UPDATE: The Sheriff’s Office forcibly evicted the Moms this morning.
Black women are being arrested by militarized officers, wielding AR-15s, for fighting for their right to housing in the “progressive” Bay Area.
pic.twitter.com/cXi57JOfcc— L E F T, PhD ⚫️ (@LeftSentThis) January 14, 2020
Stay tuned for more updates.
“I would talk (to the judge) about how violent homelessness is with two small children,” said Dominique Walker, co-founder of Moms4Housing and one of the many thousands of houseless mamas struggling to stay alive while houseless across this occupied Turtle Island. She spoke at press conference after a Christmastime eviction attempt of all the mamas from a stolen home they fiercely re-inhabited so their babies would have a roof in November of 2019.
As Dominque spoke, my mind wandered back to me and Mama trying to stay warm while houseless throughout my childhood, plugging space heaters into bus shelters and almost electrocuting ourselves. I thought aboutvthe death of Iris Canada, a 100 year old black elder evicted from her 40 year residence in the gentrifucked Fill-NoMo-district of San Francisco, and Ms. West, unhoused resident of Where DoWe Go Berkeley, barely alive in a hospital bed due to a “survival fire” lit to keep her warm.
I thought of one our youth skolaz at Deecolonize Academy barely escaping an adult sexual predator’s attack in a so-called “family shelter” when he and his mama were houseless. I thought of Child Protective Service targeting and stealing the children of a houseless, disabled family we recently supported who made the mistake of revealing their houselessness.
I thought of all of these acts of violence and am sharing them with you, the readers, possibly housed who have never experienced that kind of cold, that kind of fear, that kind of pain, that kind of trauma, and don’t ever associate the word violence with homelessness.
On November 18, 2019 a powerful group of homeless mamas and their children moved into a home in West Oakland held hostage by a real-estate “investor” called Wedgewood. Something this poverty skola, houseless mama calls realeSnakkkes and CorpRape Devil-opers.
EAST BAY REAL ESTATE INVESTORS BUYING HOUSES FAST FOR CASH TODAY
We’re a local East Bay company that can buy your house in ANY
condition, regardless of what you OWE or if you’re in foreclosure…..
The above words come from Wedgewood’s website…But what do they even mean? They are code words for legal theft accorded to land-stealers and wealth-hoarders from the original CONstitution as I call it created by the “stealing Fathers” — more wealth-hoarders, genocidal murderers and occupiers masked as “successful businessmen” (read Rich White Men).
“I would tell them about all the applications, credit checks, and fees I filled out that were always turned down, the agencies who say they are there to help us but aren’t, and a system that is set up for us to fail,” Dominque continued. She was answering a reporter’s question about what she and other mamas would have told the judge if they had been heard at that hearing about the eviction attempt by Wedgewood on December 30th. An attempt that was squashed, giving the mamas ten more days before they received their final removal notice on Friday, Jan 10.
The reality is, businesses like Wedgewood see Mama Earth as a commodity to bought and sold. Period. An important, if not most important aspect of the inhuman system called Capitalism.
Wedgewood is best known in the State of California as preeminent “house-flippers,” meaning they buy working-class people’s homes, slap a coat of paint on them, and re-sell them for three four or five times the amount they “paid” to new owners (I call gentriFUKers) who are usually not from the neighborhoods or even the state.
These homes are so easily taken because the previous owners are desperate to sell. Because when they were owners, they were never supported, rarely educated in these evil business practices, and easily confused by a truly violent business model that counts on people not understanding it. All of the owners are working class, Black, Brown, elder and family, long-term residents of a neighborhood. An intentionally blighted poor-people-of color neighborhood just like Deep East Oakland where Homefulness is located and where we launched the DegentriFUKation zone when we first launched the Unselling of Mama Earth process to try to help as many people still here, stay here.
These homes aren’t forgotten or abandoned, as sometimes is described. These family homes that working class people worked their entire lives to acquire, were foreclosed by predatory, shark-like banksters, with blood-stained paper called mortgages and bank loans and interest rates, taxed sometimes so much that the working-class owners couldn’t afford to pay with their salaries, paper-trailed with “blight” notices or fines or outright seizure, for inane reasons like old paint jobs or messy yards that weren’t in line with the vision of the new neighbors.
Months before the powerful MOMS4HOUSING effort was launched, POOR Magazine/Homefulness houseless mamas and co-founders held a press conference and eviction tour called, Scamlords be Scamming While Poor Tenants Be struggling, outside of the former home of Homefulness co-founder Aunti Frances Moore.
Vivi T, Princess Beverly and Sharena Thomas, all mamas and long-time Oakland residents gathered to speak on the harassment that scam lords, land-stealers and devil-opers are perpetrating against poor families, elders and children and have been for several years. We also made the connection as we have been since 2014 that eviction is elder and child abuse.
“There are literally thousands of intentionally hoarded and gated parcels of Mama Earth across Oakland and the whole Bay Area that these devil-opers and realESnakes buy and then hoard until property values rise high enough for them to Flip,” said Kimo Umu, one of our homeless and formerly homeless youth skolaz from POOR Magazine’s Deecolonize Academy school as he presented our WeSearch findings.
“All of our homelessness is not seen. A lot of the times us housing insecure families are hiding because it’s dangerous to be homeless,” said Sharena Diamond Thomas, from Peoples Community Medics, POOR Magazine and one of the MOMS4Housing co-founders.
We end up on the street, in tents, on someone’s couch or hidden in our cars, houseless and alone, criminalized for the sole act of being seen and then “swept” like we are trash.
Moms4Housing are SuperSheroes to us houseless and poor mamas at POOR Magazine. Supersheroes, who like my sisSTAR/welfareQUEENs at POOR Magazine; Jewnbug, Queennandi, Audrey Candy Corn, Pearl Ubumgen, Princess Beverly, Vivi-T, Sharena, Aunti Frances, Laure McElroy, Ingrid DeLeon , Teresa Molina, Cheri Honkala, Momi Palabraz,Juju Angeles, Mama Blue,Martrice Candler, Corrina Gould, Loa, my beautiful Mama Dee and so many more mamaz and uncles and daddies and youth and elders, who refuse to give up fighting no matter how many lies they say about us, and how much destruction is already built in the this system to kill us. Who fight to build poor and homeless peoples solutions, art, media and education to homelessness, like Homefulness, 1st They Came for the Homeless, Sogorea Te Land Trust, Where DO We Go Berkeley, Consider the Homeless, The Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, the Homeless Union and the #PoorPeoplesArmy.
And just in case inspiration is needed for the politricksters and conscious folks who showed up for Moms4Housing – good people like Bobbi Lopez and Nikki Fortunato Bass — the whole country of Finland has ended houselessness by refusing to live by the scarcity models of there is not enough when there is plenty for all of us.
Supershoeroes who go up against a rigged system I call krapitalism that is built on a racist, classist system of violent exploitation by people who think they “own” mama Earth.
“We are hard-working moms holding down two to three jobs just to support our children,” said Misty Croft. “We are just trying to survive.”
“This isn’t the end, this is the beginning of a movement,” Dominque said at a press conference on Friday, Jan 10th after the final eviction ruling came down. “But we are here and we are not leaving.” she concluded.
Since press time Wedgewood has given a meager scarcity model crum of two months rent to the moms (which of course doesn’t begin to cover the cost of rentals in this insane gentriFUKed housing market. The moms have said they are at “MomsHouse” at 2928 Magnolia st West Oakland. As well, POOR Magazine is holding a DeGentriFUKation Tour of their BlackArthur (MacArthur) Neighborhood on Saturday, Jan 18th at 12 noon launching at Homefulness at 8032 BlackArthur Bl Deep East Huchuin ( Oakland) as part of the Reclaim the Legacy of MLK weekend – to join or walk with us email poormag@gmail.com or come out and join us. To contact Tiny go to her website www.lisatinygraygarcia.com or on twitter @povertyskola
