Grants Pass is NOT for sale

Graphic by Tiburcio Garcia, Poor News Network Houseless and Indigenous Peoples respond and refuse the ban on our bodies and lives by Tiny Gray Garcia, povertyskola “Pleeeeease don’t take my mind … Please don’t take my mind,” my Aunty Rochelle screamed and cried at the cop while motioning to the orange-vested men hurling her collection of dolls, her torn sleeping bag and her last tarp into the trash truck near us. “We will arrest you, Ma’am, if you don’t leave now.” The cops were robotic, barely registering my Aunty’s terror, much less her humanity. This was years ago in San Francisco when she was staying with me and mama in our broken-down hooptie, which we parked wherever they didn’t arrest us or cite us for parking in public while houseless. Aunty came up from LA where she was a legit doll collector, but like the fate of so many Black, Brown and Indigenous disabled women and men alone, she lost her home, which housed her little doll store in South LA through a violent paper trail of foreclosure and eviction and ended her up with nothing but 22 dolls, which she kept wrapped up in a series of old paper...