by Giovonna Willis-Barela staff writer, POOR Magazine

Loaves vs Lofts

by Joe

I’m a little ticked off at these tools I’m learning to use to get my words out to all of you. If you
have read my work, you’ll know its pretty eclectic. It
can range from enjoying a free meal to Hyper Science.

Think of Cloning, Genetic Engineering, Cybernetics, Nano-
molecular electronics-medical technologies, Cryobiology
Life Extension and Artificial Intelligence. Considering each of
these individually, it is already staggering to think of what they can do. Now mesh, combine them: That’s Hyper Tech,or Hypertechnology. The truth is, these and other sciences I dare not mention are rapidly merging.

The frustrating part is getting this on-screen, learning new software only to find glitches in this program that erases or hides
my work. Any other writers having similar problems?

In the old days, literally a hundred or a thousand years ago, we wrote
on paper where mistakes in sentence, words, and grammar errors made us tear up the paper and try again. Most of us learned, got better, made fewer mistakes. With the PC, its so much easier to scribble thoughts, but we can lose everything with an accidental press of the delete key.

Today’s Monday, February 12, 2001. My other work is on ‘Harvesting The Dead,” about a doctor taking already dead childrens' organs without
their parents' permission. I found out about this story through Reuters News Service and reporter Kate Kelland on Tuesday in London Jan. 30, 2001.

I found out that some French researchers really believe America had a clone in 2000. Possible, probable, who knows? Do I think it's possible... Damn Straight! It' also very possible that it's a smoke screen the French may be using to hide their own clone. Just a thought.

This is my “I don’t know what I’m doin' column.” Here we are in future, and the PC chews up all my work, making me do it over and over.
I should’ve stuck with my old Underwood or Royal typewriter. In fact, if
people are throwing them out, I still want one and maybe a long continuous roll of clean meatpacking paper so if a stream of Consciousness moods hits
I’ll be able to do a ‘Jack Kerourac.’ Wait a sec, my PC is the electronic equivalent! But I still would like to switch to the old style when I can.

The Future. Yeah, right. A few flying cars, the only hovercrafts are overgrown tugboats, BART is the closest thing to teleportation and it has trouble every time it rains. No vacations in space yet, and no jetpack.
But we have Craig Computers, the Human Genome is mapped, and life extension to possible immortality is no longer a joke. We have Cloning, Stemcell research and an international Space Station.

“Star Trek Voager” is about to end. “Star Trek
Wanderers" presents Will Wheaten traveling the starlanes without a spaceship. That hybrid Q girl and Q’s son and the evolved Kess, together or separately, are saving the universe, dimensions, timelines and each other at times.
Speaking of timelines, Star Trek’s Ships of the line “Tempest and an advanced “Enterprise,” a new Timeship that has a proud legacy to live.

I know, "He’s gone loopy again!" I say update some old, embrace the old.

by Kaponda

Golden-clad rays from the fiery-rimmed, celestial globe ringed the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, as the moonlight had retired from another night of labor. The sunrise brought into full view the logo embroidered on the shirt of the man who culled me and one other man, Sam, from among the many men who were standing in the street waiting for work. It was the logo of the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey circus.

By the time the train cannonballed into the depot at Detroit, Michigan, Sam and I had become the spectacle on that dreary night in 1979. A band of circus cads had converged upon us for baneful sport. While I watched a sledgehammer quickly move toward the head of Sam, I split a 2”x4” object, that had been guided towards my temple, with my forearm. After the clowns, lion tamers, strongmen and other circus performers had retreated to their sleeping compartments, Sam and I collected our pay for our six days of labor and walked off into the Detroit moon.

Most day laborers will never experience the kind of hire-wire act that Sam and I had encountered when we were hired by the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey as laborers, while standing and waiting for work on the street in Indianapolis, Indiana. Most employers who hire people off the streets understand that we seek a clean and honest living through expenditure of physical efforts. However, there are those callous employers who exploit the labor of benign people standing on the streets of America.

If the registry of day laborers who have perished or contracted job-related illnesses at some back of beyond work site were opened for inspection, then the magnitude of danger would probably astound members of regulatory agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Short of walking off the job, there is very little, if anything at all, a laborer can do to avoid exposure to hazardous chemicals or accidents caused by unsafe working conditions and code violations.

Jose Escheddarillo has seen many of the schemes engineered by oppressive employers to extract the maximum efforts from day laborers without providing compensation equivalent to the labor. According to Escheddarillo, who, as a retired day laborer, has earned the recognizition as a living monument to the day labor industry, “a lot of employers have committed flagrant civil and human rights violations of health and safety work codes.” One of the founders of the San Francisco Day Labor Program, located at Franklin Square Park on 17th and Hampshire streets, Escheddarillo arrived in America in 1989, and, like the many other immigrants who have come before him, he wanted an opportunity to improve his life.

“I immediately realized as workers on the streets waiting to be hired,” continued the relic and current advocate of fair wages and working conditions for day laborers, “we were experiencing abuse from employers and people who were getting work from us. Back during the formation of the Day Labor Program, there were a lot of problems.”

The San Francisco Day Labor Program was created in 1990 by a collaboration of day laborers, neighbors and community service organizations. The program has provided a place where workers can find temporary and permanent work in a safe and supportive environment, without having to chase cars on the street. The San Francisco Day Labor Program also has provided free medical clinics, referral assistance, English classes and legal services to many of its clients in the Mission District. The San Francisco Day Labor Program offers these services to its clients and has developed a mechanism that allows a match between laborers who need work with employers who need laborers. However, like the offices of a circus, the Day Labor Program also currently operates out of two portable trailers that sit on a lot at Franklin Square Park.

Because Franklin Square Park is located a good distance from the original stretch on Cesar Chavez Street, where day laborers have been at the mercy of prospective drive-by employers for over 30 years, the San Francisco Day Labor Program has neither been able to prevent the continued exploitation of cheap laborers, nor provide laborers the protection from arbitrary abuses. However, the building which formerly housed Sears & Roebuck Company and more recently, the Employment Development Department, located right at Cesar Chavez Street, has invited bids from any employment-related, nonprofit who has expressed interest in relocating its business to that site. So, when I interviewed the Executive Director of La Raza Centro Legal, Anamaria Loya, I was surprised to discover that the proposal of the San Francisco Day Labor Program had been rejected by the master tenant of the building, the Department of Human Services.

“They were very hesitant and are basically saying that even though we are an employment-related nonprofit, they would not let us move in because the day laborers would not fit in with the other tenants,” stated Loya. But I was under the impression that day laborers have been at the Cesar Chavez Street corridor for over 30 years doing just that -- loitering! So I asked Loya to clarify her answer for this article? “The reason for not considering the day laborers for the hiring hall on Cesar Chavez Street,” continued Loya with a gracious tone, “is that they were afraid that the laborers would loiter around the building and were worried that the day laborers would not fit in with the other nonprofits....Who is so afraid of loitering? Men already gather along the street of Cesar Chavez. If we had a program there, then we would at least be able to help meet their needs. Our belief is that it is not that they [DHS] have a genuine concern, rather, we think they [DHS] have a disrespect for poor people because day laborers tend to be poor and homeless immigrants. I think it is just fear and disrespect of poor people.”

While everyone has been educated concerning the San Francisco Day Labor Program, employers continue to shop at the meat market where fiddle-footed laborers offer bargain-basement rates for their labor.

According to a letter publsihed in August of 2001, by the Director of the San Francisco Day Labor Program, Renee Saucedo, the new site on Cesar Chavez Street could address the concerns of loitering. “A location away from Cesar Chavez would be ineffective....,” states the letter and continues with “The relocation of the Day Labor Program is supported by many neighbors and organizations, including the Precita Valley Neighbors Association, the Southwest Mission Neighbors Association, St. Anthony’s Church, the SF Archdiocese, the SF Labor Council, the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Congress and other organizations.”

Since all the above-referenced community- and faith-based organizations have recommended the building at Cesar Chavez as the ideal site for the San Francisco Day Labor Program, I asked Anamaria Loya who at DHS actually rejected their proposal?

“The original person who rejected our proposal to use a portion of the building as a hiring hall was the Assistant to the Director of DHS....There was kind of a second rejection as well in that after we were initially rejected, we asked the mayor if he would lobby on our behalf and discuss with DHS our concerns, since DHS is one of the city departments under his watch. The office of the Mayor told us that ‘they did not have authority over their city departments.’”

The San Francisco Day Labor Program, after the rejections by DHS and the mayor put on a show of their own. It was the kind of feat that the master showman himself, P.T. Barnum would have applauded. Under the behest of La Raza Centro Legal, men and women, accompanied by the San Francisco media, marched into City Hall and demanded to know why the mayor had not provided support for the San Francisco Labor Program to move into the building where all day laborers could finally be centalized under one roof? But the lobbying efforts by La Raza Centro Legal did not stop with one action. Members of the Board of Supervisors were also contacted and responded with overwhelming support for the mission of the San Francisco Labor Program.

According to Loya, “the Department of Human Services has agreed to meet with us on Monday, February 12, 2001, concerning the possibility of moving into that site. Visits from Supervisors Chris Daly, Matt Gonzales and Tom Ammiano as well as phone calls from the office of the Mayor were instrumental in the decision to meet.”

On Monday, February 12th at 4:00 p.m., the Interim Director of the Department of Human Services on behalf of his department, expressed support of the San Francisco Day Labor Program in moving into the building on Cesar Chavez Street. Anamaria Loya, Renee Saucedo, two members of DHS and the director, Trent Rohr, discussed the concerns of the current owner of the building and how the San Francisco Day Labor Program would address those concerns. After the La Raza Centro Legal presents its proposal to allay those concerns the approval process will start.

by Kaponda

The underbrush that had cluttered the highway to desegregation was cleared by the apostles of the Civil Rights Movement. They plowed through the heartland of Jim Crow in a Greyhound bus. Those Freedom Rides of 1961 were driven by a 1946 Supreme Court ruling that struck down segregation as a violation of the United States Constitution.

Violations of economic and human rights led to the fueling of the engine of another freedom bus in November of 2000. Throughout the country, and in the state of California, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an instrument certified by the United Nations and signed by the United States, had been trampled upon and treated with contempt. Many people in America had been lulled into believing that poverty was their lot in life.

An organization with an 18-year history of fighting social injustices, the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) was prepared to chart the movement to eliminate poverty. The meat and potatoes of the movement was the Freedom Bus Tour. It was modeled after the same Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights Movement. Many people were recruited in Oakland, California to travel as Freedom Riders to educate impoverished people through testimonials, teach-ins, presentations, speak-outs, panel discussions, videos, meetings, rallies, protests, marches and going door-to-door. The men, women and children who were recruited came from all walks of life but shared the philosophy that food, housing, health care, education and a living wage are basic economic rights for every person in the world, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Social Justice Coordinator and one of the brain trust of WEAP, Blanche Mackey, discussed the myths about organizing poor people. ”I felt that getting together a group of poor people to go around the state was an amazing experience, because there is the stigma that poor people cannot be organized. We learned that we can be organized, and we can follow instructions.”

The Freedom Bus Tour was essentially a school on wheels. The Freedom Riders, nearly 40 men, women and children, were educated about their own misconceptions of poverty through discussions and videos while traveling over 2,900 miles and 20 towns and cities m California. The jumping-off principle that was taught to everyone was that, “I do not deserve to live like this. I deserve a better life.” When that principle had begun to journey through the mind of each individual, they became much more effective during their interaction with people in other towns.

From the unprovoked attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama to the hundreds of thousands of tents set up by Freedom Riders on the Mall during their March on Washington, the Freedom Riders were united in their conviction to cast the spotlight on the glaring economic and human rights violations during their travels in the 1960’s.

Not unlike the Freedoms Riders of the 1960’s, the Freedom Riders of 2000 traveled extensively, also. Their tour took them from Northern California, to Central California onto Southern California in order to drive home their message of hope to the hundreds of thousands of people whose humanities have been continually systematically stripped away. Each day, according to some of the accounts of the experiences of the Freedom Riders, a little more of the quality of the life of a poor person had been forgotten because “Many people in this country believed that the poor do not deserve a better life.”

A story that was shared during the tour about a certain woman who saw a line full of people one day. The woman went to the end of the line because she thought that she was going to miss out on something. After waiting for a long time, she reached the front of the line only to realize that it was the line for men waiting to take a shower.

The Freedom Riders’ tour was a very carefully thought-out process. Every conceivable eventuality had been thought over and over again. Diana Polson, the California Coordinator of WEAP, stated to me during an interview after I had asked her about the scope of poverty that is experienced by poor people in California and which of the many images she had seen had clung to her heart during the Freedom Ride? She continued by stating that, “There are so many people in this country who are suffering in silence and struggling in poverty.”

“Entering into the Central Valley, the Freedom Riders met with union organizers, other Freedom fighters, migrant workers, members of the Green Party and churches. The many migrant workers we met with and talked to faced economic human rights abuses on a daily basis. Many companies flock to the Central Valley because they know there are a plethora of migrant workers who will work for little money. These migrant workers have their hands tied in numerous ways because they have so much fear of being reported to the authorities. They work for little money, in no-benefit jobs and in destitute circumstances, but cannot organize or demand anything better for fear of being deported. The owners of these companies and land have complete control over the lives of these workers, getting cheap labor and not having to live up to any standards. On many farms, owners will give workers little shacks to live in and charge them high prices for rent, so the migrant workers have no money left after a paycheck. Some people we talked to have been injured on the job, have contracted cancer due to working with pesticides in the fields and are left to suffer and die by these employers because they do not offer health insurance. The employers use migrant labor for their own benefit, with little thought about the well-being of the worker.”

“We need to stop managing poverty and work towards eliminating it,” continued Polson. “That will happen by joining forces amongst poor and working people of all walks of life. It will happen when they come together to add what they can to this movement and educate themselves about the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.”

Not only did WEAP educate communities and towns about the UN Declaration of Human Rights, but also about the new movement of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC), created to address and shatter through education notions such as the poverty of people is directly proportionate to their failings. Also, the Just Health Care Campaign was the arm of the body that the Freedom Riders used to address the dire health care status in California. Fact sheets were handed out on the need to conduct Just Health Care training.

Mackey stated that she felt the tour was a wonderful enlightenment for all of the people who were present, the people who were touched and the communities that were contacted. Mackey further stated that, “It has always been said that you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family, and we became a family on that bus.”

Their camaraderie grew as they sang many songs along the route. “We Who Believe in Freedom” was a song that had been especially enjoyable by many of the 20 women Freedom Riders and a “Rich Man’s House” was an equally liked song by the other 10 children and 10 men.

The Freedom Rider tour arrived in Los Angeles to an unprecedented 42,000 poor and homeless people who occupied the community known as Skid Row. That is the largest enclave of homeless people in America.

The entire Freedom Ride Bus Tour documented over 500 economic human rights abuses. Seventeen Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Committees were established throughout the tour, and according to WEAP, the Freedom Ride Bus Tour 2000 was overwhelmingly successful.

by Kaponda and Tom McKay

The Danzates moved about like visible spirits as their blessings
poured upon the four infants whom they shielded within the fringes of
their ceremonial dance. Dressed in motley costumes that symbolized the
vivacious culture of the Latino community, the Danzates exhibited an emotional
performance which forebode the dawning of a new vanguard in the Mission
District.

The focus of the movement is aimed at the prevention of rapid displacement
of artists, workers, residents and merchants in the Mission by unscrupulous
real estate developers. The Mission District is the latest staging area
for highly technical venture capitalists and fledgling business enterprises
whose start-ups neither guarantee a long-term marriage with the Mission,
nor bring the kind of stability necessary for their continued survival
in the Mission.

"If you look at the NASDAQ, they [high-tech industries] are not even
that economically viable anymore. So, are we going to lay waste neighborhoods
for dot.com space and in five years the neighborhoods will be empty and
rotten and the damage will have been done and very hard to reclaim?" asked
Board of Supervisor President Tom Ammiano during an interview with my
editor, Lisa Gray-Garcia and I, as we participated in what was dubbed,
"Caminata," on Saturday, August 12, 2000.

Mi Rancho Market represented the kind of economic viability that Supervisor
Ammiano talked about. Located on 20th and Shotwell streets for over 40
years, it embodied the spirit of the Mission. It was one of the sites
designated by the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition as an illustration
of the kinds of atrocities that are being perpetrated by developers in
the Mission. Ten condominiums will be constructed at the former site of
Mi Rancho Market to provide housing for the future employees of the brick
building on the corner -- the brick building which consists of fifty percent
of high-tech office space!

"I just want all of this to translate in November to a passage of Proposition
L, which will start to put the brakes on the displacement that has been
happening, particularly in the Mission District, Potreo Hill, South of
Market and Bayview. The Mayor did a really sneaky thing. Two minutes before
the deadline, he put something on the ballot that had a lot of loopholes
in it, particularly around live-work. He also tried a divide-and-conquer
strategy, and we are too smart for that. He left out a lot of neighborhoods
that we want to protect as well," Supervisor Ammiano continued to speak
as he walked under the warmth of the buttery sphere in the brilliance
of the sapphire upper atmosphere.

Proposition L is the instrument that all of the people who participated
in the Caminata on Saturday, and most of the residents and merchants of
the Mission District hope will be the slayer of the huge dot.com dragons
that are devouring huge chunks of real estate in their neighborhoods.
This preliminary law would, among other things, amend the Planning Code's
Priority Policies to link commercial development to transit capacity and
traffic improvements, and discourage displacement of community services
and arts activities. In addition, it would redefine "office space" to
include multimedia and computer-based services such as software development,
web design, and electronic commerce. The redefinition of "office space"
is an essential element of Proposition L, since most developers take advantage
of the code's current broad and ambiguous description to construct high-tech
industries in the Mission.

The event was organized by members of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition
(MAC), the political, economic and social watchdog formed to curb the
flight from the Mission and the Hispanic diaspora throughout the Bay Area.
The rate of occurrence of gentrification in the Mission is astounding.
Within the past three years, there have been over 1,000 evictions. The
severity of this rate of eviction was summarized by Bill Sorro of Mission
SRO Collaborative, a component of MAC. According to Bill, "The people
who have been here for a long time are tired of being pushed out. Not
one Latino person has even come down the steps on which I am currently
sitting while you interview me. The only people who have come out of this
building, down these steps, have been young, white, hip people. I'll bet
you a dollar to a doughnut that these people have displaced our Latino
people."

His mustache sprinkled with gray, the middle-aged activist sat on the
stairs of an adjoining apartment complex with one eye on the rhythmic
performance of the Danzates as he resumed his expressions of fervor. This
event today is a culmination of years of frustration in this community.
This is the barrio. This is the barrio of the Mission District.
It has a soul that is unlike any other part of the city that is still
in tact....The barrio here is a very special working-class neighborhood."

A Mission resident of six years, a troublemaker and former member of
the Coalition on Homelessness, Stefan Goldstone became hot under the collar
as he expounded his first-person account of the consequences that the
greed of developers have had on his place of birth. According to Stefan,
"The interests of the people are not being served by the policies of the
city. The culture of the neighborhood and ability for low-income people
to stay here are being erased by the invasion of yuppies....I know a few
people who have directly been evicted from their houses as a result of
the dot.com invasion. There is also an indirect affect of this phenomenon.
My parents and best friend do not live here anymore. They were not necessarily
evicted directly, but the influx of the dot.coms and business interests
over the interests of people [like them] have made it so that their rents
had become so high and the quality of life so low that they were forced
to move to Oakland, Antioch and Pacifica -- all over the Bay Area. This
is neither fair nor right. People should have a right to live in
their communities with their friends where they were born...."

As the walk to defend the right to live in the Mission and to prevent
greed-driven speculators from shattering neighborhoods was about to began,
I asked Christian Parenti, also a resident of the Mission District, to
give tell me what he thinks of the Caminita. "This is a much needed public
protest against the evisceration of our home -- the Mission. It will send
a message to the Planning Department and the City that they can no longer
discard the law by working hand-in-glove with what is really totally illegal
development. Calling the development R&D to circumvent restriction
on office space, and the use of eviction of all the nonprofit tenants
out of the Bayview Bank, are examples of illegal development that the
City is facilitating. The City is not passively standing, but is working
hand-in-glove with dot.com industries and developers. It feels like a
sought of slow, subtle rape of a community."

by Ken Moshesh

“YOU PEOPLE SHOULD SLEEP OVER AT THE CHURCH.” THIS WAS ONE OF THE UNSOLICITED COMMENTS MADE BY THE ARRESTING UC BERKELEY OFFICER DURING THE CONTESTED OCTOBER 27 LODGING WARRANT INCIDENT COVERED IN “ARRESTED ARTISTRY”.

by KACEE

You shoved poverty down my throat, like she did

when I was six.

sitting at the breakfast table, I said no !

She slapped me in the face, hit me up side my head!

and forced oatmeal down my throat.

It’s good for you! eat it,you little ungrateul BITCH!

I saw her bodybeing lowered into the ground,

dead and rotting,

flesh dropping,

I knew they would come..........and...eat her up.

the maggots, they were there to get full,

and then they grow up and fly away.

He stuck his stick into ny black hole,

and...he did his dirty task......

He said it was making love...

it was rape.