PoShunary (Dictionary of the Po’)

by tiny, a resistance to colonial linguistic dominance

Cause we can’t use the kkkolonizers words to liberate ourselves, our ancestors and our MamaEarth

Akkkademia / akkkademiks — most if not all of the institutions of higher “learning” across Turtle Island were built by land-stealers, wealth-hoarders and colonizers. Most of the buildings on their “campuses” are named after eugenicists, or people that actively promoted, supported or benefited off of pure race science and/or the theft of land, lives, bodies, knowledge and culture across Mama Earth. 

Amerikkklan — The Stolen indigenous territory of Turtle Island named after one of the colonizers who aided and abetted in the stealing of this land and building/creating the mythology of discovery.

AMON-strazon — (remix of Amazon) as it has become a literal monster, “owning,” destroying, buying, selling ideas, art, life, and our Mama Earth

AnthroWrongOlogy and Arkkkaeology — The theft, storage, display, removal, and displacement of indigenous ancestors, poor, Black and Brown people for study, research, profit, entertainment or devil-opment without the descendants’ inclusion, permission, leadership, direction, prayer protocol, and/or ceremony.

Anti-Social Work & Case Manglers — The angry-at-poor-people, working-for-the-man, believing-in-the-“sys,” hegemony-filled people who often work in the non-profit industrial complex as front-line staff or advocates, or in Social Security, welfare/Hellfare offices, shelters or drop-in centers and ascribe to the scarcity model of the “deserving vs. undeserving poor” notion that poor people are lazy, crazy, etc.—which is often translated/taught in training sessions, academia, and/or existent in a person who lacks poverty scholarship.

AristoKrazy — Wealth-Hoarders/Land-stealers who believe that they know more inherently, because of their “bloodlines” of privilege and so-called wealth, about survival, thrival, use of resources and Mama Earth and life itself 

Blood-Stained Dollars: US Dollars or Euros (and all other empire monetary systems) gained off the exploitation, wars, removal and/or genocide of people.

Love Stained Dollars- radically redistributed stolen and hoarded wealth for liberation of Mama Earth and her sacred resources 

Brother-Ship/Sister-Ship/Mama-Ship — The opposite of a “fellow-ship”— a designation, support for loving and caregiving for your family, community and village.

ComeUNITY — A village of poor/indigenous and/or in-struggle folks operating interdependently. 

CONfused CONsumer — using billion-dollar ad campaigns to “sell” happiness and love and so-called sexiness to people, resulting in people associating love with material things in a kkkrapitalist system. Side effects/impacts—hoarding/cluttering illness, the lie of “credit,”  bankruptcy and the violence of debt

CorpRape / CorpRapeShun — remix of “corporate/corporation” as these entities exist to extract, destroy, desecrate, kill, poLice and profit off of poor, indigenous, Black and Brown peoples, animals, Mama Earth, Mama Ocean and her resources, Air, Water, Land and resources 

Eldership — The active (as opposed to passive and in name only), non-capitalist practice of caring for, honoring, and showing deference to elders in your family and in society.

Folks in Struggle — We don’t say “homeless people,” as if “homeless” were our only identity just because we don’t have access to a roof. “Homeless” is a grant-pimp guideline word/determination. We don’t say “low-income”—because whose idea of low-income are we talking about within a capitalist society? And we don’t even always say “in poverty,” because that isn’t the only way to describe the struggle of people who struggle with other oppressions like racism, ableism, gender oppression, border fascism, and more. So, as often as we can, we say “folks in struggle” instead, adding that folks are in struggle with poverty, ableism, houselessness, landlessness, and more.

GentriFUKation — Gentrification and displacement of poor peoples of color and indigenous peoples from their rooted communities, jobs, and land.

Hellthcare — The treatment received (or not received) by poor, unhoused, disabled, migrant/immigrant, indigenous and/or very low-income people.

Homefulness — a homeless, landless, self-determined movement solution to homelessness (currently being manifested in Deep East Occupied Huchiun) 

Houseless/Landless/Unhoused — As poverty skolaz we resist the term “homeless.” Like “youth” and “seniors,” “homeless” is another way that nonprofit industrial complex organizations, philanthro-pimped grants, legislators, politicians, corporate governments, media, and akkkademics “separate” us from the tables of decision-making and power, so they can talk about us instead of talking with us. By claiming the term “landless,” we align ourselves with landless peoples movements in Brazil, Kenya, South Africa, and Mexico. Our relationship to a roof does not define us as people—we are multi-layered, multi-generational, multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-lingual—we just don’t have a roof—also many folks live outside in a neighborhood, community or town, that doesn’t mean that we are any less residents than someone with access to a roof on this stolen, indigenous land.

Interdependence — The intentional connectedness of people, families, and community. Interdependence is the reliance on each other with an open acceptance that, as people, we need each other. It is a rejection of the bootstraps, capitalist ideal of separateness, isolation, and western, Euro-centric ideas of individuation and independence.

kkKrapitalism/KrapitaLOST — a person of any culture or melanin who believes that the harming system of “capitalism” is our way to be “free,” rooted in violent exploitation of your fellow human, mama earth resources or activity. Krapitalism is a word I created to clarify the racist classist, violent system known as Capitalism 

KkkrapitalisMas — a day wrongly associated with the born-day of the revolutionary indigenous, melanted man known as Yeshua (Jesus) so that kkkrapitalists could make billions of dollars of bloodstained dollars in the CONsumer kkkrapitalist industry

KlanMark — So-called landmarks like Mount Rushmore and the Alamo (and so many more all across occupied Turtle Island) where colonial terror and colonial terrorists who stole Mama Earth, enslaved people and perpetuated genocide on indigenous, Black, Brown and Disabled bodies are held up as “leaders,” “thinkers,” artists, visionaries, scientists and “presidents”  

Lie-gislators / Politricksters — The people known as legislators and politicians who use bloodstained and stolen dollars and power to abuse, criminalize and profit off of the backs of poor peoples and people of color. These folks should not be confused with conscious peoples who try to be in the race, classed and colonized space of politricks navigating the settler-colonizer laws for collective justice.

Linguistic Domination: Linguistic domination privileges the colonizers’ languages and speech, which results in the exclusion, shame, silencing, segregation, disempowerment, and destruction of voices speaking their indigenous languages and tongues. Proficiency in the colonizers’ tongues affords access, space, resources, and power to a small group of people with race, class, and/or educational privilege. Linguistic domination rewards people who can master not only the master’s language but also the dominant way of thinking, forming ideas, and living. These institutionalized forms of silencing dictate which words and information are considered legitimate, who and what is funded to create media, and who is considered valid as an expert, a media maker, a communicator. The colonizers’ languages have been afforded this legitimacy and “privilege” via access to stolen resources and imperialistic stability—e.g. libraries, endowments, institutions of academia, media corporations, and the like.

Media Resistance — Media resistance occurs when people who are usually intentionally silenced by media channels create media for the purposes of change, resistance, and revolution.

MiddleClassMedia Missionary (MCMM) — Media creators who have, as my Mama Dee would say, never missed a meal (in other words no poverty scholarship) and do “exposés” on marginalized peoples and communities with the idea that by telling our stories for us without us they are “helping” us. Writing about us poor and houseless peoples with no accountability to us or inclusion of our voices, a media missionary is silencing the peoples and communities they purport to help. Like all missionary work, media-missionary work is misguided; the “help” can be a form of genocide, telling a story that’s not the media-maker’s to tell, leading to/enabling the destruction of a community. Media-missionary work is not specific to corporate media, but it started there.

Non-Profiteers & the Savior Industrial Complex — Non-profiteers—in the tradition of capitalist paper-theft projects like real estate, multinational corporations, hedge funds, and fake insurance policies based on “capital” earned on long-ago-stolen land. Nonprofit organizations are created as corporations, beginning with 501(c)3 papers that use language very similar to that of for-profit corporations. They are all created with capitalist, individualistic structures like boards, secretaries, and presidents who follow strict guidelines and codes of conduct meant to “keep everything in line.” The organizations function in the same way corporations do—sometimes even worse, depending on what they do. Big poverty-pimped organizations like Goodwill and Salvation Army compete for government contracts to “provide” services to poverty, disability, youth, and migrant skolaz and then create large shelters that operate like jails, with piss tests and shut-down rules. Smaller organizations insist that we respect “boundaries” and create punitive requirements/actions if we don’t follow the “rules”—which often means that we are punished for acting in the ways of our ancestors, with indigenous love and respect. Nonprofits within the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC) create projects based on the “guidelines” of big philanthro-pimps, which leads to separatist, individualistic ways of allegedly providing services. In reality, though, they keep people sick, in the system, and out of control. 

Philanthro-Pimping — The industry of philanthropy includes a heavy pimping aspect with covert and overt ways of commodifying and exploiting people and their pain, struggle, and oppression. This process of commodification and exploitation often includes language about the “sexiness” of a project, initiative, or problem. See Chapter 10 of Poverty Scholarship: Poor People-Led Theory, Art, Words & Tears Across Mama Earth.

Po’Lice — Paid agents of the prison industrial complex (PIC) who protect property and provide customers for the PIC.

Poor Peoples’ Equity — Within a capitalist context, equity means the falsely bolstered property values of stolen land acquired through paper theft. Within a context of landless/houseless people, though, it can mean many things: fair access to a roof that we aren’t at risk of being kicked out of due to non-payment or lack of access to blood-stained amerikkkan dollaz (which landless/houseless people never have, due to many racist and classist setups and paper thefts and boundaries and dominations that happen every day to poor people/indigenous peoples); the ability to walk into a store and not have a security guard follow you; access to mental health services; the knowledge that someone is caring for you or will care for you if you are an elder; relationships, from academic networks to knowing there are people you can count on to provide a job or a place to stay, or anything else. Equity is covert, intangible, and at the root of race and class separation.

Poor Peoples’ Sweat Equity — Access to land, housing, and food security, not based on how many bloodstained amerikkkan dollaz we have or the over-used and oftentimes ableist, racist and classist concept of “sweat equity” based on how much physical labor humans can do. Poor peoples’ sweat equity is based on “whatever we can do” as poor elders, youth, disabled and differently abled poor people, i.e., child care, media, chairing of meetings, cleaning, organizing, i.e., the time, love, sweat, labor, struggle, and spirit we put into caring for our mama, each other and Pachamama.

Povertyskola — a person who has struggled with homelessness, poverty, eviction, false borders, racism, incarceration, profiling and/or other forms of colonial oppression in this stolen land.

Real E-Snakes & Devil-opers — Real-estate snakkkes and developers are the people or organizations who imagine and oversee real-estate speculation, from conceptualizing new real-estate developments to buying land to financing and managing construction to selling and leasing. Most developers are devil-opers, key agents of community destruction and displacement. When a developer uses “redevelopment” of an area to destroy and displace a thriving community of color, they get statues and plazas named after them. For example, Justin Herman, head of San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency in the 1960s, oversaw the displacement of tens of thousands of people of color from a neighborhood that was once described as the nation’s most diverse. That neighborhood now has a plaza named after him. See also gentriFUKation.

Underground Economic Strategies — Unrecognized ways of work, labor, and business such as selling products on the streets without a license or selling services not seen as “legal” or sanctioned by society. Underground economic strategists include recyclers, panhandlers, and unlicensed street vendors or artists.

WeSearch — I launched the concept of We-Search because I don’t believe in the akkkademic domination of research. Academic research uses philanthro-pimped and funded initiatives to study, deconstruct, and survey poor youth, adults, and elders in struggle. This research creates papers, thesis projects, and studies that talk about how poor we are, how much racism there is, and how bad our neighborhoods and schools are. We-Search is poor-people-led research and proactive media that deconstructs the lies told about our criminalized and mythologized communities.

Wite — Not to be confused with the “color” or the melanin in someone’s skin, this relates to the system of “White supremacy” that rules institutions of learning, housing, hellthcare and service provision in the US.

Wite-Science — Post-colonial science, medicine, biology, eugenics, rooted in/based on the study, experimentation, torture, exploitation and/or death of indigenous, Black, Brown, Disabled peoples stolen, disrespected, poisoned, incarcerated bodies.