This is for All Our Ancestors who were Removed, Displaced, and Evicted
Be bop bebop…bop…bop
A slow mist rose from the ground commingling with candle wax, sage, and car exhaust. Bop…bop…be-bop…bop… Warm breath weaving through the rhythm of a conga drum entwining with words of resistance from African peoples, Raza peoples, Celtic peoples, Pilipino peoples, Native peoples, indigenous peoples all… ”One: We are the people! Two: Indigenous people! Three: And we are taking back the land and ONE: We are the Scholars! TWO: Indigenous scholars and THREE: We are taking back OUR land!”
Citing articles from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted one year ago by the UN General Assembly, displaced, evicted, and removed children, mamaz, daddies, tías and tíos, aunties and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, elders, ancestors, and spirits from all across Turtle Island—Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, New Orleans, and DQ University—gathered to pray, testify, and resist on Market Street at sunrise in a spiritual, political, and revolutionary ceremony of resistance to out-of-control development, eviction, displacement and criminalization locally and globally.
“My whole family was displaced out of San Francisco,” Xicana mama of three girls, welfareQUEEN and POOR Magazine teacher and staff writer Vivien Hain called into the crowd, her powerful voice joining the layers of sounds as she re-told her family’s deep poverty scholarship of houselessness, welfare de-form, struggle, and displacement. Vivien cited Article 10 of the Declaration as she described how her uncle, a life-long Mission District resident, was gentrified out of his home with his disabled wife, and now is houseless on the streets of San Francisco. Vivien concluded her powerful speech: “Gentricide: That’s our new classification for the murderous act of gentrification.”
Since 1996—while on welfare and still dealing with the effects of over 15 years of homelessness as a child and mother, eviction, and deep poverty in LA, Oakland, and San Francisco—my mama, African-Irish-Puerta Rican and indigenous Taíno very poor single mother and I launched POOR Magazine as an indigenous organizing project to actively practice eldership, ancestor worship, and interdependence. We launched it as a direct resistance to the non-profit industrial complex, the criminal injustice system, welfare systems, and the school-to-prison pipeline that all work to separate, divide, and destroy our indigenous systems of caring and community. As a poor people/indigenous people-led organization, the personal and organizational lives, dramas, concerns, and struggles of the hundreds of co-leaders—poverty, youth, disability and migrant scholars at POOR Magazine—are intertwined with the running, survival, and thrival of ourselves, our families, our communities, and our organization. Like many other poor people/indigenous people-led organizations, there is no intention to unentwine that real and honest core of truth that is the indigenous organizational model.
In July of this year, POOR Magazine (as well as many of the non-profits and small businesses in our building who we stand in solidarity with) received a notice that our lease would not be renewed by the new owners of the building. POOR Magazine’s tenuous hold on stability was severed. As an organization, we weren’t planning to move until we had raised enough money to purchase a building so we could launch the revolutionary housing, arts and education project that acts as a long-term solution to homelessness: homefulness—a sweat-equity co-housing and sustainable community that would house and give equity, support, arts education, and economic development opportunities to homeless and formerly homeless families as well as house the offices and classrooms of the Race, Poverty, and Media Justice Institute, and Uncle Al’s Justice Cafe.
In San Francisco’s Bayview District, there have been over 150 evictions reported in August alone. In Oakland, 72 elder and disabled tenants face homelessness at the California Hotel due to mismanagement by a housing corporation given millions of dollars to “manage” their residential hotel. In New Orleans, over 4,500 people were evicted from public housing targeted for redevelopment. It was time, we thought, to employ another model for systemic change. It was time, we realized, to implement the very powerful UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Bop…be-bop…bop…bop… The drum beat wove through the voices, la tierra, our land, speaking for all the people who aren’t here, who were already displaced, removed, and destroyed—people like José Morales, a migrant elder removed from his land, his home of 40 years, by unjust laws put in place to protect property, not people…
“Indigenous people shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous people concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and where possible with the option of return,” POOR Magazine co-editor, indigenous Pilipino, African, Irish, and Native descendent poverty and worker scholar, Tony Robles, read from Article 10-28 of the Declaration throughout the ceremony
“Our land is under attack. We are working under a deadline. The General Services Administration is threatening to take back a third of our land, but we will not go,” Steve Jerome Wyatt, Native Scholar and president of the DQ University Coalition, testified at the ceremony. The ceremony was opened with a prayer led by indigenous scholars from DQ University and United Native Americans who are currently fighting for their rights to keep the only off-reservation tribal college, DQ University, alive and strong. Steve concluded, “Our spirit is with all of you, with the people always! DQ will never die!”
“We cannot allow POOR Magazine to leave this land. POOR Magazine represents our collective resistance to exploitation, deportation, incarceration, eviction,” Renee Saucedo, Xicana scholar and resistance fighter in the war on migrant peoples, representing one of the event’s co-sponsors, La Raza Centro Legal, testified. “Who is POOR Magazine? It is poor people of color, particularly young people, who are fighting criminalizing legislations like the gang injunction—people fighting every day for justice, for our communities.”
“We poor will wear our courage, sorrow, and innocence vividly as our burning rage, until Private Property bombs on the stage where for much too long it’s been pissing on the people, and then at last human space truly will belong to all.”—Excerpt from the poem “EVICTION” by San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman.
The Taking Back the Land Ceremony was about resistance to displacement, it was also about cross-organizational, cross generational, and cross-cultural movement building. Over 20 organizations from San Jose to New Orleans represented, including Dolores Street Community Services, SOMCAN, Just Cause Oakland, D-Q University, United Native America, the Coalition on Homelessness, HOMEY, POWER, Justice Matters, the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, Faithful Fools Street Ministry, the San Francisco Bay View, P.O.C.C. Block Report, First Voice Apprenticeship Program, Lumpia Project, the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, the Community Housing Partnership, the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, CHAM, Axis of Love, All African Peoples Unification Party, Homeless Action Center, and many more. Our lives, our communities, our organizations, our futures, are connected, shared and lived.
Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired. (Article 26 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)
Two San Francisco Board of Supervisors candidates, Eric Quezada and David Campos, were on-hand to testify. Both are vying for District 9 (the Mission), which is ground zero of out-of-control displacement and gentrification of communities of color. “We have been fighting this fight for 500 years!” Eric Quezada galvanized the crowd by calling out the roots of the land theft, the original theft of indigenous people’s land that happened when the colonizers “discovered” Turtle Island and launched an onslaught of terrorism against indigenous peoples in the name of “ownership” that has continued through today. Historical and current displacement in the Mission, the Tenderloin, the Bayview, DQ University, New Orleans and beyond are connected.
Eviction Victim
Eviction Resistance
23 times and counting
“cause without equity we all at-risk”
Born from three generations of poor women of color and countless generations
of
colonized others
“Mama Dee..an act of resistance” by Tiny
“My mother’s mother’s mother was a slave: She worked in tobacco and cotton plantations. My mother’s mother cleaned the houses and mansions in San Francisco. Our blood is spilled in the name of other people’s profit. We will not be moved. We should own these buildings! All of this is ours.” Citing Article 28 of the UN Declaration, which states, “indigenous people have the right to re-dress,” Laure McElroy, POOR Magazine board member, welfareQUEEN, and poverty, race, and disability scholar in residence at POOR’s Race, Poverty and Media Justice Institute, waved her hands to the land beneath and above our heads as she stated our collective right to reparations.
Bop…be-bop…bop…bop…
“Any magazine named POOR, that’s a magazine where Jesus would be,” proclaimed Sandy Perry, street minister from event co-sponsor, CHAM in San Jose. Sandy began his solidarity message to the circle with prayer and a welcome from poor folks in San Jose who are struggling with displacement, eviction, and poverty: “When Jesus said all of us can be rich, he didn’t mean rich like these developers do: He meant rich with community, with love, and with caring for one another,” Sandy concluded.
Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-indigenous media without discrimination. (Article 16 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)
“Hoy es un día histórico [today is a historical day], because as of today, we will no longer accept displacement.” Gloria Esteva, migrant and poverty scholar and staff writer with Voces de Inmigrantes en Resistencia at POOR Magazine (the revolutionary bilingual media access and education project for migrant raza workers in the Bay Area) who along with POOR Magazine reporteras y reporteros Teresa Molina and Guillermo Gonzalez, connected displacement with the exploitation of migrant peoples locally and globally, Gloria concluded, “This is our land. We built it from scratch. We will be exploited no longer!”
Prensa POBRE reportera Teresa Molina added, “The reason we don’t own land is because they don’t let us own land so they can exploit us for cheap labor! That is why we will continue to fight until our voices are heard!”
Be-bop…bop…bop…bebop
“Please stand up and fight… I am from New Orleans. I know about removal and displacement from the government. Thousands of people were removed and displaced and much of that displacement came from the government.” August Foreman, Katrina survivor here to speak on Katrina for events in the Bay honoring Katrina’s tragedy on August 29, spoke to our circle, with his words creating a national lens to the Take Back the Land Ceremony.
Be-bop…bop…bop…bop… the spirits of our displaced ancestors rose up with the drum beat.
Midway through the ceremony, I asked for a silence to be called for all the people who weren’t there—who have already been displaced—and following that powerful moment, on the wings of the very spirits we called out to for strength, our allies and fellow poverty scholars from the California Hotel in Oakland and allies, Just Cause Oakland, arrived at the ceremony. The California Hotel’s 72 elder, disabled tenants have faced eviction due to gross mismanagement by private housing developers OCHI.
“We didn’t want to become homeless, we didn’t want to be put on the street.” Mickey Martin, poverty scholar, tenant, and now co-manager of the California Hotel described their fight to stay housed even in the face of police raids, City and private funding cuts, and mismanagement of their housing, “So now our attorney is suing the City for 53 million dollars to keep our hotel open for the rest of our lives—we are going to run our hotel ‘til we become old and grey!”
He was followed by the powerful voice of Robbie from Just Cause Oakland. ”We are working now to prevent the eviction of over 215 families from public housing and, along with the California Hotel evictions, are hitting hundreds of tenants of other residential hotels as well as over 600 public housing units.”
One: WE ARE THE PEOPLE! and Two: INDIGENOUS PEOPLE! Three: And we are taking back OUR LAND!
Chris Durazo, from displacement fighters and allies at SOMCAN, spoke to the crowd. “This Take Back the Land Ceremony is very meaningful for us at SOMCAN because they are re-zoning the Eastern Neighborhoods [of San Francisco] where our families and elders live and we are responding by demanding that they stop building unaffordable condominiums and give it back to our families, our diverse families.”
Article 14 Indigenous People have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages and in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.
“I work with the children every Tuesday and Thursday in FAMILY project.” Youth Scholar and POOR press author Jasmine Hain spoke to our circle about FAMILY, an on-site classroom which is a joint education project of POOR Magazine and ART and faces eviction from their classroom at POOR. FAMILY is coordinated by comadre, poverty scholar, and welfareQUEEN Jewnbug, who is also a skilled early childhood arts educator. FAMILY provides intergenerational programming, arts, music, dance, and social justice for children ages 2–14, and parents in the Tenderloin struggling with poverty. “I work in FAMILY so that the poor families and elders, mamaz and daddys, can learn to write their stories and become media producers and make change for their families and communities,” Jasmine concluded.
“If people really wanted to ‘solve’ homelessness they would start giving poor people access to equity!”—Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia
“I stand here, the descendent of a stolen people in San Francisco, Mexico.” The next testifier was welfareQUEEN and poverty scholar in residence at POOR Magazine, Queennandi, who wrote a poem in honor of the ceremony. “My house is not my home. Technically I’m houseless and don’t own nothing. Serial land robberies. The landlord whipped me with an eviction notice cuz I resisted being whipped.”
“Under Article 22 of the UN Declaration, I accuse the Federal government of benign neglect of disabled people, women, and children, locally and globally,” founding member of POOR Magazine and poverty scholar in residence Joseph Bolden cited the Declaration.
“I want to take you on a journey: In the US, we have the Fair Housing Act. It came down under the Reagan administration. Locally, we have Propositions K and L, put into affect by Willie Brown, ostensibly to create more offices for non-profits. Under these laws, we have the right to be housed—not temporarily but permanently.” Illin’ and chillin’ columnist for POOR and founder of KRIP HOP also cited UN Declaration 22 and the recent laws that were passed to protect housing, but seem to mean nothing for our communities.
Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired. (Article 26 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)
Byron Gafford, Bayview resident of Alice Griffith whose family is facing pending eviction along with 150 others recently served with eviction notices in the Bayview thanks to government and corporate developers Lennar’s displacement efforts, testified with a poetic tribute to long-time girlfriend and recent victim of negligence at the hands of PG&E in the Bayview. “To rob, steal, and kill the good like Shirley Weston in order to claim the neighborhood of death for his own, With the help from PG&Evil.”
Aldo Arturro Della Maggiorra called on our spirits and ancestors with the conga drum. Joe Smooke from Bernal Heights Community Center spoke on media misrepresentations of poverty. RAM from POOR Magazine led the power-giving chants. San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman spit his beautiful tribute poem, “Eviction.” Allies from Homeless Action Center in Oakland testified on their collaborative work with POOR. Bruce Allison at POOR spoke a tribute poem to elder eviction resistor José Morales. Mrs. Booy from the Bayview, Quanah Brightman from D-Q University, and many others spoke, represented, and testified. So many powerful voices rose up and honored the silenced voices of indigenous peoples who struggled before us, who struggle with us today, and will struggle and resist this in the future.
“To all of the Newsoms, Giulianis, and Schwarzeneggers: We will never give up.” Revolutionary legal advocate, poverty and race scholar in residence at POOR and staff writer Marlon Crump authored a poem for the event which began, “This is OUR land you seize from OUR hand,
Be…bop…bop…bopbebop…bop…
Postscript: After the ceremony, the new owners of 1095 Market Street met with POOR Magazine staff and committed to helping POOR Magazine and the other tenants who face eviction to make a smooth and safe transition to another space that will stabilize our urgently needed youth and adult programming for the long-term.
Tiny
August 8th, 2011 at 1:29 am
paint zoom paint sprayer…
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