by Lisa ‘Tiny’ Gray-Garcia
“Mama, we don’t have any more money on the EBT card.” This sentence, often spoken somewhere between the 20th and 30th of the month, depending if we spent too much on luxury items like fresh veggies, fruit or meat, was always filled with dread ‘cause there really was no answer or option.
Every day under the orange tinted criminal-wanna-b-king, there is another violent act being waged against poor people, houseless people, indigenous peoples, Black and Brown peoples and arguably just people, who don’t have access to billions of blood-stained dollars .
Now the violent republCRAPs have waged war on our most basic of crumbs – the tiny bit we receive from the poltricksters for food assistance aka EBT, Food Stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The funny, not funny thing about this SNAP theft is the wealth-hoarders have begrudgingly “granted” those meager food crumbs off their feudal tables since the New Deal and its subsequent scarcity model was passed into law in the 1930s. Created allegedly to support the amerikkklan people in poverty but, on the real, created because there were more angry poor people than there were wealthoarding hoarders – just like today.
The New Deal and its “support” programs were also raced and classed and set up in a scarcity model. Originally designated only for “white widows of war veterans,” falling in line with the hetero patriarchal, racist, classist hate of anyone not in these categories, enhancing the criminalization and pathologizing of peoples of color, indigenous peoples, unmarried women, single parents, disabled peoples etc.
The scarcity model comes from the place of how little can we give people to keep them silent and alive, rather than how much do people need to thrive? This means we poor folks are constantly making unhealthy choices with our grocery shopping, like not buying too much, if any, organic fruit or vegetables, never considering grass-fed meat, much less meat or chicken at all, hormone free milk or cheese and rarely if ever, dreaming of healthy cereals or less fat-filled foods.
But these haters are also taking our food crumbs and our emergency food crumbs, aka Women, Infant and Children’s food program (WIC). Cause with the orange criminal and his Good Ole Boys (GOP), it actually seems like they want us to die.
But SNAP OR NO SNAP …
Bottom line is the scarcity model crumbs have never been enough to feed, clothe, house and truly support poor people. It was a deep struggle for my mama to survive on those crumbs and raise me right when she relied on the state for support and it was equally hard for me and my sun.
This scarcity also led and still leads to so many of us poor families being forced into underground economic strategies, which then often lead to our increased criminalization and incarceration. But hey, the wealth hoarders make money on their private prisons and sick detention centers, so that has always been a win-win for them.
The pandemic called Poverty
Long before the so-called pandemic and the dire lack of food, medicine or support when it first hit all of our low-no income communities, POOR Magazine, a poor and houseless people-led movement of art, media, education and solutions by us for us and everyone else, had instituted free healthy food giveaways, organic produce, that privileged, housed people donated to us, free diaper programs, hot meals and more that we poor folks constantly were distributing to our fellow impoverished Bay Area comeumity.
In 2011 when conscious, housed wealth-hoarders who had attended Peopleskool and formed the solidarity family at POOR Magazine, raised the money to purchase a small part of Mama Earth in occupied Huchiun so us poor and houseless peoples could build our own solution to homelessness we call HOMEFulness. It was ON! We officially launched the sliding scale cafe/mercadito de cambio (little market of change), the Po Mamas Panale (diaper) program and more – all aimed at redistributing everything we received from housed relatives and other revolutionary orgs away to fellow poor folks.
In 2020 when COVID hit, we just gave more. We increased from just diapers to medicine, from just hot food to organic fruit and veggies, from some groceries to entire bags of groceries, clothes, shoes, organic baked goods and more. And we have kept this consistent every week through today where we radically share all of this with over 500 babies, youth, adults and elders every week at Homefulness Sliding Scale Cafe .
Yes, I’m scared
So yes, as a formerly houseless, no-income, single parent EBT recipient myself, I’m scared for this coming Saturday, when they take these crucial crumbs away from me and my family and comeUnity, but SNAP or no SNAP, I have come to realize that politricks is nothing but a trick and is always pulling some Sheeeit. And in this time of so much hate, lies and wealth-hoarding evil from Turtle Island to Palestine, we have to walk even closer together. We have to all practice these visions of radical redistribution and Comeunity reparations.
We are all connected and our shared humanity is all we have as humans. No politrickster or wealth-hoarder will “save us.” And people who have, as my mama would put it, “never missed a meal” need to participate in this moment with love, not scarcity, radically sharing with those of us facing missed meals, empty refrigerators and scarcity fear, now more than ever. And they are already doing it.
Look at all the restaurants standing up with offers of free food and love — WahPepahs Kitchen, Monster Pho and Understory in Oakland to Tony Alba’s Pizza in San Jose to name a few.
Look at the already here grassroots movements already doing this radical redistribution like The Self-Help Hunger Program, Wood Street Commons, Love and Justice in the Streets, the Sliding Scale Cafe/Market of Change, Homies Empowerment, Deep Medicine Circle and so many more.
We can’t rely on a government that is already targeting us as the “The enemy inside” and hunting down first grade children, mamas and papas and elders to arrest and anyone that doesn’t look like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.
Self-determination is liberation. Liberation is the medicine of love we need now. Not more reliance on government structures that sweep, incarcerate, murder, kidnap, profile and destroy every poor person they can.
Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, aka “povertyskola,” is a poet and teacher and the formerly houseless, incarcerated daughter of Dee and mama of Tiburcio, author of “Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America” and many more and co-founder of Homefulness, a homeless people’s solution to homelessness. Reach her at www.lisatinygraygarcia.com or @povertyskola on Twitter/X.
