Tag: POOR Magazine

The police line was hard, boot to boot, helmet to helmet, unmoving, bringing the threat of death with each gaze. The opposing line was a circle and it was moving, with resistance. And strength and people power. We were mamaz, uncles, daddys, sisters and brothers in solidarity, and we won’t stop fighting, we won’t stop walking, we won’t stop speaking until this ongoing police murder of our babies is over. “Our children are being stalked and murdered in cold blood, and it cannot continue,” said Oscar Grant's Uncle Bobby.

The restraining order barring DeBray (Fly Benzo) Carpenter from the Cahill construction site and the stay away order barring Fly’s presence at Mendell Plaza are SFPD examples of this nation’s conspiracy to mass incarcerate and control the lives and the deaths of the young, Black and male in America. A victory for Fly Benzo is a victory for us all. Pack the courtroom Wednesday, May 30, 1:30 p.m., at the San Francisco Superior Court, 400 McAllister St., Department 514. Occupy Fly Benzo’s courtroom for us all.

“This is survival radio, without- it-us-po’-folks-might-die radio, police-harrassed-criminalized-and-under-attack radio. Welcome to Poor News Network; thats PNN, not CNN, people.” – Introduction to the Poor News Network show once heard regularly on KPFA’s old Morning Show, now heard occasionally on KPFA’s Morning Mix

Lying to a cop or concealing the truth from one is the equivalent of assaulting a cop. Shaleem Tindle withheld his identity from cops for fear of the deadly consequences that face young men of color who encounter the police for even the smallest perceived or fabricated infractions.

At POOR Magazine, where marginalized people come center stage to tell their stories, a crowd gathered in Mama Dee and Uncle Al’s Café in POOR’s headquarters for the Fifth Annual Poetry and Music Battle of ALL of the Sexes on Valentine’s Day 2012 to hear the powerful and passionate spoken words of many poets, including these first and second place winning poems.

This powerful event resonated deeply, bringing meaning to the “occupy” movement and showing that its power is to support existent fights and organizing efforts for silenced peoples that have been raging on for years as well as to shed light on the increasingly po’lice controlled state that we all live under.

Lisa Alexander, the mother of a young man with autism, Reginald "Neli" Latson, has been fighting for justice and her son’s freedom from wrongful incarceration since May 24, 2010. Lisa was convicted on Jan. 10, 2012, of a misdemeanor and jailed by the same district attorney who prosecuted Neli.

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.

Glen Cove was a large village and ceremonial grounds that was used by many different tribes throughout the Bay Area. This area has been deemed, declared and even federally recognized as sacred to indigenous peoples. Many Natives alive today have ties to ancestors buried there.

On Saturday, July 16, a 19-year-old young man, Kenneth Harding, from Seattle, Wash., came to San Francisco at the wrong time. He rode a transit vehicle to Bayview Hunters Point’s Palou station only to exit and have an encounter with two police officers about paying his $2 fare.

We sat together: elders, youth, workers, students and folks. We were on our way to a low-paid job, an overpriced university, a pre-gentrified home and a public school. There were laughter and shouts, murmurs and silence. Then suddenly, there were nine heavily armed police officers and fare inspectors walking through the crowded 14 Mission Muni line. One stopped in front of me and my son.

When police stopped a teenager stepping off the T-train yesterday to show his transfer as proof he’d paid his fare – $2 at most – he ran from them. They shot him as many as 10 times in the back and neck, according to witnesses. For many long minutes, as a crowd watched in horror, the boy, who had fallen to the sidewalk a block away, lay in a quickly growing pool of blood writhing in pain and trying to lift himself up as the cops trained their guns on him and threatened bystanders. Come to the press conference and speakout Monday, July 18, noon, at Third & Oakdale, San Francisco.

One of the most interesting publishing ventures in the San Francisco Bay Area is the POOR Press project. This revolutionary bi-lingual enterprise grew out of POOR magazine, a journal of poetry, polemics and righteous articles created by the inimitable Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, the indomitable force and magnet of affirmationof the people on the street, the economically poorest section of this society and her late mama who is alwaysstill close to Tiny’s heart and always evoked by her in a continuous solidarity.

From removal to reparations ... from houselessness to HOMEFULNESS...From indigenous lands stolen to budget crumbs throw-en

Glen Cove is acknowledged by the Greater Vallejo Recreational District and the City of Vallejo to contain many burials and to be important culturally, yet as of Thursday night they were still were planning to move forward with plans to build a toilet and parking lot on this sacred site.

“Police should not be allowed to pick from the ‘poisonous tree,’” said Jeff Adachi, public defender for San Francisco. Adachi explained that the poisonous tree was a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally.

Crying “Have a Heart, Save Our Homes,” a large Bay Area coalition marched in a driving rain from City Hall to the San Francisco Federal Building – Causa Justa/Just Cause, San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE and many more.

The Fourth Annual Poetry Battle of All the Sexes was hosted by your favorite revolutionary poets, media-makers, poverty scholars and cultural workers at POOR Magazine. Here are the winners’ poems - by Jewnbug, Vivian Thorp and Dee Allen.

Join the rally Tuesday, Feb. 22, 12 noon, on the north steps of the Capitol in Sacramento to oppose California budget cuts to CalWORKS and MediCal that will have a deadly impact on children and families.

On Feb. 18, 7 p.m., at Modern Times Bookstore, Krip-Hop Nation will present an author panel of new books by Black disabled writers and friends, including Toni Hickman of Texas, Adarro Minton of New York, Allen Jones of San Francisco and friends of Krip-Hop Nation, DC Curtis and Bones Kendall of Los Angeles.