s destructive
capacities are their own traits. Let the humans believe that they’re in
control, stumble on to discoveries that we drop in their minds. Their
hidden control continues: These are Birdview, Pigeon mind(s). Are
You Sure That What You Think Is You Or Are They P-Minds?”

And he also sent us some photos- I’m including a few. Don’t notice if
they’re a little spotty: me and Hands had a little trouble with our spit
the day that we looked at them. We had a drooling problem for
some reason.

As soon as I finish this column, which is now, I think I’ll send this
guy Joe a Hands-written invitation to dinner with me and Hands- for him
and for his pigeons. We’ll talk Joe (humor him) into going out
and taking many more rolls of film of many more pigeons, lots and lots
of pigeons. We’ll give him categories: most beautiful pigeon, most happiest
pigeon, and so on- whatever takes him the longest.

Meanwhile me and Hands will amuse ourselves, discussing with the pigeons
this plan for taking over the world, and how “Pigeons and cats mostly
run Planet Earth”, and the Delicious Dinner we will make OF, for,
I mean, the pigeons that this Joe guy leaves with us.

by Marlon Crump/PNN

When I think about the true meanings of “journey” and “destination” memories of my road to POOR Magazine/POOR News Network often race through my mind. Devotions at manual labored jobs with no future promotions. Supporting my family of four, with meager earnings, while living in Cleveland, Ohio. Going from one homeless shelter to another, until my arrival to San Francisco, California in 2004.

In between the hardships of homelessness, I found sanctity with extensive reading at the library, taking numerous G.E.D night classes for writing, and sometimes writing my poetry in the dark. There was always the need for me to feel the very words written from my own hand, created from my own mind. My passion for writing grew.

I began to feel my own words during my brief period, as a volunteer for the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, in 2005. On May 2nd of that year, I recited my poem that I wrote the night before, “Care Not Cash/Trash” aimed to criticize Mayor Gavin Newsom’s resentful policy to those receiving welfare aid.

For twenty nerve-wrecking minutes, I was here. Facing a relatively large crowd on San Francisco City Hall steps, with eyes gazing blankly, and news cameras glued to me. Hoping that I wouldn’t faint from the hammering of my heart, I summoned a subliminal will for a boost of adrenalin to carry me, even after I concluded my poem.

A woman in the crowd’s forefront smiled at me, as I stepped off of the steps. She had an easy smile, with the aura of a teacher and a revolutionary vision. “That was really great.” She said to me, still sporting that easy smile.

Six months later following the unlawful attack that occurred upon me, on October 7th, 2005 by twelve members of the San Francisco Police Department, I saw her again. She was “Tiny” Lisa Gray-Garcia, co-founder of POOR Magazine/POOR News Network.

Our worlds immediately collided as we both shared similar visions in literary art, media and access.

A year later, I learned from POOR what the meanings, and value of what a healing tool is with literary art through their revolutionary Digital Resistance media and journalism training program and later their POOR Press publishing program. After writing my first book, a series titled “Citizens & Civilians Over Corruption: Savagely Removed Occupant” I knew what I was going to give to the world, and much, much more.

To write about one’s painful experience through a path of healing re-introduces the fact shared by everyone at POOR that “writing is fighting.”

POOR Press Publications integrates the voices segregated from Corporate Mainstream Media, and its industry of Amerikkka affiliates, through the literary art of the POOR Press Authors, themselves. Each POOR Press Author, including myself, although experienced different issues we face and write about; all of us have one thing voiced to world:

Silenced voices are untold journeys in of, themselves.

“Taking Back the Land, Resisting Criminalization One Story at a time.”

Los Viajes: The Journeys, a bilingual (resisting linguistic language domination) POOR Press Publication that chronicles the journeys of scholars ranging from migrant, indigenous, poverty, and a revolutionary worker are detailed in this book, with their very own voices. Stories, images, art, and the sound of people crossing borders all over Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) are all featured in Los Viajes.

Courage displayed from Ingrid De Leon in her escape from domestic violence and poverty from Guatemala, and battling barriers to sustain a stable life in the U.S.A. are heard in her poem, “I am scared.” Prolific
poetry from Silencio Muteado revealing the horrors of how lavish lifestyles of America brainwash some undocumented immigrants into senseless competition in “What is the Amerikkkan Dream?”

The sorrows from a grandmother name Chispita for having to release her young grandson in order for him to be cured, while hanging on an ounce of faith they’ll be someday reunited with tears of joy in “From Oaxca, Mexico.” A poetic memoir from Tony Robles of his brief encounter with his grandfather in “Non-Returnable.”

“Should we go to San Francisco?” Told they could not have hotel room extension, labeled as “bums.” Dragging heavy bags while driving from strip mall to strip mall, gas station to mini mart, and then again. Terrified and unsure of what else they should do. Having friends, but no money and no hope for any money.

The mother and daughter team, “Mama” Dee Gray and “Tiny” Lisa Gray-Garcia, future co-founders of POOR Magazine/POOR News Network in “From Los Angeles to San Francisco.”

Other stories of the silenced peoples in Los Viajes: The Journeys shows its reader that the struggle from each testimony in this book proves that people in poverty continue to face have the opportunity of “Taking Back the Land, Resisting Criminalization................One Story At a Time.”

Filipino Building Maintenance Company
(Dedicated to his uncle, Al Robles.)

Tony Robles is a native San Franciscan, community organizer, activist, co-teacher, co-editor, and a “Revolutionary Worker Scholar” of POOR Magazine/POOR News Network. Robles ‘s book, Filipino Building Maintenance Company, drafts the reader’s eyes in this depth detailed novel, combined with poetry of his life experiences, while maintaining a father and son work/love relationship.

His father, James Robles, a janitor by trade worked for the City and County of San Francisco from 1977-1978 before deciding to become self employed, by starting what would be the “Filipino Building Maintenance Company” thus defying the workforce-apartheid of the U.S.A.

“The house of a janitor is supposed to be clean. One would assume this to be true because the janitor performs his duties with the sacred mop, broom, and toilet brush” A lecture once given to him by his father.

Robles’s poems present interesting themes when it comes to the reminiscence of their relationship, such as in "Broadway Chicken."
“Some of the best exchanges of words with my father came across the tables of Chinese restaurants. They weren’t really exchanges, my father usually did all the talking.”

Filipino Building Maintenance Company reveals to its reader of a father/son relationship, showing discipline, responsibility, the value and pride of hard work. It also shows motivation for entrepreneurship, and breaking barriers to future goals………..such as writing.

Untold Stories of Amerikkka

Silencio Muteado is a member of the Po Poets project of POOR Magazine/POOR News Network, a Race, Media, Poverty, and Migrant Scholar. A native from Michoacán, Mexico, Muteado was raised on the eastside of Oakland, CA.

Experiencing what most of the youth in poor communities of color endure, such as poverty, racism, oppression, and violence, Muteado realized where he was standing at: “The New World.”While living in a city with a high homicide rate, Muteado saw the bright side of the whole thing. He published his book through POOR Press Publications, in 2004 called Untold Stories of Amerikkka.

His book contains poetry (bilingual resistant to linguistic domination) that graphically details the indefinite immoral values of the U.S.A., such as slavery, war, poverty, violence, and the unrelenting attacks undocumented immigrants, and migrant people.

Additionally, Untold Stories of Amerikkka features graphic art and pictures expressing the impact of immorality from the U.S.A. has had on people. With the visual and vocal art instrumented by Muteado, Untold Stories of Amerikkka can be heard through his words as he sees the bright side of this country’s callous culture, “Rhythm was born inside the humankind.”

Life, Struggle, and Reflection II: Raw and Uncut

Kim Swan, a.k.a Queennandi X-Sheba, is a Race, Media, and Poverty Scholar, Po Poet, Revolutionary Rap Villain, of POOR Magazine/POOR News Network, a motivational speaker, and a “Super Baby Mama” mothering three daughters.

Raised out of the San Francisco’s Fillmore District, the “Moe” Queennandi is a formidable poetic voice for all poverty-stricken African Descent men, women, and children in general. All of them whom from which are daily chased by racism, police brutality, and Child Protective Services. (C.P.S.)

As a survivor of the streets, and the cruelties of modern day society, Queennandi’s categorizes these experiences in her second book released through POOR Press, Life, Struggle, and Reflection II: Raw and Uncut.
Her life experience is referenced to the title, itself. It is a sequel from her first Life, Struggle, and Reflection, as she puts it, “Black By Popular Demand.”

Queennandi’s book contain numerous poems, such as the need for urgent prevention of today’s ongoing problems, the oppression, disrespect of women, (Black Women in particular), angered feelings that follow as a result, and the massacre of revolutionary Black Men, past and present in her poem “Black Revelation.”

In “Have You Ever Heard of a Tale?” challenges the uncaring that Life, Struggle, and Reflection II: Raw and Uncut, would not need future sequels expressing its content, if people could change for the better.

Complicated: Moving into the light

Ruyata Akio McGlothin, a.ka “RAM” is a member of the Po Poets Project, Race, Media and Poverty Scholar of POOR Magazine/POOR News Network. He is also a “Super Baby Daddy” fathering two daughters.

A native San Franciscan, survivor of police brutality, and racial profiling, RAM has released his third book through POOR Press called, “Complicated: Moving into the light.” His book poetically envisions into the reader’s heart of what RAM’s feelings are in his world.

Into a world of internalized love, regrets from unsanctioned addictions, road to recovery, and memory lanes of pain toured through his mind.
Its very introduction is an induction of inspiration for those who are lost and unable to find their way in life:

It’s complicated
In recovery, in love
Poetically concentrated
If you pull, or if you’re shoved
Get clean, trying to stay
Shouldn’t mean to get away

Like its subtitle, RAM’s book inspires anyone who’s isolated into the dark to move into the light.

San Francisco County Jail Cookbook ‘Tu’: Attack of the Ass Clowns

Brother Y is a Race, Media, Poverty, and Disability Scholar of POOR Magazine/POOR News Network. He is also a frontline fighter on the “War on Drugs”, a formerly homeless veteran, and an advocate for medical cannabis patient’s rights.

Living in a Single Room Occupancy (S.R.O.) Hotel for a number of years, Brother Y experienced many encounters of harassment. From property management to police regarding his legitimate use of marijuana, Brother Y details these events in his second book released through POOR Press titled, “San Francisco County Jail Cookbook ‘Tu’: Attack of the Ass Clowns”.

A sequel to the first (released in 2008) he summarizes his resistance to the criminalization of marijuana, denied medication (while incarcerated), grievances made to uncaring property management and public officials.
Brother Y returns informing the reader that although the “War on Drugs” charges against him were dropped, most recently, his struggle continues.

He defines the “Ass Clowns” as being a landlord, a security guard, a police officer, a prosecutor or district attorney who targets people in poverty.

Brother Y shows the reader that the San Francisco County Jail Cookbook series he wastes no time exposing a recipe for disaster, as he concurs, “Time to get down to the meat of the matter.”

Non-Profit Industrial Complex: A Love Story and Other Poems

Thornton Kimes is a Race, Media, Poverty Scholar and staff writer for POOR Magazine/POOR News Network. He has also written poetry (some in haiku) for The “Street Sheet” a publication of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. Before he joined POOR in 2008, Kimes worked at Goodwill Industries.

The release of his very first book, Non-Profit Industrial Complex: A Love Story and Other Poems, Kimes categorizes the elements in his experience of working such industry: “Nature, politics, love, weirdness, working for a Non-Profit organization, and Wizard of Oz imagery"

Kimes expresses his fascination for haiku and short poetry, in his book. He enjoys trying to say the most with the fewest words: "I’m not comfortable with longer poems, but that is changing. Non-Profit Industrial Complex: A Love Story is one of the longest poems I’ve written."

"We all live in Oz. Sometimes spectacularly strange, America/Oz feels like the Yellow Brick Road’s traffic signals are broken and we’re in a giant parking lot. Finding the way is a quest for more brain, more heart, more courage...”

A first and foremost informative piece by, Thornton Kimes, not foretold by many.

Ray’s Day

Marlon Crump is a Race, Media, Poverty Scholar and journalist for POOR Magazine/POOR News Network. He is also a Revolutionary Legal Scholar.

A survivor of police brutality and racial profiling, Crump earned the title “Revolutionary Legal Scholar” by representing himself in a civil suit against the City of San Francisco.

A prolific and talented writer in his own right, Crump has released his second book released through POOR Press titled, “Ray’s Day.” He reluctantly wrote this book to finally subside the demons (trauma) that plagued him and his family for many years.

Ray’s Day is a novel that brings its reader into a deep, dark fantasy world of Crump and his callous confrontation against an individual, who committed unforgivable crimes upon his family. Creative graphic details, in fictitious form by Crump, the reader sees the true objective of Ray’s Day when they hear his voice:

“I am ultimately hopeful that “Ray’s Day” will equal a new day for all sexual assault victims to cope with their pain with self-healing………...by the potent antidote means of creativity, arts, and literacy.”

To purchase any of these books on-line by mail order you can click on POOR Press on the left-hand side of this column.

POOR will also be hosting Mercado de Cambio/The Po'Sto' Holiday Art Market and Knowledge Exchange on Wednesday, December 16th 12-9pm at their offices at
2940 16th street 1 blk below 16th street BART in the Mission /SF- Books, Po'kies and Art from POOR Press, Po Poets, neighborhood DJ's, musicians and many micro-business people and artists in the Bay will be
available for sale and exchange!.

To register for the next POOR press/Digital Resistance media and publishing training beginning in January email deeandtiny@poormagazine.org or call (415-863-6306) and leave a message.

by Leroy Moore/PNN

Krip-Hop: Tell us about Heavy Load.

Heavy Load: We're a five piece punk band from Brighton, England. We've been together for 12 years. Three of us have learning disabilities (Learning disabilities in the UK means people with developmental disabilities like Down Syndrome)¦Jimmy started everything by telling his support worker he'd like to be in a band. They sent out an advertisement and a week later the band had formed.

Krip-Hop: What kind of music you play?

Heavy Load: It's loud garage/punk rock.

Krip-Hop: Name the members of Heavy Load

Heavy Load: Heavy Load is Simon Barker (vocals), Jimmy Nicholls (guitar and vocals), Mick Williams (guitar and vocals), Michael White (drums) and Paul Richards (bass)

Krip-Hop: Name some titles of your songs?

Heavy Load: Stay Up Late, When will We Get Paid, Farty Animals, We love George Michael

Krip-Hop: Tells us about your documentary.

Heavy Load: The film follows us for 2 1⁄2 years as we try and take our music to a more mainstream audience playing at music festivals etc and particular challenges that face each member of the band in their lives. It's going to be broadcast on IFC on 23rd June and then at cinemas in the UK later in the year as well as being shown on the BBC.

Krip-Hop: How long will you be in the US?

Heavy Load: We're only in the US for five days and for all except Mick…it's our first trip to New York City.

Krip-Hop: Have you ever played with an all disabled Hip-Hop group like 4Wheel City?

Heavy Load: Last year we played with a young hip-hop group from London who had learning disabilities and we hear great things about 4Wheel City. We're really looking forward to it.

Krip-Hop: Tells us Heavy Load's experience in the music industry.

Heavy Load: I don't know what the US is like but it's difficult in the UK. It seems to be a lot about money. We've had a couple of meetings with record companies but no success. But with the Internet we can do our own thing, release what we want, and there's no shortage of gigs so we're happy do everything our own way. It seems to work for us.

Krip-Hop: Name some other disabled musicians in London/UK

Heavy Load: We're just about to release a compilation album called Wild Things “ songs of the disabled underground' which is a project we've undertaken to gather together learning disabled musicians from the UK together on one CD for the first time. There are some really great acts on it. Ones to look out for are Beat Express (also from Brighton), Vanessa and Kick Me Ugly, Dele Fakoya, Dean Rawat and The Coasters. It's a really varied album and we're really excited to be releasing it. We'd love to do a US version if people want to send us their recordings.

Krip-Hop: Tell us your Stay Up Late campaign

Heavy Load: For years we'd been playing gigs at disabled club nights and got frustrated at how early everyone was going home.
We soon realized that it was because support workers were
only scheduled to work until 10pm at night so would want
to leave by 9pm so they could get the person they were
supporting back home . We thought this was wrong so we recorded a single 'Stay Up Late', got some money from the
National Lottery and set about raising awareness and
getting disabled people to tell their staff that from time to time they wanted to Stay Up Late â“ and that this should be their right. After all most live music nights don't normally end at 9pm

Krip-Hop: What is your next project?

Heavy Load: We're currently getting the Wild Things album out there and then we'll be releasing our second album 'Shut It' at the end of June. After that we've got various gigs lined up across the UK either to promote the film or the Stay Up Late campaign. We also organizing 'mixed' nights that involve bands with and without disabilities as it creates a great vibe with the audience and introduces the public to music they might not have heard before so we'll be doing more of that later in the year. We've had a lot of requests to play gigs so the film will probably keep us busy for a good while – we hope.

Krip-Hop: Tell us about the disabled rights movement in UK compared to USA

Heavy Load: There's some great and challenging stuff going on with websites like www.bbc.co.uk/ouch which has got correspondents discussing all sorts of issues. There's also a healthy self-advocacy movement making sure that people are able to have a voice and know what their rights are. There's still a fair bit of work to be done though.

Krip-Hop: How can people get in touch with you?

Heavy Load: They can check out our myspace which is www.myspace.com/heavyloaduk or go to our website
www.heavyload.org and you can email us from there.