Elders

We stood strong youth and elders together walking, calling, singing manifesting spirit. The spirit of our African ancestors, our indigenous ancestors, our Freedom Riders, Our Freedom walkers, into the hallowed, marbled floors of City Hall to save another Black family from forced Out Migration.

(Image of Remigio Fraga with Idriss Stelley Foundation outside the Ellis Act Evictions are Elder Abuse action sponsored by POOR Magazine, Idriss Stelley Foundation, The Manilatown Heritage Foundation and the SF Bay View)

Co-editors Note-We evicted peoples wish these conscious senators luck- in the mean-time we continue with filing criminal charges on the spekkkulators)

*** PRESS RELEASE ***

MAYOR LEE & SENATOR LENO ANNOUNCE LEGISLATION TO AMEND STATE ELLIS ACT LAW TO PROTECT LONG-TIME TENANTS

Painting by Tiffany Aldridge

They were posted up at every cubicle. Threatening, over-muscled, green beret-like necks bulging with implied violence. Police officers, swat team members? The miniscule 1940’s doorways could barely hold them and there they stood anyway, watching us as we filed in to meet with the San Francisco District Attorney to file criminal charges of elder abuse under penal code 368, on the speculators using the Ellis Act to evict elders for profit.

The bespectacled Samoan

Preacher with the gray suit

And glorious head of hair

To match broke it down:

It’s not about the developers

And gentrifiers and the

People who crash Dia De Los

Muertos and eat Thai food

Tuesday, February 7 2014

Papa Bear leaned forward in his seat, with elbows on knees. Folks at the Community Newsroom directed their attention, faces, and cameras toward him, POOR Magazine's "Panhandler Reporter." He then began reporting the news, his monthly state of San Francisco summary distilled from his daily studies and experiences of Geary Blvd.

A majority  of the people on SSI and Social Security, including this poverty scholar, want to pay back the community by working regular jobs, and pay back into the tax system and pay back the debt I owe the society.

The POOR magazine' Indigenous News-making Circle/ Community Newsroom was really fierce last week when a man came and talked about the injustice committed against his relative, Leonard Peltier. As a young African-American woman I have been born and bred on corporate media and until i came to POOR's People Skool I hadn't even heard of Leonard Peltier, which, sadly is similar to many of my peers,

Newsroom is packed this month, filled with stories.  Papa Bear comes late— says he had gotten a ticket on the bus trying to get to our sacred monthly circle.  As he sits down next to me, I can feel his anguish. And I feel my own deep sadness, because when he speaks I hear what he’s really saying: that he wants to go home, that he is tired of living a hard life, that he wants to rest.