TODAY, Friday, April 24th 1pm PST From Criminalization to Corona on Stolen Land

Tiny - Posted on 24 April 2020

Join the Center for Transformative Action for the discussion: From Criminalization to Corona on Stolen Land

About this Event

This Friday: From Criminalization to Corona on Stolen Land

* Friday April 24th, 1pm PST*

Panelists: Corrina Gould, Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, and Leroy Moore with Homefulness, Krip Hop Nation, POOR Magazine and Sogorea Te Land Trust.

Moderator: Dr. Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu

Description: Through poetry, prayer, spirit and discussion, this panel will look at the reality that houseless, poor, disabled and indigenous peoples have struggled with for centuries long before the virus called Covid-19. In addition, the panel highlights struggles led by self-determined, landless and indigenous peoples' land rematriation projects, art and cultural work movements like Poverty Scholarship, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Homefulness, Krip-Hop Nation and The Bank of ComeUnity Reparations as hopeful visions and actual solutions for creating futures of decolonization.

Bios:

Dr. Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu is a Tongan/Pacific Islander scholar and community organizer. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. She is working on her book manuscript, The Mana of the Tongan Everyday: Tongan Grief and Mourning, Patriarchal Violence, and Remembering Va. She is on the founding committee of the Moana Nui Pacific Islander Climate Justice Project and Oceania Coalition of Northern California (OCNC), community organizations working for Pacific Islander self determination through land justice, facilitating Ceremony with Pacific Islander prisoners in Northern California as well as working with California American Indian tribes to protect Indigenous Sacred spaces in California and in the Pacific. Fui hosts a radio segment titled “From Moana Nui to California; Indigenous Stories of Land” on 94.1 KPFA radio. She is currently working with the Sogorea Te Land Trust, an Urban Indigenous women’s land trust located in Oakland, California.

Corrina Gould is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone. She is an acclaimed speaker locally, nationally and internationally on the work of sacred sites protection and preservation, as well as the invisibility of her people. She works within the intersection of many communities to create partnerships with all people to create a sustainable future, where Ohlone people will not continue to be invisible in their own homelands.

She was born and raised in Oakland, CA, the territory of Huichuin. She is an activist that has worked on preserving and protecting the ancient burial sites of her ancestors in the Bay Area. She is the Co-Founder and a Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a Native run grassroots organization that works on Indigenous people issues that had also sponsored the Shellmound Peace Walk between 2005-2009, to bring about education and awareness of the desecration of the sacred sites in the greater Bay Area. IPOC also hosts the annual Shellmound gathering at Emeryville Mall where an ancient site was desecrated by development.

In April of 2011 Corrina, Johnella LaRose, Wounded Knee De Ocampo and a committee of others, joined together and put a call out to warriors to create a prayerful vigil and occupation of Sogorea Te in Vallejo CA. This is a 15 acre Sacred Site that sits along the Carquinez Straits. The occupation lasted for 109 days and resulted in a cultural easement between the City of Vallejo, the Greater Vallejo Recreation District and two federally recognized tribes. This struggle was victorious and will set precedence in this type of work going forward with others that are working on sacred sites issues within city boundaries in California.

Her current work includes the Co-Founding of a Native women led urban land trust within the setting of what continues to be her ancestral territory of the Bay Area. Corrina worked with Michelle Steinberg to create the film "Beyond Recognition", that focus' on the work of creating the Sogorea Te Land Trust, which has been shown at multiple film festivals and won the "Green Award" at the SF green film festival in 2015. The movie has been shown on PBS locally and has been shown nation wide.

Corrina also sits on a number of local non-profit boards.

Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. With her Mama Dee- she co-founded Escuela de la gente/PeopleSkool- a poor and indigenous people-led skool, as well as several cultural projects such as the Po Poets Project/Poetas POBREs Proyecto (co-founded with Leroy Moore), welfareQUEENs, the Theatre of the POOR/Teatro de los pobres, Hotel Voices( to name a few. She is also the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of A Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution, Born & Raised in Frisco and her second book- Poverty ScholarShip -Poor People Theory, Arts, words and Tears Across Mama Earth A PeoplesTeXt was released in 2019.

In 2011 she co-launched The Homefulness Project - a landless peoples, self-determined land liberation movement in the Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin territory known as Deep East Oakland, ,and co-founded a liberation school for children, Deecolonize Academy

In 2016 tiny launched the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tours Through Turtle Island with 1st Nations leaders and fellow poverty scholars where poor people tour "rich" neighborhoods across the US and knock on doors humbly asking that wealth hoarders redistribute their hoarded money and assets, The tour is loosely based on the Bhoodan Movement of India launched by Vinoba Bhave who walked through India asking wealthy "land-owners" to gift their land to landless peoples.This led to the launch of the Bank of ComeUnity Reparations- a poor and indigenous people-led fund to radically redistribute stolen and hoarded wealth to houseless, poor, black and Brown and indigenous peoples

She just completed an international webinar on poverty, homelessness and climate change with Dr. Fei Mok- entitled Exposed and Closest

Leroy F. Moore Jr., is Founder of the Krip-Hop Nation (a movement that addresses ableism, or discrimination against disabled artists, esp. Black musicians marginalized because of racism AND ableism internationally) and the cofounder of Sins Invalid. Moore is an activist, writer, poet, rapper, feminist, and radio programmer. Moore wrote for I.D.E.A.L. Magazine, and since the 1990s, has written the column "Illin-N-Chillin" for POOR Magazine.

His books include the spoken-word CD, a children’s book, Black Disabled Art History 101 that was published in 2017 by Xochitl Justice Press. His poetry/lyrics book, The Black Kripple Delivers Poetry & Lyrics has been published by Poetic Matrix Press in the Winter of 2015. Moore is writing a Krip-Hop graphic Novel under Poor Press and is working with Juba Kalamka on a full length album. Moore has won many awards for his advocacy, from the San Francisco Mayor’s Disability Council under Willie L. Brown to the Local Hero Award in 2002 from Public Television Station, KQED in San Francisco.

As a youth, Moore discovered that most people had little knowledge of the historical impact of disabled African Americans. This led him to begin research, initially in the music industry, and to promote artists with disabilities for broader inclusion. Moore is a leading activist on issues of wrongful incarceration and police brutality against people with disabilities.

He writes, lectures, and performs about race and disability issues both in the United States and abroad. Moore is one of the founding member of National Black Disability Coalition. Moore has traveled to S Korea for the Para-Olympics and for the 2014 DaDa Fest Krip-Hop Nation UK Tour, as well as to South Africa, Canada, Mexico, and elsewhere, networking internationally with other disabled activists and artists. Moore has interviewed hip-hop\soul\blues\jazz artists with disabilities; the Blind Boys of Alabama, Jazz elder Jimmy Scott, Hip-Hop star, Wonder Mike of the Sugar Hill Gang, DJ Quad of LA, Paraplegic MC of Chicago, Rob DA Noize Temple of New York to name a few. Leroy has a poetry CD, entitled Black Disabled Man with a Big Mouth & A High I.Q. and has put out his poetry CDs entitled The Black Kripple Delivers Krip Love Mixtape (2014) & Krip-Blues Stories (2017).

Born in 1967 with cerebral palsy in NYC, Leroy Moore, Jr. was blessed to have a conscious, activist father & mother who instilled a strong sense of identity as a Black and disabled youngster.

APR

FRIDAY: From Criminalization to Corona on Stolen Land

by CTA at Mills College