Poet Laureate Reviews Crushing Wheelchairs
- devorah major
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
This review was written by devorah major and originally published on her website. It can be read here.
The unhoused, who are said to live on the margins of our society, are in front of our eyes every day we walk or drive down our streets if we look. Too many complain about the view, applaud people’s lives swept up and moved from one corner to another. But to not see the unhoused, is to be blind to a wealth of survival tactics, and a goldmine of individuals and families creating their own self-supporting communities. They do not see imagination, strength, love, cooperation, artistry, unity. And it is not as if these things are hidden, but one has to see these people not a category but as part of one’s family, the human family with all of its glories, fragilities and weaknesses. The film opens with Reggie, a disabled, Black elder screaming, “That’s my Wheelchair…” at a bulldozer coming for her “comeUnity” and her wheelchair.
When I saw “Crushing Wheelchairs” last year at the end of the film many of the people in the film, the actors who played various roles that were or had been themselves homeless came up on the stage to answer questions or make statements. One of the women featured in the film spoke saying that when we see someone who is unhoused on the street offer a smile, that just a smile would make a significant difference. My thought was that it was something, but it really isn’t enough.
“Because we are not trash, this movie at this time is urgent medicine for humanity itself, who through this art can realize that we as houseless people are just like housed people. We are workers, artists, poets and innovators, and survivors. We have solutions and backstories and HERstories and visions – this movie lifts up those urgent stories, those urgent solutions – this movie is Medicine for Mama Earth and all of us, “ tiny gray-garcia aka PovertySkola
“Crushing Wheelchairs” it’s an honest unvarnished look at a worthy population that so many want to ignore or hide from insult or punish for the crime of being poor. There are no political speeches or banners in this film, but it is a clear indictment of capitalism and how it harms so many. After all, we live in a nation where homelessness has been declared a crime by the Supreme Court (City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson, 2024) It is critique of local governments that have ample time and money to call out the police to uproot homeless encampments but no time or money to sit down with these people and work out real viable solutions.
The story of Crushing Wheelchairs is written in a prayer, a dream, and a scream felt and barely survived by me, tiny gray-garcia aka povertyskola, my houseless, disabled mama, and all of my fellow poverty/disability skolaz & ancestors portrayed/lived in this movie/story.
The lead characters in this powerful movie feature tiny gray-garcia, who first created this work as a staged play and then re-framed it as a feature length film, and throughout her childhood with her mother struggled with homelessness, Aunti Frances Moore, a formerly houseless Black Panther in Oakland; Stephanie Grant, who was pregnant and homeless when she witnessed the murder of Luis Gongora Pat by police in 2016, for being houseless and indigenous in a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco Mission district neighborhood.
This film through series of interconnected vignettes shows not just the struggles of the unhoused but also the way things such as gentrification affect them. When a young lesbian couple move into the house that they are so excited they have “finally” been able to buy, the couple is offended by all the neighbors who they must have walked past on their way to view the house when it was for sale. One of the more than comfortable new homeowners has a panic attack when she sees one of her homeless neighbors accosted. Her partner consoles her, but neither one of them addresses or tries to work with or even get to know these people who are indeed their neighbors.
This is the art of our lives, our almost survival, and our death at the hands of laws that say our bodies and lives are criminal and that we are trash. tiny gray-garcia aka PovertySkola
The film is narrated with thoughtful poems and a hypnotic music track drilling into your consciousness as you see real people with their real stories open and honest, difficult and uncomfortable. The movie was co-directed by Adrian Diamond, formerly houseless povertyskolaz, tiny gray-garcia, and Muteado Silencio and produced by Green Diamond Projects and POOR Magazine. It includes important poet voices, including Tongo Eisen – Martin, Ayodele Wordslangar Nzinga, Luis Rodriguez, devorah major and Po Poets; Dee Allen, Frances Moore, Leroy Moore, Muteado Silencio and tiny gray-garcia. Also in the film are Indigenous leaders and prayer-bringers Corrina Gould, Tony Gonzales, OG Rev, Harry Williams, as well as Brother Mink and formerly houseless leaders from Wood Street Commons and Homefulness.
This is not a film made by politically correct people looking from the outside at a situation they have never experienced. It is a film written and directed and performed by the unhoused. It is a montage of real stories unmasked, unfiltered and always compelling. Some of the people are employed, but never with a living wage or with respectful compassionate employers. There are women who for a time endure abuse to have a roof for their children. There is one young adult ashamed of the family’s homelessness who works at a regular job, uses drugs, and in a fit of madness kills an unhoused person. These things happen. Though not a documentary, the film documents the hardships and struggles of multi-generational, multiethnic, multilingual, multi-talented people who find a way to survive in a city that alternately ignores and oppresses them. A society that at its best closes its eyes and far more often tyrannizes them, choosing incarceration of their bodies, (attempted) crippling of their spirits and destruction of their belongings as justifiable, indeed laudable. Despite ongoing sweeps where they lose the few things that make their difficult lives a bit more bearable, they work, they love, they create, they survive.
If you are in the Los Angelos area you have an opportunity to see the film
7pm Wednesday, January 7th
If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, you have an opportunity to see “Crushing Wheelchairs”
2220 Arts Archive 2220 Beverly Bl LA (Occupied Tovaangar)
6pm Saturday, February 21st
Black Repertory Group 3201 Adeline Street, Berkeley, CA, USA
Watch this trailer to geta taste of the magic it spins This film needs to be seen because far too much time is taken up talking about the homeless problem instead of talking with the unhoused communities. Too much time is taken up in judgments and assumptions about who these people are and how they find themselves on the streets and not enough time spent listening to what their stories really are. Here is an opportunity to see truths of the unhoused in all of their colors displayed by the people who live those realities.
To learn more about how the unhoused are working together to educate each other, to, with true allies amass political power and not only survive, but work with a vision of flourishing, please visit the following sites:
POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork(PNN)/Homefulness
IG/Twitter/FB/TikTok: @povertyskola & @poormagazine
If you have specific strategies to suggest to increase home-fullness, or resources to share, or any comments please leave them below.
