Street Spirit

Los Angeles Janitors Fight for Their Jobs

News
Firings because of immigration status do irreparable harm to workers and to their communities. Immigrant workers didn’t cause the unemployment that plagues millions. They didn’t close a single plant. Big corporations did. They didn’t cause the economic recession or foreclose on anyone’s home. Big banks did.

Oakland Tenants Wrongly Threatened with Eviction

News
About 25 percent of the residents in the apartment building received notices threatening them with eviction. The tenants were falsely accused of denying EBALDC entry into their apartments. Tenants received notices warning that they had seven days to correct the violation or face eviction.

The Bearing Witness Chronicles: Keeper of the Book

Features   Uncategorized
He finds sanctuary in the written word, praying it can hold him. He knows that too many frowns or raised eyebrows will translate to a small tug of his jacket, a kind or maybe not-so-kind tap on the shoulder and small words with large repercussions: “Sorry, but you have to go.”

Aging in America

Opinion
Has aging become a crime in the U.S., punishable by a shot of Botox or various and sundry tucks, snips and pulls? Simone de Beauvoir, the French existentialist philosopher, in her book, The Second Sex, called our treatment of the aged “scandalous.”

HMOs Make Vision an Unaffordable Luxury: A Personal Narrative

Opinion
It will cost money I don’t have just to fix my current glasses frames and their already jerry-rigged earpiece, where I used a piece of wire I cut with some toenail clippers from a spiral notebook and attached it between the lenses and the tiny hole in the earpiece.

Democrats Cave in to Right-Wing Ideologues

Opinion
Democrats are joining Republicans in Congress to shred the safety net for the benefit of the financial interests of huge corporations. Their rhetoric about “shared sacrifice” rings hollow when the vast majority of us are being sacrificed to the financial benefit of big banks and large corporations.

WINDOWS AND MIRRORS

News
WINDOWS AND MIRRORS: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan is a traveling exhibit that makes a powerful statement on a nearly invisible reality. The 45 panels created by international artists and U.S. and Kabul students help us imagine the experience of Afghan civilians – from death and destruction to hopes for peace.

High-Spirited Flashmob Invades S.F. Financial District, Shuts Down Bank

News
West Coast social justice groups protested Big Finance’s theft of billions of tax dollars, home foreclosures, attacks on unions, and record rates of criminalization of poor and homeless people. After marching on the union-busting Hyatt Hotel and corporate financier Charles Schwab, masses of protesters successfully shut down Wells Fargo bank.

August Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
A gentle lady with Parkinson's/ slept in dark alleyways/ without curfew and/ abandoned houses without walls/ in lonely Cable Car Land/ She's not there anymore/ a concerned young man/ gave her his arm and/ brought her to the hospital/ from where she never returned

When a Great Heart Ceases

Arts and Culture   Poetry
I read M.A. Griffiths’ collected poems, "Grasshopper," from what I believe is a unique perspective, that of a poet who, like Griffiths, was dying over many months, alone, aware that she was close to death. Many of her poems are extremely moving to me, and I feel very close to them.

An Ominous Path to an Orwellian Society

Opinion
Our society is in a state of constant surveillance. While this may help solve crimes, it interferes with the privacy of individuals. Businesses are hiring private security forces to monitor the public, especially the poor. It can be crazy-making not to know when and if one is being watched.

WRAP Loses One of Its Founders, Mikey Chapman

Features
You never saw him on television or leading a march or a meeting, but Mikey Chapman did the quiet things that keep the movement running. A memorial tribute to one of the founding warriors of The Western Regional Avocacy Project.