Landlessness/Houselessness

“Paha Sapa, The heart of everything that is” at least that is what my people, the Lakota Sioux Nation, say about our homeland.  The dark black rolling hills filled with the smell of pure oxygen thanks to the pine trees, sticky with sweet smelling sap made by my peoples as a syrup source, small clear creeks filled with minnows.

“You can’t come in,” the oddly butler-esque dressed sheriff stopped me, my 12 year old sun Tiburcio and literally hundreds of members of the “public” at the door to King Lee’s (Not at all) “public” inauguration.

“We were told it was open to the public,” I countered, 

“It is,” a weird silence ensued and he looked above us. 

“So if its public, we are the public and we would like to go in,” I continued.

Side by Side 

This year, 5^th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

When I was a kid, my father would make me sit with him and watch old western movies on TV.  Those movies would be aired in the afternoon—cowboys on horses shooting at things—cowboys, stagecoaches, whiskey bottles—and, of course, Indians.  I looked more like an Indian than a cowboy and my dad would sit, his attention, his mind, his spirit inhabiting each scene, as if he’d been on horseback with a six shooter firing into the expanse of sky as the wild prickly cacti bore witness.  I’d see horses, badges, tumbleweed and gamblers on our little TV set

Gripping the steering wheel so tightly my hands hurt, I saw my mama so many years before, looking straight ahead to the road, trying to not let the mountain of tears crush her soft face. Now it was me and my sun alone on the highway, 30 years later, trying  to drive away from my torn and  crumbled  heart..

Patrick Wetter, brother, son, mechanic, long-time friend to many, and loving uncle, was just 25 years old, and living with his father, when he was brutally killed by Stockton police on January 6, 2015.  Patrick's death, unlike his life, was extremely violent.  A police dog was sicked on him, he endured six gunshots to his trunk, he was struck with a tazer.  In life, Patrick stood 6 foot 5 inches tall, and his friends and family refer to him as a “gentle giant” and he had the nickname of Tiny.

STATEMENT: For Mario Woods and all crimes of displacement and police terror against our poor, Black, Brown and disabled bodies we, the most impacted, are calling for the resignations of the San Francisco Mayor and Police Chief

There have been at least two "frets" in San Francisco in the past few months. A fret is where police go out in the poor neighborhoods – SOMA, the Tenderloin – and stop anyone who looks poor and/or houseless.