The Scam Called Rent With or Without a Virus

We live in tents cuz we cant afford your scam called rent Yea rent is a lie- paid by us all cuz we colonized into believing like its analgous with breathing That someone owns mama earth drumming it into us since birth No- buying a small piece of her dont make u safe in fact it just makes u party to the pillage and rape All we need to do is work hard and get our own no you dont - that aint set in stone all you weekday revolutionaries wit trust funds and land stealing parents who stay quiet in organzing circles about where your money come from and how u even have the time to protest and walk liberaSHUN U culpible All of us who save and save cuz thats all we been taught bout to b safe from scamlords and their endless lying ways income property- Rent increases, Evictions and interest rates Bankksters & real ESTATE Snakes Buying and selling - pimping and playing every single day Yea i say Cancel Rent- And in the same breath i say UnSell Mama Earth And the peoples who have privilege & trust funds and hoarded resources redistributing to those of us who dont so together we can all liberate whether we houseless or housed indebted to bankkkster loan Follow the lead of 1st Nations warriors Like we do at homefulness who have protected mama earth since back in the day Ending the reign of terror and Mama Earth rape then we might be able to talk about being safe… "Our Landlord is telling us we will be evicted if we dont pay the rent by April 1st," said Merriam X, one of the indigenous refugees from the other side of the false borders who come to Homefulness Sliding Scale Cafe to receive free diapers, food and legal advocacy, "We are all afraid, she concluded. POOR Magazine jailhouse lawyers all went to work to support her and her family so they wouldn't continue to be harassed by their scamlord who, just like many scamlords in this time doesnt seem to care about the state, county and city wide moratorium against evictions put in place since the shelter in place mandate began. " I am living here with my daughter, Fatima, one of the tenants of 3080 Richmond spoke about her struggle to pay rent in the middle of this pandemic, " we are out of work, and we have no money," The 37 tenants of 3080 Richmond are all hard-working people, some care-givers, small business people, contractors, working -class , very low-income, and all working before the pandemic and now, out of work and out of rent. Alameda county put an eviction moratorium in place, which albeit requires the tenant to pay the rent in the future, which means eventually we poor people will face eviction cause if you dont have the money now - you arent gonna have it in the future. But it does give protections to tenants to at least not be evicted right now "They are harassing tenants all the time with 3 day notices, towing cars, its so wrong," said Momi Palabraz, one of the tenants of 3080 Richmond , a poverty skola and organizer with Self-Help Hunger Program and POOR Magazine who helped to organize he building when they started getting this insane harassment. Listening to Momi, Merriam and Fatima i was reminded of me and mamaz lifelong struggle,"I dont think we have enough for the rent.... " when mama would say this, which she said so many times throughout my childhood since she lost her job and ended up on the street, my heart would start beating faster and i would literally become terrorized. "Is there anything else we can sell?" It was always the same story, we would pay the rent for as long as we made money in our street based business and then something would happen, one of us would get sick, the hoopties we always had would break down and the cost to fix them would break us, we wouldn't sell enough t-shirts on the street or a bill collector would find us. Whether it was motel rooms or apartments, we would be kicked out ALL the TIME and end up back where we started, sleeping in our cars when we had one or on park benches, bus benches or shelter beds. This was life from 11-22 years old. We tried everything all the time and worked really hard to get ahead and somehow, some way would end up outside. And the original reason myself and three other single mamaz in the mission launched MamaHouse back in 2007 in the mission District of San Francisco, as we had all been evicted, dealt with homelessness and were unable to afford the gentriFUKation rents and this work eventually led to POOR Magazine launching Hoemfulness- in Deep East Oakland. "We are homeless with children, and these homes are just sitting here vacant, said Dominque, one of the powerFULL members of Moms4Housing who launched a full scale resistance to the haording of empty homes and the rent strike in East Oakland that happened before covid19 taking over abandoned houses that real esnakes were sitting on just to make money on. Income property they call it. Moms4Housing and ACCE are working now on a CancelRent campaign. From the original Lords of the Land of feudal societies stealing indigenous peoples land and then charging them to live on their own land in their own homes or they would be evicted to settler colonial theft of Turtle Island, and genocide waged on indigenous peoples we have all been told this is the way to "make it" and meanwhile big and small "management companies like Raj Properties, the "owners" and terrorizers of 3080 Richmond continue to get away with abuse, mis-management, harassment, uninhapbitable conditions and on and on. Now, with over 16 million people filing for unemployment, it has become even more crucial that the demands to cancel rent, mortgage and utility payments are met. Together we are building a powerful movement of renters, homeowners and community members across the country to win homes for all. These demands are not just to help our communities get through this crisis, but to ensure a #DebtFreeFuture and healthy, safe, thriving communities for us all.... these words are from the website from www.cancelrent.us. On April 22nd, they waged a national call to politricksters and communities to lift up this movement and are now organizing for May Day. My only hope with movements like this is that they center, include and vision their work in the spaces where us very poor tenants dwell. Us tenants who like me and my mama, were not "woke" or politicized. Did not understand or overstand the inherent problems with Krapitalism ( as i call it now) but are terrified of being evicted. This is what i call Poverty Scholarship- and goes back to lived, not just learned experience of struggle and that additionally all of the work surrounding land and rent theft be centered in 1st Nations honoring and recognition that indigenous peoples experienced this first form of removal, eviction and gentriFUKation -called colonization. "Its ok if you don't have the rent," After years of evictions and homelessness, the only thing that "worked" for me and mama was meeting a landlord who didnt evict us when we didn't have the rent money. for the first time, our rent was canceled. We are asking people to stand with the tenants of 3080 Richmond tomorrow, Monday at 3pm for a Zoom press conference and then at 1pm in drive-by caravans in front of the real eSnakes office of Raj Properties at 520 Van Buren In Oakland - for more information on the Zoom press conference or the MayDay event-click here- For more information on the May Day action - go to www.poormagazine.org/calendar