Project Title: Poverty Heroes
Recipient Organization: Community Defense Inc.
Lead Artist: Lisa Gray-Garcia
Genre and Date Awarded: Literary Arts, June 2001
To Be Presented: In a series of events through July 2002

The literary arts project, “Poverty Heroes” resulted in live performances, print and on-line publications, radio broadcasts, and a compact disc of 13 literary art narratives written with and by low- and no-income residents of San Francisco. A collaboration between Lisa Gray-Garcia, co-founder of Poor Magazine, and Community Defense Inc. the project drew together writers who led creative workshops along with attorneys who provided pro bono advice and assistance to the project’s homeless and very poor participants. Workshops were conducted in homeless shelters, group homes, and welfare offices; and in conjunction with other organizations that serve very low income people.

The lead artist describes the “poverty hero” literary narrative, as being “replete with myth, metaphor, and magical realism,” a non-traditional hero whose bravery, wit, and tenacity is demonstrated in surviving an existence fraught with misery and suffering. Lead artist Lisa Gray-Garcia writes, “The Hero text…has traditionally been reserved for the valiant fighter, the noble warrior or the kind and brave king, rather than, for instance, the Asian elder who has worked her entire life in sweatshops only to end up fighting eviction from project housing in Chinatown….” The project’s goals were to provide all classes of society with a new way of interpreting and ‘seeing’ people who live in poverty; and to invite people who live in these very difficult circumstances to propose solutions and ideas. Among other results of the project, one low-income writer participating in the workshops successfully fought eviction from her apartment.

The collaborative partnership grew out of the lead artist’s life experience. She, her mother, and little sister lived in poverty throughout her childhood, largely due to her mother’s disability. Living in their car, they accumulated numerous parking tickets and moving violations for which Lisa Gray-Garcia faced incarceration. As she was the sole caregiver and support for her little sister and mother, her being jailed would have destroyed their family. After lengthy investigation, her mother found an attorney from Community Defense Inc. who represented Lisa in court, and succeeded in commuting her sentence into community service. In assigning her service project, she was asked what she could do, to which she answered she was a writer. This led to her writing about her life. Her first piece was published in The Express newspaper. She writes, “In the end I was not only ‘heard,’ but I was helped—permanently able to change the course of our life.” Among other projects, Lisa and Dee Gray-Garcia founded and co-edits Poor Magazine.

For the “Poverty Heroes” project, Lisa and Dee Gray-Garcia collaborated closely with Joseph Bolden, and Leroy Moore, who have experience with leading workshops, radio production, publication, and spoken word performance; and who have close connections with the communities they would be teaching.

The project had multiple tiers for engaging its participants and communicating with the public. A series of ten five-week workshops were held in group homes, shelters, project housing, and welfare offices throughout the Bay Area. The lead artist and others involved with Poor magazine led participants through a series of writing exercises which formed the basis for their hero texts. The collaborating artists then met with each participant individually to finish and shape their texts. At the site of each workshop series, Community Defense, Inc. provided an on-site legal clinic to explore the civil rights landlord-tenant conflicts, and workers’ rights frequently faced by low and no-income adults. Lisa Gray-Garcia writes:

The beautiful aspect of our collaboration was that on-site legal advocacy was an integral part of each workshop provided by the paralegals and attorneys at Community Defense Inc. and as well we expanded the advocacy to include a legal clinic on eviction as well as an organizing workshop on how to fight gentrification and police harassment. This informative and extremely necessary component of the Poverty Hero Project was the magic of the project and was, in fact, a dream of many of the artists at POOR who are themselves victims of the lack of resources for legal aid.

Workshop material was aired as part of the series “Poverty Heroes, an Oral History” 6-minute segments broadcast over a 12-month period on KPFA 94.1 FM; collaborators developed an interactive on-line column which included, among other content, each completed “Hero Text.” Workshop participants presented spoken word performances. At the project’s culmination, collaborators produced the print publication, The Poverty Hero, an anthology of original literary and visual art honoring a new literary hero, featuring writing by Ashley Adams, Joseph Bolden, Lisa Gray-Garcia, Lucia Gonzalez, MariLuna, Isabel Estrada, Rodrigo Jimenez, Connie Lu, Leroy Moore, Anna Morrow, Vlad Pogorelov, Liz Rodda, and Valerie Schwartz.

Community Defense Inc. is a nonprofit legal defense organization serving homeless, very low and no income San Francisco Bay Area residents. It has sponsored education sessions in parks and shelters to help homeless people understand and demand their civil rights. Among its activities, Community Defense created, published, and distributed the “Homeless Rights Card,” one of the first of its kind in the country. It provides support for unions of homeless people in Berkeley and Oakland; offers on-call attorney services for emergencies and defense of homeless people involved in demonstrations for economic justice; researches legal issues regarding the rights of homeless people; coaches homeless people in self-representation in criminal court and small claims court; and is establishing legal precedents in homeless rights lawsuits.

Lisa Gray-Garcia is a literary and performance artist, and teacher who struggled and barely survived her own poverty. She has dedicated her art to creating new channels of access for low income adults and youth to have their voices heard. Lisa and her mother Dee began as conceptual and performance artists, producing performance installations such as “the Art of Homelessness,” which included live docent tours through the car in which they lived. Since co-founding of Poor Magazine in 1995, Lisa also has founded the New Journalism/Media Studies Program and the Youth in Media project, an intensive media and multi-media training for very low income Bay Area residents. Both Dee and Lisa have been widely published in The San Francisco Chronicle, The LA Weekly, The Express, The San Francisco Examiner, and other papers. Lisa is the author of the forthcoming novel, Criminal of Poverty, a journal of poverty, homelessness, and incarceration in America.

Professional Experience

• Founding Co-editor, Poor Magazine (1995-present)
• Teacher of creative writing workshops for low and no-income adults and children
• Created a Welfare-to-Work job training program in investigative journalism, media, and multi-media, training former and current welfare recipients in how to become media and multi-media professionals (1998-present)
• San Francisco Examiner, Writer/Facilitator, Created the Writer Facilitation Project for low income and homeless writers who are functionally illiterate. Facilitated and published twelve op-ed and feature stories. (1998-present)

Writing/Publishing Experience

• “Landing in the Mess,” “Criminal of Poverty,” The Express
• Included in Class, Race, and Poverty, textbook by Armenia Garcia
• “COLORS,” film review, The LA Weekly
• Criminal of Poverty, A Journal of Homelessness, Poverty, and Incarceration in America, manuscript

Performance/Spoken Word

Created and performed the spoken word series, “We Will Be Heard” with an ensemble of other low and no income artists creating poetry and spoken word at dozens of venues in California, including:

• Black Repertory Theater (November 1999)
• Poverilo Room (October 1, 1999)
• Mumia 911 (September 1999)
• UN Plaza (August 1999)
• Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library (July 1999)
• Santa Monica Museum (April 1999)
• Venice Jail, Performance Art Consortium (January 1999)
• ILWU Union Hall (August 1998)
• Tenderloin Arts Festival (June 1998)
• Luggage Store Gallery (June 1998; November 1997)
• Four Walls Gallery (November 1996)
• LA Weekly, Los Angeles (September 1996)
• Co-authored a book from this series, entitled The Book-let

Selected Performance History

• Created, organized, and co-chaired the FUN-DING event
• “I Danced with Fidel,” choreographed and performed in collaboration with Dee Gray-Garcia
• ECOMUSEE/Women’s Art Museum,” a neighborhood ecology project, co-curated and established with Dee Gray-Garcia
• Conducted docent tours of the “permanent collection” of Dee&Tiny’s “Mom and Dad’s Birthplace” at the Women’s Museum
• Co-curated the “Everywoman’s Reading Room,” at “The Museum,” an interactive gossip archives
• Wrote, performed, choreographed “Fear of Bread,” Footwork Dance Studio
• Showing at the Roxie Cinema of Dee&Tiny’s “Mom and Dad’s Birthplace” video
• Co-led with Dee a series of Life/Art workshops
• Produced solo show, New Performance Gallery
• Developed cult film, Dee&Tiny’s “Mom and Dad’s Birthplace”
• Created and Exhibited “Car Piece,” performed at Artists Television Access and San Francisco State University

Leroy Moore is a disabled poet, writer, and activist. He is the founder of Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization (DAMO), and author of the on-line column “Illin and chillin” on www.poormagazine.org, as well as several articles on race and disability for Bayview Newspaper and ColorLines. He is a member of the spoken word group New Vices and has performed his work at many San Francisco Bay Area venues. He also has performed several poems and essays on Poor’s radio broadcast on KPFA and KPOO and is the author of the book Black Disabled Man with a Big Mouth and a High IQ.

Joseph Bolden is a previously homeless writer, poet, and radio orator who has created several pieces of audio art for KPFA. He also has conduced creative writing workshops in conjunction with Poor Magazine in several shelters and public assistance offices. He is also the author of the column “Ask Joe/He Don’t Know” on www.poormagazine.org.