Honoring the Unseen Women

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: tiny gray-garcia or Muteado SilencioPhone: 510-435-7500Email: poormag@gmail.comOrganization: POOR Magazine / Homefulness

Honoring the Unseen women Homeless/Disabled/Indigenous/Refugee, Incarcerated and Comfort Women Honored for Women’s HERstory Month

What

Prayer Walk/March  and Testimony 

When

11am Wedesday, March 11th 

Where

Launch at the Corner of Market & Montgomery in San Francisco (Yelamu) 

(Listen to a PoemCast by Povertyskola For all the UnSeen Women...)

The HERstories of poor women are rarely if ever spoken about, remembered or recognized. In this humble prayer walk/procession/march led by houseless and formerly houseless women and youth, disabled women, indigenous women and joined by our solidarity of housed ComeUnity, we will lift up and recognize the HERstories of sisters, aunties, daughters, mothers and grandmothers who have died from the violence of homelessness, false borders, imperial wars and state terror.

We will be launching the walk at Market and Montgomery in San Francisco above the BART station where many houseless, disabled women have tried to sleep and rest and have been violently “swept” because the so-called public sidewalks and public transportation are not actually for ALL of the public.

“I was arrested for sitting at the BART station, just because I looked homeless,I ended up in the hospital that night because my temperature dropped so low i almost died from hypothermia,” said RoofLess Radio reporter Maria X  

Women experiencing homelessness are the most impacted by the state terrror of Sweeps as they are vulnerable to violence when they are on the street in exposed, unlighted areas and/or lose their street communities and networks of protection. 

Since the 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, houseless people have lost constitutional protections, leading cities across California to dramatically increase sweeps—each one more dangerous and deadly than the last.

Like San Francisco and Oakland, most cities across the US, housing is unaffordable, scarce or inaccessible to poor and houseless women and children.

“When my disabled mama and I were being police-harassed, swept, and arrested for trying to sleep in doorways, bus shelters, and the back seats of cars in San Francisco and Oakland, we tried to get into housing and never had enough money for the rent and the costs of move-in fees,” said tiny gray-garcia, co-founder of POOR Magazine and visionary co-founder of Homefulness.

Our next stop on the procession is the previous  site of the ICE/DHS court in SF, where thousands of women, children and families have been terrorized by the racist, classist profiling and detentions of indigenous refugee women from the other sides of the false borders. 

We will culminate our prayer walk/procession at the Comfort Woman Memorial which honors the rarely spoken about ancestors and survivors of Imperial wars that exploited, enslaved and raped thousands of poor women and girls from Korea to the Phillipines  

This powerful prayer procession/march is co-sponored by Houseless/formerly houseless people-led movements and a broad range of community organizations in solidarity POOR Magazine/Homefulness: Coalition on Homelessness, Wood Street Commons, Western Regional Advocacy Program, Self Help Hunger Program, Room2Grow, CALMA, Globa Womens Strike, Parent Voices, Nikkei Decolonization Tour, Together We Stand, and ASEJ 

Please join us on March 11th at 11am at Market and Montgomery in San Francisco 

Follow: 📣 @poormagazine for livestream of event