Landlessness/Houselessness

Four years ago I met the love of my life. As a 62 year old male bachelor/Hippie Madman, I met the love of my life.  We got hitched, I’ll just say our life together is perfect as a saltnpepper low income senior. With senior and disability problems. I am not saying we don’t debate. We do that. Quite loudly sometimes. Outside of that we get along great. As I say, she has spiced up my life.

Editors Note: Jose H. Villarreal is one of several power-FUL PNNPlantation prison correspondents.

Its tough these days.  The economy has been rough for years.  Especially for low income residents of the city, mentally and physically disabled folk, and an under educated youth.  These are the people who have made up the back bone of the Cannabis industry for the last 10-15 years.  Many landowners, growers, and field workers in the Cannabis industry in Northern California are on government disability and use the cash economy to ‘cheat’ the government so they can live a decent living.  Its hard to even get a space in a trailer park when your only income

For the past few months, every other Thursday, CalTrans alongside the Berkeley Police Department and the California Highway Patrol have been pushing out houseless communities out of their encampment space from under the overpass at Gilman Street in Berkeley.  Most of these communities are the casualty of being pushed out of the Albany Bulb and having been forced out of Downtown Berkeley (Shattuck Avenue corridor) because of the newly adopted local city ordinances that discriminate and marginalize houseless and poor communities.

Like thousands of people, I have worked, cultivated and planted seeds, never to see or enjoy the fruits of our labor. We have made and cleaned the most beautiful gardens that I have seen in my life in the mountains of Berkeley for people with money. Earning $10 an hour, we have built and managed houses with immense beauty, only to never see them again.

Recently while Walking on Division St. in San Francisco with laundry and groceries by a tent city, I was approached by a young black female news reporter from one of the local mainstream news station affiliates. She was accompanied by another gentleman of African descent and a camera man of Asian descent.

She excitedly asked me as if she heard good news that I should also be excited about “Are you moving?"

To which I replied, am I moving?

“Geeet on the ground, Get on the Ground…” Moving in slowly like they were on a hunt.  High-powered weapons pointed down. the descendants of slave-catchers aka Po’Lice stalk an indigenous man humbly sitting on Shotwell street holding a soccer ball.

Targeted, unhoused, on the run, doing things I call underground economic strategies, to survive the Intentional poverty, present and historical trauma rampant in Amerikkklan. This is the other narrative about stolen, Po’Lice murdered sister-mama-daughter Jessica Nelson-Williams, cornered and murdered by the paid agents of the state (PoLice) in the Bayview on May 19th 2016 . The terrifying but very true aspect of her murder is that everyday of her life she was under surveillance.

“What is the amerikkkan dream? families risking their life for the amerikkkkan dream, the same dream all of his hear about but few of us get to see ..” Muteado Silencio, Po’ Poet & Land Liberator with POOR Magazine/Homefulness