Story Archives

by Staff Writer

Can you not see

We

As all in all a whole,

Begin to expect the

Beliefs of others. I

Need

You and you need

Me, no longer, separated as

We, us, now begin

To

Believe, accept, and

Follow the rule under

Which we are rejecting

Change!!

Can you NOT see??

-Kayla

by Bruce Allison and Thornton Kimes/PNN

The Governor’s 4 crazy ideas (restricting in-home care workers to the state and/or local minimum wage; family members banned from being in-home care workers for relatives; banning convicted felons from being in-home care workers; physical incapacity is okay, being a hoarder/clutterer isn’t enough for in-home care) have been zapped with a restraining order. Peter E. Sheehan, of The Social Justice Law Project requested the restraining order on behalf of Mark Beckwith and others.

The case will be heard in the Superior Court in Oakland, CA, January 29th, 2010, by Judge of the Superior Court Frank Roesch, at 9a.m., unless a possible move to a friendlier court (Lake County is, in this elder poverty scholar’s opinion, high on the list of anti in-home care worker “friendly” spots for a venue move) happens. Otherwise, get there early to get a good seat!

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution to ban finger printing of elders and their in-home care providers, and unannounced visits by “fraud cops”, on December 19th, 2009 at the Public Services Committee meeting. Call the Clerk of the Board of Supes for information on the time of the meeting. Some elders (including cancer patients) have lost their fingerprints due to medication side effects. Age also wears out some folks’ fingerprints.

The most common discovery of in-home care clients’ “fraud” by investigators is in the range of 75 cents to $2 per month due to age-related deterioration of math skills and memory problems. This elder poverty scholar is not aware of any in-home care client with an gazillion dollar off-shore bank account generating giant sucking sounds from the taxpayers of California.

Stayed tuned to the Bad Bruce Channel for more updates.

A note from Thornton Kimes. Governor Schwarzenegger appeared at a Bay Area food bank the week of December 7th- 11th, 2009, to ask everyone to do their part for poor people. I’m amazed my television didn’t turn blue, the words I was saying. The unbelieveable chutzpah and high-order irony factor certainly should have.

Maria Shriver, “the Wifeinator”, who has been challenged by many asking her to confront her husband about his budget cuts hurting the poor (and in-home health care clients) more than anyone else in California, recently hosted another of her annual conferences celebrating women. Women have been threatened and/or hurt more than anyone, yet the Wifeinator said no. I’m hoping people remember this in 2010 when Maria wants folks to be happy campers about yet another of her annual conferences.

by Joe B.

America Loves Consummers,
let's consume shares of

Multi National Corporations.

We worker's can Share Wealth locally and globally.

Blue, pink, white, or no collars, skilled, unskilled, low wage-working poor
families, homeless people, single mother's, father's [who's work is not counted.]

hollywood talent, to hi-tech folks; we all have one thing in
common we're all WORKERS.

Some are paid better salaries, weekly, hourly wages but We Are All WORKERS.

My plan:Worker's Inc. It includes Pooling our collective experiences and/or expertise in economics, and
spread the wealth locally.

That's step 1)
step 2) is pooling monies of many workers in investment clubs, economic enclaves with retired
stock brokers or pentioners as instructors teaching insider skills
to working poor, homeless people or anyone willing to learn
the true realities of local and international economic systems.

Step 3) Spreading the wealth to people who really need it like elderly with with cronic
illnessess, war veterans, sick and dying children, or fast tracking renewable alternative energy research and development.

Step 4) Global Spread of the monies made by Worker's.

International Money Market fund investing keeps
diversifying, dividing as workers help others as they've been helped keeping Worker's Corp. or Inc.
vibrant and strong.

Owning large chunks of American real estate either swampland, desert, or land deemed worthless
could be a first way of getting off-world to be independent of all governments.

Using Capitalism against Capitalism may sound like an oxymoron
in this case it just might work.

Because we workers know the money talks and BS walks.
Let's form many W.I./W.B.A. [Worker's Inc, Worker
Buy America concloms of our own.

I know working poor and homeless America and abroad can do much better than Multi Nationals.
Isn't it about time to really BUY AMERICA?".

Remember:If art work, begging netted us 30, 50, to 100,000 dollars quickly magically we're no longer working poor or homeless folk but entrepreneurial geniuses instead.

P.S. Any suggestions to get this rolling or improving on this concept?

Write me C/O Poor Magazine.

Ask Joe at 255 9th St.

San Francisco, Ca.94103

email askjoe@poormagazine.org

For Joe only snail mail:

PO Box 1230 #645

Market St.San Francisco,

CA. 94102

by Joe B.

Part of my short life I was a serious, bookworm, introverted, and extremely shy and sensitive to cracks about my lazy left eye from both boys and girls.

I could understand the guys its one less kid to worry about for dates if you sought them out for ridicule and abuse soon they’d be the odd one out.

It worked up to a point is when one constantly tries to join an in-group that want one to be on the outs sadly, it pretty well happen.

Dosen’t it seem it’s the outs that change the world along with a few joiners?

Anyway skip a few years of bumming to Los Angeles, being an extra in a movie or two, getting laid and finding you were never odd or different just perceived that way and though its old news those psychological scars remain.

Also in high school and later I always the next wave of things tried to tell people and then when it happened was looked at as a freak for knowing.

Its still this way and with this expanding war all I want me an people to do is "Live Through This" so its not only technology that shows what happens through sound bites but people too who’ve experienced it from the youngest antiwar protester to the oldest soldier returning from Iraq.

I have my own personal quest which doesn’t involve staying glued to radio or T. V. mesmerized by flicker night and day time bombings of holy cities and people in the cradle of civilization.

If anyone’s read that stupid online dating statement by someone being way too honest.

I though of trying LAVA LIGHT or whatever that phone chat is instead of placing my photo on line then again why not do both; I’ve always said "get rid of the no rejections first ; a thousand no’s means nothing but one yes is priceless."

Recently I’ve gone into bars, some dance clubs with a friend or two found it exhilarating and expensive with certain type of clothes to wear, drink prices and when asking women to dance actually enjoying a yes once in a while.

However my job is low wage even now I must put a catalog together spreading our author’s (including me) recent publications.

If anyone knows about self publishing and placing orders, getting at a bookstand to be sold and making little if now money from it then that’s where I and other author’s of POOR Magazine is at now.

I save the red paper for my own kind of work. Red paper goes good with gore, lurid titles, and writings POOR may not make that will not be part of.

Yes, I’ve been accused of writing porn but in my defense poor folks in Single Occupancy Housing or One Room Occupancy have the same physical needs as anyone else and because it difficult if not impossible to wine, dine, and a woman or man before taking them to your abode and have a desk clerk ask for their Identification Card to keep.

They do this not to embarrass you or your date It’s the rules of S R O’s for securities sake but it does get in the way especially if you’re the date in question.

Personally, I’d rather be at the woman’s place then she’s feels more comfortable, has power over the situation and can say no if she really feels it and not forced into what she does not want beside my room is so barren of flowers, pictures, cluttered, smelly, and dirty she’d really have to like me, be horny as hell, or both to get it on there.

Notice I haven’t talked about the war because that’s all lots of people have talked off, listened too, feared, and whispered. I’m taking a brake from the war at least for few days.

What to do, cannot afford dance clubs with suits, drinks, and especially girls-free-men-pay cover charges. I know there are places without cover charges but isn’t it time for women to pay and men to go in for free? I know, that goes against the grain, women still earn less than men, and if you can’t pay don’t go.

If wimin want so much to be equal why don’t they open a few dance club/bars charging their wimin to get in and men go free then the balance would be more men for each woman.

Except for lesbian it would still be free but with money made from drinks.

I was told any long establishment like this would lose money and be out of business if what I suggested was tried.

The only answer I had to that was that many more clubs can try it all over San Francisco and across the bay area it would become trendy that women pay and there would be a feeling of equality that it is now men who are being wooed and asked to dance by women also taking the chance of rejection.

See what I mean, being far seeing what I’ve said will happen, wimin will see it as another step in their freedom but maybe I’m wrong and they would rather be the ones giving out cell phone numbers deciding to call or not call guys instead of they being on the male side of worry.

But if one wants to continue the equal rights gambit this and others way might be one of many ways to go.

I have to fold the catalogs someone else will staple them.

It has to be done and I’m elected.

Men can help too by creating men friendly clubs those who a few clubs can try in and if it doesn’t work they can return to what make money for them.

So, Wimin, men, club owners what do ‘ya think is it possible or do we all wait another half century or the next to even up this pay for play?

Meanwhile I’ll look for bars that I don’t have to dance in even if I have to pay a cover charge and might as well have a full belly even I don’t have a date. …Bye.

by Staff Writer

Two revolutionary media and art projects of POOR Magazine's Race
Poverty and Media Justice Institute in its new classrooms in the
Mission District have forged a powerful collaboration with
Intersection for The Arts and Mission Community Council to create
Mission Resistance! - Mission Voices SPeak up on issues of poverty,
border fascism, unrecognized work and micro-business, migration/immigration, homelessness, gender,
disability, racism, police brutality, and survival by any means necessary!

Digital Resistance a revolutionary media & arts education project for
youth, adults and elders in poverty locally and globally

Los Viajes a bi-lingual Audio, Literary and Performance anthology of
peoples migration/journeys to the United States from their homelands.
Los Viajes also introduces a new lens on migration/immigration that
resists the criminalization of false borders and the introduces the UN
Declaration on Indigenous Peoples

This event will also be a preview to the Los Viajes Anthology Project
which will be released in September of 2009 (at the anniversary of
the signing of the UN declaration of Indigenous Peoples)

Translation will be provided

The welfareQUEENS will appear for special guest appearance
The welfareQUEENS are a group of mamaz , daughters, grandmothers and
sons speaking up about the poverty and criminalization of poor
families locally and globally.

--

by Marlon Crump and Laure McElroy/PNN poverty scholars in residence

“I have cataracts in both eyes, diabetic feet, advanced periodontal disease and PTSD, “ says Mesha Monge-Irizary,a local organizer, powerful woman, and the founder of ISARC (Idriss Stelley Action Resource Center). Mesha continued, “Now that medi-Cal cut off othamology, podiatry, dentistry, and long-term mental healthcare I may be forced to die blind, with amputated feel, toothless and crazy!"

 Mesha is also one of the millions of seniors who will suffer under the lack of an affordable, comprehensive national system of healthcare combined with massive budget cuts in health services at the state and local level. “This is nothing less than an early death sentence, a genocide for us elder diabetics in the United States."Mesha concluded.

"I never could accept the idea that healthcare is not free and is really a business. Cutting healthcare to me, as a pregnant mom with a six year old causes me a lot of anxiety," says June Hall, a.k.a Jewnbug, single mom, co-founder of Family Project of POOR Magazine. "These new cuts have affected my access to dental care, eye care, and even certain medications.”
 

Last week I had to ask myself, “Who is disposable?” as I looked through the letter informing me of changes for the worse to my medicare and state disability benefits.
 

The truth is, those of us without finances are prevented from accessing the healthcare we desperately need because budget cuts enacted at the federal, state and local levels keep defunding our services. Every single day, anyone who is anyone that has little or no finances are having their pockets prevented from accessing affordable health and medical care. Every single year, all government officials at the city, state, and especially at the federal jurisdiction “propose budget cuts” that relate to health and medical services
                  

We are not silent about it.. We who are impacted take to the streets, we wave picket signs and banners. We sound horns, we march and we petition. It’s a dance of protest that is all too familiar these days. But is it really fair to make any sick person fight like a dog for their own chance at health?
 

"The Republicans have a new healthcare proposal: Just say NO to illness!” says Mark Russell, stand up comedian and political satirist. Does his comic art imitate life for the near future? Is this what we have to look forward to?
 

In 2006, Bush the Younger signed into effect the Medicare part D prescription benefit, which required the elderly and the disabled to pay a $295 deductible on medication coverage, and 25% of medication costs until the costs reach $2700. After that, patients participating in the program are required to pay for all of their meds. In November of 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger collaborated with federal social security officials to cut medicare bart b, which covers doctor’s visits, treatments, diagnostic tests, among other things.

Every  single red cent subtracted from poor and working class individuals is catastrophic for them, somewhere down these lines. In July of this year, California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger called the budget cuts “tough” but necessary.” Of course these cuts included healthcare, welfare benefits and programs.
 

At the same time, recipients of state disability benefits also received drastic cuts. Apparently the only cuts worse than a wound is getting slashed while receiving such vital health care services, and not having enough to even pay remaining costs and coverage.
 

“My net monthly income is $300 after I pay my rent.” says Bruce Allison, senior elder scholar, and staff writer of POOR. “If I have to pay $60 for my medicine and hospital care, I will leave the state!”
 

“Medi-Cal has affected my not having access to getting my rotting teeth fixed!” sharply explained statement by Vivian Hain, single mom,poverty scholar and co-teacher at POOR Magazine.
 

Although the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted the Health Care Security Ordinance, following the 2006 establishment of “Healthy San Francisco” (a program providing health care services to uninsured residents) Mayor Gavin Newsom constantly proposes budget cuts that affected the poor and working class of a “Healthy San Francisco.”
. 

In a recently published study on how documented and undocumented latina women access healthcare at San Francisco General Hosital, results suggested that uninsured women were less likely to access preventative, dental or even urgent health care services (Immigration Status and Use of Health Services among Latina Women in the San Francisco Bay Area, Elena Fuentes-Afflick, M.D., M.P.H. and Nancy A. Hessol, MSPH, Journal of Women’s Health Volume 8, 2009).
 

“Immigrant communities are wrongfully blamed for their own lack of initiative concerning health care.” Angel Garcia, staff writer, Race Poverty, and Disability Scholar and a POOR Press Author explained in detail in his 2007 POOR Press Article. “But the real reasons behind higher percentages of preventable disease among immigrant communities, is not because of a lack of understanding or self-care, but because of this country’s denial to provide access to health care for all.”

President Barack Obama has received major criticism this past year predominately from Republicans, regarding his plan of “Health care Reform” and what the costs of his program will be in the future. 



President Obama answered the criticisms with this clarification: “Opponents of health care reform warn that this is all some big plot for socialized medicine or government-run health care with long lines and rationed care. That’s not true either. I don’t believe that government can or should run health care. But I also don’t think insurance companies should have free reign to do as they please.”

Politically-condemned, death row inmate and award winning journalist, Mumia Abu Jamal recently wrote an article regarding the whole healthcare system and the politics that continue to surround it.

“And yes, a bill will pass, and Obama will sign it, but it'll mean less, not more health care. It'll mean higher co-pays (really prepays, or deductibles), less services, and more profits for their campaign contributors. There will be celebrations and TV PR people will praise it like American Idol but it'll be a sell-out, pure and simple.Unless people really raise hell and demand single payer and universal health care……….before the door slams shut.”

The hospitals and rest care facilities are overwhelmed with lack of humanity for the sick, the disease  affected, and seniors who  are unable to balance the bill.The voices of those of us in poverty go unheard and/or ignored , ” Welfare Queens/Super Baby Mamas, undocumented, migrant families, workers, and the disabled, eyes filled with too much sorrow to even clearly see the bill. Long lines of poor and working class people continue in an ill-fated mission to locate the medical care stolen from their lives.

by Staff Writer

How much longer will Motlanthe
allow migrants like hearing a song’s end
and see Mugabe's corpses
swarming through Limpopo river.

Corpses scrambling out of Zimbabwe
gasping for fresh air, while South Africans
squirm from this encroaching pestilence.
Some of which makes it to high ground.

But what habitation, what work
will they find? Only a few
melting through to the top.
And the rest, is a frigid motley-lot.

Huddled along the tarred roads.
Waiting for a day's cleaning job
or to fix and fit, load and unload
some rich man’s looty-booty.

Crowds standing shoulder to shoulder
under the bright southern sun.
Their browned shaggy bodies
can't support them against ridicule.

Political and economic refugees
migrating into an alien culture.
Where scrambling wars are the norm
and greedy officials feasts upon them.

Now, too far from home.
Doomed to be butchered
by black South Africans' melting impatience
and negrophobia(xenophobia) fangs.

by Tom Mckay

David Duncombe is in Washington, DC, fasting in support of debt forgiveness for 33 impoverished nations. He has been on a water-only fast since his last meal on June 10. UNICEF estimates that 30,000 children die in developing countries every day because of hunger and poverty. Governments of poor countries have little left for health care, schools, housing, or sanitation services after they make their debt payments to foreign creditors.A year ago, the wealthier industrial nations pledged in Cologne to write off $90 billion of developing country debt, a 70 percent reduction. The United States' share is $920 million over 4 years. The U.S. Congress needs to appropriate $435 million this year to keep debt relief on schedule, but the House has only approved $69 million and the Senate has only approved $75 million.

David Duncombe has said: "Millions of people are starving because of Congress' inaction. I feel it is my duty to illustrate for the men and women in Congress who quite literally are making this life and death decision. That a person is willing to starve so that others may not has to speak powerfully to the soul." During his fast he has been visiting eight to ten Congressional Offices a day. For more information see the Jubilee 2000/USA website at http://www.j2000usa.org/updates/fast5.html

by Leroy Moore

The title of this essay, "Buried Alive not Dead," is a metaphor for the unspoken and unwritten connection between Black history and disability.
In this essay I will concentrate on two major historical events that shaped the future of African Americans: the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and slavery. So far my research into these two periods reveals a sharp connection that links early African American history to disability. You will see that although disability has been intertwined with African American history, it has been overlooked, put on the back burner for the sake of "bigger issues." This history has been buried alive, but the history and contribution of Black disabled people is not dead.

The Bible

In the Old Testament disability was seen as a sin, or a punishment from God. Sometimes disability was seen as being possessed by evil. In the New Testament Jesus healed the lame, sick, blind and crippled, or in today's terminology, ìpersons with disabilities.î

But also in the Old Testament we find a prophet of God who performed some amazing feats without changing his physical stand. This prophet comes up again and again throughout the history of Black Americans, from African slaves to Martin Luther King. I'm talking about Moses in Exodus.

In Exodus, Moses was chosen by God to lead the Israelite slaves out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom in Israel. When God came to Moses and gave him this dangerous assignment, Moses doubted his own abilities to lead because he was slow of tongue. Another way to phrase this is to say Moses had a speech impediment.

But God didn't cure Moses' "speech disability" (as Jesus did to his followers in the New Testament). God gave Moses an accommodation, his brother Aaron, to speak for Moses. Moses and Aaron were a team together. Moses had the leadership skills and Aaron provided the voice.

The connection between Moses and African slaves was the strong hold of religion in the Black community. The Black church expressed a rich spirituality that sustained slaves and freed people through hard times. Although White masters taught their slaves to be Christians by preaching the New Testament, slaves were interested in the Old Testament because it spoke of their lives, and gave them hope of a new and better world. Moses was a hero to African American slaves, inspiring them to sing, "Go Down Moses."

Slavery & Disability

Although slaves looked to Moses as a role model, Moses' speech disability did not translate into positive attitudes toward disability at that time. We can say that Moses' disability did not affect his ability to perform physical labor, so it was placed in the background of his life. In slavery times, the main link to being a successful slave was the ability to perform physical, manual work on the plantations.

Many Africans did not survive the long boat ride to America because of the inhumane, abusive conditions of the slave ships. The slaves who were sick and physically disabled from the conditions of the boat ride and the physical torment from the White settlers were tossed overboard and left to drown. Is this where my history stops, at the bottom of the sea?

The harsh treatment of slaves produced a high rate of physical and mental disabilities. One historian linked mental illness and insanity among slaves to the separation of families. In 1863 a slave woman went insane because her sons were sold and sent to the trader's jail.

Disability had to be hidden away for a slave to stay alive. African slaves who were born physically disabled were put to death by their White masters or even their own parents because these disabilities made them useless on the plantations. When a slave woman gave birth, the first thing she was concerned about was the infant's physical condition. As time went by, the mother forced the baby to stand and walk.

I'm reminded of a short story titled 'Black Diamond' by Afi Tiomble A. Kambon. The story starts out in a small village in Africa and talks about the White invaders who brought the African villagers to the New World. The story concentrates on a slave woman who gave birth to a lovely girl who sparkled like a diamond. The only problem was the baby girl's legs were thin, and she was unable to stand and walk. At the end of 'Black Diamond,' the master dropped, kicked and stomped the baby until it was dead.

Pages 133 and 136 of American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a
Thousand Witness describe the slaves' masters' views on disability as follows:

Old Slaves:
They're seen as a tax to the Master, it would be in the best interest to shorten their days.

The Incurably Diseased Maimed:
It would be cheaper for Masters to buy poison than medicine.

The Blind, Lunatics and Idiots:
They're seen as a tax to the Master, it would be in the best interest to shorten their days.

The Deaf, Dumb and Person Greatly Deformed:
Such might or might not be serviceable to the Master, many of them would be a burden and many men throw their burden away.

Feeble Infants:
Would require much nursing, the time, trouble and expense necessary to raise them would generally cost more than they would be worth as working animals.

This document goes on to give estimattions of 1600 slaves who were deaf and dumb, and 1300 blind slaves, in 1830. The directors of the American Asylum produced these numbers for the Deaf and Dumb of Hartford, CT.

On many plantations there were hospitals for sick slaves, but these were not healing places. Slaves in these hospitals had to work while recovering. In a personal narrative, Mr. George A. Avery describes the treatment of sick slaves as "revolting!" The same book reads, "If no cure was found for the sick slave then death was ordered with no compensation to be made, but if cured a bonus up to $300.00 was to be given" (336). Nine times out of ten, when a slave was really, really sick, he was left in an empty room alone for days or even months to die.

All disabled slaves were not killed! Many slaves lived and worked on American plantations with their physical and mental disabilities by making adaptive equipment to make them seem 'normal'. Mentally disabled slaves leaned on the slave community to hide their illnesses. These slaves were watched closely by their Masters to make sure they were not dangerous to themselves and others.

The bodies of the slaves were on display for auction, and slaves and their Masters tried to hide flaws, weaknesses and disabilities. Still, slaves' masters continued to use harsh torment and physical abuse, causing physical and mental disabilities.

Harriet Tubman, who led the famous Underground Railroad, was beaten so badly that she experienced black outs and seizures. Ms. Tubman's health made it difficult for her Master to find her a new Master. In 1857 Harriet
Tubman brought her parents to freedom. Her parents were too feeble to walk, so she hired a wagon to accommodate them. In her journey to lead slaves to freedom, Ms. Tubman would leave her company hidden in the woods while she herself went into towns in search of information. After freeing slaves, Ms. Tubman watched over their welfare, collected clothes, and organized the free slaves into societies. She also raised funds to build a house for her parents.

During her days of the Underground Railroad, one of Ms. Tubman's disguises was to look so stupid that nobody would suspect her of knowing enough to be dangerous! She, like Moses, led slaves to freedom, and her disability, like Moses', was and is played down or looked upon as a pity in the history of Black Americans.

As you can see, disability was a part of slavery. Although disability among slaves often equaled death, many disabled slaves contributed on the plantations, helped free other slaves, invented adoptive equipment and gave encouragement to the slaves' population.

After the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves went to war to fight for their freedom. What happened to the soldiers who returned home disabled? What happened to disabled slaves after slavery? Did Black disabled free people enjoy the benefits of the Black Reconstruction? What happened in the sixties to Black disabled people?

The two histories, African American history and Disability history, do mention Black disabled people and their contribution, but it is buried alive. The connection between African American history and Disability history needs more attention and research in a positive light.

by Connie Lu and Dee Gray/PNN

Dusk - the streets are quiet except for a few passing buses and the occassional car. I am walking up 3rd street towards the Third Baptist Church to attend a neighborhood meeting about the shelter at the Church, or what my editor calls - a meeting about NIMBYISM (Not in My Backyard)
On my way, I pass by a few homeless men, who
are patiently and quietly waiting for the shelter at
Third Baptist Church to open. I ask them how I could
get into the church and was kindly directed around the
corner to an open door

I arrive to find my co-worker Joseph Bolden, staff writer and
photographer for POOR Magazine/PNN, in the second row
of chairs at the Third Baptist Church. The room
itself is spacious with an old piano in the front and
several doors along the white walls decorated with a
few posters and bulletin boards. I look down at the
dark red carpeting with gray grid lines and begin to
notice the muffled sounds of footsteps coming from
upstairs. I hear quick feet scurrying above, I
imagine the pure innocence of small children running
freely in laughter. I also hear the applaud of an
audience as it penetrates through the walls of the
church from a nearby room and flows into where I await
for the Alamo Square neighborhood meeting to begin.

The neighbors of Alamo Square, located in District 4
of San Francisco, invited Matt Gonzalez, who is on the
Board of Supervisors for their district to express
their concerns about the homeless shelter in their
neighborhood during the meeting. The shelter is
located in the Alamo Square district (near the Western Addition) at Amos
Brown's Third Baptist Church. The meeting begins with
Gonzalez approaching the front of the room, as he
opens the meeting up for questions. The residents bring up several
issues and concerns, which are then addressed by
Gonzalez. Then the issue of the homeless shelter is presented.

As the discussion about the shelter begins, I remember the men outside who gave me directions, despite their polite
mannerism towards me, I still expected to hear only
complaints from the neighboring residents about the
homeless being unwanted nuisances because
unfortunately that's how they're perceived.

However, Arla Ertz who lives close to the shelter at Third
Baptist Church begins by voiceing her compassion for the
homeless during the meeting. She explains, "Poverty
is a serious crisis. I would really like us to be
compassionate. I find the homeless to be very
respectful. I don't experience any noise from them."

Prior to the meeting I had spoken with another shelter resident, who stayed at a different shelter near Third Baptist Church. She
agreed with Ertz and explains, "I was treated well at
the shelter, and in turn, the homeless residents respected the neighbors."

Another resident of the Alamo Square neighborhood
named Steve Crosley said, "I am not so much bothered
by the homeless people themselves, but I feel that the
church should be more open about discussing the
shelter with the community."

Then Joseph from POOR Magazine suggested that we invite Amos Brown, Pastor of the Third Baptist Church, to the meeting so the neighbors could
voice their opinions about the homeless shelter since
he was actually present at church, but just not at the
meeting. However,Joseph's suggestion was not taken
into consideration because Captain Fagan of the SFPD
defended Pastor Brown, claiming that the invitation would
not be appropriate because it would not give Pastor Brown
enough prior notice. Matt Gonzalez then closes the
issue of the shelter by suggesting, "It would be a
good idea to call Brown to invite him to discuss the
issues about the shelter before we go any further."

Currently, there are several contradictory issues
surrounding the shelter at Pastor Brown's church because he
has been very outspoken about his views against the
homeless. The whole time he was a SF board supervisor he voted against all civil rights issues regarding issues of homelessness and poor people. Yet he decided to open a shelter for the
homeless at his church. In addition to this paradox,
Ertz explains that the shelter, which is scheduled to
close by the end of June is an "illegal shelter"
because Brown does not have a permit to run it either.

After the meeting, I spoke with Arla, a warm-hearted
woman who notified POOR Magazine of this meeting in
the first place due to her concern for the growing
Nimbyism in her neighborhood. She spoke with concern for the
homeless residents of the shelter in her calm and soothing voice.
My desire to understand the source of her compassion leads me to
asking her why she cares for the homeless. She
describes her job as the Program Director for
"Draw Bridge," which is an art program for homeless
children and how she was raised and taught to be
empathetic.

I leave the meeting and the afternoon sun has faded into a dark night sky. I walk past the shelter. I listen for the supposed noise claimed by the neighbors. Once again, I hear nothing but the occasional car and my quickly approaching bus.

Letter to POOR from Arla Ertz

I really appreciate the interest of the POOR staff, and I appreciate your following up on this issue. I went to another meeting on Wednesday. It wasn't a meeting of the neighborhood association, but of "McAllister Neighbors." These are folks who live closest to the Third Baptist Church, not the whole Alamo Square Neighborhood Association (ASNA) group. This meeting was specifically for neighbors concerned about the shelter.

This was the hardest meeting of my life so far, I think. I had no allies in
that room whatsoever. I found it disheartening to be so unheeded and to see
that I live among people whose classism runs so deep, yet they are clueless
about it and simply think they're right and that naturally everyone should
live like them. Anyway, I'm attaching the minutes of that meeting for you.
I notice that nothing I said appears in the minutes. It's like I wasn't
even there. I thought I presented myself very diplomatically and swallowed
a lot of things for the sake of maintaining a dialogue. However, at one
point when I proposed talking with the people at the church and inviting
someone from the Interfaith Council to be present, a woman there said, "Why
negotiate against yourself?" She said we must advocate to shut the shelter
down so the city will learn to do these things right. Another man lectured
me, saying we must advocate the same. I said I'd go a step farther and
suggested we advocate for housing that's affordable to poor and homeless
people and then they wouldn't even need shelters. The whole group
simultaneously shouted me down at that point.

Anyway, you get the idea. And as well, they rejected the idea of Matt
Gonzalez conducting mediation sessions. They said Amos Brown won't talk to
Matt Gonzalez.

Thanks again for your interest and help,

Warmly,

Arla

For more information you can contact them at:

Alamo Square Neighborhood Association

P.O. Box 15372

San Francisco, CA 94115

Phone: 552-0673 (Sue Valentine, president)