Tag: Lisa Gray-Garcia aka Tiny

Homefulness is a poor people-led revolution that has taken root in Oakland. Homefulness can also be called humbleness. It is a sweat-equity model of housing that honors the land that was stolen from our ancestors. As history has shown us with poor people-led revolutions and movements of the past, there are those who will try to undermine a humble revolution. This manipulation is rooted in envy. It has no place in our humble revolution known as Homefulness. We will continue to live the revolution by any means necessary.

The standing-room-only town hall was yelling above the police as they spoke about the murder on March 21 of young Raza organizer, City College of San Francisco student and beloved son de la mision (of the Mission), Alejandro Nieto, 28, by police in Bernal Heights Park. Join the march on Saturday, March 29, for Alex Nieto at 2 p.m. from Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St., to Bernal Heights Park, San Francisco.

Whack, tap, crack – the sound of the steel police flashlight on a car window is like no other, and it always had the same effect on homeless me and mama: blood-curdling fear. I thought about our constant police harassment, abuse and eventual arrest for the sole act of being houseless in Amerikkka when I heard about South Carolina’s “new” law that officially made it illegal to be homeless in downtown Columbia, S.C.

To write with laughter, heart, fire and humility – to get those words down and draw the reader in – to make the reader warm with the fire of poetry, wet with the tears of memory, full with the soup of experience – leaving the reader satisfied and inspired to change the world – that is what the writer does.

I was served with a rent increase of $700. And so me, my son and the other poor mamas and children who lived together in Mamahouse no longer dream, think, rest or live there. I work so hard in my mind and heart every day to not take my son through this sorrow.

District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly, champion of the have-nots in San Francisco for a decade, has passed the torch and endorsed James Keys, his longtime legislative assistant and campaign coordinator, to be his successor. “James was by my side through my toughest battles,” Daly said.

PeopleSkool is a six-week seminar of Poor Magazine, an indigenous, community-based, revolutionary news organization. A group of eager students of all races and ages meet twice a week and share from one another. We learn about migration, about disability, about poverty. Summer Session begins June 15. Register now!

When I heard about the revolutionary resistance of our South African brothers and sisters in Abahlai baseMjondolo (The Shack Dwellers Union) in South Africa, who successfully overturned the Slums Act, which would have given South African police the ability to legally demolish, destroy and evict poor people from their shacks without notice, I cried.

During the first 200 years of the theft of indigenous people's land, destruction of resources and death of peoples and communities known as European colonization in the U.S., the missionary ideals and practices of Christian charity were replaced by the capitalist and patriarchal pattern of philanthropy.