by Dee

When fully armed soldiers stand on the steps of government buildings in Third and Fourth World Banana Republics it is a sign that a coup has occurred

Are the fully armed soldiers standing on the steps of the White House in Washington DC signifying that a coup has taken place by the Bush Administration?

Does this image bother anyone but me - why are we letting this happen?

Has the US become a Banana Republic for the Bush Administration ? – do they want us to believe that by constantly showing us this image…?

by Staff Writer

My name is Francisco

I was born in Santa Barbara till I was three

Then I moved to Oakland to live closer to family

we all struggle together

some of us have moved out

but the rest of us are still here.

Supporting brothers, sisters

most of us are called "Immigrants"

but are we?

so tell me are we "Immigrants"

by: Francisco Javier Gonzalez
Age 17

by Leroy Moore, Darla Lennox, Maria Palacios, Zilwood, Tiny

Capitalismas Def: Holiday created by capitalists who appropriated multiple pagan and indigenous celebrations and "changed" the birthdate of a revolutionary who cared for gente pobre (Jesus Christ) all in pursuit of consumer-based profits

Twas' the night before capitalistmas

And all thru the house

not a product was stirring

not a PC nor its mouse

The children were nestled

all snug in their beds –

while visions of corporate-fueled gang violence
covert army videos and fetishized
females

danced in their head

Mama slathered

in the newest skin rejuvenation
cream to be competitive in the gender wars

and Papa dreaming of the an on-line date

he just might score

When out on the lawn

there arose such a clatter –

the family sprung from the bed to see what was
the matter –

it was the marshal to deliver a summons to take
back their title and render them homeless cause
since dad had lost his job - they couldn't keep up
the payments

As the marshal gave the family one last kick and
a push they were secure in knowing it was all
cause of Citigroup, BofA, AIG and their rich
corporate friends

Warm and cosy all tucked in their beds
dreaming of the rich getting richer, the poor left
for dead….

by Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, PoorNewsNetwork poverty scholar

"There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose, if they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life"
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"In Durban, South Africa, it is not racism, it's poverty that's affecting us now." I was blessed to meet Mazwi Nzimande, youth and poverty scholar leader with Abahlai base Mjondolo (The Shack Dwellers Union) in South Africa, a revolutionary group of landless folks in Capetown and Durban, South Africa, who were one of the organizations sharing scholarship at the Poverty Scholars Program Leadership School held in West Virginia in August of 2009.

Myself and Laure McElroy, poverty scholars, co-madres and staff writers with the welfareQUEENS project of POOR Magazine, and our sons, POOR Magazine youth scholars Evander McElroy and Tiburcio Garcia-Gray traveled for over 9 hours and three consistently late plane connections to be here, leaving unpaid water bills, unfunded programs, unsent unemployment checks, racial profiling, po'lice abuse and almost unpaid rent to make sure our voices and scholarship could join with over 120 other scholars from across the globe to re-ignite Dr. Kings dream.

With scholars from Scotland to New York, from Africa to Detroit, we were educated on multiple models of resistance and struggle throughout herstory, organizing through art and faith, multi-lingual inclusion and systemic change in the face of the often talked about but rarely understood economic downturn.

There is money to build housing but the money is being spent to build stadiums,
Mazwi went on to explain how the homes of the shack dwellers in Durban and other cities in South Africa are being systematically demolished so the poor people remain at least 50 kilometers away from the upcoming World Cup stadium. In an act that will permanently criminalize landless South Africans, the current government is trying to pass the Slums Act which allows the eviction of families by saying that certain areas of South Africa must be slum free.

When the people of South Africa challenged this unconstitutional act, they faced a judge who fell asleep while on the bench supposedly adjudicating their case, similar to the cases of many of the judges and lawyers in Amerikkkan Criminal Un-Justice System that have convicted poor black men and sent them to death row in Texas while sleeping throughout the trials.

"We have a very nice constitution in South Africa that states no-one can be evicted once they have lived in a place for over 24 hours without due process, but its dust now, no-one follows it", Mazwi concluded. Mazwi told us how poor children who are found living on the streets are put in jail for weeks at a time if tourists are expected to come to Durban. Mazwi's stories of removal and criminalization reminded me of the ways that encampments of landless folks in the Bay Area are arrested and washed away with high pressure power washers when they are found in settlements under the freeways, under the bridges, in doorways, and other outside residences.

As of 2007, 37 million people are living in poverty in the US, that's up from 5.7 million in 2003, the powerful week of knowledge sharing and coalition building began with youth leaders from Philadelphia Student Union (PSU) and Media Mobilizing Project, breaking down the numbers of people struggling to stay fed, housed and employed in every city in the US today.

Yo soy Angelica Hernandez, y yo soy trabadora domestica, (I am Angelica Hernandez and I am a domestic worker) Angelica explained that she worked with an organization called Domestic Workers United in New York, an organization that many of PoorNewsNetwork's migrant and poverty scholars have worked with to achieve worker rights for migrant scholars.

Christine Lewis, also with Domestic Workers United explained how many amazing women have spearheaded the fight to create a domestic workers bill of rights which makes sure that domestic workers are paid decent wages and given proper protection and recognition for the crucial work they do.

We must root our struggle in the history of all peoples struggle, and that includes all of our struggles across organizations and regions, religion and race. In a training on multi-lingualism sponsored by Voluta Interpreters collective based in Philadelphia, Willie Baptist, long-time organizer and one of the poverty scholar leaders involved in the Leadership School, articulated the current goals of the campaign.

After all of these powerful women and men shared their resistance struggles my eyes traveled outside the window of our plenary session. I watched drops of thick warm rain as it rolled down deep green leaves onto fertile West Virginia earth. Land once tilled and harvested by Shawnee, Iroquis and Seneca peoples before guns and treaties and more guns stole it away. Earth stained with the blood of coal miners, former slaves and migrant peoples struggling for workers' rights, civil rights and human rights and now land rights.

"Mountain-top removal is causing weekly flooding round these parts, we are losing our land, our homes, and our jobs", Gerry Randal, a life-long resident of Matewan, West Virginia, said, explaining how corporations like Massey Energy, one of the largest coal producers in West Virginia which is part of the "clean coal" movement and has been destroying the land his family has lived on for hundreds of years. "We are poor people we have nowhere to go", Gerry concluded and then in a deep West Virginia drawl, told me to have a nice day miss..

The corporate-fueled, flagrantly illegal land destruction in the name of development reminded Laure and myself of the poisoning of communities by private housing developers like Lennar Corporation who is attempting to gentrify and destroy the Bayview/Hunters Point district of San Francisco, even if it means poisoning our children and families.

I ran into Gerry while I was on a tour provided by the institute through Matewan, the town known for a shoot-out between the town's sheriff and the thugs hired to kill, evict and harass any coal miners who were suspected of union organizing. On this tour we learned the bloody and deadly herstory and histories of repression by coal companies of their workers. We also learned the inspiring stories of resistance like the true meaning of "red-necks" and the "red-neck army:--a group of over 1700 coal miners who were known for wearing red scarves around their necks and dared to take up arms against the brutality of corporations like Massey Coal, who paid their workers in script worth cents on the dollar and only redeemable in Massey company stores.

We left Matewan, the heat and humidity dripping slowly down the backs of the chewed on mountains. Carpet green hills, forests dense with deep brown and red. Spirits of poverty scholars and amerikkkan survivors seemed to sway with songs of lost ancestors.

When John Henry was hammering on the mountain

And his hammer was striking fire

He drove so hard til he broke his poor heart

And he laid down his hammer and he died

He laid down his hammer and he died

He laid down his hammer and he died John Henry was a black railroad worker who the legend has it died working on the rails in West Virginia

Rivers large and small, wide and narrow.. winded through the land that we passed, carrying life, time, dreams, and resistance. In these rivers and forests of immense beauty and devastating struggle, my Mama Dee came forth, her tears that I cry often for--her struggle as an unwanted, abused and tortured mixed race child living in poverty and later as a poor single mother of color who became disabled and houseless with me her daughter, and later my struggle to care for her when she was unable to work followed, then, by my ongoing struggle to raise a child while struggling with houselessness, her struggle is my struggle, the struggle of all of our mamaz and children, entwined, threaded, with the struggles for land.

It is for my mama and all our mamaz and daughters, daddys and sons, grandmothers and grandfathers that POOR Magazine has launched the Homefulness Project, a sweat-equity co-housing project that distributes equity to landless families not tied to how much money they have access to. HOMEFFULNESS includes a small farm and intergenerational, multi-lingual school and several micro-business projects to support economic self sufficiency for poor folk moving off the grid of budget cuts, corporate gentrification, Slavemart (Walmart) and (Safeway) Slaveway food poisoning, english language domination, the non-profit industrial complex and poverty pimpology.

And then our magical tour bus of change arrived at the West Virginia Historical Society, which contained a powerful exhibition about the New Deal and the towns of Allendale, Preston and Daily, three resettlement communities for unemployed workers created by Eleanor Roosevelt in the time of the severe depression and the New Deal when millions of US residents were living without food, housing or jobs. Each resettlement community included a farm, carpet factory, furniture factory and a school. Omigod, I dreamed, what a truly revolutionary way for that much talked about stimulus money to be used in the 21st Century for our current poor and landless families.

This is Chemical Valley, said pastor Amanda Gayle Reed a fifth generation native of West Virgina, about the land around the Camp. At a community bbq sponsored by the Leadership School I met Pastor Gayle only to be terrified by more corporate poisoning. She continued,"the levels of MIC (Methyl Isocyanate, the chemical released in Bhopal, India in 1984 that killed more than 3,800 People) from the Dow chemical plant buried in this valley are higher than they were in Bhopal, India when they had the explosion, we have shelter in place warnings all the time because the chemical levels here are so high."

I have been to the mountaintopDr. Martin Luther King Jr

On our final day at the institute my son and I talked about the power of resistance of our elders and ancestors that came and fought before us like Dr. King and John Henry, Uncle Al Robles and Mama Dee, as we gazed upon the land. We meditated on the words of Dr. King, our teachings this week and our own lives as a poor, landless family in resistance in the US. And finally we reflected on one of the messages that were proven this week at the Institute which we teach on often at POOR Magazine--the connections between all of our shared struggles for land, food, freedom and voice in South Africa, New Orleans, Mexico, West Virginia, Oakland, Guatemala and beyond,now, we thought, lets work to keep the revolution of truth-telling and cross-movement mobilization flowing so we can continue Dr. King's walk up all of Pacha Mama's ailing mountain-tops.

We are the keepers of the mountain

Love them or leave them

Just don't destroy them

If you dare to be one to.. Larry Gibson, fighting the removal of his families mountain by Massy Coal

To support the families in struggle to keep their land contact Larry.gibson@mountainkeepers.org or call 304-542-1134

For more information on the Poverty Initiative program go on-line to www.povertyintiative.org

by JJ Colagrande/PoorNewsNetwork

It is Feb. 16 2002 and a heavy silence lingers in the air of the auditorium of the SF public library. It is a huge room filled with hundreds of seats and the weight of the silence is heavy because the room is almost empty; however, the silence is not tense, just hollow, as it waits for a life and a voice that would soon consume it.

I sit alone in the scarcly filled meeting room waiting for the conference on race and disability to begin and I start to dream. I dream about being a track and field star. Back in the day I used to run track. In my dream I’m jetting down a track, it is the track that surrounded the football field of my old junior high school in New York, the same track where I used to always lose every race I competed in. I was one of the only white boys in a class dominated by African-Americans and it was hard for me to catch up with some of the track stars at my school cause they were fast. In my dream I’m in a race and I’m running as fast as I can. In my dream I’m fueled with desire, loaded with determination, and I’m challenging every obstacle in my course. I’m leaping every hurdle, jumping as high and far as I can, and I’m about to cross the finish line victorious but I wake up before I win.

The silence of the auditorium is starting to make me uncomfortable. The conference was suppossed to start fifteen minutes ago. I look around and notice Samuel Irving sitting alone in the front row. He is a dark chocalate warrior poet, humble, calm, strong like a bomb. He has multiple scilrosis and is legally blind. He sits alone just as I do.

As an able white man I actually feel self-conscious in a room filled with disabled people of color. I feel different and I don’t like the feeling at all. I know I’m not different but I can’t help feeling that I am. I wonder how I can overcome my self-consciousness as I meditate on the uncomfortable silence in the room.

The conference at the library begins when Leroy Moore, the last minute substitute host of the event, strolls up to the microphone and gives the hollowed ghost of silence a soul. He fills the quiet air with a voice. He announces, "I have stories to tell and I won’t shut up."

Samuel Irving is soon introduced to the microphone and he steps up to recite a couple of poems. From his poem entitled Headway he said something that caused my self consciousness to evaporate like dew when the sun breaks through from the clouds. He recited "my structure is what you don’t see when you look at me."

Word.

Word up, Samuel.

The conference continues and Leroy introduces a wide variety of poets, disabled activists, and advocates of disability rights. I begin to hear these diverse voices, african- american, latino, asian, all within this community, all educated and eloquent, and I wonder why they are not being heard.

I think back to when I was a kid and how frustrated I was when adults would not take me seriously. It was like my teachers or parents did not listen to me. Like they didn’t talk to me. Sure they talked about me or through me or around me but never TO me. I had a voice, just like all those voices that filled the library hall with life, so why exactly wouldn’t anybody listen?

The conference at the public library was designed to help get a serious voice heard. Organized by the Disability Advocates of Minorties Organization, the conference presented the Breaking the Silence and Organize Campaign. The BSOC is a platform for disabled people of color. The main goal of BSOC is to build friendships and leaders through networking. The BSOC also strives to display the culture, artistic talents, and history of disabled people of color while advocating legal rights, services, and bringing to light issues that touch the disabled people community in San Francisco.

The BSOC was born because there is no platform where disabled people of color can come together to express themselves, feel empowered. It is a question of empowerment so that the disabled community can use their own abilities to facilitate change. The BSOC wants to increase public awareness about issues that face them. One such issue is unemployment. Disabled minorities have the highest unemployment rate every year.

I sit comfortably in my chair in the last row of the scarcley filled auditorium, even though I know things are crazy, hard, and just ill sometimes I’m at ease, and I listen.

If you whisper you may not be heard.

If you speak you still may not be heard.

If you yell you will be heard.

But will people listen?

At the end of an ispirational conference, Leroy Moore, when commenting on his desire to get the BSOC’s voice heard, says, "next year we want this auditorium full."

I have no trouble believing him.

by Ken Moshesh

UNSEEN
ARE THE DIVERSE FACES
OF MY HOMELESS AND AT-RISK
PEOPLE
STILL CLOAKED IN INVISIBILITIES
OF
SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL, COLD
WAR
DENIALS AND FEARS
PASSED DOWN THROUGH
PAEENTINGS AND NIGHTMARES
OF PAST AND POSSIBLE
DEPRESSIONS
VEILED IN PRESENT
INSECURITIES AND OBLIGATIONS
DEEMED NECESSARY TO PREVENT
THE NON-BEHOLDER FROM
BECOMING THE BEHELD.
STEEPED IN SELF-SERVING
NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES DEMOCRATIC PROCLAMATIONS
RATIONALIZING
LOFTY, POSITIVE,
FOR WHICH WE HAVE KILLED.

AND NOW, FAR TOO MANY
WHO RISKED ALL TO KILL
FOR THE CAUSE
ARE ALSO RENDERED
HOMELESSSLY MISSING IN
ACTION
BY THE UNNECESSARY
UNREGULATED GREED
OF A FEW.
BLIND ARE THE TUNNELED EYES
OF THE ABUNDANT SOLUTIONS
TO THE BEAUTIFUL HUMAN FACES OF
MY HOMELESS AND AT-RISK PEOPLE
WHO ALSO
BARELY SEE EACH OTHER
AS THE NATION STRUGGLES
TOWARD HOMELESSNESS RECOVERY

K MOSHESH 3/00

by Thorton Kimes

Part One

Conspiracy theories and Swine Flu were on our minds at POOR Magazine when the S.F. first popped up on the radar. Still are. The state of hellthcare in Amerikka, folks buying cheaper medicine from Canada (the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex ranting and raving about not being able to afford to do research and development to save us from doom and gloom if that was allowed), and a whole host of other problems that hurt poor people the most—the truth is that Capitalism is the only conspiracy theory you need.

The word “conspiracy” or “conspire” comes from Latin, a phrase meaning “to breathe together”. Whether or not we are on the same page about Swine Flu or anything else, we’re breathing together all the time, like it or not.

Swine Flu and other nasty surprises we’ve had over the past few decades can be explained only a few ways and all of them mean we’re in trouble. Disease is one of Nature’s best population control weapons, the Black Death did a very good job of that in Europe and the Spanish Flu killed millions in North America and lives in the institutional memory and nightmares of the medical world.

The biggest thing that freaks out the medical folks is diseases lurking in rain forests being destroyed to create more farms, diseases hitchhiking on container ships or sent ‘round the world by the underground trade in exotic animals—even stuff long dormant in the snow and ice of the fast-melting poles, stuff we have no natural defenses against or drugs to use to combat them.

Those are reasonable fears. Other people have fears that are either “conspiracy theories” or reality, and there are historical precedents backing them as real. The U.S. government experiment on Black Americans from 1932 to 1972, the Tuskegee Experiment in Macon, GA, involved 400 men infected with syphilis who were never told they had it. Even after Penicillin was invented the researchers wanted to keep studying those men.

Old-school (and supposedly outlawed) chemical warfare agents like Mustard Gas, used in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980’s, killed thousands of fighters and left more crippled for whatever remained of their lives. Agent Orange worked better than the post-9/11 Anthrax attacks, destroying plant life, hurting and killing many Vietnamese and doing the same to many American soldiers on the ground.

Israel used White Phosphorus bombs in the late 2008 invasion of Gaza. White Phosphorus burns flesh, to the bone if you can’t remove it, and it burns under water too—which means you can’t wash it off the usual way. My own mother, normally a skeptical person, freaked out about the Anthrax attacks. Three hundred million people in this country and she feared a bio-weapon that ultimately was more pain in the posterior than true lethal threat.

Native Americans suffered forced sterilizations, and they weren’t the only ones. U.S. soldiers were exposed to radiation from nuclear bomb tests, and “Downwinders”, families living near the desert south-west test facilities have been suffering radiation damage and cancers, including Breast Cancer, ever since. Terry Tempest Williams, a Utah-based Mormon naturalist-writer, wrote REFUGE: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY OF FAMILY AND PLACE after watching some of her beloved local natural terrain (the Great Salt Lake) go through some devastating fluctuations—and losing her mother to Downwinder Breast Cancer.

If you haven’t read her book, please do. Gay America may have very good reason to hate the Mormon Church, but Williams is an amazing writer who brings her Mormon upbringing and family, and the tragedy they suffered from a government conspiracy, into very clear focus.

Part 2

Countries like Egypt destroyed pigs, but Mexico, Swine Flu Ground Zero, fell on its sword and cancelled all public activities in the midst of the Cinco de Mayo celebrations, hurting countless small businesspeople and the folks who worked for them. Poor Mexicans heard the same message all Mexicans got about proper use of water and washing hands—and had little or no access to water but plenty of access to Fear.

China quarantined Mexicans traveling there, which gave Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderone, a great excuse to complain about “discrimination” against Mexicans when he was the Discriminator In Chief. Live by the sword, hey—look both ways before falling on it, someone will be all too willing to “help”.

In Amerikkka we either don’t freak out enough or do it too much. Who benefits from the FEAR propaganda? The PhIC at least. A new way for an old disease to mess with you? New profits to be made from drugs already developed for something else? Yum. Yum!

The truth is that Swine Flu hasn’t yet become the deadly killer we’ve been told it is. Regular flu kills 30,000+ Amerikkkans a year and we don’t freak out about that! We barely even know it, the news media whispered about it a little bit and then shut up about it. I’ve noticed the whispers in this second round of FEARmongering, but the whispered truth just gets lost in the hard sell of we-must-all-be-vaccinated-or-we’re-all-gonna-die stuff going around.

At least one spokesperson I heard during Round One said something about not knowing “everything” about Swine Flu. You get caught with your pants down, fact-finding is job one, but what exactly do we need to know?

The October 23rd, 2009 ABC national news’ medical expert indirectly concluded that Swine Flu may have made Flu season a 24/7 365 days-a-year thing in Amerikkka and possibly elsewhere. Until the behavior of the Medical Industrial Complex, and/or the virus, changes again, we probably must adjust to this new reality.

Acting rationally about it is tough when the Fearmongers are out for blood. Your blood. Your heart and mind. I agree with the coughing/sneezing into an arm instead of cupped hand concept, but now the Etiquette Monger/Fear Monger Complex wants to encourage folks to change fundamentals of behavior like shaking hands!

Shaking hands is a very primal thing, like up-close-and-personal unarmed or close quarters combat with knives and swords; shaking hands is a greeting that proves both hand shakers are unarmed and trustworthy. Wasting a lot of time surfing the net (I’m good at that…) has done a fair amount of damage to face-to-face interpersonal connections people need to forge and reforge often for basic emotional mental health.

The Reagan “Just Say No To Drugs” campgain led some children to turn their parents in to the Police, I wonder what will come of a campaign to kill hand shaking if we truly are entering the era of 24/7 365 days a year Flu, etc.

Part 3

Simon Sez: kids get sick, keep ‘em at home, but keep the schools open. School districts acted and looked like fools during Round One, and high school students in Mill Valley (Marin County), CA, made them look dumberer by publically stating and acting on their intent to hang out together during their unexpected school break. Nothing bad happened.

Schools are being closed again, mostly because 20-25% of students got sick. One student in Northern CA said half her 15-student math class was sick at home. Math has always been my Kryptonite at Algebra and above, but if I had a 1 teacher-to-7-students ratio I’d be dancing the Macarena. If I was a parent I’d be marveling that any school could have a math class with only 15 students in it to start with!

If lack of students equals lack of money from the state or federal government, I’d like to see a special Swine Flu bonus paid to schools that stay open even if many students and some of their teachers are at home. Close the school? Are ya’ll nuts?

Prisons in CA and other places went on lock-down, and still are, the Swine Flu the perfect rationalization for being mean to prisoners. The PIC doesn’t need a new reason for that, AIDS hasn’t locked-down prisons, the PIC doesn’t mind making life and death very frustrating and painful for HIV-positive/AIDS-suffering prisoners. (Poor) Families of prisoners, already burdened by separation and the extreme difficulty of often long distances they must travel for any visits they can manage, are hurt the most.

More isolation. The news media matter-of-factly reports prison overcrowding in CA and the CA governor’s antics over it, and the the Swine Flu decisions, but doesn’t lift a finger to act like that means more than another reason to spread fear or read more words off a teleprompter.

Part 4

There is one valuable thing I’ve learned in the past 20 years: the first 24 hours of a block-buster “breaking news” story is when the confusion and outright lies come fast and thick, hit hard and take hold of our minds like those songs we sometimes can’t get out of our heads for a whole day. Waiting a few days usually leads to greater clarity about what actually happened or is happening.

I’ve mentioned real conspiracies. Many people fear mercury and other additives put into drugs and other necessities of our lives over the past century, substances that the chemical industry, the agricultural industry, and the PhIC suspected or knew could and did contribute to major health problems if they didn’t directly cause them. We need to pay more attention to that, and, supposedly, the government is watching to ensure that the Swine Flu vaccine is safe.

We all know numbers can be made to dance on the head of a pin with the angels. Can we play the music they dance to?

One very interesting thing about recent corporate news media coverage of Swine Flu and the you-may-bave-won-a-flu-shot sweepstakes: one or two skeptical doctors who told their clientele they didn’t need shots got tv face time. Then they vanished. Nothing to see here folks, just go home.

Remember the Peanuts comic strip? Charlie Brown didn’t often get good advice when The Doctor Was In, and he never got to kick the football.

The PhIC has its fingers in many medical pies, including the creation of vaccines for Flu Flu, Swine Flu, et al. The government uses an old, slow method to create vaccine doses, when there is a newer, faster way to do it. The PhIC seems happy to move almost as slowly, allowing the government to promise there will be enough to go around and then –whoops! There isn’t enough. The Fear Mongers strike again.

There is reason for fear. I’m not a parent with a child in the crosshairs. There is reason for pissed-offness too. Who wins when we allow fear to rule us? Haven’t we been through this with 9/11, color coded alerts, fear of a Muslim planet? Red Alert! Red Alert! Klingons!

by Jack Hirschman

FOR EHREN WATADA

This warring government
having lost its people
and having exposed
its lies and its twists

and turns of the knife

in the back of all decency,

has only the guns left
to keep the people in line
in Iraq and here as well,
the guns that make people
afraid because they can
make people dead,

and so when an officer
like Ehren Watada
from one of the two
newest states to be
legalized as part of
the United States

realizes that the war
declared by his country
is an illegal one, and he
refuses to be deployed
to Iraq, and is illegally
court-martialed,

he has opened a crack
in the cage we all are
fearfully imprisoned in,
and the sun of truth
has streamed in radiantly,
and hopefully others

today or tomorrow will
be touched by the same
luminous courage as
Ehren Watada’s, and the
dominum effect lead to the
highest-ranking officer: Peace.

by Press Release

On October 1, 2009, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe assumed management and oversight of the Southern Ute Health Center in Ignacio, which has been operated by the federal Indian Health Service (IHS) and provides health care to Southern Ute tribal members and other local Indians.

The Tribe had initially proposed such a transfer to IHS as early as in 2005 under the Indian Self-Determination Act, or ISDA, a federal law that seeks to “assur[e] maximum … participation [by Indian tribes] in the direction of … Federal services to Indian communities so as to render such services more responsive to the needs and desires of those communities.” The IHS declined the Tribe’s initial proposal, which led to protracted litigation. Recently, the Tribe and the HIS agreed to a contract under the ISDA that allowed the Tribe to begin management of the Southern Ute Health Center while still allowing for the resolution of the issues that led to the litigation.

“The Tribe has been looking forward to this date for a long time and many tribal leaders, including previous Chairmen, members of prior Tribal Councils, and numerous tribal members committed to improving our healthcare have brought us to this point,” said the Tribe’s Chairman, Matthew J. Box. “Unfortunately, it has taken us longer to get here than we had hoped but we are excited that we can now move forward with our plans for providing quality health care to our members and other Indians in the community.” Chairman Box noted that health care was a top priority for the Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council and taking over management of the Health Center was an important accomplishment for meeting that priority. “Although the changes may not be immediately seen,” Box said, “the Tribe’s management of the Health Center will ultimately mean we can be more responsive to the health care needs of our members rather than relying on the IHS.”

by Leroy Moore

It has been said that California and the rest of the nation are in an economic boom and many organizations and systems are feeding off of this boom. With help from legislators and governors, the prison system is getting fat from this booming economy. Many studies say that California operates the largest and most costly prison system in the nation. Activists like Angela Davis have staged protests and campaigns against the prison system and the political arena in California for the overwhelming number of people of color in the prison system. But, the voices of disabled prisoners have been left out or have been muddled.

Since the birth of the Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization (DAMO) in 1998, we have received many letters from disabled inmates begging for public recognition of the deadly environment that they are forced to live in. The latest letter came from the state of one of the candidates for US President, Texas. Closer to home, in February the Bayview newspaper had a letter from a disabled African American inmate. In both cases the inmates talked about the physical abuse they have experienced from guards or other inmates and how they are denied service and medical care. The inmates have looked for help for their cases but have not received any assistance.

Texas is known for its tough criminal system and has led the country in executions of inmates on death row. According to the December 19, 1999 issue of the Boston Globe, the number of prisoners in Texas has grown from 40,000 to 150,000 since Bush took office! He has also overseen the executions of 113 death row inmates, more than any other governor in any state has since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Many inmates on death row in Texas are or were inmates with mental illness and with developmental disabilities. To date, Bush has not spoken publicly about the Johnny Paul Penry case. Last Spring Bush voted against a bill that would ban executions of the mentally retarded. All of this is shocking because Bush’s father is remembered in the disabled community as the father of the American Disability Act of 1990.

Texas, like California, has poured money into the prison system. According to the Houston Chronicle of March 25, 2000 five years ago the Texas prison system completed the largest construction program in the nation’s history, but now top prison officials say they need as much as $3 billion more to fix up aging units. While the prison systems nationwide are enjoying the booming economy, there has been progressive work on the status of disabled prisoners. In the Houston Chronicle of February 16, 2000 the Senate Criminal Justice Committee heard testimony as they began to study the impact of mentally ill inmates on Texas prisoners and jails.

In 1998 Senator Paul Weelston (D), of Minnesota toured the privately run prisons and found conditions deplorable. Since receiving many allegations of the abuse of mentally disabled youth, Senator Weelston has introduced legislation designed to make sure youngsters with mental disabilities are not improperly locked away, and to end the mistreatment of those already behind bars. Weelston wants to set aside $2.5 billion over five years to help better train jail staff about mental illness, screen out youngsters with mental disorders before they are sent to prison, and build new facilities to house non-violent offenders with mental disabilities. Still, their voices have not reached mainstream mass media.

Although California prisons have been forced by a class action suit, Armstrong Vs. Pete Wilson in 1994, to follow the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, not discriminate against prisoners, DAMO’s prison files have been overflowing with stories of physical brutality. A 1996 survey by California state prison officials showed that at least 1,375 of the state’s 142,000 inmates are blind or deaf, use wheelchairs or need canes or other devices to walk. If we include prisoners with mental disabilities, HIV, mental illness and cancer, the number is overwhelming. The letter that appeared in the Bayview newspaper was from a disabled African American between and he described his reality in a local jail where he has been beaten and overmedicated. He says that he speaks for disabled people everywhere because, "We’re getting stepped on and not represented in a proper manner when we have legal issues that need to be addressed." This statement was echoed in the San Francisco Chronicle of March 14, 2000 by Senator Burton who blocked a Governor Davis appointee to the State Parole Board because the Board violated the ADA. According to Burton and Judge Claudia of Oakland, there have been some prisoners who used wheelchairs who have had to crawl up stairs to get to their hearings.

While California’s prisons are still trying to get in compliance with the ADA, Rogelio, a blind paraplegic man described the physical brutality he lives under the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In his letter to DAMO, he details his experience as a disabled inmate. Rogelio was punched out of his wheelchair by a guard because he told the guard not to read his legal letters. When Rogelio was on the floor, two officers continued to kick and hit him causing fractures on his left elbow and on his right wrist. Because of these injuries Rogelio could not get back into his wheelchair. The officers did help offenders with mental disabilities. And in California a few disability organizations have been putting the heat on the correction system with help from Senator Burton.

In California, Jean Stewart, Founder of Disabled Prisoners Justice Fund and author has received letters from disabled prisoners for years and is in the process of writing a book on disabled prisoners. She has visited disabled prisoners and helped them get the service and legal representation they need. Disabled Prisoners Justice Fund is a legal defense fund established to protect the rights and meet the legal needs of prisoners with disabilities.

Disabled prisoners are only now getting visibility because of people and grass roots organizations like Jean Stewart and her Disabled Prisoners Justice Fund, Senator Burton, Senator Weelston, and Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization. Despite these voices though, cases of physical abuse and lack of access to prison programs and medical care are still common in a system that is booming under this current economy.

The rights of disabled prisoners is an unpopular issue in the political arena, prison systems, and the traditional disabled organizations but we can’t turn our heads; because if we don’t act now you or I could be caught in the booming prison system.

By Leroy F. Moore
Founder of Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization (DAMO)