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1. A poverty hero is a man, woman or child who, in the words of Shakespeare, has suffered the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," i.e., has lived a life of desperation and/or crisis, related to poverty, and managed to overcome, prevail or survive, to create art, life, activism and/or their voice. POOR Magazine is honoring the heroism of survival, itself a triumph, through class and/or race oppression..... 

2. A poverty hero is a person or persons who has dedicated their life to service, activism and/or the creativity of communities in poverty, who through their efforts has alleviated the suffering, promoted the creativity, organized the efforts, raised the consciousness, and/or aided and abetted the survival of people, suffering from race and class oppression.  POOR welcomes your nominations for Poverty Hero. To qualify, they must fit one (or both) of the above definitions. Please send a picture and a one page description by US postal service to POOR Magazine, 255 9th Street, San Francisco, Ca 94103. Include a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope, your phone number and name. 

By TINY

Heavenly teardrops dance their delicately choreagraphed wake-up concert across the pulled-over covering adorning my semi-sleeplessness........and for a brief moment, I forget I am homeless, and still struggling..... with diminished capacity to rise up.........Ken Moshesh, POOR Magazine, Volume #3

Ken Moshesh, artist, writer, dancer, percussionist and poet, was born into poverty in West Oakland. The oldest of eleven children, his was a family always "on the precipice" of struggle and survival. After graduating from Oakland Technical school with honors and going on to be the only black student in a private business school, he became a member of the Black Panthers through the "Neighborhood Youth Corps" under the foremen; Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.

After going on to receive his degree at UC Berkeley in education, subsequently teaching and being involved in the third world strikes of 1969, a series of circumstances led him to fall far into the "cracks," of society and in the 80's he became homeless on the streets of Berkeley.
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Ken Moshesh, a staff writer at POOR Magazine, recently appeared on a panel at the Bay Area Book Festival hosted by POOR Magazine: The Scholarship of Poverty and has just completed an anthology of his poetry and prose entitled, "Heavenly Teardrops" Ken is a poverty survivor and an accomplished artist and we are proud to honor him as a POVERTY HERO at PoorNewsNetwork.

"Even my girlfriend thinks I should accept the indigntities associated with homelessness, she naively considers them paranoid delusions... cause she doesn't want to believe such a state of being could exist in America. She's not the only one and maybe that's why she's no longer my girlfriend and I'm alone to deal with this dilemma... besides Im not budgeted to deal with human relations, anyway..." -from Homeless to Hollywood. (top of page)