On May 23, the Law Center held a labor-focused community appreciation event at Kinfolx Cafe in Occupied Huchiun (aka Downtown Oakland) where we invited some of our collaborators to come enjoy each others’ company for an evening. Our guests of honor that night were poverty scholar teachers from Poor Magazine, 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 Mama Earth.  The Law Center has been supporting Poor with legal advice on land and housing. Some of us have also attended Poor Magazine’s twice-annual People Skool seminar, which is coming up on August 24 and 25 (find out more here). That day, we invited folks at Poor to share their scholarship around labor.  We deeply appreciate them for sharing it.

Poor Magazine began with a theater production based on their real-life experiences of working to survive as poor people in Occupied Turtle Island, or “United Snakkkes” as they call it [1]. As folks at Poor say, “you can’t perform poverty” - so all of the actors had personal experience - or poverty scholarship [2] - with what they were re-enacting. Their production depicted poor peoples’ survival work, like child care and panhandling while houseless, selling fruit and clothing without a license, and recycling. It also portrayed the harmful, traumatic behaviors of ignorant privileged folks, and of police who criminalize this work. The theater piece was followed by an all-nations prayer for Mama Earth and readings from Chapter 7 of their Poverty Scholarship book entitled “Underground Economic Strategies, Unrecognized Work, and Survival Work.”

Left photo: A woman panhandling has a conversation with someone passing by her on the street. (Performers left to right: Broken Cloud, Juju Angeles and child, Dee Allen, Aunti Frances Moore, Muteado Silencio)
Right photo: Social services threatens to take away a houseless woman's baby during a police sweep. (Performers left to right: Aunti Frances Moore, Momii Palapaz, Juju Angeles, Tiny Gray-Garcia)

Watching Poor’s presentation expanded what I think of as “labor” for the purposes of The Law Center’s Labor Circle projects. It pushed me to expand my thinking about whom we organize with, stand with, and share resources with in the Labor Circle. 

What does it mean to be a “worker”? What are the benefits that come with that status?

In particular, Poor’s presentation made me ask myself:

• Who gets to be in the category of “worker” (legal category, mental category, cultural category) and enjoy the benefits? Who is excluded?
• Who created this category?
• Why is certain work designated as “illegal” and policed constantly? Who benefits from the illegality and the policing, and how? 
• How does exclusion from “worker” status impact those who are excluded? How does it impact those who are included? What impacts does the inclusion/exclusion have on both groups overall? 
  

I saw the parallels between the police criminalizing street vending and panhandling and ICE criminalizing immigrants without papers. Criminalization creates highly exploitable groups of people, who are forced to make do with way too little  - they are underpaid for their work, or not paid at all, and many times don’t have a safe place to live. Whatever money they should get for their work, and land and housing they should get access to,  is made available to people like me with class, race and/or educational privilege, who often have more than enough to begin with. 

I also thought about what would happen if the characters in the theater piece attended one of our Resilient Communities Legal Cafes. What if they came with a request for advice like, 

“I panhandle for a living, I have regular work hours, locations and donors, and I’m skilled and I work hard just like everyone else - how could I start a panhandling coop with my friends where each worker gets one vote and we share resources and information, and even get benefits like paid sick time?” 

Before addressing their questions, we would have to find out if their work location still enforces anti-panhandling laws. And anti-poor discrimination would pose a huge hurdle to startup funding and support for such a coop. Contrast this with a person who comes in wanting to start a worker coop bar with their bartender friends. They would have to work hard and take risks, but wouldn’t face criminalization, or anywhere near as much stigma. 

Left photo: During Poor Magazine's presentation, a mother clutches her baby in front of their tent, while a police officer harasses a person sorting recycling in the street. (Performers left-to-right are Juju Angeles and child, Tiny Gray-Garcia and Dee Allen.)

Right photo: Poor Magazine presenter Alvaro Tellez kneels and touches the ground during an all-nations prayer to Mama Earth.

Resisting the False Boxes the Law Creates [3]

Why don’t we see panhandling as akin to foraging - which has become a new fad among environmentally conscious, privileged people like myself - in a world where money has largely replaced abundant food, and where small groups have stolen and hoarded so much money, land, plants and animals that so many others are forced to directly ask passersby for money to survive?   

So often in my work as a lawyer, people have asked me “I want to do X, how can I do X in conformance with the laws?” or “I signed X contract, now Y has happened, what do I do?” For the longest time I would do what law school drilled into me: explain what laws or contracts say and how that applies to the person’s situation. Many, many times, I would try to mentally apply laws to facts, my heart would sink, and I would feel forced to try to explain the confusing, endlessly complex structure of the laws or contract sections that didn’t even make complete sense to me, and which would just end up preventing the person from doing the wonderful thing they wanted to do. This still happens. Or even worse, I would explain that the laws or contract sections are not complicated, but would force them to suffer unjustly at the hands of a more powerful person (like a landlord), and there was nothing they could do (legally) to fight back. I never thought much about the bigger-picture, systemic-level questions, like why the laws were created or for whose benefit. I related to the legal system as I related to facts of life, like old age. Not only that, but the mental bubble of the law’s boxes and entanglement [4] cut me off from connecting with people who came to me for advice. From learning their stories, feeling their pain and joy, and building relationships.  

I didn’t realize it was possible to think outside the law’s own false boxes because for so long, those boxes were a necessary ingredient in my paycheck - my own survival and comfort. To a great extent they still are. By contrast, hearing stories from people whose survival has depended on constantly acting and doing outside the law’s boxes, and suffering the violence of stigma and policing - made me relate to those boxes differently. 

Now, any legal advising I do is from a place of resistance to the boxes. Because everyone has to deal with the practical realities of the violent boxes to stay alive. But especially people like me with unearned class, racial and educational privileges can (often) choose between spending energy propping up the boxes, or helping to compost them [5]. Lawyers can and should work with people who have been resisting the boxes for centuries to compost them for the benefit of our communities and Mama Earth, and enable other lawyers to do the same. As Tiny Gray-Garcia writes in Poor’s Poverty Scholarship book: “From Africa to Argentina, from Peru to the Philippines, we made our own clothes, grew and created our own fabric and food, taught our own children and built our own houses. This was work. Self-determined, off-plantation and un-pimped.” [6]

A crowd of audience members, sitting and standing, clap and smile after POOR Magazine's presentation at Kinfolx in downtown Oakland, May 2024.

A group photo of smiling attendees at our Labor Community Appreciation Party, May 2024.

I am grateful for everyone’s expenditures of energy and resources (including money) to show up for our community appreciation party, and especially for Poor Magazine’s presentation. I was also happy to see people I know connecting with each other. I hope the event sparked the beginnings of new relationships and collaborations.  

FOOTNOTES - PLEASE READ

[1][^Jump back] Poor Magazine asked us to credit them when using any terms that they created. Please do the same if you use their terminology.

[2] [^Jump back] Poverty scholarship is also a term created by Poor Magazine. See Lisa “Tiny” Gray Garcia, Dee Garcia and the Poor Magazine Family, Poverty Scholarship: Poor People-Led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth (2020) available here.

[3] [^Jump back] The box metaphor to describe laws comes from Janelle Orsi. See, e.g., Janelle’s presentations Nurturance Lawyering Pt. 2: Legal ethics in an interdependent world and Nurturance Lawyering Pt 3: The legal profession is a white supremacist institution.

[4] [^Jump back] The idea that laws entangle (like prey in a spider’s web) is from Janelle’s presentation Legal Tools for Radical Homeownership.

[5] [^Jump back] I would like to credit Vanessa Machado de Oliveira and her book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism for the composting metaphor. I would also like to credit Janelle Orsi for this metaphor, who talked about composting to describe facing and working with chronic issues she experienced (e.g., depression, anxiety), which opened a door to aliveness for her in her presentation Nurturance Lawyering Pt. 1: How to bring connection and healing to our work in challenging times.

[6] [^Jump back] Lisa “Tiny” Gray Garcia, Dee Garcia and the Poor Magazine Family, Poverty Scholarship: Poor People-Led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth (2020), page 251.