Healing Truth.
Libelist attack of a povertyskola at David Geffen School of Medicine (UCLA)
By tiny gray-garcia
When mama and me were on the street barely with enuf food to eat
No-one cared - they called us homeless bums
See those trash over there
Our life was the endless violence of sweeps and stares
But then i ask for prayer for firebombed babies and suddenly u see me clear
Fast foreward 20 years
Building/Writing/Visioning Homefulness for Houseless Families EVERYWHERE
Always with humble liberation prayer
For folks in poverty
Like me and Mama Dee
From LA to Palestine
For slaughtered and houseless babies
In all this time of local and global genocide
Make up Lies
To wash the truth
call me names
Say i forced spirit, message, away from our roots
This is so strange
Cuz if u know me
Im always here to tell truths
That people refuse to see
I walked in from outside today
At the Elite institution known
As UCLA
I always walk with equal amounts of truth and love
Its a calling in not a calling out -from below and above
Cuz we all been caught in so manyhurtful lies
Cuz we all been taught to look away from strife
“Do you see us houseless mamaz and daughters living in a tent ? ….. i said, do you see us houseless mamaz and daughters sleeping in a tent- thats cause we don’t have money for the rent….
I opened my talk at UCLA medical school with the same ask I do of everyone I speak with… I ask housed people who have never struggled with the violence of trying to be safe outside, trying to keep their last blanket dry in the rain, their bodies cool in the deafening heat, their lungs breathing when the air is filled with smoke and their bodies well even when they are medically fragile and have no place to safely dwell. People like myself for most of my childhood with my disabled houseless mama, who have never had a place to shelter in safely when humans are told to shelter in place.
I asked this question of conscious, loving humans who have decided to become healers because they want to save lives and make us all well. I ask this of students at UCLA medical school, who have been protected by the “privilege of privacy” i.e., a roof to hide under, a door to close, a heater to stand near, a lamp to turn on, a bed to sleep in. I asked if those conscious humans are able to look at us, houseless humans, who have none of these things, and are also dealing with the trauma that so many of us struggle with everyday, from lives lived of abuse, racism, classism, ableism, war, gun violence and poverty.
I asked this and I always ask this because maybe if they can actually see us, if you can actually see us as the human beings we are, in deep struggle just to stay alive, as povertyskolaz who have struggled and survived by any means necessary, maybe you can also listen to us about the very real and practicable solutions we have created to solve not only our own homelessness but homelessness across Mama Earth. Solutions like Homefulness, Aetna Street, Wood Street and NIcklesville
This is what i brought to UCLA medical school. Because the medical school is filled with healers with beautiful hearts who are learning how to expand those hearts to heal communities that this society would rather eradicate. Would rather not see. Learning urgent medicine of racial equity, disability justice, indigenous land rights, the connections of eviction, homelessness and gentrification on peoples health, and the very real healing of reparations, equity and housing for all.
I began, like I always begin with prayer for all ancestors. 1st Nations ancestors of the lands we are sitting, standing, living and learning on, who took care of these lands for thousands of years before any settlers arrived and committed the genocide of removal and land theft .
Ancestors of homelessness, because homelessness kills. Because up to 6 LA residents per week are being found dead in their tents, on the street and in the jail-like motel rooms and tiny homes aka “solutions” that aren’t poverty scholarship informed, created right now in cities across the US, about us without us poor people
Baby and mama ancestors of wars across Mama Earth from Palestine to West Papua, where poor and houseless children and mamas and elders are being targeted, murdered, burned, firebombed, and removed so that other people can gain access to their lands of origins.
Prayer for Mama Earth, Mama Trees and Mama Ocean because we as humans have systematically extracted, poisoned, drilled and destroyed all of her, all of them, and continue to, even to our collective peril and hers.
For all of these humble prayers of peace and transformation, offered to people, not demanded of anyone, spoken in truth and earnest,I was targeted, I was demeaned, lied about, framed, accused and libeled.
I am heartbroken. I am in deeper grief than i already was. Because now I am clear that bringing humble truth into this institution is not protected or respected. And so I ask how can we grow the loving, life-changing human healers known as doctors, when we can’t teach truth, love and respect ?
