We Are All Criminals
“You’re a thief!” The words came crashing down the staircase and slammed against a poverty scholar at the Roxie Theater. The large man with the wild dreadlocks and warm, buttery voice at the bottom of the stairwell had been sitting two seats over from me in the front row of A Dialogue on the Criminalization of Poverty. Taken aback by the force of these words ringing through the air of the lobby, my eyes traveled up the stairwell to see who could have possibly hurled these word after the event we had just experienced. A young man with a crisp dark shirt, lily clean skin, and indignant down-turned eyes looked down at this gentle giant and took aim: “You are stealing! You have to pay for that!”
I arrived at the Roxie at 16th and Valencia just before the 7 p.m. dialogue began. I approached the ticket booth of the Roxie and told the ticket-taker, a sandy-haired man with thick black-rimmed glasses, that I was with POOR Magazine and I was looking for my folks. He told me that the event was three doors down and pointed up 16th street. I made my way up the street and through the front door. The lobby was bustling and the tables were lined with books and informational packets. To the left I saw Laure McElroy, a welfareQueen and Poverty Scholar at POOR Magazine. She was standing behind a counter right near the entrance where cans of soda were balanced. My tongue was cotton and the drinks were a welcome sight. I picked up a can and Laure said, “I think you have to pay for those, but I’m not sure.” I asked her if any Roxie employees were nearby, but we didn’t see any. Discouraged, I put the drink down and made my way inside the theater.
The evening was opened by the welfareQUEENS, a revolutionary group of mamaz struggling with poverty, welfare, racism, and disability, creating art with the goal of resisting and reclaiming the racist and classist mythologies about poverty and the cri
Lola
