While Mamdani reinstates sweeps, a new movie about sweeps and homelessness screens in New York

Unhoused, formerly Houseless disabled youth, families, and elders from California have created a movie about their lives and their ancestors lost to the ongoing violence of homelessness, evictions, gentrification, poLice terror, and sweeps 

Movie Trailer HERE

NEW YORK/NJ  SCREENING DATES 

May 7: New York, NY

Maysles Documentary Center (6:30pm) 343 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10027

May 8: (2 event day!) Poughkeepsie, NY & Red Bank, NJ

1) Vassar College (11am) 124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604

2) Count Basie Center for the Arts (7pm) 99 Monmouth St, Red Bank, NJ 07701

As sweeps return in New York City under Mayor Mamdani, a tour of houseless and formerly houseless youth, adults and elders create a movie on the violence of homelessness and bring it to the Maysles Documentary Center

New York Mayor Mamdani, who stopped sweeps, reinstated them last month, while NYC faces a drastic uptick in houseless peoples  deaths. This movie, created by people who have lived this reality themselves, and have created a new solution to homelessness, is a powerful statement for New Yorkers to experience and learn from. 

Six houseless residents of San Francisco, LA and Oakland live outside in tents, cardboard boxes & RVs, surviving together in community, interdependently, until each city deploys a giant machine and multiple poLice and state agencies that crush all of their belongings, tents, walkers, wheelchairs and more. The exciting new movie Crushing Wheelchairs, which incorporates magical realism, poetry, and myth in the stories of each of the characters, culminates in violent tragedy and hope rooted in decolonial self-determination. The production includes a cast of only houseless or formerly houseless and disabled actors who have been participants in a series of theatre and writing workshops led by formerly houseless screenwriter, povertyskola and poet Tiny (Lisa) Gray-Garcia aka @povertyskola. The film was produced in partnership with LA-based filmmaker, Adrian Diamond (Green Diamond Projects).

Don’t miss this movie! As poverty increases and more and more of our neighbors are houseless, and subject to unconstitutional and cruel policing policies, there are solutions to be heard in the voices and creativity of folks forced to sleep on the street, or other public spaces. Fascism targets poor folkx, holding the line against fascism means solidarity with our unhoused neighbors. –Lynn Lewis, former civil rights organizer and ED, Picture the Homeless NYC.

"I had everything taken from me, things I will never be able to replace no matter how many hoops I went through—I could never get them back from CalTrans,” said Brokin Cloud. Houseless in Oakland for over fifteen years, Brokin Cloud is one of the over twenty co-creators, actors, and writers who have been meeting in a workshop led by the playwright, poet, actor and visionary PovertySkola also known as Tiny Gray-Garcia, who herself was a houseless child with her disabled mother for the majority of her childhood, and then again as a single mother with her son due to the violent gentrification of the Bay Area throughout the last decade.

"This movie, based on a play of the same name created by tiny, and all of the cultural work we do at Theatre of the POOR has helped me to heal from the multiple traumas I have dealt with as a houseless disabled Black woman, and survivor of eviction and poverty,” said Aunti Frances Moore, Black Panther, POOR Magazine povertyskola, co-founder of Homefulness, and founder of the Self-Help Hunger Program in Oakland, who "plays" Reggi, based on one of the ancestor povertyskolaz honored in this play, all who died because of the violence of anti-poor people-hate, racism, politricks and/or poLice Terror.

"I created this movie based on my life as a child who barely survived poverty and homelessness, criminalization and incarceration. I created this movie based on my mama's life and the lives of countless fellow houseless youth, mamas, and elders who have barely survived and often died from the position of being without shelter in a system that values "private property" over people. Values the hoarding and acquiring of stolen resources and indigenous land over the safety of children and families and elders and disabled people, and actually views us as trash when we are outside—to be swept—or put to death," said writer and co-director tiny Gray-Garcia, formerly homeless, incarcerated, single mother, poet,co-founder with her mama Dee of POOR magazine, visionary of Homefulness and co-author of many publications including Criminal of Poverty - Growing Up Homeless in America and more. 

"This movie honors and pays tribute, prayer, and art to the stories and spirits of Steven Taylor, Tyrell Wilson, Luis Demetrio Góngora Pat, Luis Temaj, Laure McElroy, Anjileen “Green Eyes” Swan, Desiree Quintero, and Shannon Marie Bigley, and so many more  all who passed from the violence of sweeps, poLice terror, and hate of us poor people,” said Tiny. “This movie honors our lives as well—currently in struggle homeless poverty skolaz, in cities like ours where, in San Francisco we are being swept in the rain, or hosed down by individuals like art gallery owner Collier Gwin, or Oakland like the Wood Street Commons residents who were violently evicted from their longtime neighborhood in West Oakland in the middle of torrential rains.”

“I feel blessed to rehearse, heal, and co-write my own story of decades of homelessness into the new movie Crushing Wheelchairs," concluded Brokin Cloud. Brokin Cloud moved into Homefulness - a rent free housing project created by houseless people at POOR Magazine, after surviving for 25 years on the street. Brokin Cloud, like many houseless people was called “Service Resistant” which really just meant the carceral “solutions” created by city, state and federal government are never informed by poor and houseless peoples ourselves and rarely if ever work. Since the release of the movie, and due to the health complications of his life and struggle on the streets for decades,  beloved elder Brokin Cloud has joined the ancestors.  This movie remains a testament to his life and struggle and the medicine of HOMEfulness. 

Each screening of the movie includes Indigenous and all nations prayer for ancestors of homelessness, poLice terror and sweeps. As well, in all of the cities we are visiting, also besieged by violent sweeps, we are honored to be co-sponsored and in collaboration with houseless sweeps and displacement survivors, mutual aid workers and advocates like the Poor People's Army in Philadelphia, Urban Justice Center, Rent Refusers, Art Against Displacement, WSP Mutual Aid, National Homelessness Law Center and more in New York, Touch the Sky, All Camps Are Beautiful in Western Mass, and will be featuring a discussion with sweeps and eviction survivors from POOR Magazine and their solution called Homefulness-a homeless peoples solution to homelessness that currently houses 24 houseless youth, adults and elders in rent-free forever housing and Wood Street Commons -members that survived the violent sweeps of their entire community and now work as advocates. 

The film has recently premiered to sold-out audiences in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles. Read reviews from the Movie HERE 

Watch the film's TRAILER here: 

UnTour to Back East Turtle Island co-sponsors include: Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign/Poor Peoples Army, Urban Justice Center, National Homelessness Law Center, Rent Refusers, Mutual Aid and Scientific Socialism, Anarchy 99, Touch the Sky,IMixWhatILike, Art Against Displacement, WSP Mutual Aid, Mixed Kollective, Safety Net Project and many more.

Follow @poormagazine for Livestream coverage of events. www.PoorMagazine.org

Full Schedule of UnTour Screenings here