Challa Tabeson, a student in POOR Magazine’s digital resistance classes, protests Mayor Newsom’s poverty courts proposal.

Condemn the criminalization of poverty Monday, May 21, 7pm, Roxie Theatre, 16th & Valencia

“We may look like a rag tag army, but we are the salt of the earth.” Supervisor Chris Daly’s voice boomed over the large crowd gathered in front of the Metreon Theatre last Tuesday. In the breeze warmed by the San Francisco sun, signs waved reading “Homelessness is not a crime,” “Give me a home and I shall not roam,” “Ser pobre o es un crimen.”

This rag tag yet powerful army, of which I was a part as student reporter and poverty scholar with Poor News Network, was marching against the war declared on the poor and homeless by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposed “community” courts – or what we poverty scholars call poverty courts.

These poverty courts are Newsom’s latest effort to “clean up the City” by eradicating people struggling with poverty and homelessness all over San Francisco. Based on the Manhattan Project, former New York mayor, now presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s disastrous cleanup plan, these courts would immediately send people to jail and/or mete out other punishments for committing status crimes – crimes that are unavoidable to people living on the streets, such as sitting on a sidewalk, vending, camping or sleeping outside or in a car. This plan, disguised as a “compassionate approach to quality of life issues,” is yet another that disproportionately targets and criminalizes poor people in the Bay Area.

Not only is this plan poor policy and a misuse of funds, but it also poses a huge threat to the rights of houseless individuals and families and doesn’t address the root causes of poverty and homelessness in any way.

“We don’t need poor people courts to punish poor people for being poor,” exclaimed Daly. I nodded my head vigorously in agreement as crowd members shouted out their approval.

A hush fell over the crowd when San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman took the stage and read a powerful poem about living on the streets. His hands shook with intensity as he bemoaned the sweeps of the poor and homeless: “Streets swept clean of every bit of spontaneous life,” he said, his voice cutting through the silence.

As I listened to Hirschman, I examined the sidewalk beneath my feet. Indeed the streets looked freshly cleaned and manicured without a spot of humanity left behind. I compared the spotlessness of the streets to our army of poverty, race, disability, immigrant and youth scholars with our torn jackets and backpacks, each of us bursting with emotions and feelings, yearning for justice and equality.

As the crowd marched to the brand new federal building, I glanced up at the buildings lining the sky of the financial district. I couldn’t help notice how much TLC these million dollar buildings receive every day. Every need is catered to and every problem fixed at once.

When I glanced down, I noticed the people, citizens of the richest nation in the world, whose festering wounds and illnesses are ignored or criminalized. In San Francisco, a shiny new building gets more care and attention than a living, breathing human being.

“It is illegal to be poor in the U.S.,” said Renee Saucedo, who acted as emcee for the day’s march, speaking with Teresa Molina, one of POOR’s reporters from the Voces de Immigrantes en Resistencia Project. “Under these kinds of legislation and similar ones that incarcerate poor immigrants, poor workers and poor youth,” Renee declared, “we are all at risk of incarceration, deportation and harassment.

“We can spend $484 billion blowin’ up people. We can sure as hell spend some money to take care of each other,” Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) told the crowd. “Homeless people are not the problem. The problem is cuts in housing,” he said powerfully.

With the marchers filing by, Jennifer Friedenbach from the Coalition on Homelessness, which works to create permanent solutions to homelessness, spoke with me about the problems of poverty courts.

“Gavin Newsom’s idea of poverty courts is an idiotic idea. They use a ton of money to prosecute people who don’t have a home. Police are used to clean the streets of the poor and homeless,” she stated.

She explained the benefits politicians expect for supporting this criminalizing legislation. “They receive large donations from the tourism industry,” she said. “It works to their advantage.”

As our conversation ended, a large chant boomed out from the crowd: “We demand housing and health care. We don’t want your poverty courts; they are anti-human.”

As I shouted in approval, I turned around and noticed that we had attracted some new soldiers for our march. Three SFPD squad cars and Homeland Security were following closely behind us and I realized the full extent of this criminalization.

After the march ended with major voices speaking in opposition to this plan, the Chronicle published a glowing profile of the Manhattan poverty court’s judge above the fold on the Sunday paper. In response, my editor, Tiny, a formerly homeless poverty scholar who just released the new book, “Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America,” spoke with Juan Prada, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

His response was simple: “The Newsom administration is working on a public relations campaign because this is an election year. These kinds of legislation are not planned to be funded or supported in the City.”

Later, while thinking about the day’s march and reflecting on the police presence there, I wondered, “Is this any way to treat the salt of the earth?”

Sam Drew is a student and poverty scholar in POOR Magazine’s Race, Poverty and Media Justice Institute. Join Tiny and other poverty, race and disability scholars from POOR at a “Dialogue on the Criminalization of Poverty” with Jeff Adachi, Renee Saucedo, James Garrett, Ross Mirkarimi, Leroy Moore and the welfareQUEENS on Monday, May 21, 7 p.m., at the Roxie Theatre at 16th and Valencia in San Francisco.

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