A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Jazzie O. Gray
Juneteenth—also known as Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Black Independence Day, Emancipation Day and Juneteenth National Independence Day—is the annual commemoration on June 19 of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. President Biden first officially recognized the federal holiday in 2021, but Juneteenth has been celebrated since 1865. So why did it take so long to acknowledge the freedom of all African Americans in this country nationally?
by Jordan Davis
In early August of 2022, I wrote a piece for Street Sheet on the eviction crisis in permanent supportive housing—or PSH. Later that month, the Chronicle published their second article for the Broken Homes series, focusing on issues around PSH evictions. The main focus of the story was Robert Bowman, a Black disabled queer man who was evicted from an SRO run by Episcopal Community Services for non-violent visitor policy violations.
by Johanna Elattar
As I stand in line at the supermarket, there are two women ahead of me. They’re talking about the pandemic. The two women are discussing the end of the emergency food stamps that were given to everyone who’s on public assistance during quarantine, and for several months after. Now, communities are lifting requirements to wear masks in most public places, and social distancing has become a thing of the recent past.
by Tatiana Lyulkin
Nobody owns the sunrise,
The air we breathe,
The ground
Where we plant
And nurture our seeds.
The ones
Who were here before us
Believed so.
You can’t buy a waterfall,
A mountain meadow
Where the yellow
And blue flowers bloom.
Nobody owns
A quiet country road,
by India Christian Price
I grew up on stolen land. But as a Black woman in the Bay Area, primarily in the East Bay and partially in the Peninsula, I never fully understood that the land was even stolen, and that’s actually where the problem began. You grow up seeing white people, wealthy people, really damn near everyone except Black people owning homes and having expensive things. And you believe that it may have always been this way,
An Origin Story
by Tiny, daughter of Dee, povertyskola co-founder /visionary of Homefulness
@povertyskola on Twitter and IG and online at https://www.poormagazine.org/post/decolonizing-homelessness
Decolonizing or dying?
I mean how can we talk about just transfers
and still b owning her while she b desecrated and yet we keep buying and selling and buying
Mama earth is who I speak of
Our great mama who like our mamas we only have one of
Her purchase
Your profit
Leads to all these violent Evictions and sweeps that got us poor peoples dying
From WinnaMucca to Wood Street to around the corner from 1st nations elders to grandmamas like Iris Canadá and Elaine Turner
Buying selling renting and dwelling -if u po u lucky if u win the real esnakke monopoly end up housed instead of at the mercy of scamlords,
by Homefulness Resident/Formerly Homeless Poverty Scholar Israel Muñoz
learn more about Homefulness here: https://www.poormagazine.org/homefulness
(Espanol/Spanish)
Hoy, como todos, sigo con la lucha de cada día. Dejar el alcohol y con la ayuda de la gente que tuve la suerte de conocer a través de otra persona. Una persona con la que tuve el honor de compartir y aprender cosas que no se enseñan en la escuela,
by Amir, DeeColonize Academy
Learn more about homefulness here: https://www.poormagazine.org/homefulness
Homefulness is a community launched by Dee and Tiny Garcia. Homefulness is a safe place for people of color that could join us in the movement to free Mama Earth along with all of our Po Uncles, Aunties, Grandmas and Grandpas. I study at Deecolonize Academy – a school at Homefulness in East Oakland.
Homefulness is a place that helps our fellow houseless relatives on the streets.
By Arcenia Macedo Sixto
The moment I was able to understand as a child that I was considered an alien in the United States, my heart broke. I wondered why my three older siblings all held those important papers that made them special.
In 1999, my mother began her treacherous journey through disadvantaged and violent towns in Mexico, alone with a 2-year-old baby. She eventually had to connect with a coyote to cross the border.
original storypoem w/ accompanied collage art by Jason Hannan
On cusp dusky twilight, periwinkle wide – breaching highest cotton edge, our souls touched.
Tasked selling the Epic Triathloniversary, 45th & not in merchandise mood. I hadn’t been since the indigenous occupants’ diffusing back to their land after stand together.
I heard the Muscogee hymn from Trail of Tears throughout the moon phases & couldn’t cease it. Rattled me like birth.
