By AudreyCandyCorn aka SistahSaveASoul March 3rd, 2020 As I reflect on my life, these 6 years have really changed me. I am not the same person I was before. I didn't expect to be. I didn't know what to expect. I instinctually knew life would be forever changed, which means different not the same. However common sense lured me to the assumption and well, I wasn't too far off... Some days I don't know who I am. I've lost so many parts and pieces to me... Sometimes I'm not even recognizable to myself. The horror of it all. I try to balance my Mind Body and Soul. I've yet to balance all 3. Some days are better than others. I'm still here. I'm alive, fighting the so called good fight. What exactly is the good fight? I'm always torn between this physical world and the spiritual world. When I was a little girl in my house, I was taught what you do on Earth will be the determining factor in order to be in God's presence eternally. I believe most of us have been taught this very same message all across the world but as we age, live, and experience life we learn Why we have been given that lesson of behavior while on Earth... The commandments of GOD'S word expresses to us NOT to "kill steal or covet.” We are to be help mates to each other, love one another, be fruitful and multiply, NOT KILL off fellow humans, rob and create tools such as guns to assist with the wrong doing of mankind ... Yet it is happening and it hit home And the kicker is there is a disregard for life PERIOD. And it's getting worse. I've lived in Oakland my whole life, I remember giving birth to Torian, I was So Happy. I also remember being asked do I plan to raise my new life in Oakland? Every holiday was magical and since he was a boy, often the gifts that were given to him were toy guns whether it had pellets or was a water gun. When Easter came, the basket was full of candy filled guns and eggs of course. Back in my day the boys’ Easter baskets were filled with balls—basketball, football, soccer balls, etc. You might get a bow and arrow in it but eventually the guns saturated the Easter baskets. Little did I know they were brainwashing all the little boys to like, want, and gravitate towards guns... By the time my brother got through shooting me with those sticky gun darts I wanted a boy's Easter basket of my own just to get back at him (that candy). My son grew up and loved being an Oakland native. He had BIG pride and not the rainbow. Torian was fearless. Up until the day he had to have his 1st challenge encountering a GUN. Eventually, Torian faced his challenge and died nobly and so as I reflect back, I searched for something on myself and found this article referring to my son as a PeaceGunner: Gunning for Peace up until the very END. And so as I share this with you, please understand this platform is for me to Vent, Heal, Reach, and Teach If and when applicable. It takes a village to raise a child. The village raised me and my son. The village is the same system that fucks with the gun play. Some have guns, some don't but they’re always accessible. I Am AudreyCandyCorn and this is my unsung story as I reflect on my life and how it has forever changed. But one thing that has remained the Same is The GUNS ARE HERE TO STAY. Now what gets done to you once caught is always CHANGING, gun laws always changing, we got to have a new MINDSET redirecting and brainwashing the little innocent boys. Guns are Not toys. Once dead you can't come back. Guns don't kill. The person pulling the trigger kills. Sure, taking the guns away would keep the death rate down amongst us killing ourselves but it doesn't stop others from killing us. What it does do is put us in a position where we cannot defend ourselves. So again, I'm Torn. And so today I surf the web looking for shattered pieces of me to be picked up and put back together again and I came across this article. I don't care for the way it was put together—intrusive—however I am kind of used to it. The bigger picture is the time has come back around. Gun laws are to be voted on and while I'm not sure where my vote is going to be, I do know that we need to get down to the real reason as to Why the beef behind the shooting occurs in the first place, which leads me to my very own article highlighting my parent and myself... Speaking more on Torian's concern growing up in the hood facing the struggle of the ghetto's normal dangers. It was me and his grandmother that had the fear. Torian walked the streets bold, he lived life to the fullest, he feared no man but GOD. Torian loved to laugh, never no drama, was easygoing, very loyal and an honest person who believed in GOD and loved his people. Torian trusted me, confided in me. What we adults fear, the children have accepted as their NORMAL. Drop the mic. 6 YEAR Reflection: Everybody Get Strapped Check the article as it reads................................... Two weeks ago, Audrey Candy Corn, the mother of Torian Hughes, told family and friends gathered at his memorial service that shortly before Hughes was gunned down, he said he was scared to walk the streets of Oakland. He was afraid of the ubiquitous threat of gun violence and worried constantly about being shot in a robbery or a random confrontation. On December 20, Hughes’s fears came true at the corner of Mandela Parkway and 8th Street in West Oakland. Two men approached him in broad daylight. One of them pulled a gun and fatally shot Hughes. This was the second to last homicide in Oakland in 2015, a year that ended with 93 killings, almost all of them committed with a gun. “People treat shootings like a personal tragedy, but the truth is, after Torian was killed, people keep coming up to me and telling me that they, too, have lost a family member to gun violence,” said Oakland City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney, in an interview. Although Audrey Corn was not related by blood to Gibson McElhaney and her husband Clarence, the couple treated her like she was their daughter, and Torian, like a grandson. They helped raise Torian and, at times, provided support to Corn. Gibson McElhaney also worried about Torian, not because of anything he ever did, but because of who he was. In Oakland, anyone can become a shooting victim, but the Black community suffers disproportionately, and Black men and boys are especially vulnerable. Gibson McElhaney was a peacemaker long before her grandson was killed, but the incident is transforming her. The suspect arrested in Torian’s death earlier this month is a fifteen-year-old boy. Gibson McElhaney said everything about the tragic event — one child killing another — points to the failure of Americans to overcome political polarization on gun policy and to adopt sensible laws that have been proven to reduce the availability of firearms to people who have no business possessing them. “I have a brother by marriage who owns a gun store and gun range in Texas. I’m not anti-gun,” said Gibson McElhaney. “I took my son down to Texas so that he could learn about gun safety from his uncle. My father owned guns and hunted.” Gibson McElhaney rejects the claim that there is an inherent conflict between the Second Amendment and the types of laws that would reduce gun violence, suicides, and accidental shootings. But she notes that because of the policy gridlock at the federal level, cities like Oakland become flooded with guns, which, in turn, become available to children and people with violent criminal backgrounds. This produces trauma and fear, she noted. Gibson McElhaney said that several years ago, she was going door to door in West Oakland, canvassing the neighborhood during a political campaign. As she walked through the City Towers apartments, a high-rise, affordable-housing community, she noticed bullet holes in the walls. She spoke with a middle-aged couple that lived in one of the buildings who told her about their fear of stepping outside at the wrong time of day or night, of being robbed at gunpoint, or caught in the crossfire of a shooting. The couple told her they went so far as to alter their work schedules and sneak out to their cars to avoid certain areas at certain times. The conversation stuck with her. “No one should have to live like that,” said Gibson McElhaney. “That’s not freedom.” The fear of gun violence, the way it distorts everyday life in Oakland, and stunts the development of youngsters who grow up traumatized by the sound of gunfire and the murder of their friends and loved ones, is a form of imprisonment, said Gibson McElhaney. It’s the opposite of the freedom that both libertarians and some on the radical left associate with the Second Amendment. Gibson McElhaney said people must come to terms with the fact that the nation’s existing gun laws are more a source of oppression than a wellspring of liberty. “Too many people are dying, and there’s trauma in our community,” she said. “And because of this trauma, people are fearful. They don’t get to live fully human, fully expressed lives.” As an example of laws that would further reduce gun violence and make Americans safer and freer, Gibson McElhaney points to President Obama’s recent executive action to expand the definition of a firearms dealer and require all dealers to register with the government, conduct background checks, and file paperwork on gun sales. Obama’s action, if enforced, would help to close the gun-show loophole that allows for millions of firearms every year to be traded and sold without any tracking mechanism. Law enforcement officials suspect that this loophole is exploited by gun traffickers to divert tens of thousands of firearms each year into the underground market and onto the streets of cities like Oakland. “Ninety-two percent of Americans, including card-carrying members of the NRA, support universal background checks,” said Gibson McElhaney, referring to a recent poll showing widespread support for checking the criminal and mental health histories of all gun buyers. Gibson McElhaney said that she believes measures like these, which are known to reduce gun violence, and which are broadly supported, are likely being blocked by the gun industry and firearms dealers. “Citizens in every state have to push back against this minority interest that’s very powerful and entrenched, and, I think, profit-driven.” Gibson McElhaney acknowledges that Oakland’s borders are porous. But she said that the city needs to do whatever it can to reduce gun violence, even if it means passing laws that are as much symbolic as they are substantive. “The city and its residents have a role to play in amplifying this message so that it matters on a national level,” she said. “We failed Torian. The question is: How can we work to make sure there isn’t another victim?”

Corona Killed Capitalism ? By Tiny- (Listen to Podcast by a Poverty Skola of this piece) I have a Case of Toilet Paper, I’ll bring it over tomorrow” said Reena, a now unemployed accountant from Alameda. “I have a box of organic vitamins.” Said Mr. Johns, an architect. I will bring two bags of non-perishable groceries over.” Said Linda, a landscape gardener “I have so many masks - we had hoarded them after the fires,” said Gene, an UberEats Driver. All of these beautiful statements were just a few of literally hundreds of people who have become “RadicalRedistributors” in this time of Covid19. What is Radical Redistribution? Its what most people might refer to as mutual aid, but we as a houseless and poor people/indigenous people-led, self-determined movement on stolen land have been doing since our inception in 1996 when me and mama led extreme outreach street based writing workshops in shelters, welfare offices and street- corners to eventually launch the first physical copy of POOR Magazine and the very grassroots, non-profit of the same name. Fast foreward 20 years and here we are with permission and guidance from 1st Nations elders and families, unSelling Mama Earth and working really hard to build Homefulness -a homeless peoples solution to homelessness while also supporting po mamas and families with the Po Mamas Reparations Fund and The Bank of ComeUnity Reparations. For us mutual aid is interdependence, donations is radical redistribution, as it involves a decolonizing and intentional consciousness shift away from the hoarding, producing, CONsuming mentality of Capitalism, and just like our multi-nationed ancestors before us, we have operated this way from the beginning of our movement life and personal lives. Every Tuesday for the last several years POOR Magazine goes into encampments from San Francisco to Oakland to create grassroots poor people -led media and simultaneously pass out healthy organic food, hygiene kits, produce, tents and sleeping bags. On Friday we distribute cash money, food and supplies to very low and no-income housed families as part of the Po Mamas Reparations Fund and on Thursday since we got to Homefulness on BlackArthur in Occupied Huchuin in 2011 we have been operating the Sliding Scale Cafe, Po Peoples Organic Bakery and Po Peoples Organic Farm, all of these provide free food, produce, organic harm reduction hot dogs, healthy food to help decolonize our poor people diets and have the goal of supporting unhoused and very low-income This was all long before there was a Covid19 virus, we were struggling to heal the virus called Poverty, which all of us have or still currently deal with. Now the numbers of peoples needing help has increased, so we have increased our support. Other powerful very grassroots groups like the Self-Help Hunger Program, Phat Beetz, East Oakland Collective, Coalition on Homelessness, Community Ready Corps, UFAD, Consider the Homeless, Where Do we Go Berkeley , First they Came for the Homeless, Anti-PoLice Terror Project, the Poor Peoples Economic Human rights Campaign out of Philly , HomiesEmpowrment and Disability Culture Club have been doing this work since their inception too. But the odd disconnect is, its always been just seen as movement work or social work or even worse, as in the case of the big NGO’s, savior work. But now with the shelter in place scenario when so many supportive services, and savior services are not even open, us very grassroots folks of course are still here, relied on more and happily now, joined by huge numbers of people waking up to the lies of scarcity and the violence of poverty. Stop Perpetrating the Violent Act of Looking Away.. Oddly, peoples inability to operate same old same old seems to have forced them to actually think about the lies of hoarding and accumulating, stealing and selling, in a way never seen before by this poverty skola. In fact, I might be so bold as to say- Corona might have killed Capitalism. Most of the new radical redistributors aren’t members of POOR Magazine’s powerful Solidarity family of conscious wealth-hoarders or even a graduates of our decolonizing/degentriFUKing seminar called Peopleskool which we do twice a year, to help people ungentriFUK their minds and lives, they are redistributing this toilet paper, food, masks, money and essential things because they were answering a call for radical redistribution. Which is a direct resistance to the lies of hoarding and accumulating, stealing and selling that are so rampant in crapitalism. Rent Moratoriums and Reparations From 2009 when POOR Magazine launched the concept I call Community Reparations most people, even so-called conscious and woke seem to listen to me talk about it with that annoyed/confused look on their faces. Waiting politely until I am finished explaining even though i am a formerly houseless poverty skola I don’t want to be saved by them or anyone else... then they proceed with their talks about, “organizing oppressed people from the bottom up….” It is always mind-numbingly idiotic and I want to scream, didnt you hear me? ( and alot of this nonsense is happening on Zoom now- but more on that next week) But now, perhaps because so many people are experiencing just a small slice of the torture of scarcity, isolation and abandonment by a system who doesn’t care about anyone, even if you have played by its harmful rules. A lot more people are suddenly waking up. It Takes a Barrio..HomiesEmpowerment “Someone said once, when you are hungry, you can’t eat books, so now our library is filled with food, toothpaste and essentials, said Cesar A Cruz Teolol - founder of HomiesEmpowerment, a powerful grassroots, educational, arts and culture space right here on occupied Huchuin, BlackArthur, down the street from Homefulness. As an indigenous and very grassroots, organizing project, Homies Empowerment launched the “Freedom Store” earlier this month as a direct response to Covid19 scarcity, hunger and struggle. Now they are distributing paper towels, food, sundries and so much to over 700 low and no-income Oakland families. And then we have the powerFULL work of young people like this young man name Eagle in Richmond who on his own put out a little table of food outside so people who might be hungry could eat and Deecolonize Academy Students who unflinchingly jump to the punch to offer support whenever called on for Sliding Scale Cafe and RoofLESS radio. The End of Krapitalism Driving through downtown San Francisco and Oakland and gazing upon images of Las Vegas, New York's Time Square and other spaces across Mama Earth it seems like its over. Everything, the useless work, the superfluous travel, the CONventions, the buying and selling and extracting, and stealing, the profiting off of and the destroying. Of course its not . The insane poltricksters trying to “open back up” and weird protestors of social distancing, the land -stealers of Wamponoag land (again) and the extraction nation are still here, never left and are waiting like vultures to strike. The PoLice, ICE and Plantation prisons, Detention centers, false borders and selective enforcement and murder didn’t go away, haven’t really ebbed and in many ways are more dangerous than ever. But this moment will never be forgotten and hopefully has taught a huge lesson to us all, that krapitalism is just that , crap, that scarcity is a lie. That there is in fact enough for everyone and its not based on how much money you have in your pocket, or land you have stolen but where your heart and consciousness is located. And all that useless hoarding doesn’t actually get anyone anywhere, except alone, with a lot of useless stuff and stolen land. To radically redistribute to HomiesEmpowerment via Paypal - teolol@yahoo.com or Venmo @Cesar-Cruz-22 . To Radically Redistribute to POOR Magazine - RadicalRedistribution-Fund on Venmo To drop things off to POOR magazine or for more information about PeopleSkool email poormag@gmail.com

The people charge landlords with elder abuse for Ellis Act evictions Originally published February 11, 2014 on 48hills and San Francisco BayView On Wednesday, Feb. 5, citing California Penal Code Section 368, we, the evicted, gentrified, policed, elderly and disabled, walked into the Hall of Justice in San Francisco to bring criminal charges of elder abuse against landlords for the perpetration of the crime of Ellis Act evictions against frail, elder, disabled and traumatized residents of San Francisco. POOR Magazine at the Hall of Justice on February 5, 2014 “Becoming homeless as an already disabled senior almost killed me,” said Kathy Galvez, African Descendent elder evicted in 2012 from her San Francisco home of 40 years so a realtor and bank gangster could make profit on her now stolen home. Due to the predatory speculation of landlords like Urban Green and lawyers like Andrew Sacks trying to scramble to make profit from the huge influx of new tech employees flooding the Bay Area, thousands of families with young children and disabled elders have been served with Ellis Act eviction notices, or have already been evicted, ending up in the streets, in shelters or, most terrifying of all, dead from the trauma of eviction and homelessness. The Ellis Act is a state law which says that landlords have the unconditional right to evict tenants to “go out of business.” This landlord-written law has been used to enable speculators to buy apartment buildings filled with long-term tenants and “legally evict” all the tenants living there so that after a short wait, they can re-rent all the vacant units for any insane price they want. ‘I have nowhere to go’ Pictures of Black Herstory filled every inch of Miss Nan’s walls. Mamas, daughters, sons, uncles, aunties, grandmamas and great-greats looked down at me as Miss Nan spoke: “This whole eviction process has made me extremely ill. I was already sick, but I’m not sure if I’m going to make it now.” The voice of 75-year-old Miss Nan was shaking as she spoke about the Ellis Act eviction notice she and her neighbors had just received, which would mean she, an African-American disabled elder and life-long resident of San Francisco, will be evicted from her home of 43 years. “I have nowhere to go, and I can hardly walk. And now they are sending people out here to harass me,” she concluded. Me and POOR Magazine’s co-editor and Manilatown son Tony Robles were there, sitting in her humble living room with Judge Judy quietly adjudicating on the old school Panasonic in the background, trying desperately to “save” Miss Nan from the vicious crime of eviction for profit. As Miss Nan spoke, telling her story and the stories of her two disabled neighbors, one of whom had just been rushed to the hospital because he was so traumatized by receiving an Ellis Act eviction notice, her voice remained deep and strong, holding back over 50 years of rent and bills paid, jobs tirelessly labored, unions joined, children born, families raised, elders cared for, mamas transitioned. “I have nowhere to go,” she repeated. After holding the disgusting crime of Miss Nan’s eviction on my heart, I was thrown back to the trauma of nine years ago, when me and my mama were given an Ellis Act eviction notice – the last straw, she said, after an already too long life of poverty and suffering, and the reason she became very sick and soon after transitioned. Thousands of families with young children and disabled elders have been served with Ellis Act eviction notices, or have already been evicted, ending up in the streets, in shelters or, most terrifying of all, dead from the trauma of eviction and homelessness. I remembered the family of Gerry Ambrose, a four generation working-class family dismantled by Ellis Act eviction and eventual displacement to a trailer park in West Sacramento from the predatory impact of the first dot-com boom, my own eviction in 2010 under Ellis Act of Mamahouse, a home for poor single parents like myself that I started in 2007. And now Miss Nan, Benito Santiago, the entire block just Ellis Acted last month in North Beach, dozens more we at POOR Magazine have gotten calls from every week for the last eight months and literally thousands more across the state of California, being evicted for profit of the few and the suffering of so many. As a caregiver for elders, an advocate for all poor peoples who like myself and my family have struggled to survive in the inhuman system they call capitalism, and a good indigenous daughter who has always practiced eldership, I realized then that these evictions under the Ellis Act, used for the profit of a few and causing the suffering of so many, were an actual crime, a crime of elder abuse. “We need to put an end to the Ellis Act and other laws like it which cause more poverty and homelessness,” said Luis Rodriguez, candidate for governor of California, who spoke at the press conference that preceded the filing. The filing “I’m sorry, we can’t take this complaint. You will need to go downstairs to the police window.” When we first presented the detailed complaints of 12 disabled elders ranging in age from 62 to 95 years old, whose lives have been dismantled by the abuse of an Ellis Act eviction, the DA tried to give us what us po’ folks call the “welfare shuffle”; i.e, sorry we can’t help you, you need to go somewhere else. But this time, for one of the few times in our unprotected and system-abused lives, someone stood up for our fight for the most unprotected in our society. “Actually, no, this is the right place for us to be. Due to the enormity and seriousness of these charges, they have the right to go directly to the District Attorney,” said Tony Prince, revolutionary lawyer who showed up for us and is also acting as Luis Rodriguez’ campaign manager in his run for governor of California. And then suddenly, almost as quickly as the “no” came out of her mouth, the DA’s representative agreed to go to the back and consult with other attorneys. When she came back, she agreed to take our first seven complaints and make an appointment to sit down with us to discuss investigating them further. Her “no” was not unexpected for us. Us poor and profiled folks of color have been told “no” more than we would care to count. Our lives and the lives of our young Black and Brown people are constantly arrested, cited, incarcerated and harassed for less than what these landlords and speculators have gotten away with. We are constantly called criminals and thugs and perpetrators and dangerous. And yet, who among us is abusing the most vulnerable of us, who among us are creating sit-lie, stop and frisk and gang injunction laws daily to keep our poor bodies constantly under threat and attack. “We will be investigating any clear acts of elder abuse,” said George Gascon to reporters who questioned him on our complaints. “We need to put an end to the Ellis Act and other laws like it which cause more poverty and homelessness,” said Luis Rodriguez, candidate for governor of California, who spoke at the press conference that preceded the filing. The ultimate irony of capitalist defined crimes is who are considered the good, honest working people and who are considered the dangerous criminals. It is not our houseless peoples or Black and Brown young people who are throwing 95-year-old elders on the street in the cold with nowhere to go. It is the people who have stolen this indigenous land and charged us rent for it and use papers and lawyers to destroy us who are the real criminals, the dangerous ones. They are the ones we need to watch out for – the ones who need to be cleaned off our streets and out of our neighborhoods before they abuse any more of us. California Penal Code Section 368 (Elder Abuse Law) “Any person who knows or reasonably should know that a person is an elder or dependent adult and who, under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death, willfully causes or permits any elder or dependent adult to suffer, or inflicts thereon unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering, or having the care or custody of any elder or dependent adult, willfully causes or permits the person or health of the elder or dependent adult to be injured, or willfully causes or permits the elder or dependent adult to be placed in a situation in which his or her person or health is endangered, is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by a fine not to exceed six thousand dollars ($6,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment, or by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years.” Join POOR to discuss elder abuse charges with DA This Friday, Feb. 14, at 12 noon, elders, families and advocates come back to 850 Bryant St. in San Francisco to hold a press conference on the front steps of the Hall of Justice and then meet with the district attorney to pursue these criminal charges of elder abuse. Come join us.