Gutting the Revolution: Krapitalism is Trying to Kill the Redstone Labor Temple
By Tiny/PovertySkola
Petition to save the temple: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/petition-to-save-the-redstone-labor-temple-as-a-community-center-peticion-para-salvar-el-templo-laboral-de-redstone-como-centro-comunitario?source=direct_link&
Door after Door opened to nothing - Emptiness is the gentriFUKers idea of Best But what is left ? All of us wrecked, unable to rest While bulldozers doze off cuz they barely slept Room after room of dismantled nests Lives lived in here- eyes cried in here - prayers were laid down and wealthhoarders were disrobed and tried in here. Unfair Labor was fought and died in here- replaced with unions and civil Rights so all of us could work without fear - this is the Herstory of archives and dreams - sacred memories that belong to the trees From poor peoples theatre, Living wages, Trans visionaries and dreamers, a temple of work Migrante /indigenous warriors, green cabs and Ronnie Goddmans Art- this building is all that is resistance and its beiing crushed by the deadly hush of blood-stained dollar lust The Redstone Labor Temple must live - Don’t let the gentriFUKers Win ..tiny
“I was dealing with domestic violence and i came to this building and Catholic Charities helped me,” said sister warrior for the people Guillermina Castellanos, “this building saved my life,” Guillermina told her story at a protest to Save the Redstone Labor Temple, a 107 year old building in the Mission district of San Francisco, led by tenants and community that. Guillermina
went onto explain that the Redstone was a very important resource for women like her in crisis.
After years of struggling with an antagonistic, wealth-hoarding scamlord who “owned the building, but was always trying to sell the building for millions of dollars, subsequent promises that were made by other organizations and even resolutions made by SF poltricksters to “save the Redstone” the sacred Redstone was sold in 2021 to a corpRape Real Esnakkke devil-oper, Aurora Lights LLC.
After a pandemic-fueled slow bleed of scam-lording that included renovations, locking up of all the community theatres so the community could never use them and low-key urging to all of its tenants to relocate, in 2023 they launched a fullscale onslaught of hell on this delicate eco-system of liberation. Beginning with a visual and actual gutting of the whole building and all the rooms and all of the sacred seen and unseen uses and an “app” instead of a key to open the building which the scamlord CONtrols remotely in some SciFi office building iteration of driverless cars, they have now descended on the last two remaining tenants, WRAP and Living Wage with strong-arm tactics, telling them they have to relocate to inaccessible units that would make it impossible for them to even operate their movements. POOR Magazine still shares a small office space in the Living Wage unit for our San Francisco Theatre of the POOR workshops for houseless and very low-income San Francisco residents, and we have alot of disabled workshop participants who would not be able to attend a workshop in an inaccessible unit.
The violence of this desecraiton reminds me of the desecraiton of 1st peoples shellmounds. It is violent and careless and exemplary of Kolonial Krapitalism stomping on anything and everything sacred in pursuit of the blood-stained dollar. The walls of the Redstone are covered in ancient murals of labor resistance. The halls are filled with the ancestors of every struggle that ever went down in Occupied Yelamu aka San Francisco and as Roger, the buildings manager for many years used to teach, it is literally on top of an Ohlone Shellmound.
This building saved this povertyskola’s life and the life of so many poor and houseless, migrante, indigenous, Black and Brown poverty skolaz who slept here, hid out here, lived here and worked here.
“Mission Agenda, The National Campaign to Stop the Vietnam War, Womens Inc, Prison Focus, a prison rights organization, Theatre Rhinoceros, Luna Sea Theatre, El/ La and more….” Karl Kramer of Living Wage Coalition along with musician and warrior for the people Francisco Hererra gave a bi-lingual herstory of the hundred years of labor resistance at the Redstone from a truck parked outside on 16th street at the protest in Septmeber to save it. Both of them mentioned scores of revolutionary and grassroots organizations. To sum up their oral history, the Redstone housed almost every movement that ever did anything to resist the violent, extractive system of Krapitalism. And now Krapitalism is trying to kill it. Mmmm
San Francisco is littered with the sorrow of its endless removal of the sacred. Ever since the Dot com sickness, grasrroots movements and organizations have been scrambling just to stay safely housed so we can serve, organize and rise up. POOR Magazine is one of those movements.
In 2009 POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE a poor/houseless, indigenous people-led movement of education, liberation, art, media and advocacy was being evicted and gentriFUKed out of a tiny run-down office in the Tenderloin district of SF at 7th and Market so the new building owners could turn the building into a luxury hotel. We as fellow poor people ran five programs to support poor and houseless people with cultural art, theatre, media education and direct advocacy. We were a revolutionary movement building the notion of Poverty Scholarship - Poor people-led theory and trying to activate solutions for us by us. People counted on us. We counted on us. We needed somewhere safe. Living Wage Coaliiton told us about space at the Redstone. We visited and walked around the beautiful building, we prayed and spoke to the ancestors. We saw our warrior comrades in houseless peoples liberation - Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) also in the building. We knew we were home.
In the years we were safely and lovingly housed at the Redstone we authored the Declaration of Interdependence, The Poverty Heroes Mural, The MamaFesto for Change, the original plans for Po Peoples Radio PNN-KEXU 96.1fm, the blueprints and Peoples Agreement for ( a MamaFesto that guides us to this day in our creation of Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness
We led hundreds of writing, theatre, media and radio workshops and published POOR Press publications for and by scores of low/ no-income and houseless youth and adults. We collaborated with our comrades from Idriss Stelley Foundation, also in the building and many more and held our weekly Street Newsroom and hosted community skolaz and warriors like Jeff Adachi and Papa Bear and more.
This building is Life.
Please sign and send to others this petition
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