Tag: POOR Magazine

There are so many more terrorizing things in this poverty skola’s life than a virus. Before you read on, please turn your phone, TV, radio or computer off for just a minute. Take a deep breath and give your corporate media-terrorized mind a rest.

It’s hard to hope – when every time you do, you get slapped down. Now is the time to step out on faith. Vote Bernie! Vote 100% (that means YOU)!

In February, Poor Press will be releasing eight powerful and beautiful books, including “Black Disabled Ancestors” by Leroy Moore, “Unwritten Law” by Dee Allen, “When Mama and Me Lived Outside” by Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, “Disturbance Within Myself” by Audrey Candycorn, “Chimalli” by Muteado Silencio, “Horse Tuuxi: My Name is Kai!” by Angela Taylor, “Everybody’s Jesus” by Katana Barnes – the most diverse Poor book-making program in the history of Poor Press

Moms 4 Housing and all the beautiful people who stood together with the Moms are sheroes and heroes who manifested something capitalism tries very hard to kill: People Power. But they also manifested MAMA POWER, which, like all of us mamaz and daughters know, can take down a developer or real estate snake any day.

On Martin Luther King Day, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020, at 10:00 a.m., noted Bay Area grassroots leaders will host a protest rally at the Oakland City Church to highlight the plight of the unhoused.

The moms have declared they are staying and are putting a massive call out to everyone to join them tomorrow, Monday, Jan. 13, at 6:30 a.m., at “MomsHouse,” 2928 Magnolia St., West Oakland, to keep a roof over their children’s heads. Homelessness is cold, terrifying, painful … and violent!

At thanks-taking time, we are not asking for a friggin’ one day of charity; we are asking for liberated land, de-criminalization and our own self-determiNATION so we can solve our own problems and build movements and long-term solutions like Homefulness. We will not continue to be swept to death.

Poverty skolaz’ schools are everywhere. Our teachings are essential, haphazard and immediate, fluid and static. Our research is based on our lives and our experience, our solutions, our vast knowledge of what works and what can work.

As a professor with UC Berkeley’s Global Poverty and Practice Program, this is the book I have been waiting for, and that I want all of my students to read. I am so grateful for the effort that has gone into the writing and publishing of this essential book.

I often tell people to imagine if someone came into your home and snatched the roof off your bedroom, dorm room or home, leaving you exposed, over-seen, no longer covered. In other words, no longer “safe” to be messy, unorganized, unclean or just human, because now you no longer were living with what housed people live with every day and take completely for granted, the privilege of privacy.

Poor, homeless and disabled scholars are releasing a book sharing their truly innovative solutions to homelessness and poverty and launch a national theatre production on poverty, homelessness and criminalization of poor people. This book and curriculum release will be accompanied by a series of theatre and poetry workshops in community centers, schools and jails with other homeless and formerly homeless communities.

“This (conservatorship law) sounds like slavery to me,” reported Memphis, houseless poverty skola reporter for POOR Magazine’s RoofLESS radio after a terrifying town hall on SB1045, the new anti-poor people conservatorship legislation that was just signed into law by then-Gov. Brown and will be enacted as a “demonstration” in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Unhoused residents of Berkeley who live in RVs and vans on the occupied streets of Berkeley (called Huchuin Lisjan by the Ohlone, the first people) wrote their stories in POOR Magazine’s Street-Writing Workshop held weekly on the corner of Eighth and Harrison streets. This powerful community, who call themselves Berkeley Friends on Wheels have dealt with harassment, politricksters and ongoing criminalization for doing nothing but living humbly and cleanly in their RVs.

“You were right, Tiny. Interdependence does work for us poor mamas.” My revolutionary poet, fellow welfareQUEEN at POOR Magazine and co-founder of Homefulness and KEXU radio Laure McElroy and I spoke quietly on the phone in the kind of intimacy befitting deep sister comrades like we were and had been for many years of deep struggle and deep resistance. Writing this today is so hard for me between tears and pain. I’m so unsure of how to go on without her love. On Sunday, Sept. 23, we held a multi-nationed tree-planting ceremony in Laure’s honor at Homefulness.

The violent Separation Nation didn’t begin with this generation --- with these babies --- or their incarceration --- The Separation Nation began with the theft of Turtle Island --- and the humans who lived here and thrived on it. As we grieve, show up, demand and scream for the freedom of these incarcerated babies, please don’t get confused by the blur of this present genocidal history. Take a refresher course with me through the violent herstories that built this stolen land – and continue to assist in the realization and manifestation of the most important aspects of what I call the Separation Nation.

“We are surrounded by Black cops,” said Leroy Moore, with POOR Magazine and Krip Hop Nation, about the 15 Black cops who surrounded us houseless and formerly houseless mamas, uncles, children and elders from the Poor People’s March when we walked humbly into the Washington, D.C., office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demand our housing back. “We are here to meet with Ben Carson,” we all said.

There we were – the unhoused, the evicted, the displaced, the disabled, Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor white, youth and elders on one accord, all colors, all nations, all cultures, all ages, all abilities. The 2018 Poor Peoples March on Washington was originally launched by impacted poor, houseless and formerly unhoused people from the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign 15 years ago. Poor folks walked in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor Peoples March on Washington in 1968.

by Tiny   What is a shero who never gave up & NEVER let go never stood down, sold out or took the politrickster road who breathed liberation from...

This is not charity. It is the right to have access to education, not only in the US but all over the world. This was our goal when Krip-Hop Nation of the USA and journalist Ronald Galiwango of Uganda, Africa, teamed up to write about a single father raising two disabled daughters who needed basic things to survive like wheelchairs and help to pay for the oldest daughter to go to school to become “a disabled advocate like Leroy Moore of Krip-Hop Nation!” Eunice Atim told Ronald in a video interview.

It’s because of this ongoing and increasing hate, othering, criminalizing and politricking that I and other poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine work so hard every day to manifest a homeless people’s solution to homelessness aka Homefulness. This hate and increased pimping/politricking is also why myself and other unhoused and formerly unhoused poverty skolaz are working on the Homeless 4 Mayor Campaign in San Francisco 2018.