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pstrongMUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S 'LEGAL BOMBSHELL'br / Man Confesses to Cop Slaying, says Mumia is innocent. "I have personal knowledge that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not shoot police officer Faulkner..." /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/408/photo_2_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Teishan Latner,International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal /p pRevolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal is now in his twentieth year on Pennsylvania's death row, fighting for his life despite a mountain of evidence that he was framed for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia cop. Coerced witnesses, police lies, faulty ballistics evidence, inadequate and conniving legal defense, political card-playing and the denial of basic Constitutional rights are just a few of the ways that Mumia was railroaded to prison, but on May 4, 2001 his new legal team filed five new affidavits in federal court which further elucidate his case. Included are long-awaited statements from Mumia and his brother William Cook and, adding another roller-coaster dimension to the case, the confession of a man who claims he was the real killer of officer Daniel Faulkner, the cop whom Mumia is falsely accused of killing./p pAffidavit of Arnold Beverly: "I shot Faulkner in the face..." /p pWrites Beverly: "I was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the Mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling and drugs without prosecution in the Center City area...I shot Faulkner in the face at close range. Jamal was shot shortly after by a uniformed police officer who arrived on the scene..."/p pBeverly has since passed a lie-detector test administered by eminent polygraph expert Charles Hontson. Beverly has also asked for the opportunity to make a court deposition (confess in court) but the Philadelphia District Attorney's office has opposed it in a virtually unprecedented decision, claiming the confession is "ridiculous." The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot yet guarantee the validity of Beverly's statement but is continuing its investigation. If admitted in court, the confession will likely be the most powerful evidential weapon yet in the struggle to release Mumia./p pAffidavit of Mumia Abu-Jamal: "I heard what sounded like gunshots..." /p pMumia Abu-Jamal was parked in his cab at 13th and Locust streets filling out his trip sheet when he heard gun shots, he writes in his affidavit. Recognizing his injured brother in the street behind him, he left the cab and ran toward him. "As I came across the street I saw a uniformed cop turn toward me gun in hand, saw a flash and went down to my knees...I had nothing to do with the killing of Faulkner." Mumia also explains his reasons for not issuing this account publicly until now. "At my trial I was denied the right to defend myself. I had no confidence in my court-appointed attorney, who never even asked me what happened that night...since I was denied all my rights at my trial I did not testify. I would not be used to make it look like I had a fair trial..."/p pAffidavit of William Cook: "When I first saw my brother, he was running..." /p pThose clamoring for Mumia's execution have long claimed that his pleas of innocence are undermined by the absence of court testimony from his brother, William Cook. Cook was indeed present at the scene, having just been beaten by officer Faulkner, but his affidavit maintains that Mumia had nothing to do with the shooting. However, Cook's silence until now was apparently motivated by a very legitimate concern: police retaliation. "When they had me in the police station they threatened to kill me and throw me in the river [if I involved myself in Mumia's trial]. I have been afraid for my life ever since that night. I have been afraid to tell anything about what happened" Cook also writes that he wanted to testify at the Post Conviction Relief hearings in 1995 but did not because of conflicting opinions from Mumia's lawyers, and because he did not receive protection from possible police retaliation. He disappeared immediately after and went into hiding, where he remains. /p pAffidavit of Donald Hersing: "I provided monetary payoffs and other considerations to various Philadelphia police officers..." /p pIn 1981 Hersing was an undercover FBI agent who was part of an investigation into the Philadelphia Police Department, the only federal corruption investigation of a police department in U.S. history. Hersing's testimony helped convict five Philadelphia cops of corruption of exactly the nature mentioned by Arnold Beverly in his confession to the Faulkner killing, and during the same time period. Hersing says that while working as an undercover FBI agent, Philadelphia police accepted his payoffs for the purpose of allowing prostitution and other activities to flourish in the Center City area. Hersing's testimony corroborates Beverly's claim of police corruption, something many in Philadelphia today say was "common knowledge" at the time. /p pAffidavit of Linn Washington: "The first thing that struck me was the absolute absence of any police"/p pCurrently a professor of journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia and an outspoken voice against police injustice, Linn Washington is also a former journalist colleague and personal friend of Mumia's. Washington says he inspected the scene of the shootings shortly after the incident and found it completely unguarded, enabling any bystander or cop to meddle with sensitive evidence. It was a circumstance he found "highly unusual," although not unprecedented: Washington had observed that Philadelphia police also suspiciously demolished the scene of the August 8, 1978 police attack on the MOVE organization, making investigations into the shooting death of a police officer there impossible, a killing that MOVE members were charged with. /p pThe affidavits are extremely compelling reading and should be reviewed by anyone concerned with the outcome of the struggle for Mumia's freedom. They are viewable on-line at a href="http://www.mumia.org" title="www.mumia.org"www.mumia.org/a, wwwfreemumia.org or by calling the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal at 215-476-5416. Organizations are encouraged to begin mobilizing now for the December 8, 2001 demonstration for Mumia in Philadelphia, as well as other actions. Contact the ICFFMAJ for more information.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongHundreds testify at Police Review Commission hearing about the shooting by the police of a young African-American man who suffered from mental illness . /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/409/photo_1_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Kaponda/p pHer tears were hastened away by the gentle winds as warm rays from the sun dried the eyes of a weeping mother. The crowd whose hands were clasped ringed Mesha Monge Irizarry during a moment of silence to observe the senseless death of her beloved son. The spirit of Idriss Stelley had infused the people with the strength to walk into the presence of The Police Commission and demand that the five members stop the cover-up of his death, request an independent criminal investigation, and a top to bottom review of related police policies as well as concrete changes in police practice./p p “My son is having a party with his ancestors and the angels, so I know he is all right,” stated the courageous mother of Idriss Stelley before a standing-room only crowd and the commissioners at The Police Commission hearing. “But this is no longer about my son. I am not doing this for Idriss. I will now be the voice of the voiceless. I am going to do this for the community. I am not afraid,” stated Irizarry of her plans to enlist in the rank and file of activists who regularly protest civil and human rights violations./p pVan Jones, an attorney with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights requested the venue of the hearing be moved because the room lacked the capacity to accommodate the swell of activists from community-based organizations, friends and residents of the Bayview Hunters Point District where Idriss Stelley had resided, and many other concerned citizens of the Bay Area. But his request was immediately rejected by Sidney Chan, the president of The Police Commission because “logistics” makes a change of venue difficult. This verbal interplay between Jones and Chan set the stage for a long and emotional evening at The Police Commission./p p “We are here to put the command staff [of the San Francisco Police Department] on notice that the people here today will be joined by more people in the future [to protest civil and human rights violations by police],” stated Jones as Chan asked him to restrain the clamorous crowd which he led through the doors of the Hall of Justice to the threshold of open rebellion. “The people from the Bay Area community have come here to express outrage at the way Idriss Stelley was brutally murdered by the San Francisco Police Department,” added Jones amid the mean mugs of commissioners, police and activists that expressed the degree of hostility between the crusaders of justice and the San Francisco Police Department./p p “We are talking about the Metreon shooting,” stated a cordial Inspector Sherman Ackerson, Public Information Officer for the San Francisco Police Department, during an in-depth discussion about the death of Idriss Stelley. “Obviously, a very tragic incident, I think we all agree, about a person with some mental illness in a theater. I understand he was with his girlfriend and father-in-law, and, obviously, he was suffering with some sort of emotional problem. I understand he had a history of mental illness,” continued Ackerson./p pInspector Akerson stated that “we had heard [that Idriss Stelley had a history of mental illness] in the media,” when he was asked to explain the source of his information. “I am not releasing it from the San Francisco Police Department. I understand from the media that he had a history of some problems or maybe the family had mentioned it,” stated Inspector Ackerson./p pWhile in a theater on Wednesday, June 13th, Summer Galbreath, the girlfriend of Idriss Stelley called the police because Idriss Stelley had undergone a mental health episode or, as his girlfriend explained to the police dispatcher, a “5150.” Eight police officers arrived at the theater and shot Idriss Stelley to death, as he waved a two-inch knife./p p “The police investigator told me he might have been shot ‘to protect the community,’” stated the mother of Idriss Stelley. “Protect the community from whom?” Is the community in need of protection from a tutor at the San Francisco Day Labor Program, or a AIDS volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital? Is the community in need of protection from a chess instructor who taught kids the game, or a tutor at City College? Is the community in need of a graphic artist at the Fillmore Center or a spiritual teacher?” concluded Mesha Monge Irizarry./p p “I know there has been some talk about the size of the knife. I don’t know how big the knife was,” stated Inspector Ackerson when asked if the response by police officers was unusual when confronted by someone waving a small knife. “I think we should wait until all the facts are in. Wait until we find out exactly how big the knife is. Our officers are trained and it is the policy of the San Francisco Police Department to react when they feel that there is a danger of serious bodily injury or death to themselves or to another person, stated Inspector Ackerson.”/p pBut, opinions about the death of Idriss Stelley have already been formed by officers of the San Francisco Police Department./p p “It was a legitimate knife on a full-blown chain used as a weapon to kill,” stated a sergeant of the San Francisco Police Department who spoke with me on condition of anonymity. “This knife posed a threat to the police officers despite their bullet-proof bullets. I was not at the Metreon and did not see the knife, but I absolutely think that he posed a direct threat,” stated the sergeant./p pNinety two percent of the San Francisco police force are not trained to recognize a mental health episode. In fact, the San Francisco Police Department fought fiercely for years against any notion of a police crisis intervention training. The San Francisco Police Department was never clear on specific reasons why a police crisis intervention training was needed. The Department simply did not think training to recognize mental health episodes was necessary, even though one out of every four persons officers come in contact with a person that suffers with mental illness. In fact, a person who has a mental episode has a better chance of winning the Super Lottery than having a police officer dispatched to the scene of the episode because only 24 police out of 2,200 San Francisco Police Officers have completed the training program which was shoved down the throat of the Department by the Board of Supervisors. /p p “My son was diagnosed with depression and was seeking help. He was in therapy at Mission Health, located in the Portreo District,” stated Irizarry./p pThe value of the impact of the contributions that Idriss Stelley brought to his community may never be measured, since his life was denigrated by the bullets of overzealous police officers. But, the death of Idriss Stelley has already put the importance of recognition of mental illness in the spotlight and has begun to affect decisions of further funding of police crisis intervention training./p p “What I am saying is, Yes. We have problems,” stated Inspector Ackerson. “Every time an officer discharges a weapon. Every time an officer kills someone, that is a tragic incident. It is regrettable that officers have to discharge their weapons when they do. And we certainly don’t take any glee in this,” stated Inspector Ackerson. /p p “There is a pattern of abuse and, in this case, killings of persons with mental disabilities by the San Francisco Police Department. It is a long-standing pattern. We are out here because Our organization for the past four years has been working diligently to try to get the Department to deal differently with people who are mentally distressed. We had s huge uphill battle. We knew that what happened to Idriss Stelley could happen given the way that the San Francisco Police Department responds to people who have mental health issues. They respond with violence. Time after time after time,” stated Van Jones when asked about the attitude of the San Francisco Police Department./p pEven the stolid faces of the commissioners were softened during an emotional spoken-word tribute, titled “It was a Warm Night,” to Idriss Stelley by Lisa Gray-Garcia of POOR Magazine’s Po Poets Project . The commissioners sat on the edge of their seats as they listened to a successive stream of representatives from many, many organizations who testified into the night and reminded them of their duty to provide an impartial investigation into the cover-up by the police department of the death of Idriss Stelley and the brutality that usually characterizes police response to a situation. Thaddeus Bordofsky, a medical doctor at the Alameda County Hospital spoke about victims of police officers after they are brought to him./p p“I’ve personally seen at least two or three patients who I felt were brutally beaten by police and qualified as victims of police brutality,” stated Dr. Bordofsky when asked to be more specific. “In particular, there was one patient that I saw who had been brutalized. He was in the custody of another police officer who stated to the patient, ‘You are lucky that I wasn’t there because you would not be able to speak.’ The persons who I have seen have suffered numerous injuries from police officers, including severe pain and emotionally from the terror,” concluded Dr. Bordofsky./p p “This is legalized terrorism as far as I’m concerned,” stated Mesha Monge Irizarry as she prepared to demand an end to the cover-up of the death of her son./p pThe circumstances of the two-inch knife blade, and the bullet-proof vests worn by the officers of the San Francisco Police Department are sufficient to support the claim by Mesha Monge Irizarry made to the commissioners that her son was “gunned down like a pig.”/p pThe testimony by residents and activists went on and on as the spirit of Idriss Stelley lingered in the room like the swish from a flawless shot that brings the crowd to its feet. The commissioners had finally begun to understand that they were no longer listening to the voices of mere mortal people, but the expressions of victims of years and years of police misconduct.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongVehicularily housed beat reporter chronicles police harassment, citations and the struggles of people who live in their cars./strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/410/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Vlad Pogorelov/Vehicularily Housed Beat Reporter/p pI woke up this morning to the sound of someone banging on the walls and windows of my house. My dog Marina did not like it, of course, and started barking violently at the intruder. I got dressed and walked outside, ready to face a teenage prankster, a street hoodlum or worse. To my surprise, I saw a policeman in a white motorcycle helmet writing down my license plate number. “How can I help you?” I asked him. /p p“You’ve got to move,” he replied angrily, and proceeded in filling out a “red tag”—a notice informing me I was parked illegally and would have to move or risk a $53 fine as well as having my motorhome towed. /p p“But I just moved here yesterday,” I told him. /p p“Too bad,” said the policeman. “The captain wants everyone out of here. You’ve got to move,” he repeated, marking my tires with yellow chalk. Then he slapped a pink sheet of paper on my windshield, got into his police car and drove away. /p pI had a sour taste in my mouth as I studied the official document issued by Bayview Police Station. Despite beautiful spring weather, my mood was low. I had a new headache now, as I needed to find a new parking space for my 25-foot motorhome./p pTo be clear, I am not a stranger to those “red tags” which can be issued by the Police Department and DPT to any vehicle which, in their opinion, appears abandoned or broken down, or is not moving for an extensive amount of time. /p pHowever, there is another category of vehicles being systematically targeted by police, regardless of how often they move or change parking spots on the streets of San Francisco. These are vehicles that serve as houses. Such are the motorhomes, the RV’s, the school buses, the trailers and other vehicles which have been converted to mobile residences. These types of vehicles are considered enemies by police, and every effort is being made by the city to ticket and tow vehicular houses making it impossible for those who live in them to remain in San Francisco. /p pDespite police efforts to chase the vehicularily housed away, many more such citizens continue to arrive. And it’s not surprising.br / I am a vehicularily housed resident of San Francisco. I started living in a motorhome about a year ago after being evicted from my home on Potrero Hill by the Sheriff’s Department. Unable to find any suitable living space that I could afford, I had no other way of remaining in San Francisco except living in my car. Since then I have been parking my house mainly in the China Basin area. /p pSince the 1960’s, vehicular housing has been an established tradition in China Basin and Central Basin. According to Joe Ann, a construction worker who has lived in her motorhome in the Dog Patch area of Bayview District for the last 20 years, and raised two daughters on the street, there were hundreds if not thousands of vehicularly housed residents living in that area. Jack, a writer, is another vehicular resident of Dog Patch, there since the late 60’s, had the same opinion. “It was really easy to be here. It was such a funky neighborhood back then!”, he recalls, a nostalgic look in his eyes. /p pBecause of massive gentrification of Potrero Hill, Dog Patch and surrounding light industrial areas of Central Basin, the habitat of vehicularily housed residents is being destroyed. Within the last 2 months I have been “red tagged” more than 10 times, sometimes receiving an official threat of “house expropriation” immediately upon arrival to my new parking spot. /p pThe threat of being towed by the police is not an empty one. On a daily basis I see police towing away motorhomes, school buses, trailers and vans for a variety of bogus charges. Frequently, there is an anonymous complainer from the nearby neighborhood of expensive live-work lofts which sprang-up during the dot-com boom. It seems that the dot-com era has gone by, yet many of those live-work lofts are still under construction. The transformation of a semi-industrial area, which had many streets available for parking of vehicularly housed , into an upscale neighborhood for the rich is progressing at full speed. /p pAnd it’s not just an issue of Bayview Police Station versus vehicularly house residents. Because of increasingly gentrified environment the poor people who live in their run down vehicles end up situated next to the luxury Porsches and Alfa Romeos that belong to new loft residents. As a result, vehicularly housed people are being targeted by those who inhibit expensive lofts as well. /p pRecently a neighbor of mine who lives in his van and works on the ferry which transports people across the San Francisco Bay brought me a big poster which he pulled off a nearby electric poll on 23rd and Indiana. A 2x3 ft sheet of paper stated “Homeless people have more rights than you do!”. And then it accused those of us who live in vehicles in being a nuisance and encouraged everyone to call Bayview Police Station and complain. /p p An aim of such an attack against vehicularly housed is clear—it takes only one anonymous complaint to displace dozens of people from the neighborhood in which many of them lived for years, if not decades, without any due process. The gentrification of Dog Patch and Central Basin area is a clear cause of it. Developers have invested millions of dollars there, and now in order to attract the tenants into the expensive lofts they would like to eradicate the poor from the area. A number of loft buildings were built along 3rd Street and a few more are being built on Indiana, Mississippi Streets, as well as along other streets in that area. /p pIt seems that the opposite process of what is happening in the Mission is taking place. I would call such practices the “Vehicularly Housed Eradication Project”. A division has been drawn and the opposing forces, though completely unequal are facing each other before the final battle. While thinking of this sad situation, I remembered the words which were said by a Russian soldier facing the Nazi tanks during the battle of Moscow, “Russia is big. But we have nowhere to retreat — Moscow is behind us!” To paraphrase it is to say, “The Bay Area is big. But here, we have nowhere to go as we are being pushed over into the Bay.” We have to fight for our right to stay here or to disappear and let the forces global markets defeat us to the point of non-existent”./p p This week, a number of vehicles used as residences were “red-tagged” on 24th Street near Illinois Street. The inhabitants of those vehicles appeared to be very poor with very little resources to gas or a replacement tire which frequently needed in order to move to a new location. It is possible that some of them will not be able to move and will loose their houses to the City Tow which is located only two blocks away./p pRecently, I was driving by one of the lofts in Dog Patch near 3rd Street. I saw a message spray painted on the wall: “Bust the live work racket!” Well, not everyone is passively accepting the current situation, I thought. Some people are ready to fight back. It’s made me hopeful about the future, the fate of those who call our vehicles — home. Our struggles were the inspiration for this new beat report on PNN and column b They towed my home.. /b./p p PS: I would appreciate your feedback, your thoughts, suggestions, questions and stories. The struggle of vehicularly housed people is not limited to San Francisco. So, please e-mail your comments to: a href="mailto:nuthamsun@onebox.com"nuthamsun@onebox.com/a or contact POOR magazine: (415)863-6306. Peace and Love to you all!br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongYouth in The Media Internships at POOR /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/413/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby PNN Staff/p p b pYouth in the Media/p/b Program; is an extension of POOR's b Youth Mentoring program/b and bThe Po' Poets Project/b. Each internship includes:br / extensive creative arts, and media training, media activism and advocacy focused on addressing and creating media on issues affecting low and no income youth such as police harassment, racial and economic profiling, gentrification, homelessness, the juvenile justice system, education, family restoration, and poverty. /p pWorking in print, radio, television and on-line media youth are able to voice issues that affect the communities from which they come. As writers, they would lead the discourse on issues of economic and racial justice, with a focus of using the media as an organizing tool to smash stereotypes and gain support and recognition for the expertise of the low income youth writers around issue of poverty and racism. /p pEach mentorship spans 10-16 weeks, and includes three components;.br / Section I; Basic writing, Newswriting, Investigative reporting, Community based Research, Media activism, and Advocacybr / Section II ; poetry /spoken word and live performancebr / Section III: Web based-publishing, print CD and radio productionbr / As well, each internship includes POOR #101 - a comprehensive investigation into the root causes of poverty and racism./p pTUITION; Agency scholarships provided for low income youthbr / Contact POOR for more information/p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrong pbAmerica Love's Consummers.br / bLet's Consume Multi National Corps ofbr / USA by forming the Ultimate Worker Union./b/b/p/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Joe. B/p pIf our grandmother's and mother's can pool money via investor's br / clubs create wealth. Worker's can to with a clear, evolving, economic plans./p pBlue, white, pink, collars, low wage-working poor families, br / homeless people, and hollywood talent, to hi-tech folks... all have something in commonbr / we're all Worker's. br /Some are paid better salaries, hourly, by weekly, or monthly wages but we're all worker's./p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongSmall business owner at risk of losing business due to rising costsbr / /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/418/photo_1_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Alison VanDeursen/p pWe're all trying to keep our PGE bills down. At my house we try to do our laundry on the rare sunny San Francisco days, so we can hang our clothes out on the line to dry. I am fortunate to have a washing machine and yard at my apartment, and the sheets smell so fresh and sweet when they come in from the garden. /p pBut there's nothing sweet about the energy crisis. It stinks of politics and big business, and of the sad decay of our community businesses. A couple of months ago I saw a sign taped in the window of the Laundromat, 2 doors down from my house, on the corner of Haight and Pierce in the lower Haight. It read, "Due to EXTREMELY HIGH PGE Bills and INCREASINGLY HIGH utility costs, we REGRET that we will have to raise the prices to COVER our operating costs." Top loaders went up 75 cents. I thought to myself, that's still got to take a lot of $2.00 loads of laundry to cover that bill!/p pNot long after that, my neighbor introduced me to Sharon, the owner of the Delaney Wash Dry. I asked Sharon how she was handling the crisis, and she shook her head. "That's my baby," she said of the Laundromat. 'My PGE bills have tripled. I'm working here today because I can't afford to pay anyone." Tearful, she feared she might have to sell the business and the building, which she owns as well./p pI have to mention that this is no ordinary Laundromat. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's a real community sort of place. I used to do a lot of laundry there, and everyone was friendly. It is always clean and in good order. Employees sweep the sidewalk, hang out and chat with passers by. It just has the feel of a solid neighborhood institution. And it appears to be one of the few remaining African-American owned businesses in the increasingly gentrified Lower Haight. /p pI spoke with an employee of the Laundromat named Maria. "Pushing sixty," she is a feisty grandmother and close friends with Sharon. They met 8 years ago, "hit it off right away," and have worked, laughed and cried together ever since. /p p"At first people would say to me, 'What? Why're you working for a black woman?'" Maria is from Texas, of Hispanic descent. "I say, what does that matter? She's a real good boss, a great bossÖ there ain't no one like her," Maria told me. "Anytime I had a serious problem, she was there for me."/p pI asked about the business in light of the energy crisis. "Sharon and I have cried together over this," Maria said. "Her dad worked so long to build this, he would turn over in his grave if he could see this." She told me that the bills had more than tripled- they had risen from $1000 a month to over $4000. Sharon, Maria said, is "playing it ear to ear- by the skin of her teeth." As the overhead has soared, business has slowed down- people are more conservative with their quarters in the face of their own bills and the laundry rate increase. These days Maria insists on helping out at the Laundromat, though Sharon often cannot pay her. /p pSharon fears foreclosure, of losing all she has worked her whole life for. Maria describes a generous woman dedicated to her family and friends, who would help anyone in any way she could, a woman who is smart but so trusting she has been taken advantage of by contractors who consider a woman an easy target. Now it seems she is being duped by the energy industry and its corrupt friends in government./p p"George Bush could have stopped it when he came here," Maria said. He could have frozen it. This is taking bread out the mouths of my grandchildren and I am pissed." Maria herself feels the crunch at home, where she lives with one of her daughters. In addition to managing an apartment building and her days at the laundry, Maria often earned some extra money washing and folding customers' clothing. But these days, she says, the entire laundry money goes straight into the machines, and then straight to PGE. "I understand," she said, "but that eight dollars here and there bought lot of fruit for my grandchildren." /p pA sign hangs above the dryers that reads, "In Case of Emergency Call 555-1212" Maria told me I could reach Sharon at that number, and I figure the PGE crisis is an emergency of sorts. I haven't reached her. Maybe I haven't been persistent enough. She's very busy. Her sister has been sick. Maybe she doesn't want to talk about it. Still, I am hoping to speak soon with Sharon, and to be able to share her story, in her own words. My own seem inadequate./p pI think I'll go back to doing my laundry at Delaney's. I'm not sure how much my $2.00 worth of whites and permanent press will serve to save my favorite neighborhood Laundromat. But it's getting cold in San Francisco, and itís still warm inside Delaney's, and Maria still has lots of stories to tell me about her grandchildren.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/417/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Leroy Moore/p pElizabeth Grigsby, a Consumer Advocate of San Francisco Golden Gate Regional Center, put it straight when she said, "I'm not about to sugarcoat anything!" at the Senseless Crimes Open Forum on crimes and brutality against people with disabilities on July14th. This truth-telling turned the forum into a healing arena for the community and people with disabilities that was long overdue, and by the results of the evaluations of the forum, it needs to continue. /p pThe seed of this forum was planted in 1998 when Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization started writing for POOR Magazine on issues that face disabled people of color. After two years of writing and researching issues that touch disabled people ofbr / color we, at DAMO, noticed the issue of crimes and brutality against people with disabilities and people with mental illness, and especially against people of color who are poor, is an unspoken, deadly issue that is a reality. /p pDAMO had a vision to lift these words from its article entitled "Senseless Crimes" on Illin-N-Chillin, a column on Poor Magazine's on-line news service, and put them into action. The lead-up to this forum was a struggle for grassroots organizations with this vision, because of the lack of funding and other resources as well as the shame or "hush, hush" feelings that engulf the issue of crimes and brutality against people with disabilities. /p pHowever, July 14th came, and the Senseless Crimes Openbr / forum was a success. The Forum consisted of a diverse panel with specialists in the areas of crimes against people with disabilities and mental illness, as well as disabled advocates, parents, media organizations, advocacy organizations that represent people with disabilities and the SFPD ADA Coordinator. /p pIn the tradition of Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization and Poor Magazine, the forum also used poetry to express and heal. One of the big concerns was how to connect the people with organizations and resource on this issue. With an outreach table of information, including the long-awaited Senseless Crime Booklet of articles, a list of organizations to contact and poetry taken from Illin-N-Chillin and Po' Poets column at a href="http://www.poormagazine.org" title="www.poormagazine.org"www.poormagazine.org/a, that bridge was connected./p pOne of the co-sponsors of this forum, Daniel Sorensen of Crime Victims with Disabilities Initiative of California and a parent of a young man with disabilities, opened up the forum with many shockingbr / but unfortunately true facts of crimes against people with disabilities. Ten years ago when he started this work, only two dozen individuals were working on the issue of crimes against whom he calls "The Invisible Victims!" People with disabilities, family organizations, law enforcement agencies and social service agencies were "asleep at the wheel." Today more than several hundred people across the country are working on this issue. /p pDanniel Sorensen laid out what CVDI is doing state wide through the new Crime Victims with Disabilities Specialist Grants. These grants will set up a specialist in six counties in California to do two main things:br /br / (1) to work with communities and social service agencies of people with disabilities to become aware of this issue and to increase the number of reported crimes against people with disabilities. br /br / (2)To work directly with the criminal justice system on a case by case basis to assist them to investigate, pro and try people with disabilities. /p pAll of this will take years and a massive on-going educational campaign to all avenues in California i.e. the media, the criminal justice system, law enforcement, social services, community organizations and schools. The Crime Victims with Disabilitiesbr / Initiative has the backing of Governor Gray Davis and CVDI is creating a speaker bureau on this issue to educate the public. /p pElizabeth Grigsby, consumer advocate for the Golden Gate Regional Center, brought up crimes of the unspoken abuse that goes on in some local nursing and group homes. Ms. Grigsby's strong activist voice made it clear that we as people in the community need to step up to the plate for those who are in these institutions without a voice and choice on how they live their own lives. She spoke passionately about the lack of funds for in-home support services to move people withbr / disabilities from institutions to the community. "We need more pro-active techniques like going to Sacramento and chaining ourselves to the Governor's office until he agrees to spend more money forbr / in-home-support-services.!" Elizabeth demanded. She ended with a call for people to get involved, and not to sit on the sidelines./p pWeeks before the forum Lisa and I knew that the main focus of the forum would turn into police shootings of people with mental illness and we were right because of the recent shooting of Idriss Stelley. Sergt. Michael Sullivan, the Americans with Disability Act Coordinator of San Francisco Police Department, reminded the audience that he has been working on the recent training of 20 or so police on how to approach and deal with people with mental illness. He is committed to push this training to all police officers. /p pAn audience member questioned why people know the number for the police 911 but don't know the number for a mental health crisis hotline. She recommended that police officers and mental health workers act as a team in responding to calls from a person in a mental health crisis. /p pLance Martin from the Coalition on Homeless asked "Are our values skewed when the SPCA of San Francisco built a multi-million dollar animal shelter with carpets and televisions, but people who are homeless and mentally ill are getting beaten up and shot on the street with very little outcry?" It's not only what happens on the streets, people with mental illness are also fighting sometimes their own advocacy parent organizations that are lobbying in the halls of our political arena. Martin brought this issue to the table when he talked about the pro-force treatment platform of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Sometimes people with disabilities are surrounded by advocates and organizations, and society forgets that the only people who know about their disabled sons and daughters may be their parents. /p pSonia Ricks of Family Resource Network and Harambee ofbr / Oakland claims she has earned a Masters Degree in being a mother and advocate of her African American son! She described how people view her tall, African American son with a developmental disabilities. Although her son is a good looking and talented young man many parents and teachers hold the view him as a threat. Although he, like any young man, likes to get to know girls, many parents are afraid that this tall black young man is a threat to their daughters. /p pMary Kate of Caduceus gave the open forum a new avenue on how to force the rights of people with mental illness when it comes to police shootings and mistreatment of people with mental illness. She isbr / looking at to get Department Of Justice in title two of the Americans with Disabilities. She researched the ADA and people with mental illness and noticed that people with mental illness had been left out in the coverage of the ADA. If Mary Kate is successful this will be one of the first case looking at people with mental illness and police shootings under the ADA./p pMesha Irizarry, mother of Idriss Stelley, spoke about her work on training police in addressing people with mental illness, work that reaches beyond the case of her son. She remembered a 13-year-old Samoan boy with Down syndrome who was shot by SFPD in 1988, because he had a toy gun. Mesha pledged that she is in this for the long run, and her beautiful words closed the forum. Po' Poets kept Idriss Stelley alive through their spoken word tribute. /p pIn all, the Senseless Crimes: Open Forum broke new ground and gave an arena for this drastically important issue. We at Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization and Poor Magazine are looking how to keep this forum going and how to create more action steps to solve this issue, but we need you. Please contact us with your ideas./p pb*********************************/b/p pbSenseless Crimes Open Forum: Crimes Against People with Disabilitiesbr / br /The report back/bbr / br /By Fiona Gow/p pLeroy, in the first of what will hopefully be many open forums to discuss and organize around the issue of crimes against the disabled, brought together a group of people rich in experience and insight to open up the discussion of how to end violence against the disabled. Panelists included Daniel Sorensen, chairmen of the California Victims of Crime Committee, the renowned mental health expert Mary Kate Connor of Caduceus Outreach Services, Mesha Irizarry-longtime mental health advocate and mother of Idriss Stelley, the young man who was recently shot by police, Michael Sullivan, ADA coordinator for the San Francisco Police Department, Sonia Ricks of Oakland's Family Resource Network, Elizabeth Grisgsby of Golden Gate Regional Center, Lisa Gray-Garcia of POOR Magazine, Chance Martin frombr / the Coalition on Homelessness, and Diana Wolf of Critical Focus./p pA book of poems and essays about crimes against the disabled, many written in honor of Idriss Stelley, was created by the PO' Poets for this conference. The poem "Can't Rest", included in the book, gives some insight into why Leroy organized this panel and how strong his spirit is in this fight./p pICan't Restbr / I can't restbr / My disabled brothers and sistersbr / Are shot, dragged and beaten to death/i/p pSociety is scared of himbr / Big, black and mentally illbr / Take him away and give him more pills/p pI can't sleepbr / My disabled brothers and sisters are living on the streetsbr / The Americans with Disabilities Act has done nothing for me/p pListen to my life/p pGot raped in a shelterbr / Got robbed on the streetsbr / Three strikes and now I'm in prison for life/p pI can't restbr / Millions for Ed Roberts' Campusbr / Can't even get my SSI cause I have no address/p pDoes anybody carebr / Disabled youth abused in foster carebr / Segregated in school now I'm on welfare/p pMy disabled brothers and sisters are put to restbr / On the streets, in psychiatric wards and in prisonbr / But I feel their spirit and anger in my chest/p pI won't restbr / Our spirit and anger won't restbr / We won't let you rest/p pBecause the panel discussion came on the coat tails of great upsetbr / regarding the police murder of the young, mentally ill man, Idriss Stelley, I had assumed the conference would almost exclusively focus on police brutality and murder of disabled people. But the people on the panel made very clear that violence against the disabled doesn't start or stop with the police. Violence against the disabled occurs within Board and Care facilities, institutional settings, the justice system, the home, in the school system, by the medical world, etc...The natural focus lately has been on the police, because their acts of discrimination have been the most severe, the most irreparable- they have taken people's lives, but abuse is occurring everywhere. If an honest discussion is to be had about abuse ofbr / the disabled, the panel made clear that there are many people who will need to be held accountable./p pThe greatest fear people with disabilities have is of being victims of crime. Daniel Sorensen, the driving force behind the Crime Victims with Disabilities Initiative, provided some statistics on where this fear might stem from. With five million crimes a year being committed against disabled people, the disabled are 4 to 10 times more likely to be the victims of crime that is the rest of the population. Eighty-three percent of women with disabilities have been raped and 32 percent of men have. Almost 50 percent of women had been raped ten or more times. The disabled are also at an almost 13 percent greater risk for being robbed than are non-disabled people./p pNot all the abuse is violent, but its effect can be just as detrimental. Elizabeth Grigsby of the Golden Gate Regional Center spoke about how little money there is for recreational activities for the disabled. She recounted how some people are made to go to sleep at 7pm; many caretakers approach the disabled with the attitude that it's easier to turn them into a vegetable, to incapacitate them so that they won't be able to demand more of life than the right to breath. On the most basic level they are not being allowed a quality of life that is anywhere near what other people non-disabled people expect. Elizabeth said some daring has a bodacious spirit and was very forthright in stating that the community needs to express their outrage about this./p pWhy is there so much crime against the disabled? The fact that only 5 percent of crimes against the disabled are actually prosecuted is probably a big reason. As audience member and candidate for public defender Jeff Adachi stated, "Within the criminal justice system they are not second or even third class, but fourth class citizens." Because some disabled people may not be able to communicate what has happened to them they are often written off as unreliable in court. Victims may also not understand that they have been the victims of a crime and not report the crime to anyone./p pAnother point that Sorensen brought up regarding why disabled people are victimized is that many of the people who work with the disabled are totally inexperienced and unqualified to do so. Most frightening is that some people actually choose to work with the disabled because they are easy to victimize and crimes against them will probably go unreported. Care providers and family members commit fifty-two percent of sex-offences against the disabled./p pOn the other side of the issue is how unfairly the disabled are treated when they are seen as the perpetrators of crimes. The prosecution rate of disabled people is far higher and the sentencing much harsher than for other segment of the population. Even in much more innocent things, the disabled have to be on their guard. Sonya Ricks spoke about her son, a good-looking 15-year old boy with mental disabilities. She said that expectations of him are so different that she has to be on-guard at every turn. What is acceptable for other kids his age to do is not OK for him. If he kisses a girl, it could be construed as abuse, simply because he is disabled, whereas other children are allowed to flirt and play as they will./p pLisa Gray-Garcia gave an impassioned critique of mainstream media and the responsibility it bears by not reporting how disabilities play into crime. When disabled people are murdered by law enforcement, if the media does not report a person's disability, then often they are missing one of the main points of the crime. By neglecting to mention the disability, the media let the police of the hook and no investigation is forthcoming. She claimed that the only way to correct the present situation is for people who are living the news to take it back and rewrite the story for themselves, writing the truth./p pMary Kate Connor spoke about how once mentally disabled people are in the criminal justice system little or nothing is done for their mental health needs and their problems are exacerbated. It can take up to a month of being in jail before a person's level of mental health is evaluated, and within that time their medications may well have been taken from them./p pIn response to demands from service providers, advocates, and thebr / disabled, the SFPD finally implemented an optional 40-hour training program developed to build awareness in officers of how to work with mentally ill people. Unfortunately only 24 out of 2000 officers have actually taken the training. But, with the two very recent cases of mentally ill people getting shot to death, the trainings should not be optional. When service providers voiced their outrage regarding police misconduct Mike Sullivan handed out his business card and told people to call him if anything came up. This doesn't seem like a very proactive or sincere approach to confronting the immensity of the problems. Sullivan would do better to have a taskforce out monitoring the actions and attitudes of the SFPD towards the disabled and there should be special investigations into the recent shootings of the twobr / mentally ill men./p pA lot of hope for lessening the threat of violence towards disabledbr / people lies in the Crime Victims with Disabilities Initiative. Gray Davis has already approved the initiative, which allocates $739,000 to specifically address crime against the disabled. The initiative would fund a crime victim specialist to assist people with disabilities, advocates and service providers in identifying and reporting crime. The specialist would also assist law enforcement by providing technical assistance in the investigation, prosecution and trial of such cases. Educating the disabled about personal safety is another part of the initiative; service providers would be required to include a personal safety component as part of each individual client plan. The last major piece of the initiative is a public information campaign. A statewide speaker's bureau would be created for experts on crimes against people with disabilities to speak at conferences./p pThere would also be an information campaign targeted at consumers, their families, service providers, the criminal justice system and the general public. The campaign's focus would be on preventing crimes against persons with disabilities, reducing the risk of such crimes, assisting crime victims in securing restitution and services and promoting the timely reporting, investigation and prosecution of these crimes./p p This panel was one huge step in getting information out about brutality against the disabled. Hopefully there will be more such panels and the community, service providers, disabled activists and advocates can organize forcefully around this issue and create the dramatic changes needed. As Leroy wrote in his poem about the untimely death of Idriss Stelley, a young, mentally ill man who was shot by police:/p pIThere is no ending to this bookbr / To be continuedbr / Cause nobody can kill an angelbr / But they tried but Shhhhh!!!!!!br / Can you hear him/ibr / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pstrongA Low Income Woman Plays the Energy Game/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/416/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Carol Harvey/ PoorNewsNetwork/p pYesterday, I called PGE for the 11th time this year to arrange for a late payment. I talked to no fewer than three supervisors. All were abusive. All castigated me for having late payments, though I explained that I have to juggle my paltry income and outgo VERY carefully. No sympathy there!/p pbPGE SUPERVISOR:/b Do you realize that you have had ELEVEN late payments this year?/p pbME: /b Yes, I am a very good customer. I have a seven-year history of always paying my bill. I don't make very much money. I have to plan my payments around my pay dates, and sometimes the pay dates come after my payment due dates. This became especially true after PGE raised their rates 150%, and I got hit by a rental pass-through that hiked my rent up by $35.00 more a month./p pbSUPERVISOR: /b You told the other rep that you were going to mail the $51.02. She noted on your account, 'Per your original promise to pay,' you were supposed to pay on July 9th. You did not keep it. /p pbME: /b I didn't promise to pay it on the 9th. That was your pre-set PGE due date. I actually called on the 7th, two days in advance of the 9th, to ask for an extension because I knew that I would not get paid until the 11th. /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b What the computer shows me is that basically, you made an arrangement on the 25th to pay $52.02, and $51.02 on July the 9th, for a Past Due total of $103.04. /p pbME: /b I acted in good faith to pay this bill by calling in advance of that due date. I knew that I couldn't make it, so I called for an extension. Your rep said that she would give me an extension and I should call back on Friday. I remember the date because we kidded that it was Friday the 13th (of July), my "lucky" day./p pbSUPERVISOR: /b Looking at what the rep noted on the account: You had called way back in June. She said she gave an arrangement to pay $52.02 on the 25th, and ..../p pbME: /b We disagree about that happened. We are going around in circles. What I would like to do is get you your money... /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b Okay, so.../p pbME: /b And the second thing I would like to do is to have some guarantee that my service will stay turned on./p pbSUPERVISOR: /b You will get a 48 hour notice on July 25. /p pbME: /b Both other supervisors neglected to give me this vital piece of data. It would have helped me a lot to know that I will get a notice in time to pay my bill before you shut me down.. /p p...Give me a minute to write this down. I am under severe duress because I'm not making enough money and I'm doing fancy footwork to adjust for that. I have a seven-year long record of conscientiously paying you. You always get your money from me./p pbSUPERVISOR: /b We get our money, but then, too, looking at your account, within one year you have received eleven notices. So, yes, you are paying your bill, but you're not paying your bill on time. /p pbME: /b So, sue me because I don't make a lot of money. This is insulting to me. /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b Well, then..../p pbME: /b PGE raised their rates way above what people can pay. That is what happened to me. I don't need to be abused for that. /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b Wait a minute. PGE raised our rates because we were still paying half of your bill here./p pbME: /b What?!/p pbSUPERVISOR: /b PGE raised their rates because... /p pbME: /b What are you talking about?!/p pbSUPERVISOR: /b Hold on. I'll tell you./p pbME: /b Are you saying that you're giving me charity? /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b No, I'm not giving you charity... /p pbME: /b What on earth are you trying to....? /p pbPGE SUPERVISOR: /b Well, PGE has been carrying you for years. That's why the rates went up./p pbME: /b You mean you've been giving me charity all this time?/p pbPGE SUPERVISOR: /b PGE has been undercharging people for years. /p pIf you listen, I will tell you exactly what I am trying to say."Basically, the reason why PGE raised its rates is because in the last five years, PGE's rates were frozen. We were charging customers 11 cents, and it was costing... /p pbME: /b NONSENSE! Your rates went up because of the alleged power crisis in California. I DO read the papers./p pbSUPERVISOR: /b Well, then you are not reading the news correctly, because it's telling you that PGE's rates were frozen for the last five years. /p pbME: /b What!!? (Is she actually counseling me on how to read the news?!) /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b And it was costing PGE 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, and we were only charging you 11 cents. So, PGE was absorbing 6 cents per kilowatt-hour of your bill each month./p pbME: /b Are you talking about me personally? /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b No. I am talking about all PGE electric customers. (Painting all of YOU with the same ugly brush.)/p pbME: /b Okay. Look. I want to be able to pay you your money. I do not accept being verbally flagellated because I don't make a lot of money. /p pbSUPERVISOR: /b Now, now./p pbME: /b These silly verbal power plays are really turning ME off. Pun intended./p pAnd I hung up./p pSighing philosophically, I ruminated upon the fact that this sort of abusive conversation has been going on for centuries between THE POOR (like myself) and THE ENTITLED (management, supervisors, landlords, usurers and their ilk). In silent movies of the Depression, the landlord commands, "You must pay the rent!" The maiden cries, "I can't pay the rent!" Her suitor rides in saying, "I'll pay the rent!" She bats her helpless eyelashes and proclaims, "MY HERO!" /p pSince I am over 55, I think next time I will cry poverty, boo hoo pathetically, and play my "Elder Card."/p pNot satisfied by the verbal abuse of this PGE Red Queen, I called back a few days later and talked to another supervisor. By then I had cooled off, and decided to be more objective and circumspect in my approach. I realized that, despite her power posturing, the Supervisor had been trying to give me actual information. I decided to research what she had "shared." /p pSince Red Queen had informed me that "Five Years ago PGE froze the rates," I asked: "Who froze the rates and why?"/p pThis new guy, a mild mannered, buttoned-down bureaucratic type, I will call the "White Knight" in this game of power chess. White Knight explained that five years ago, when "we went into Deregulation," the California Public Utility Commission ordered PGE to freeze their rates. These rates were to be "unfrozen" in the year 2002. /p pApparently, the CPUC and Courts had determined that PGE was a Monopoly. PGE was forbidden to maintain any of its own power plants in California. To foster competition, they were forced to buy their power from other states. (As a result of this current debacle, they are now being allowed to build eight new power plants, two of which will be online soon.) /p pThe Red Queen had said that the rates were "unfrozen" this year. The White Knight, whose power style was to be as smooth and cooperative as possible, said that this was inaccurate. /p pHe said that competition was basically driving PGE out of business and putting them into bankruptcy because the CPUC had forbidden PGE to raise their rates. To ease that problem, a 1-cent per kilowatt-hour surcharge was put in place on January 1, 2001. (Apparently, this is not to be construed as being the same as "unfreezing rates".) /p pThe new surcharge still did not solve the problem, so on June 1, 2001 an additional surcharge was instituted. This new add-on surcharge was built on a 5-tier system based on geographical area, penalizing high users of energy in step-up fashion. It was to function as a disincentive to high-energy use. /p p"It has worked so well," said the White Knight, "and customers have been so careful about their energy usage that in July 2001, PGE actually has a surplus which they are selling to other states." /p pI asked this supervisor about the rumor I heard that there were meltdown conditions in the nuclear plant at San Onofre near San Clemente that triggered the energy shortage in California. He said he had not heard about that, and it was part of Southern California Edison's system, not PGE. /p pThe White Knight looked at his computer, and gently informed me that my rates had gone up because of my high usage of energy. I said my usage had not changed in seven years. It turns out what has ACTUALLY raised my rates is the new 5-tier step-up usage system instituted on June 1 which is based on where one lives./p pI live in pricey Pacific Heights, so according to their 5-tier grid system, my usage in July is suddenly considered high where before June 1, it was not. It may be that they know that people who live in Pacific Heights make, on the average, a lot more money than the rest of the world (The Getty Mansion and Melvin Bell's former estate are 3 blocks away, and Larry Ellison lives up here) and, for that reason, these residents can handle higher. I guess my brilliance in finding a low-rent studio apartment in a high-rent district, and living on a below-subsistence level income is a piece of fancy footwork that shall not go unpunished./p pThe big news in MY life is that I am paying $35 a month more for rent suddenly, and a helluva lot more for power./p pMy next research phone call to PGE will focus on why there is an energy shortage across the country at the very moment PGE is going into bankruptcy in California. Why these two conditions intersect just now triggers all my internal conspiracy theory alarms. In a city like San Francisco, where Willie Brown has said publicly that people who make under $50,000 shouldn't live here, sudden jumps in utility rates and rents seem to make the rich much richer while driving the poor deeper into debt and out of the city entirely.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/420/photo_3_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Albert Bliss/p pFour weeks ago I walked into San Jose’s “Labor Ready,” an employment agency that doled out day jobs. There was a cute chick behind the counter. I waited for her to finish talking with a new employee about his job application. Her shiny, brown stiff hair curled just above her shoulders. And when she smiled, I could see her clean white teeth. Four weeks ago I walked into Labor Ready and today was my last day in town, I hoped. /p p“Hi Marissa.” /p p “Hi Al. What up?” /p p “I’m heading east, Hon. I’m leaving San Jose late tonight, by thumb.” /p p “Well, good luck to you.” /p p “Can you hook me up with a job? I need the extra coin for the road trip.”/p p “Saturdays are slow but we are getting calls. All I can say is put your name on the list and wait.” /p pAfter signing the first-come/ first-served list I sat in a white plastic lawn chair and looked around the room. There were twelve guys waiting for a job, no gals. Some were watching the video (Gladiator) on the television, some were reading the sports page and some were snoozing. The phones were not ringing and that was a bad sign. I looked at each face to see if I knew any of them from Montgomery Street Inn, the homeless shelter where I was staying. I didn’t and so I took my notebook out of my backpack and wrote out my final impressions of the San Jose homeless scene. /p pThere were good points and bad points to every job agency, and Labor Ready was no different. “Work Today Get Paid Today” was their motto and it was true. I got cake jobs through this joint and I got backbreaking jobs. I did catering and construction work, mostly. Employers that I worked for paid Labor Ready and the agency paid me. The employers paid Labor Ready sixteen to eighteen bucks per hour but laborers like me only got half of that figure. In my opinion, laborers should have gotten the lion share of the hourly rate, but I kept my jaws shut because I needed money. Monday through Friday was busy; the phones were always ringing and I always went out on a job. On-the-wait for day jobs were Mexicans, Blacks, Whites and a bleached blond dude with a big silver hoop through his left lobe. There was a middle aged Asian fellow with a stainless steel clipper attached to his wrist and a younger White dude who wore a black patch, pirate style. /p pI mention the men I shaped-up with at Labor Ready because some homeless guys won’t travel America on the cheap. Why? Because they don’t know if they’ll be accepted for being aboriginal, gay, midget or disabled. Everybody had a fair chance to get the day jobs, dig? /p pSan Jose’s Labor Ready had a bathroom inside the shape-up hall, a wash up sink outside the can and a couple of soda and candy vending machines against the wall. They showed video films at Labor Ready, while you waited for your name to be called. The agency also offered free coffee. I have gotten jobs out of temporary employment agencies around America and none have offered video films as I waited for work and only a few joints provided free fresh coffee. /p pExcept for my first seven days in San Jose, Montgomery Street Inn, also known as InnVision, was my home. I slept in bed twenty-three, top bunk. The bed had clean sheets, blanket and pillow. My Bunkie, Don, a sixty-year old court appointed parolee, occupied the bottom bed. InnVision served three free meals per day, seven days per week, to residents and non-residents alike. Breakfast was five o’clock till seven; lunch was one o’clock till two; dinner was six o’clock till seven. Members of a church group did the cooking Thursday nights and the line to get a sit-down for that meal was one hundred plus long. Except for Thursday dinners, the food at InnVision was basic. /p pEveryone had to do a daily chore to keep his bed. My chore was to sweep and dry-mop the kitchen. It took me a half-hour to forty minutes to do my do. All the residents had to leave the shelter by eight o’clock in the morning and return to the shelter by seven thirty at night. The curfew was way too early for grown men to be holed-up for the night, and I voiced my opinion to InnVision Staff on a suggestion form. /p pThe first thirty days at Montgomery Street Inn were free; after that the cost was forty-five bucks per week. Many of the residents had full time jobs but most earned their rent money doing per diem work out of Labor Ready. It was my opinion that these working residents should be given brown bag lunches to save money and I put that opinion in the suggestion box, also. There were other shelters, CityTeam Ministries, Salvation Army and Little Orchard Shelter. Montgomery Street Inn was the best; it had the most to offer and that was why I stayed there. /p pCompared to other cities, San Jose did not have a sizable homeless population. Four hundred would be a liberal head count and any higher number would be false. Nobody panhandled for money there and few men did the tin can and plastic bottle gig. I have traveled all over America and have written about the stuff I observed. Every single city that I had visited had pigeon feeders, except San Jose. I have witnessed and participated in that homeless ritual, feeding the pigeons, for five whole years. It was strange not hearing homeless men asking soup kitchen volunteers for extra bread and cake. It was odd not seeing them breaking bread into morsels and feeding the winged creatures. I often wondered what had happened? /p pSan Jose cops were everywhere! I did not hear any first hand accounts of police brutality perpetrated against homeless people, but I did see a huge police presence. Black and white squad cars circled downtown streets all the time; ditto for police vans and shiny black motorcycles and blue uniforms on foot patrol. /p pDespite what city slackers said, “You’ll never go hungry in San Jose,” in my view there were not enough free restaurants to feed the hungry. It was difficult to get hygiene supplies but easy to get spare threads. I stood in line at a social service window every three days or so. (In case you decide to do the San Jose homeless scene, the address of the social service window is 80 South Market Street). The window was womaned by Cathy, a short brunette with tweezed eyebrows and upturned nostrils. I got bus and train passes from Cathy, soft drinks and snacks, toilet tokens and clothing vouchers. /p pOne of my favorite haunts was lounging inside transportation terminals. I saw no grifters working the San Jose bus depots and there were no con artists scamming tourists as they exited Amtrak train terminal. There were no homeless baggage handlers in either depot, earning tips in exchange for handling luggage. Upon arrival, I camped-out on the banks of the Guadalupe River. During that first week I saw few of San Jose’s homeless, hardly any slept outside and that surprised me. When I loitered in San Diego and in Los Angeles hundreds of men and women slept on sidewalks, on loading docks and on abandoned lots. /p pThe distinguishing personality traits of San Jose’s homeless men were timid and submissive. I was not at all impressed with what I saw and heard. Most were friendly dudes and followed InnVision staff rules but none behaved as arrogant outsiders. Not one man regarded himself as an American rebel. I hope my read on them was wrong but I believe that San Jose’s street men do not have the guts to become homeless nonconformists. What a loss for the city of San Jose! What a terrible loss to the street nobility that I picture and predict! A few InnVision residents played the “I got over on the system” game, but I was not bamboozled. A few men had prescriptions for painkillers, Vacadin, Zannex, Codein3 and Morphine. By means of the “meds,” they cloaked their dope addiction and kept their beds at InnVision. Big deal! A few dudes got drunk early in the morning, others skin-popped before they left the shelter, so that they’d be sober by curfew time. Big fucking deal! Some dudes made shelter headlines when they got “bottled” (made to take a urine test) or breathalized. Others thought themselves clever because they managed to smuggle a vial of cocaine into a federal courthouse without being nabbed. /p pI humored the motherfuckers, but between you and me, homeless sir, what difference did their pranks make? Even if they did get thrown in the slammer, their antics were not deliberate deeds of civil disobedience designed to create social chaos. Their acts did not draw attention to the plight of San Jose’s homeless, and so what good were they? Rather than destroying their bodies with hard booze and excessive sleep, I wished that they used their energy to think-up and execute strategies to dismantle the San Jose police state. Rather than mainlining H. and popping pills, I wished that they used their time to become first rank anarchists and top shelf artists. /p pI was ashamed of these men and it pained me deeply when I wrote the following: San Jose’s homeless men had no higher purpose other than to get numbed-out; they had no personal destiny to fulfill other than to make rent and tobacco money. This, my last day in San Jose, was filled with distress and despair. I was distressed because I came to San Jose to meet the blessed lambs of the new age of homelessness and found only cowardly chickens. As I had hitchhiked from Vancouver, Canada to San Jose,California, I remember I had such wonderful daydreams. My mind pictured mastermind bums that had evil plans to lead a street revolution. As I held my thumb out for a car ride along Interstate Highway Five, I envisioned skilled musicians who would write battle songs to be sung by vagrant warriors hell-bent on establishing a brave new Homeless Republic. As my skin burned under a scorching sun, waiting for a ride, I saw myself sitting cross-legged around a campfire, rapping with San Jose’s street poets, men who wanted to create romantic rhymes for the ages, to be recited before lovers do the do. I imagined myself competing with down and out writers for the highest prize, homeless immortality. I saw myself penning everlasting street prose for lonely, hungry and courageous road masters. I had such high hopes when I got here, four weeks ago. I sought homeless pariahs who were ready to give themselves a sublime direction and equally ready to sacrifice their lives for the new order. I hunted the transportation depots for cunning criminals who could persuade the cream of street life to join an elite class of fearless lords. I searched the parks and scoured the banks of the Guadalupe River for powerful vagrants who could change the course of homeless history. When I first got here I walked the pavements for days, feet aching, searching for San Jose’s best bums. Now, hours before I hit the road, I felt only despair and failure. That is why I must leave San Jose promptly and waste no more of my precious time.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/421/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Samuel Irving/p pbr /I pledge allegiance to a nation,br / br /Where I am notbr / br /Included in webr / br /And the surface of changebr / br /Is not covered in the republicbr / br /Clothes of a flag/p pbr /Misrepresenting the onenessbr / br /Of a dream, in radiant liesbr / br /Followed by slick tongues,br / br /But I am under IGod/i/p pbr /While mental freedom is invisiblebr / br /And there is justice for some,br / br /The chains remain, in eyesbr / br /Of government plots, with no libertybr / br /In a pursuit of racial profiles/p pbr /And America, Americabr / br /IGodIshed his grave on us,br / br /For we are none butbr / br /Strong in numbersbr / br /During waves ofbr / br /President caused genocide/i/i/p p/p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p