Door after Door opened to nothing—
Emptiness
is the gentriFUKers idea of Best
But what is left ?
All of us wrecked, unable to rest
While bulldozers doze off cuz they barely slept
Room after room of dismantled nests
Lives lived in here—eyes cried in here— prayers were laid down and wealthhoarders were disrobed and tried in here.
Unfair Labor was fought and died in here,
replaced with unions and civil rights so all of us could work without fear
This is the Herstory of archives and dreams—sacred memories that belong to the trees
From poor people’s theatre, living wages, trans visionaries and dreamers, a temple of work migrante /indigenous warriors, green cabs and Ronnie Goddmans Art—this building is all that is resistance and its beiing crushed by the deadly hush of blood-stained dollar lust
The Redstone Labor Temple must live. Don’t let the gentriFUKers Win
“I was dealing with domestic violence, and I came to this building and Catholic Charities helped me,” said sister warrior for the people Guillermina Castellanos. “This building saved my life.”
Guillermina told her story at a protest to Save the Redstone Labor Temple, a 107-year-old building in the Mission district of San Francisco, led by tenants and community. Guillermina, went onto explain that the Redstone was a very important resource for women like her in crisis.
Supporters rally outside the historic Redstone Building, a labor temple that has been home to much of the SF left for decades.
After years of struggling with a landlord who was always trying to sell the building for millions of dollars, subsequent promises that were made by other organizations and even resolutions made by SF supervisors to “save the Redstone”. But the sacred Redstone was sold in 2021 to Aurora Lights LLC.
“They are now playing hardball with us as one of the last tenants, left in the building, telling us we need to relocate to a unit to us in the building that’s completely inaccessible for our disabled and elder communities. They know we can’t accept that,” said Karl Kramer, a warrior for labor and migrante justice and longtime lead organizer with the Living Wage Coaltion and CISPES ( a movement for the liberation of El Salvador).
POOR Magazine still shares a small office space in the Living Wage unit for our San Francisco Theatre of the POOR workshops for houseless and very low-income San Francisco residents, and we have a lot of disabled workshop participants who would not be able to attend a workshop in an inaccessible unit.
The walls of the Redstone are covered in ancient murals of labor resistance. The halls are filled with the ancestors of every struggle that ever went down in Occupied Yelamu, and as Roger, the buildings manager for many years used to teach, it is literally on top of an Ohlone shell mound.
This building saved this povertyskola’s life and the life of so many poor and houseless, migrante, indigenous, Black and Brown poverty skolaz who slept here, hid out here, lived here, and worked here.
“Mission Agenda, The National Campaign to Stop the Vietnam War, Women’s Inc., Prison Focus, Theatre Rhinoceros, Luna Sea Theatre, El/ La and more….” Kramer said. He, along with musician and warrior for the people Francisco Hererra gave a bi-lingual herstory of the hundred years of labor resistance at the Redstone from a truck parked outside on 16th street at the protest in September to save it.
Both of them mentioned scores of revolutionary and grassroots organizations. To sum up their oral history, the Redstone housed almost every movement that ever did anything to resist the violent, extractive system of Krapitalism. And now Krapitalism is trying to kill it.
San Francisco is littered with the sorrow of its endless removal of the sacred. Ever since the dot-com sickness, grassroots movements and organizations have been scrambling just to stay safely housed so we can serve, organize and rise up. POOR Magazine is one of those movements.
In 2009 POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE a poor/houseless, indigenous people-led movement of education, liberation, art, media, and advocacy was being evicted from a tiny run-down office in the Tenderloin so the new building owners could turn the building into a luxury hotel.
Living Wage Coalition told us about space at the Redstone. We visited and walked around the beautiful building, we prayed and spoke to the ancestors. We saw our warrior comrades in houseless people’s liberation—the Western Regional Advocacy Project was also in the building. We knew we were home.
In the years we were safely and lovingly housed at the Redstone we authored the Declaration of Interdependence, The Poverty Heroes Mural, The MamaFesto for Change, the original plans for Po Peoples Radio PNN-KEXU 96.1fm, the blueprints and Peoples Agreement for (a MamaFesto that guides us to this day in our creation of Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness.)
We led hundreds of writing, theatre, media and radio workshops and published POOR Press publications for and by scores of low/ no-income and houseless youth and adults. We collaborated with our comrades from Idriss Stelley Foundation, also in the building and many more and held our weekly Street Newsroom and hosted community skolaz and warriors like Jeff Adachi and Papa Bear and more.
This building is Life. For any movement people who care about the struggles of homelessness, false borders, Labor, Liberation, Global Terror, Human Rights and Mama Earth, please come thru to an emergency meeting on Tuesday at 5pm at 2940 16th St #301.
