Workshop 6:

How to Not Call the PoLice EVER

Thursday 15 April 2021 ~ 6:05 - 7:35pm Pacific

Recording available here (90 mins)

POOR Magazine is a poor people led/indigenous people led, grassroots non-profit arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, art, education and advocacy to silenced youth, adults and elders in poverty across the globe.

In 21 years of collective love and struggle, the poor, unhoused, disabled, Black, Brown, Indigenous, elder and youth leaders, artists, and cultural workers of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE have never called the Po’Lice. This workshop will include teaching on poor and traumatized peoples accountability, how to REdefine a western wite supremacist notion of security, and how to hold each other through trauma and into a true definition of interdependent safety.

Walking this walk among a poor and indigneous peoples-led movement means facing our demons ALL THE TIME because we all come out of collective trauma experiences of racism, wite supremacy, ablism, family violence, false borders, eviction, houselessness, criminalization, elder/child abuse, sexual violence, rape, incarceration, poLICE violence genderism, hate crimes and so much more. You will hear from poor, unhoused, disabled, Black, Brown, Indigenous, elder and youth leaders, artists, cultural workers of POOR Magazine/PrensaPOBRE who have practiced this work for 21 years.

Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled mama Dee, and the co-founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. With her Mama Dee- she co-founded Escuela de la gente/PeopleSkool- a poor and indigenous people-led skool, as well as several cultural projects such as the Po Poets Project/Poetas POBREs Proyecto (co-founded with Leroy Moore), welfareQUEENs, the Theatre of the POOR/Teatro de los pobres, and Hotel Voices. In 2011 she co-launched The Homefulness Project - a landless peoples, self-determined land liberation movement in the Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin territory known as Deep East Oakland, and co-founded a liberation school for children, Deecolonize Academy. She is also the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of A Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution, Born & Raised in Frisco and her second book- Poverty ScholarShip - Poor People Theory, Arts, words and Tears Across Mama Earth was released in 2019.

Leroy F. Moore Jr. is an African American writer, poet, community activist, and feminist. Moore was born November 2, 1967 in New York City. Moore is one of the founders of Krip Hop. Moore and his counterparts Rob Da’ Noize Temple, and Keith Jones started Krip Hop, a movement that uses hip-hop music as a means of expression for people with disabilities. The primary goal of the Krip Hop Nation is to increase awareness in music and media outlets of the talents, history and rights of people with disabilities. The Krip Hop Nation also focuses on advocacy, activism and education and holds workshops on relevant social, artistic, and political issues. In addition to his work with Krip Hop, since the 1990s, Moore has written the column "Illin-N-Chillin" for POOR Magazine. Moore is also a co-founder of the disability performance art collective Sins Invalid. Additionally, he currently serves as the Chair of the Black Disability Studies Committee for the National Black Disability Coalition. He co-authored a children's book called Black Disabled Art History 101.

Dee Allen, African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s. In the collection of badass poetry released on POOR press in 2019 called Skeletal Black: Poems from Beneath the Poverty Line, Dee tells the story of poverty, arson, displacement and removal us poor people face all the time, through all the evil means that the exploitative inhuman system called “krapitalism” unfolds. Dee is also the author of 3 books [Boneyard, Unwritten Law, and Stormwater, all from POOR Press] and 16 anthology appearances [including Poets 11: 2014, Feather Floating on the Water, Rise, Your Golden Sun Still Shines, The City Is Already Speaking, What is Love and the newest from Vagabond Books, Extreme] under his figurative belt so far.

Muteado Silencio, Indigenous Purepecha/Raza artist, writer, media producer, teacher and poet from Michoacan, Mexico. Co–teacher of the Poetas POBRES/Po Poets Project at Prensa POBRE (POOR Magazine), In/migrant & Indigenous and revolutionary artist & scholar in residence at the Race, Poverty Media Justice Institute and staff writer for Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia and community Activist. Actor and writer with People of Color Action Theatre (POCAT) "We did not cross the border, the border crossed us" Raised in the East Side of Oakland by his single mother, born in Michoacan made in Oakland in a beautiful community of Black and Brown folks, land of the Homicides and Sideshows. "My pen is my gun, my words are my bullets", Done work with Color Ink, Theater of the Oppress, Oakland Unified School District, Unity Concepts, La Carpa del Feo....

Aunti Frances Moore is a beloved Black disabled activist, elder, Black Panther and community leader from North Oakland/South Berkeley. She grew up in North Berkeley and has dedicated most of her time and care to her community. Aunti Frances used music for healing purposes while going through transition at a young age. She was honored to work alongside with courageous geniuses of the revolutions as a member of the Black Panthers. She continues on with the legacy of the Black Panther party using food as an organizing tool to fight against gentrification and displacement. In her work, she has touched the lives of many community members, housed and houseless, through her Self-help Hunger Program. She has helped transform Driver Plaza from a tiny patch of grass and cement to a fruiting edible garden and community hub. She is vital to the life of the neighborhood and is a memory-keeper and storyteller who preserves our history even as the city faces so many rapid changes.