Homeless to Yale

And Then Back Again.

On purpose.

By Choice.

Because it Makes More Sense.

Read one woman’s story of why we all should be paying attention to Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia and POOR Magazine.

Valerie Klokow

May 12, 2017

   I used to think that the worst thing

(Click here for PNN-TV - Youth Skolaz interviews at MayDay March)

No Borders, No walls- No Deportations at all....

I’m everything but broke.

I’m trying to make it home too. Cause I’m riding around in the same car that the police pulled me over in and drawed guns on me and my children on March 3, 2017. I need someone to trail me home now and make sure I make it from East Oakland to West Oakland safe while I left my children’s school.

“What is your name,” a mechanical voice shouted through the receiver of my phone. Before  I could answer this bizarre beginning to a call, he added, “ What is your address, Where do you work, Do you have any other phone numbers…?” The barrage of accusatory questions with no basis continued for several minutes with me barely able to get a word in edgewise, and then.., “Do you have a 13 year old son?”, with this sentence… my heart began to race, my eyes started to blur and the the room began to warp.

In November, for the second time in a decade, California voters will once again be presented with the opportunity to go to the ballots and vote on the legal recreational use of marijuana for adults. The first ballot initiative was only marginally defeated.The current one, proposition 64 - also known as AUMA -is all bad.It would potentially be harmful for poor youth under 21, particularly youth of color. For this demographic, being arrested with an ounce and/or not having money to pay a fine would immediately land them in jail.

Its tough these days.  The economy has been rough for years.  Especially for low income residents of the city, mentally and physically disabled folk, and an under educated youth.  These are the people who have made up the back bone of the Cannabis industry for the last 10-15 years.  Many landowners, growers, and field workers in the Cannabis industry in Northern California are on government disability and use the cash economy to ‘cheat’ the government so they can live a decent living.  Its hard to even get a space in a trailer park when your only income

Like thousands of people, I have worked, cultivated and planted seeds, never to see or enjoy the fruits of our labor. We have made and cleaned the most beautiful gardens that I have seen in my life in the mountains of Berkeley for people with money. Earning $10 an hour, we have built and managed houses with immense beauty, only to never see them again.

Thursday April 14, 2016 at the City Council o

“What is the amerikkkan dream? families risking their life for the amerikkkkan dream, the same dream all of his hear about but few of us get to see ..” Muteado Silencio, Po’ Poet & Land Liberator with POOR Magazine/Homefulness

America’s Other Death Penalty Problem

What does it say about a country that can condemn 50,000 men and women to the slow, grinding death in prison of life without the possibility of parole? In 49 of these United States, the sentence of death by imprisonment is a well-used option. In several states- California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania- there are thousands of individuals suffering under this sentence, in the worst prisons, with the greatest restrictions, and the fewest privileges.