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By: Meiriely Amaral Mama Cheryl Canson’s story is one of resistance. She spoke on Po' People's Revolutionary Newz Hour: Keeping the "A's" even if Poor Peoples Cant Stay on April 13, 2021 (listen here) about her experience at Canyon Rim Apartments in San Diego. “While we’re fighting a pandemic we’re fighting amongst each other, and that’s really a saddening thing and we don't realize the solution to a lot of our issues is unity” - Mama Cheryl Mama Cheryl has been living at Canyon Rim for the past 2 years. When she first moved in she got a lot of glares and stares, and there was a lot of racism and prejudice. She is Black and the neighborhood had few people who looked like her, and ever since moving in she’s been getting harassed. The goal of this has been to get her uncomfortable enough to move. Some of her neighbors have used glares and mean mugs to show their displeasure of her moving there and becoming their neighbor, but Mama Cheryl is going to stand because she is not ashamed in her Blackness. She was thinking about moving, but then she got connected with the San Diego Tenants Union. They have stood with her united, and let her know that she’s not alone, fighting side by side with her. Mama Cheryl has a history of mental illness in her family, which sometimes leads to loud moments and that’s just something she deals with. Sometimes she’s told neighbors in the past about this but it’s a catch 22 - do you let your neighbors know about your situation or do you not for fear of targeting. None of these things can change, not her race nor her mental illness, and Mama Cheryl is not going to fight against that. “I am what I am ... I’m sure you’re proud of who you are but I’m not bothering you, Ima let you be who you are and be proud of who you are, you know, but allow me to do the same” - Mama Cheryl There was an initial complaint made against Mama Cheryl, and legal aid was initially representing her, but it was the San Diego Tenants Union who was able to find mistakes in the original complaint. Shout out to the tenants union in San Diego!! People united can conquer anything. Since this complaint wasn’t answered in time, it was rendered invalid. It’s still unclear to Mama Cheryl the exact details of the process she is in, but she knows she is waiting for a court hearing. She got together with the tenants union and knocked on doors, together they were able to empower others by being united, showing her fellow neighbors that if they should experience or were experiencing any of the things she was, that they were not alone. In the pandemic, there are laws preventing landlords/scamlords from using lack of payment to evict people, so these scamlords look for other reasons to evict people. Mama Cheryl was paying her rent electronically, but they blocked her access and wouldn’t accept her rent, so they clearly wanted her to move for other reasons. When that initial complaint was filed, the poLICE came to her door to “investigate”, and it was clear that the noise and arguing that was complained about didn’t exist. The only explanation for how this has gotten so full blown is that the office has been discriminating as well. Especially because in a building of 197 tenants or so, where she was open from the start about her mental illness history, they could have placed her in a more accommodating space around more tolerating neighbors, but they chose not to listen to her. Mama Cheryl is in good hands in her resistance, and in her unity with the people through the tenants union.

By Tiburcio Garcia and Amir Cornish/Youth poverty Skola reporters for POOR Magazine (Editor's Note: Tiburcio and Amir are students at Deecolonize Academy- the poor and indigenous people -led liberation school on the sacred land we houseless poverty skolaz call Homefulness) The metallic crunching fills the air, the screeching sound of metal destroying metal pierces the skin harder than the whipping ocean breeze. Homes, belongings, memoires, being crushed like tin cans by the city of Marin County, the people that resided in them for generations being shuffled around while forced to watch everything they knew be destroyed. Preventing this from happening on a larger scale, preventing this from happening to thousands of other houseless and poor people was the reason behind Tuesdays #SupportNotSweeps action in front of CalTrans. “People living on their boats for hundreds of years are now in jeopardy as much as people living under freeways,” a houseless sailor yells, looking back at the corporate building that stands as a monument of terror. “The Harbormaster is smashing boats, the City Council and the Counsellors are agreeing to it and there's tons of money being made on the backs of the people. This man, along with many others who came out to speak out on their situations of being harassed by entities just like CalTrans, who don’t care if human lives are being put at risk because of their actions as long as they make profit. We youth and family poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine re-ported and sup-ported on the Support Not Sweeps action through theatre and presence. The theatre acted out the very real violence so many of us at POOR Magazine have dealt with and still deal with - people being forcibly removed in the form of a Theater of the POOR, where some of us acted out a very familiar scene, houseless people in tents being harassed by cops and DPW officers, the DPW officers chanting louder and louder over the desperate cries of the people, “WE ARE JUST DOING OUR JOBS! WE ARE JUST DOING OUR JOBS!'' I hope that no matter how many times they say that they won't be able to sleep at night. When I was younger, me and my mother were houseless, evicted over and over again in the city of San Francisco. I was never on the streets, but we always knew from our friends and family the violence of the sweeps that happened then and continue to happen nearly a decade later. Then, Homefulness was born out of a dream from my grandmother's head, from years of teaching people with race and class privilege to give reparations. Now, we are being tied up by the City of Oakland, the same that sweeps so many houseless people, unable to complete a project that will take us and our families out of houselessness. We all went to Oakland City hall to demand Free Homefulness right after the Support Not Sweeps sit in at Caltrans The struggle unhoused people are dealing with now is nothing new - what my mama Tiny calls, the Violence called Sweeps, or the Violence of exposure, swept like we as houseless people are trash.. But it is getting worse. From Liveaboard and poor boat residents to people sleeping in tents, people are constantly being “swept” and thrown away and demolished and displaced. The sweeps and destruction is increasing in the so-called “opening back up” cities all across this state are increasing evictions of houseless peoples from their tents and lands when they have nowhere to go. This #SupportNotSweeps action, near downtown Oakland, filled up nearly the entire block with houseless and poor people exclaiming their human rights and demanding justice. Boats being destroyed in front of their now houseless owners eyes, lifelong belongings being thrown in a dump truck by glass eyed workers, day and day it happens and it never stops. As long as there is money to be made this government will colonize and pillage and destroy to get it. Stand with Liveaboard Mariners as they fight an eviction of their whole encampment where they have been forced to live after their boats were crushed in front of their eyes by the wealth-hoarder poltricksters of so-called Sausalito Marin County - aka Occupied Miwok Territory on Tuesday, June 28th 7am-7pm, 300 Locust Street Sausalito, Cal

By Akil Carrilo and Ziair Hughes/Youth Poverty SKola Reporters for POOR Magazine (Editor's Note: Akil and Ziair are students at Deecolonize Academy- the poor and indigenous people-led liberation school on the sacred land we houseless poverty skolaz call Homefulness) “The poLice pulled my brother out of the car and left his two white friends alone,” said Talika, sister of Roger Allen at a prayer ceremony for Roger Allen and his family that POOR magazine youth and family elders re-ported and sup-ported on last week. On April 7, 2021 Roger Allen was killed by Daly City Police for being Black while changing a tire. He was on the side of the road with a flat tire, a drug task force unit of the Daly City PD pulled up. Instead of helping him with the flat they began to harass him and were trying to search his car for drugs. Roger Allen was with two white friends, the cops only asked Roger Allen’s friends to step out of the car while he was asked to remain inside. One thing led to another and the cops shot and killed Roger Allen. This happened April 7, about 3 months after I am writing his story. This is because there is absolutely no media coverage on his story. Roger Allen’s life is just one of the many Black and Brown lives lost due to police brutality, after they are killed everything is forgotten about and never learned. The only thing left are the tears of the family left behind. George Floyd and Roger Allen are no different but why was George Floyd’s death on national tv, while Roger’s was not on any mainstream media outlet. This happens on a daily basis, so many people are killed by cops that no one knows about. This is a common occurrence, it's not a surprise anymore, just a constant struggle. Living each day with the fear that it might be the last. “A human was killed for a flat tire, we know it's because of systemic white supremacy,” said Conamor Jas, one of the organizers of the beautiful ceremony at Garfield Park, close to where the family lives. The cops used a division tactic with Roger Allen, then separated him from his friend leaving him alone and vulnerable. These tactics have been used for years, this is why Racism exists, to separate us and once we are separated we slowly get picked off. “Daly City and South San Francisco are klan towns - it's dangerous to be a Black person there. Period. The Family of Shaleen Tindle were pulled out of their car in that area and seriously harassed in 2010, which is just one of many experiences we have reported and supported on of this sickkk place,” said Tiny Gray-Garcia, POOR Magazine Co-Editor. All these corporations, laws, cops are all the same people, It's all the same hate and fear. They all see us as pests that need to be squashed. We are nothing to them. This is shown to us on a daily basis when poor, houseless, Black and Brown people get murdered, when we aren't allowed to build solutions for ourselves.

by Lisa Ganser On July 4, 2016, 18-year-old Latino Loved One Anthony Nuñez was in a mental health crisis in his home in San José, CA. Anthony had shot himself, grazing his head with a bullet, was bleeding, and was in desperate need of medical attention. Two pleas for life-saving medical support to 911 were made by Anthony’s family. Even in the life-threatening heat of the moment and with language barriers of Spanish and english, at the 911 dispatcher’s request, the gun was separated from Anthony well before emergency response units arrived. Anthony was no threat to anyone but himself that day, and after shooting himself, was wounded and needed immediate medical assistance. Unfortunately, medical help never made it to Anthony. Instead it was the militarized poLice, who committed to Use of Force before even arriving to the scene, who were first to Anthony. They arrived in massive numbers and in tactical gear and placed snipers, keeping medics and Anthony’s family from him. Instead of providing care and assistance, SJPD officers Michael Santos and Anthony Vissuz violently shot and murdered Anthony Nuñez in his family’s home. Anthony Nuñez is very loved. He was a handsome Mexican teenager who often got haircuts (he loved getting good haircuts). His Momma, Sandy Sanchez, jokes about how he would constantly look in any mirror he saw. If he could see his own reflection, Anthony would look. Anthony loved to dance, to joke around, he liked to rap, he had a lot of friends. Anthony’s family members, including his cousins Natalie and Jason, say that Anthony was human, he made mistakes, like all teenage boys. They say he was an amazing young person, he was working at a new job the day he died, that he was held close by a strong family. Anthony’s death has taken a very serious toll on his family members, especially his Mom, Sandy, who has raised him since his birth Mom died when Anthony was very young. This made Anthony like a brother and sister with his cousins, they were raised together and are his siblings. Sandy is disabled and the impact of grief, trauma, the complete lack of accountability and lies of the poLice and the way it is pushing her family apart is literally killing her. Sandy says that her Son, Anthony, was never treated for any mental illness or psychiatric disability, and no one but Anthony knows what was going on for him that day he died. It is not uncommon for boys and men, especially men of color, to not address or receive care for their mental health. Anthony’s death has forever changed those who love him. Anthony’s death has caused a ripple effect within his immediate and extended family, causing disconnect and serious health problems. Depression got ahold of Anthony Nuñez on July 4, 2016, and ultimately, it is the San José poLice who violently stole his young life. Rest in Power Anthony Nuñez. Please support Justice for Anthony Nuñez by showing up with his family and friends for kourt support at the civil trial at the San Jose, CA Federal Kourt House on June 17th, 2019 at 9am, that trial is expected to run a couple weeks, Mon-Thurs. The family is also fundraising to have a headstone for Anthony at his gravesite. #JusticeforAnthonyNuñez Lisa Ganser is a white, Poor, Disabled, Queer, non binary, artist and organizer living in Olympia, WA on stolen Squaxin, Chehalis and Nisqually land. They are a sidewalk chalker, a copwatcher, a dog walker and the Daughter of a Momma named Sam. Lisa uses they/them pronouns, has survived suicide attempts and poLice terror, and sends deep love to those mourning Anthony’s death.

By Min King X aka Pyeface California Prison Focus and KAGE Universal presents The Hunger Striking for True Freedom Tour August 1 - August 21, 2021 Shining light on California’s Prison Industrial Complex while inspiring meaningful discourse nation-wide. ☠ 163 jails ☠ 86 juvenile facilities ☠ 46 federal and state prisons ☠ 5 ICE detention centers ☠ ♡ Multiple rallies & events ♡ daily pop ups ♡ featured artivists ♡ and a quest for true freedom ♡ “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” Fyodor Dostoevsky “State repression is centralized within the prison system.” Angela Davis The Hunger Striking for True Freedom Tour, a project of California Prison Focus/KAGE Universal (CPF/KAGE) will consist of a caravan of mostly formerly incarcerated activists, including two featured artists and a prison cell on wheels with a piano in it. The caravan of formerly incarcerated artivists will cover over two thousand miles and last for 21 days, passing by many of California’s more than 300 federal, state, county and ICE detention facilities, with multiple organized rallies and interactive art exhibit/tabling/pop-ups along the way. We will use our art, voices, and literature, amplified by our social media presence, to bring awareness to the omnipresence of the California carceral system, the brutality of this system, and its wide-ranging social and economic impacts. Through both organized and impromptu community dialogues, we will present and explore solutions and concrete steps towards ending mass incarceration.. The tour is being organized in solidarity with and in honor of the California Prison Hunger Strikes of 2011, 2012 and 2013 - who starved themselves for 60 days to liberate themselves from decades of torture in Pelican Bay State Prison’s long term solitary confinement units (PBSP SHU). This tour will shine light on their plight, as well the plight of thousands of other incarcerated elders, men, women, children and families who are surviving life in a concrete box, under the guise of “public safety” and under the color of law. We will illuminate the malignant consequences of structural racism and spark meaningful discourse about viable pathways to uncaging California, and the nation as a whole. We will present solutions developed by still imprisoned scholars and activists, including the Prisoner Human Rights Movement Blueprint, Strategic Release and the “Autonomous Infrastructure” of the Abolish Legal Slavery in Amerika Movement (A13-AIM). Featured artivists include CPF/KAGE Co-Director and spoken-flowz artivist, Min King X aka Pyeface, author/artivist Jose’ Villarreal who survived 9 years in Pelican Bay SHU, and world-renowned jazz pianist, Eric Vaughn. In addition there will be skits and two theatrical productions of Solitary Man: A Visit to Pelican Bay State Prison, a two person play with Fred Johnson based on interactions with prisoners in Pelican Bay SHU/solitary confinement. Other artivists and speakers will be joining our caravan and/or rallies and pop ups along the way. We will also be sharing the artwork, poetry and writings and pre-recorded messages of our still imprisoned artivist allies. ** Other people are welcome to join our caravan, however, California Prison Focus is not responsible for travel or lodging arrangements. If you join us, please come prepared! Dates and locations will be posted, at a later date, at www.prisons.org. * This tour was organized in memory and honor of Christian Gomez and Billy Sells who lost their lives during the California Prison Hunger Strikes, and of political prisoner, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, and for his children and family who spent decades waiting and looking forward to the day their family would be whole again. Chip, a member of the Black Panther Party, passed away on April 12, 2021, after serving three times the average sentence for the offense he was imprisoned for. * Political Prisoners and a Legacy of Resistance in California The California Prison Hunger Strikes of 2011, 2012 and 2013 The California Prison Hunger Strikes were organized by the same politically active individuals at Pelican Bay State Prison who were instrumental in the development of California Prison Focus back in 1989, subsequent to the opening of Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP). These men who became our close allies, were tortured for decades with “sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, thought deprivation, social deprivation and cultural deprivation” - as stated by incarcerated writer and activist, Louis Powell, who spent over three decades tortured in PBSP SHU, and is still seeking his freedom today. Five hundred of the California Prison Hunger Strikers at PBSP had been tortured in the SHU for more than ten years and 78 for more than twenty years. Hugo Pinell endured 43 years of solitary confinement torture. While the strikes were successful in that over 30,000 people participated in the 2013 strike, including prisoners and activists from all over the world, who joined in solidarity with the California prison hunger strikers, and the CDCR was forced to release the men from solitary confinement, many of the tortured individuals continue to suffer from the long term effects of SHU PTSD. (See “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Solitary Confinement” by Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa and Baridi J. Williamson, Prison Focus, Spring 2018, Issue 55 or “Pathology of the SHU” by Ifoma Modibo Kambon, Prison Focus, Summer 2017, Issue 52) Most of the organizers of the strike are unable to begin the healing process because so many of them remain imprisoned today, as the result of retaliation by prison guards for their organizing activities and act of resistance. These freedom fighters did not starve themselves only to be moved from one unit to another within the prisons. They did so to gain TRUE FREEDOM for themselves, for their peers, their children, their families and communities, and for all of us! California Prison Focus and the California Prisoner Hunger Strikes In 2015 California Prison Focus sponsored and became a founding member of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. Through our work with the coalition, our investigative legal visits and subsequent quarterly California Prison Reports, as well as our advocacy, direct actions and our publication, Prison Focus, we played an instrumental role in the success of the California Prisoner Hunger Strikes and the Ashker v. Governor of California class action lawsuit, which ended indeterminate solitary confinement in California and led to the release of more than 1,500 people from California SHU,.... via California Prison Focus’ Liberate the Caged Voices and Agreement 2 Come Home campaigns, CPF/KAGE Universal will continue to advocate for the TRUE FREEDOM of our allied and aging artivists who are still locked up today, and all aging prisoners, nationwide. California Political Prisoners Political movements have historically developed and evolved inside U.S. prisons paralleling those which exist outside the prison walls. While some people in prison today are there as a direct result of their political activities before their imprisonment, many others became politicized after arriving in prison. Angela Davis, in a 2007 interview with Prison Focus, explains that imprisoned scholars in California, “were analyzing the conditions of their lives in prison, and came up with new ideas of how to engage in struggle around prison issues and relate these issues to the larger construct of racism and economic exploitation.” Some of the imprisoned individuals who remained active in agitating for social change - educating themselves and those around them - as those described above - have, as Davis went on to explain, “been subjected to another layer of repression precisely because of their politics” Caravan, Rally and event details will be posted at www.prisons.org Featured Artivists

Im getting weak tiny,” said Ronnie, “ Really not sure how long I will last in this heat. Ronnie X, a long time RoofLESSradio reporter called me from his torn tent pitched on the streets of East Oakland in September of 2020 when the Bay Area was experiencing severe heat wave. The hardest part for me is he refused to tell me where he was, “ I don’t want help, im done. ” and then he hung up. I went to all the places he normally slept and couldn’t find him. I know his privacy was important, he never wanted to tell his story publicly but was always there for anyone else who needed help. He had lived through a long life of trauma and struggle, like all of us on the streets, was part of our JailsToStreets WeSearch as he had a home until he was profiled for being Black and disabled in amerikkklan. When he got out of the plantation kkkage he couldn’t jump the hoops to get back inside. Like so many of us you see on the street. And then living outside itself killed him. So many privileged people and non-profiteers make a job and business and lifes work out of the so-called Climate change movement and they NEVER talk about poverty and homelessness - but the reality is as a houseless person I have been learning and humbly living on Mama Earth for years trying to be a good care-taker of her. As the daughter of Taino indigenous, disabled woman I have learned how to walk softly on Mama Earth- Attaabey as Mama Earth is called in Taino and as instructed by my mama have learned and listened to 1st Nations and indigenous elders who have been taking care of Mama Earth for years before wite colonizers stole, desecrated and destroyed so much of it for their own profit and greed. But like is always the case poor people from the Congo to California we are already and will be continue to be the ones suffering, dying, sickened and destroyed by the destruction of our Mama Earth. In deference to his need for privacy i didnt speak on Ronnies tragic death until now, inspired by POOR Magazine family and povertyskola Lisa Ganser who told me yesterday about another poverty skola who just died in the heat wave of their stolen territorial home so-called Olympia, Washington - which just experienced a deadly heat wave. Since 2006 us poverty skolaz have been writing, screaming and telling people about the impact of Mama Earth destruction on our poor and houseless bodies. But really no-one cares about us anyway so why should they care if we die outside from heat or cold exposure, smoke filled air, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. The violent scarcity models already in place causes us to get barely enough food, resources and support to stay alive - and in fact, work to take everything from us. The violence called sweeps continue on our exposed bodies and did all the way through a pandemic and are ramping up to get worse across California . Once we are in these plantation cages, they let us die there too. We are building our own solutions with natural, recycled trash and materials and no-one is listening. Cob on Wood, Liveaboard Mariners, Camp Commorant, Poor Peoples Army, Homeless Unions. We are growing our own gardens, building our own housing and deconstructing the lie of ownership - Sogorea Te Land Trust and Planting Justice, Self-Help Hunger Program and Homefulness. Sweeps continue, bulldozers keep bulldozing and permits (For Homefulness) are exorbitant and unaffordable, "They just came by and literally power-washed us off of Division street- where are we supposed to go, " said Miguel another RoofLEss Radio reporter. This power-washing of humans is nothing new, it used to happen to me and my mama when we were on the street houseless in San Francisco. But with the backdrop of so-called Climate Change, and trying to be "green" its disgusting that these violent sweeps of our houseless bodies use these dangerous chemicals to literally wash us off the street From West Oakland to the Mission, our poor bodies keep getting moved and evicted. And yet when beautiful solutions like Cob on Wood are created in the middle of recycling lot in West Oakland, the land-stealers and CalTrans and the Mayor endlessly threaten them with removal. When homeless peoples self-determined movements like Homefulness are created in Oakland, the permit gangsters descend to make it so costly to build houses for fellow houseless folks that we have to stop. The settler colonial goals are to get rid of us, kill us and/or incarcerate us, so really why would they care if poor, disabled and indigenous people die from the impact of their endless extraction and destruction. IF anything we are just an obstacle, standing in the way of krapitalism, profiting off of mama earth This is why the indigenous resistance movements of Mauna Kea, West Berkeley Shellmound, MamaTreeSits by Pomo Nation, Line 3 pipeline, and Standing Rock are so important. “We are asking to meet with the Mayor (Of Sausalito) said one of the many houseless disabled elders who faced off bulldozers at “Camp Commorant” , a small encampment of houseless mariners whose boats were crushed before their eyes because the wealth-hoarders and land-stealers of Sausalito didnt like their old boats, and tagged them with the same blight notices they tag old homes in poor and black and brown neighborhoods and RV’s and cars we poor people sleep in when we have been evicted. In the end as i try to teach to as many wealth-hoarders and land stealers and descendents of that theft and hoarding who want to walk differently in the world, that impacted peoples, disabled, houseless and poor, indigenous and 1st Nations have always been innovators and liberators and should be leading this work on so-called Climate Change, I also must say again to everyone, even the land-stealers, that Mama Earth is not an infinite resource to be endlessly traded, destroyed and desecrated and if anyone want to learn back the humility that colonial policies and profit margins stole from us - hit this povertyskola up. Come to the next session of PeopleSkool. There is no more space, time or air to continue to hoard and steal and destroy.

Tiburcio Garcia Lisa Garcia Revolutionary Journalism 29 June 2021 Deecolonized Un-Tour: Kolorado Sweeps “Things are a lot different on the streets since I’ve been out there,” said Benjamin, looking around at everyone in the circle. On this day, after doing our Revolutionary Journalist Workshop where we give a stipend to houseless people for writing their stories, we met with Therese and Benjamin from Denver Homeless Outloud, and interviewed them about the situation with houselessness and sweeps that were going on out here. Listening to him, I realized that our situation out in the Bay Area isn’t so different from theirs. In the Bay Area, we at Poor Magazine protest and fight against constant sweeps that happen in San Francisco and Oakland. These sweeps are unrelenting, happening so often that most of the time houseless folks being sweeps don’t even have a day's break before they are forcibly moved to another area. Denver Homeless Outloud is currently pursuing a lawsuit that they opened six years ago in an act to prevent the constant sweeps that happen out here. It seems houseless people are treated similarly no matter what part of colonized Turtle Island we are on. The lawsuit began after Denver Homeless Outloud built Tiny Houses on private property that was abandoned for ten years, with a response from the mayor that was a bit overzealous. Seventy police officers showed up to stop the construction of the Tiny Houses, along with a SWAT team, and thus began a redoubled effort by the mayor to sweep the Denver Houseless population. “So we filed the lawsuit, and rather than being about people’s right to exist in space the way the lawsuit is set up is about people’s property. Apparently your property has more rights than you do,” (insert name) said, sighing and looking down. After three years, the lawsuit was settled out of court, with the settlement being signed by the Denver houseless community and the City of Denver, which the City of Denver promptly broke. The settlement included warning from the city about when and where they were going to seize property to try to give the houseless community some warning before a sweep, yet the city went ahead and continued to sweep without warning regardless. “There was a very high level of camping ban enforcement from 2016 to around 2019, when our lawsuit settlement went in place” said Therese, member of Denver Homeless Outloud, and a formerly houseless mother. She continued by talking about the things that have happened in the last couple of years to prevent houseless people from being on the streets. Public Rideaway Strips, the line of dirt or grass that goes between the sidewalk and the street are places that houseless people set up their tents because rideaway strips are not private property. After being swept and kicked out of every other place in Denver, the only place houseless people can camp are the public rideaway strips, and the city had put up orange and green fences on the strips to prevent that from happening. Just like in the Bay Area, it is clear Denver puts in no effort to assist getting people off of the streets, and instead puts all their effort into making life even worse for houseless people, treating them like animals that need to be herded. It sickens me because this is the norm. Houseless and poor people have always been seen as less than human, because most houseless and poor people are people of color who have been oppressed by a system that is designed to keep them down.

“Noooooooo don’t take my baaaabeeee….” I dream those words in daymares and nightmares, the sound of my mama’s screams haunt me to this day… They were screamed by my mama when I was 11 and then again when I was 14. Two times CPS ( affectionately renamed Child Separation Services by me and a lot of victims of this sys- that Dorsey Nunn said to think of like the poLice) -when they “found” us houseless and me not in school and automatically deemed my mama unfit to mama me. Reported by elementary school teachers, therapists and truant officers who were “mandated reporters”, meaning the people who if witnessing “abuse” of a child, must “call it in.” This whole terrifying and real aspect of a houseless families life became the basis of my most recent Children's book- When Mama and me Lived Outside (Cover art of Mama and me by Ace Robles) What is a mandated reporter and how are they related to the poLice If people don’t know there is a state, county mandate, depending on where you are in the United Snakes, of anyone working with dependent children or disabled adults and elders requires the “reporting of any abuse witnessed” to a local poLice department, Child or Adult Protective Services agency . The rules dictating who is deemed "unfit" are rooted in ancient hetero-patriarchal society lies about who and what defines a parent and what or who defines “fitness” in regards to raising, loving, teaching and caring for your babies. All that said, my mama was none of those things. She was a mixed race, poor, orphan with no job, minimal education, a disability and no husband. Her “husband” , my colonizer father, had taken her to divorce kkkort and accused her of being an unfit parent just to terrify her away from fighting for Any kind of child support. Because he was a wealthy wite man, everything he said was believed, including using the length of my mama’s mini skirts to prove that she was a "whore” as she used to recant to me. All of these horrors happened all the time to women and still do, but when the CPS anti-social worker said the same thing, but now speaking about our homelessness and my mama’s lack of “mental stability” it was locked in. Our only option was going underground. Getting lost, if you will, falling intentionally ( as many of us poor people do) way deep in the cracks so as never to be “witnessed” again. This process of criminalizing and hiding is so treacherous and sad and part of the life as a houseless family. From then on when we were sleeping outside on bus benches, park benches, in our cars, when we were lucky enough to have one, we were checking, watching, fearful that we would be seen, always hiding, cause once you are, people’s inclination, usually coming from fear of the “other” the “unknown” or even just their loving hearts, savior-trained and CONfused is to “fix” it, solve it, cure it, cure “you” the houseless mama, child, elder, person having a “mental health crisis” - which frankly as a sufferer of mental illness, I’m not even sure what that is. Suicidality, extreme depression, wanting to recluse, wanting to just sleep, even many forms of substance abuse, only become the public’s problem because we don’t have access to a roof. For most people that struggle with these issues who are housed, no-one gets in their business, calls poLice on them and turns their struggle into a “mental health crisis” worthy of calling the poLice, except of course in cases where “well-checks” lead to death-checks of many Black and Brown elders. But by and large a so-called mental health crisis, the ensuing struggle and any of the healing processes is afforded the privilege of privacy - rather than what I call the “violence of exposure.” That violence of exposure is what killed Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat, Steven Tyler and so many more Black and Brown women and men across this stolen land. For poor families, the violence of exposure leads to automatic poLice /CPS calls, leading to families thrown in a worse place than they were, full of hoops they can never jump through as poor people who are struggling to stay alive, feed our children, and still acquire the crumbs it takes to do all these things, including endless appointments to assess our “sanity” with privileged “therapists” who have never missed a meal or lived our lives, assessments that determine our “fitness” as a parent based on aforementioned hetero-patriarchal , classist, concepts of parental “goodness” . And none of these are clear, or simple as they are created and rooted in the same system. Concepts like “in the best interests of the child” that is the guiding light of the “mandated reporter” are not clearcut - sometimes children and elders are in fact struggling in abuse and more than often we are struggling in a place of extreme non-support, and attack mode, that if switched up into a model of care and support, would change our situations completely. My mama and me spent all night printing shirts and most of the next day selling shirts, because if we didn’t we couldn’t afford to pay for the motel room to stay in that night so we didnt have to sleep on the street. In addition to all of that we were filling out endless applications to get on low-income housing lists, section 8 lists and cash aid lists. This was our hustle and It was feedback loop from hell. So if you witnessed us from the classist lens that informs all hetero-patriarchal notions of Mama - health, my mama was unfit to raise me. And yet really what she was, was un-supported to raise me. As a poor, disabled, mixed race single parent alone, with no family in this occupied land, she was doing her best. This society, which values “independence” and aloneness entrenches poverty with isolation. But me and mama weren’t operating like that - we were an indigenous mama and daughter in a family business trying really hard to survive. Entrenched poverty, truama and struggle like that doesn’t end overnight because an anti-social worker separates a child from a birth parent and institutionalizes the child. What happens to the mama? What happens to the child. Endless studies by academics have proven the connections between foster care and prison industrial complex but very few people, except some Black revolutionaries and my mama and her project COURTWATCH has looked at the connections between CPS calls and the Foster Kare Industrial Complex - the reality CPS gets a huge federal payout each time they seize a child from a parent and that the mandate of the anti-social worker is not coming from the people but rather the State and the Therapy Industrial Complex, rooted in the same racist, ableist, class-informed, hetero-patriarchal systems. “That woman doesn’t have the mama-gene”, said my mama about some of the folks she worked along-side and supported, who no matter how much they were supported didnt really even want to parent, to be mamas or daddy or care-givers, because of all kinds of real ways they were un-linked, un-connected to their babies. Very subtle, very deep and something a poverty skola mama can assess through action and life, not a code in a wite-science book like the Bible of the Therpeutic Industrial Complex aka the "DSM" a book of codes telling therapists and doctor how to "code" our trauma.. This insanity and hypoCrazy causes poor children to be stolen from poor, Black, Brown and indigenous parents who are struggling on $341.00 dollars a month or maybe a little more and placed with foster families who will receive 1200-4,000 to raise that same child, locking in the institutionalized profit-making machine to keep being made off of that stolen child. And to be clear the ideas I am presenting here aren’t some Neo-liberal, social work perspectives, this narrative comes from Poverty Scholarship- a 22 year long poor people-indigenous people-led theory and practice- that took lives of struggle and resistance to figure out. That are rooted in culture and poverty, disability justice, multi-nationed eldership and the prayers of our ancestors. They can’t be quantified in a “test” of sanity or mental fitness and should not be quickly inhaled and discounted. We do bi-yearly PeopleSkool sessions and ongoing consulting work with teachers, anti-social workers and care-givers who are mandated reporters to try to help them unlearn these very dangerous lies rooted in the krapitalism we all want to overturn. And we don’t just talk about this - we live it at Homefulness, a homeless peoples solution to homelessness where we refuse/resist Ever engaging with the poLice, CPS or APS and Deecolonize Academy- a poor mama and uncle -led school for houseless and formerly houseless, disabled and indigenous children. If we witness child abuse ( which, just like violence and abuse of adults, happens in families in poverty ALL THE TIME ) we don’t look the other way, we don’t enable it or pretend its not there, we pull the family in closer, we work with the our Family elders to bring healing practices and call an endless amount of Family Elder/Elephant councils ( our accountability circles) to resolve conflicts in family and then straight up raise some reparations from our Bank of Come-Unity reparations for the family so money isn’t there as another trigger to mama is losing it. In the end, I am asking anti-poLice community organizers, politricksters, conscious legislators, therapists, teachers and care-givers to look and listen, learn from Poverty Scholarship and the Elephant council models of Revolutionary Love Work as models to over-turn and end not only poLice but its violent cousin, the mandated reporter model, and not replace it with what I affectionately call anti-social work or even “restorative justice”. To realize ableist, racist, classist poLice policies are in so many parts of our society and the least of which is how love and care is assessed for our children and elders. And that like Bell Hooks said, Class Matters, and like my sisSTAR skola Jewnbug says at POOR Magazine, poverty is a culture, in teaching, loving, raising, repairing and criminalizing our parents and children in poverty. Tiny can be reached at www.lisatinygraygarcia.com and @povertyskola on Twitter.

To get the Podcast from a PovertySkola of this piece- click here ) Stop Calling Stop Stalling Stop Talking while more Black Suns are fallen No I mean Stop enabling and Kolonizing a system that kills more than it does anything else with roots in the original lie of Discovery and theft Meant to CONfuse our already CONfused mindSets Got us all believing that numbers like 911 mean housed people are safe from us houseless- that witesAndLites are safe in their own embedded desire for wealth-hoarding wite-ness that continuing to buy & evict, foreclose, sweep, and kick - makes anyone safe from myths About how to be safe and what is the way to handle fear and danger everyday In a place already stolen A land already rife with murderous lies that keep getting told and told That Was set up to Shoot, Kill every Black, Brown or poor person in their way Was locked in to support fear so more protected classes could steal And more of us could end up in their jail cels These are the legacies of the stealing fathers And the Kop-callers And the way to unlink the shooting from PoLice Is for you to stop and think Why am I calling- And how did I begin to believe safety ever meant dialing 9-!-! leading to the death of more black, brown and poor daughters and Suns.. Stop Calling (the PoLice) a poem by Tiny "I do this every day... please let me go," said Mali Watkins, a 44-year-old martial artist. "I was just dancing." As the body camera footage of the Alameda poLice was released yet another example of racist cop callers and racist cops literally terroizing an unarmed Black man for the sole act of "dancing while Black in this stolen land" As disgusting as Mali Watkins story of poLice terror is, the silent perpetrators, who as usual are not being named were the people who “reported it” and to be clear it must noted that although more than one person “called” it in, multiple witnesses testified that not only did Mali live in that neighborhood, but did the same dance routine in the street everyday for exercise. Now if you think, oh thats terrible, that should never have happened, guess what, most of the poLice calls which sadly lead to this kind of abuse EVERYDAY, are rooted in people “calling” 911 and reporting it. The death of Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat was caused by a call to 311 (the social service line) the death of Stephon Clark was “someone” calling about a “suspicious” black man entering the house ( his grandmas house, who he often entered that way) Steven Taylor was having a mental health crisis in Walmart and cops were called. People called the fire department who then called the poLice on Demouria Hogg, 30 for peacefully sleeping while black in his car in Oakland. And in this nightmare called poLice terror and murder the tragic gentriFUKer call on Alex Nieto must not be forgotten. Again a person calling on a Brown man eating a burrito in his long-time neighborhood of the mission that so many of us long-time residents cant even afford to live in anymore, because of the influx of the same people, who happily call the cops on us if we “look out of place” code for Racist, Classist gaze of terror. Not always wite btw- many times coming from other cultures, looking with racist/classist/abliest wannabe wite eyes. There are literally hundreds of folks killed by these calls that then lead to the military armies who were "called" out to "solve" the fear of the caller, killing us, cause no matter how many "trainings" reform measures or body cameras" will always continue to operate that way. Could any of these people have minded their own business? Did they think they were “helping”? Have they been told somewhere along the way that calling poLice is being a good “citizen” And do people EVER examine their own racist, classist point of view about Black, Brown and Houseless people before they make these calls. To get the roots of this systemic CONfusion, we have to look at the herstory of 911 and the poLice in this stolen land The genocidal roots of PoLice From the beginning of this theft of this land police and police-alike agencies were used to enforce, brutalize, incarcerate and control poor people, indigenous people and enslaved people. In different parts of this stolen land there were different needs, in the South it was “slave patrols” to keep Chattel Slavery able to do its evil, in the plains and Western states it was to incarcerate, kill and harass 1st peoples of this land so colonial land theft and blood-stained paper trails stealing 1st peoples land was possible. Subsequently, it was to guard the stolen land from the people who it was stolen from daring to take it back, live on it or even walk near it, in the very ancestral land thier peoples were born. Because stealing mama earth, buying and selling and hoarding her was also taught as the way to "make it" in this wealth-hoarding society, these laws only increased and got more entrenched and dangerous. and the poLice becaume the ones who literally were there to "protect" private property" which is at the root of the whole evil. Workers were threatened and shot by poLice in many workers rebellions, anti-poor, anti-disabled people laws or “ugly laws” and pauper laws were used to incarcerate, harass and move unhoused people and non-stop harassment and ongoing jailing and deportation of indigenous children and babies, poor youth of color have always suffered from poLice harassment, and jailing and terrorizing continues today, so many times leading to the profiling and murder of young people of color in our own barrios and hoods like Eric Salgado, just shot in his car in deep East Oakland this week, Alex Nieto in the mission and more. And then there is that looming question that people asked after the insane story of Mali Watkins, what else should they have done? You mean the racist telephone-trigger- happy residents of Mr. Watkins own neighborhood, who like Barbecue Becky and all the other BBQ beckies in the US, with their overt and arrogant, covert and CONfused racism and classism are able to just make a call that literally could lead to the death of the called on. Maybe they need to be certified and trained before they even have 911 enabled on their phones. Trained in the herstory and lies of colonization, chattel slavery, anti-poverty laws, and their own roots in land-stealing and wealth-hoarding and racism. And maybe like we teach at our How to Not Call the PoLice Ever - there needs to be another emergency number instituted that is NOT CONNECTED TO THE POLICE. How did 311 ( mental health crisis, Fire Department, Adult protective services and child protective services get connected, linked to the poLice) these are separate moves, they are serious but not EVER something that should include a person with a gun, taser, chokehold or stick, to beat, kill, maim and kill. As a poor parent and revolutionary I never engage with any of those agencies, and as a principal and because of our lived experience as what we call "poverty skolaz" of the poor people-led movement called POOr magazine, we never have and never will engage with any of these agencies, as we have lived through the abuse and terrorism they perpetrate. In my case CPS and poLice were called on me and my mama countless times, I was arrested and thrown against a building for being houseless and my mama’s life was threatened multiple times as well as the seizure and incarceration of me away from her for the sole act of being houseless in this occupied land. How do u Unlink the Po from the Lice It is a never ending battle for all of us to stop calling these murderers, when we do the HOw to Not Call PoLIce trainings we are constantly asked, what else can I do? Even by fellow poverty skolaz, and truth be told, rape and child molestation and murder and violence are real, and thats where the rest of us ComeUnity leaders comes in. Leaders like POOR Magazine’s elephant council, which we convene with our elders and prayer-bringers and manifestos of change, when we hurt each other, which we do often as houseless, very low-income, indigenous, traumatized folks. Community Ready Corp, who has worked for years to create a Black-led community response team to crisis, to folks like Critical Resistance who continue to teach the roots of poLicing, and others like or brother Joey Villarreal from POOR who is working with other leaders to create a Xicano led first response crisis team. But its also important for folks to begin by questioning the reasons they are afraid of houseless bodies, disabled Black and Brown bodies in our and your neighborhoods, how you automatically and unwarrantedly decide that we are not your neighbors, that we are not just eating a burrito, or recycling or exercising and instead decided that our mere presence is a threat to your “safety”. And how did any of us become so CONvinced that people with weapons that cause death make us safe. And how did your safety become linked with poor and POC peoples absence. ? And how did Safety get defined by a crapitalist model of violence and military and death even when we face these very serious and terrifying situations. These are issues we get into in depth in our How to NOT call PoLice Ever workshop which will be held on Zoom in July - and I in the meantime , would urge you to check out the work of POOR Magazine poverty, indigenous disabilty skolaz in the Poverty Scholarship Poor people-led theory, art words and tears which teaches the medicine of our poor people led liberation from the agencies who test, arrest and incarcerate us as well as the article 10, 11, or 14 things to do instead of calling the poLice And finally, consider the demand we houseless people made again ( the millionth time) To Disband the PoLice like some powerFUL warriors are doing in now in Minneapolis. or the Black New Deal created by Anti-PoLice Terror Project. But in the meantime, keep protesting, keep resisting, keep saying no to racist PoLice and/or if you do nothing else, please stop calling the PoLice ever. You can reach tiny at www.lisatinygraygarcia.com or @povertyskola on Twitter. You can register for the workshop by emailing poormag@gmail.com

To hear the Podcast from a PovertySkola of this story click here “It feels like we are back in prison, said Ronald, one of POOR Magazine’s roofLESS radio houseless reporters from the Tenderloin about the cage, I mean, “Sanctuary” aka the Safe Sleeping Village that was constructed in the Civic Center of San Francisco this week for socially distant “sleeping” of houseless people while thousands of hotel and motel rooms still sit empty. Since 1996 when myself and my houseless disabled Mama who co-founded POOR Magazine were still sleeping in bus shelters, park benches and hoopties,(Mama and me were houseless for the majority of my childhood and young adulthood) we have been sharing food, money, tents and resources with fellow houseless and poor folks on the street. We are poverty skolaz, our knowledge comes from survival and we can’t survive without each other. Its called Interdependence. Since Covid19 began the need has increased, more people are hungry, more people are scared and so the acts of sharing have increased with us all. The RoofLESS cru is supporting up to 700 people a week on both sides of the bay with homemade food, donated food, groceries, masks, cleaning supplies, Hand sanitizers, media and more.. POOR Magazine, the magazine and then the very grassroots, poor/indigenous people-led movement of the same name, started cause me and Mama realized the inherent violence of this settler colonial system that criminalizes poverty and poor people like us and realized that one of the ways we had to fight back is with our collective voices, education, art and solutions. In addition to media and art, we also do something we call WeSearch- Poor people-led research- ie, not academic or CorpRape surveys, studies or tests. “Its like Martial Law, trying to condition us, I don’t feel “safe” staying there as a houseless person,” said Maria, houseless reporter from the Tenderloin. Yesterday on our Friday radical redistribution stops in SF we launched a WeSearch project with fellow houseless folks sleeping near or in the SSV, who we have been supporting since Covid19 shelter in place pandemic began. “I don’t trust any fences, I have been in jail too long, cant go back, I just wonder where the hotel rooms they were promising are,” said Marcus, RoofLess radio reporter from the Tenderloin, who was living in an alley three blocks away from the SSV. “I just hope they don’t use this as another excuse to take our tents, which this city has been doing even with the Pandemic. “Have you heard of cages for immigrant children? Well they have them here for homeless people,” said Pastor GW, a formerly houseless poverty skola and pastor from Mission Dei Congregation in Occupied Seminole Territory (which we call St. Petersburg). When the Cage, (Sanctuary) showed up in San Francisco this week right after we did an action on Monday about the hoarding of Hotel rooms, many of us POOR Magazine poverty skolaz, Aunti Frances Moore, Dee Allen, Leroy Moore, Muteado Silencio, Israel,Pearl Ubungen, Tiburcio and myself and others were brought back to our own experiences of jailing, criminalization and/or profiling for the sole acts of being a person of color, houseless and /or in poverty as well as a terrifying journey some of us went on to last year to Occupied Seminole Territory aka St Petersburg, Florida to present on the Poverty Scholarship- Poor People-led Theory, Art words and Tears text book, where we witnessed what Pastor Wright and Pastor GW called, The People Cages” which were actual cages of chain link fencing ( just like what surrounds San Francisco’s SSV ) on the streets of Downtown St Petersburg. People had to “check in” to the cages by 7pm and couldn’t leave until 7am, at which point they were kicked out. Now lest you believe the Public Relations campaign by the Mayor that this is sanctuary land, let me school you. The ones who spear-headed and supported the St Petersburg one were also “helping” or Charity organizations, non-profiteers, city government and several so-called advocates, not to mention poLice, sheriffs, and poltricksters. “We used to have tent cities right down this street here in St Petersburg, me and GW were the ‘street-sheriffs’ making sure folks were safe at night,” said Bruce Wright, formerly houseless poverty skola with the Poor Peoples Economic Human rights Campaign and pastor of the Refuge Ministries of Tampa Bay, pointing at the long empty dark street next to the “people cages.” “I can’t even speak,” Aunti Frances, who like me and Dee, Leroy Moore, and Tiburcio were all on the tour leading the workshops, have all dealt with endless criminalization of our unhoused, disabled and criminalized bodies, lives, belongings and spaces, and like Driver Plaza in Oakland where Aunti Frances deals with an endless amount of poLice harassment when she operates her beautiful Black-led Self-Help Hunger Program, was still completely destroyed by this scene. “This is too much and what they want to do with all of us,” she concluded. Is this Cage or is it Sanctuary? Many of us poverty skolaz are already clear that most of the “services” or “anti-social work” thats “provided” to poor people and why I re-name it anti-social work is rooted in violent scarcity, I.e., how little we can provide poor peoples versus how much is needed by a person or family to survive, and the criminalizing of our lives and actions and homes with constant inspections, evaluations, applications and assessments and the slippery slope of shelter beds and SRO’s that require check-ins, check-outs, ID’s and more. So really the 9 foot fence around a parking lot thats now called a “safe sleeping sanctuary” isn’t that different from any of the soft cages built for poor people including the ultimate cage thats now the biggest “public housing project” for 89-90% of disabled, very low-income and/or peoples of color in this occupied land, aka Prisons and jails. Nor is it any different from the hater solution to Covid19 of Las Vegas which threw its houseless people out fo the meager one shelter that town had and had them sleep in a parking lot, “socially distant” or the recent move of cleaning houseless people out of the New York subway only to have them cramped together in the lobbies of homeless shelters dangerously close together or going even further back because like I always say the Virus of poverty has been going on a lot longer than the virus called Covid19, the violent removal of houseless disabled people from the old Trans-Bay terminal in 2010 so the shiny new tech colonizers building Salesforce could be built to house more 20 something tech commuters, something POOR Magazine shed light on in our Stolen Land /Hoarded Resources Tour earlier this year. To get clear about where this comes from and why people need to resist it we have to go back to the bloody settler colonial history of when the Savior and Charity industries became Unsafe and Caring became Cages. First we must go back to the roots aka the anti-poor people HIs-story to a terrifying thing called the Ugly Laws that Leroy Moore and myself have written and reported on multiple times and a book by Sister shero Susan Schweik. Ugly laws in the United States arose in the late nineteenth century. During this period, urban spaces underwent an influx of new residents, which placed strain on the existing communities. As a reaction to this influx of people who were impoverished, ministers, charitable organizers, city planners, and city officials across the United States worked to create ugly laws for their community. People charged under the ugly law were either charged a fine or held in jail until they could be sent to the poor house or work farm. The wording in the San Francisco ordinance indicates violators will be sent to the almshouse. This connects with the Victorian Era poor law policy. The ugly laws did not restrict performances of people with disabilities for the purpose of entertainment or eliciting disgust, but rather restricted people with disabilities from mingling with the general public. Racism also played a role in the enforcement of ugly laws.In San Francisco, Chinese immigrants and their descendants were unlawfully quarantined to prevent spread of disease and epidemic The first “social workers and shelters were known as almshouses and settlement houses and in a terrifying twist of the Charity Industrial complex essentially launching /creating and crafting their own clients, residents and purpose, which happens so much to poor people, the social workers were the ones who launched the Ugly laws in most cities, working in tandem with the poLice, who would arrest poor disabled people from being poor and disabled in public and bring them to the shelters. Cages, criminalization and policing as a solution isn’t new, its just a continuation of a long process to make money off of poor peoples bodies and problems by the people who are supposedly here to “save” us, help us, house us. In the end, its why us poor and houseless people at POOR Magazine, the Poor Peoples Army/Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign,, Reclaim SF, 1st they Came For the Homeless and Where do We Go Berkeley and Moms4housing have been vehemently launching our own solutions to our own problems. Refusing the ongoing pimping, criminalizing and caging of our bodies and our problems and creating our own. It is also why POOR Magazine is working so hard to launching homeless peoples solution to homelessness we call Homefulness, with guidance and permission from 1st Nations leaders of the Ohlone /Lisjan nation at the Sogerea Te Land Trust. Evil Sheriff Joe Arpaio tried his racist hate tactics out on houseless people in Phoenix, Arizona before he began his terror on indigenous refugees from the other sides of the false borders, throwing up barricades around a two block area and telling the houseless people they couldn’t leave until the morning, hoping ultimately we would kill each other..excerpt from Poverty Scholarship- Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth “There’s enough room to put us in a hotel or SRO ( single room occupancy hotel) where they can keep us safe away from the virus. Why put us in a parking lot? That SRO could change someone’s life,” said Nick. ( in a beautiful story by Matt Leahy of 48hills) one of the residents of whats been called by poltricksters Safe Sleeping Village ( SSV) asks the question, why a parking lot when there are hotel rooms available,” “They are still “sweeping” us in the Mission,” said Miguel, RoofLESS radio reportero yesterday. If Mayor Breed wanted to continue the hoarding of hotels and not house houseless residents of San Francisco, she could have just stopped taking peoples tents and allow people to sleep houselessly without fear of arrest and belonging theft. Why put a 9 foot chain link fence with barriers up around a parking lot? (Sweeps and Belonging Theft is an ongoing struggle documented and fought by so many for so long including the warriors from the Stolen Belonging Project of San Francisco) People Cages for indigenous children or houseless, disabled adults in San Francisco, Arizona or St Petersburg aren’t ok, aren’t ever ok and can’t be normalized and like I always say, the slide into fascism isn’t because the scary wite cheeto imposes martial law, or the “army” comes to town, its much more likely to happen in a slow bleed from the people who are supposedly there to support, save, or care for us… Tune in to From Katrina to Corona - People Cages from St Petersburg to San Francisco - a web zoom series on Sunday night at 6pm PST- click here to get the zoom instructions. To reach tiny go to www.lisatinygraygarcia.com C.A.R.E. For the homeless On some street In Saint Pete Looks like A cage For people An open-air Holding cell South of Heaven, East side of Hell, A jailhouse with a dusky Ceiling full of stars, Black wrought Iron bars Surround the transients’ reality. Across the street From a trailer, S.W.A.T. monitors enclosed activity: Crouching low, Pacing around, Nine-hour Lock-down— It was animals That placed Homeless ones in captivity For no sins, away from palm trees & passers-by. A step up from sidewalk Tent-snatching. -- Excerpt of the poem People Cages by Dee Allen /Po Poets Project

Listen to the Podcast Here: Had a dream- not to save the world but to save other unhoused disabled mamaz & little girls U see i was that baby wit my mama holding that sign the one you turned away from pretending i wasn’t alive grew up wit mama- her and me almost made it thru the poverty/racism/houselessness drama hustled for food- never had the rent until mama sed chase that dream- write a grant - take a chance u got skills tiny U can do the grant dance U see - we the Philanthro-pamps u a sexy young thing with at least one grant circle we can exploit just come and sniff a little of this grant guidelines oil… You can do whatever you want (Deep star wars voice) BUT ALWAYS DO WHAT WE SAY So happy created a job for my uncle, houseless friends and my mommy Wow- self-determination liberation words, and dreams helping each other And then… what you aint doing what we say & reporting on each other keep those feet up- the philanthro-pimps say that grant might run out cuz , well u aint sexy anymore - anyway….. Todays message from a poverty skola is dedicated to all the truth-tellers, action- walkers- never stop/cant stop revolutionary poverty skolaz who innovate, liberate and activate but aren’t ever seen, heard, understood or over stood and therefore are easily pimped, opted, stolen from and never quoted. Im talking about about liberators like the Poor Peoples Army , Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign Krip Hop Nation, Where Do WE Go Berkeley and Frist they Came for the Homeless, MOVE 9 when it was happening - not now when its glamorized and talked about. Im talking about people who do the work, with or without the virus called Covid19, blood-stained dollars, fame, or UN raceteers. I’m talking about the Mad Housers in Georgia and Krip Hop In Senegal, Im talking about Tara Colon and Lisa Richards in Florida and I’m Talking about Papa Bear and so many poor and houseless workers never seen people- I’m talking about the I-Hotel and Pearl Ubungen - I’m talking about Nino Parker and his un-sanctioned encampment Im talking about, Peoples Commuity Medics and The Idriss Stelly Foundation - Im talking about Indigenous nations who have been caring for Mama Earth long before 350 .org decided to take up “climate Change” im talking about Refinery walks from IdleNoMore Sf and Pennie Opal Plant and I’m talking about us over here at Homefulness tryin to UnSell Mama Earth - tryin to teach Hoarders how to UnHoard - tryin to teach people we don’t need a savior, a charity project, pimp or an institution we need a poor people-led revolution without ever being opted, stolen, lied about or displaced. Im talking about so-called movements that use all the right language, so they sound like us , (cause it was stolen from us), and thinned out to be more palatable and easily “understood”. I’m talking about academia and non-profiteers profiting, talking and walking about us without us. To give people terrifying examples of this process let me take you down to journeys that are hard to talk about - but must be exposed. One is the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign - a powerful poor mama -led movement in Philadelphia launched as the Kensington Welfare Rights Union - that was activating and lifting up the work of poor people since the 1980’s - lifting up and re-activating the work of Dr Martin Luther King and the Poor Peoples March until the Ford Foundation came in and stole and opted all of their work and words and turned it into a massive, middle class led, non-profiteered “national” campaign - using ideas, work and time suffered in real time by real poverty skolaz in Philly for a well-funded , well-oiled Ford Foundationed machine. If anyone else did this it would just be theft, but there is massive money and institutional access behind these moves and so we are just opted and left out. The opted, thinned out message then becomes the public message, with both “independent” and CorpRape media covering it and reporting on it. And the “fix” is in. Its “sanctioning” and legitimizing continues as academia takes up the charge. Now there are Reports, studies, research generated and cited and suddenly the innovators, the liberators, the actual oppressed peoples who lived the struggle, activated the change are no longer really even there. The philanthro-pimps can’t take all the credit for killing these movements. They are just the machines of krapitalism which always needs a new market. So its Very important for people to forget herstory, history and the originators and the resistors. Its VERY important to have a short -term memory and lift up what is “new” ( read re-done) so that new “campaigns” with new jobs, new payrolls, new media and new profits can be generated. This is where it gets so complicated, and CONfusing. Because people are now hired, many of them are themselves poor people, POC’s who need a job, who want to “work” for something meaningful, who themselves have no knowledge of the herstory/history struggle that came before, but real talk, also just have to pay the rent. Another example is the UN racketeers ( Rappoteaurs) when they came to town, Homefulness is over here since 2011- a group of homeless and formerly homeless poverty skolaz trying to build housing, supporting, reporting and constantly lifting up the voices of unhoused folks on the streets so they can build/launch their own homefulness movements. But nary a word , an interview, a visit, a mention. No we were completely, intentionally left out - first from a non-profit and academic heavy panel and “report” and then from a cherry picked , non-profiteered tour of “poverty and homelessness which enabled a “lens” that left private wealth-hoarders and indigenous and poor people-led self-determination completely out and separate from the narritive on homelessness, as there is no grant funding, jobs or non-profiteers involved in these projects. In other words, no money to be made. Another sad example of this by media and academia was the gentrification of journalism of a long-time People of color newspaper in the mission by a cutesy, well-oiled UC Berkeley staffed on-line magazine that basically used and opted the newspapers audience, lens and message. This process was hardly documented except by the SF Bayview Newspaper, Block Report Radio and POOR Magazine. The academics, corporate non-profit and philanthro-pimps are all in for the money game, but what makes it much harder and where my challenge is directed is at the fellow liberators and movement folks out there who know better and can do better. In the work to live into being another world, we all need each other, and need to respect, lift up and appreciate each other. This is done through horizontal love, lifting up, shouts-out, sharing of media, resources and by-lines. It is partly why POORPress.net is doing a Po Peoples Survival Guide thru Covid19 and the Virus of Poverty- chronicling everyone who was already here- who should be seen, heard and recognized and never left out and kept out when this moment in herstory is locked in. As HomiesEmpowerment right here on BlackArthur have been launching their beautiful FREEdom Store we have committed from the beginning to lift them up, love them up and sing them up- to do the same with all other grassroots groups, to honor the land liberation and radical redistribution work of the warriors like Poor Peoples Army/PPHRC, Peoples Community Medics, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Where DO We GO Berkeley, Consider the Homeless, Self-Help Hunger Program, First The Came for the homeless and East Oakland Collective. From the beginning of this Covid19 crisis, we at POOR Magazine have been working so hard to make sure everyone who is already there, who is standing up is held and loved, respect and seen. Another beautiful example of liberation work, instead of covetous, I-got-Mines moves is the beautiful people at Disability Culture Club, United Front Against Displacement and Anti-PoLice Terror Project, Community Ready Corp who from the beginning of this crisis made a point of reaching out to POOR magazine, with supplies to share, media to share and love to share. Ford foundation creating a new plantation Poor people in the fields picking cotton Some picked to be house negroes To get that that grant dough..Leroy Moore And for academia, media examples, the work of Jared Ball from IMixWhatILike, Susan Schweik, Cecilia Lucas, from UC Berkeley who from the beginning have made a point of not stealing, opting or talking about us without us, but rather launching education movements Like Creating Freedom Movement and books like the Ugly Laws, The Myth of Black Buying Power (coming out on May 25th) and Survival HandBook through Covid19 and the Virus of Poverty- (coming out on May 24th available for free to all poverty skolaz and on a sliding scale to anyone who can pay for it.) I am not calling out peoples or organizations, that would be more horizontal hater politricks, but I will say that in the process to live into being a different way, we need to stop perpetrating more opting and stealing, rock-star leading, scarcity modeling exclusion. We need to lift up each other in all of our beautiful, hard-work, front-line work, so we can truly end krapitalism and build a different world, not just a different paycheck. “Ford foundation creating a new plantation Poor people in the fields picking cotton Some picked to be house negroes To get that that grant dough… excerpt from Solutions without a Grant Proposal by Leroy Moore, POOR Magazine family, Homefulness co-founder and founder of Krip Hop Nation To get a copy of the upcoming Po Peoples Survival Guide go to poorpress.net . To get a copy of the upcoming the Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power go to imixwhatilike.org