Project 20 or More Poverty

The mouth of the Truck had teeth Large white porceline teeth stained with blood my blood, mi sangri which dripped down its metal jaws into rivers of solid black rubber Rubber that became the soles of boots on the feet of marching soldiers who first took my apartment, then mi vida...

Wheels that shook the earth, mi tierra, and plowed down the land, mi... Dark turning wheels on my tongue maybe if I licked their boots they wouldn't take my home, my car, mi vida...

Wheels by Tiny/Po' Poets Project at POOR Magazine

Not so many years ago my mother and I were living through a different kind of poverty. A poverty that was even more precarious, fraught with Driving While Poor (DWP) violations, (i.e. sleeping in our vehicle and/or overnight parking, expired registration, broken taillight, et al), "camping" citations and or loitering (i.e., being homeless in public). Why? Because my mother and I were a homeless family and it’s illegal to be homeless in Amerikka.

One of the enemies of low-income, working poor and houseless folks is The Department of Parking and Traffic, aka DPT and their hand-maidens, and the Tow Companies, as they are the enforcers, along with cops, of the Driving While Poor Violations, and the subsequent theft of poor peoples' vehicles, houses on wheels and/or belongings

Both of these industries employ a lot of low-income folks so it is important to distinguish between the slave and the master. And one of the most concrete examples of that is the fact that the current master, residing in the San Francisco Mayors Office used to be head of Department of Parking and Traffic, i.e., our own Gavin Newsom.

When my mother and I were living in our car, we would lose "our homes" all the time to the metallic jaws of the Tow Companies, ordered alternately by DPT officers and cops. And then when we couldn't afford to buy another hooptie to replace what they had stole so many times over, we ended up "on the street" getting the "camping" citations.

"Have you ever signed up to Project 20 to work off your tickets?"

One dark morning after one of these thefts I pushed a gallon of tears into the back of my parched throat and got on the phone for the hundredth time and requested some kind of help. This time I called the right person. I reached the Coalition on Homelessness, who had a staff attorney who had suggested that I could sign up to a program called Project 20 and "work off" the fines I owed by volunteering at a non-profit organization.

Within what seemed like seconds I was in the Project 20 office being interviewed by a very kind African descendent man who laid out the whole program and gave me a referral to work off several hundred hours with the United Farm workers, one of many non-profit organizations approved to work with the San Francisco Pre-Trial Diversion Project, aka Project 20.

July 2005

"The Mayor (Newsom) doesn't like Project 20, he thinks it takes money away from City, and he wants to get rid of it."

Fast forward to present day. My family is still very low-income, but thanks to a kind landlord who doesn't evict us every time we can't pay the rent on time, we are housed. I have at least three jobs (and barely make ends meet) and one of them includes driving. This is San Francisco where the Parking and Traffic people seem to outnumber the residents, so I still get way too many tickets and must sign up to Project 20 when I can't afford to pay them, which is most of the time.

Two weeks ago I walked into Project 20 to sign up a gaggle of tickets I have accumulated on my driving job and was informed by one of the workers that Mayor Newsom doesn't "like" the program anymore. She went on, "It’s been like a graveyard in here, cause they (DPT) aren't referring anyone here." She then paused and looked around nervously. " I'm already worried about losing my job," she said.

"Really," I answered, "so what's happening with the program?"

She continued conspiratorially, "Well, to try to make the Mayor a little happier with the program we are sending people to Department of Public Works to do 50 percent of their hours, and then they can do the rest with a non-profits. It’s great because you can get more credit per hour for any work you do with DPW."

"Well, in my case that would be really hard, ‘cause I would have to pay for child care while I worked for DPW, and I can't afford child care as it is," I responded.

She continued unfazed. "It's the only way, cause then the money goes back to the City and the Mayor won't discontinue the program," she said. With her last nervous assertion she shoved a contract for DPW in front of me and handed me a pen.

As my weary-of-poverty-and-struggle feet walked out of the building I wasn't sure who to feel sorrier for; the wonderful, real-talkin’ mostly African Descendent employees of the Project 20 program who were at-risk of being unemployed if Mr. Newsom didn't get happier; or all the houseless, working poor and even middle-class residents of San Francisco who rely on Project 20 to allow them to work off their tickets and therefore keep their cars; or the many really great non-profit organizations who rely on the help provided to them by Project 20 workers.

After I left and gulped down my fear/sorrow, I got mad. I called the non-profit organization I was dealing with and they called Department of Parking and Traffic to find out what was going on. Within minutes I got a call back. It seems that the whole DPW push was not official and after further investigation, neither was the Mayor’s "dislike" of the program.

Apparently the Mayor had held a private meeting about his sentiments and it was never supposed to "go public." Following DPT's promise to rescind my DPW "contract," I attempted to get a comment on the whole situation from the Mayors office, DPT and Project 20, and now that I was representing the "Press" no-one would answer my calls

The moral of the story - Fight Back, cause as most of the readers of PNN/ beyond.chron know, if we don't keep fighting for it – they - and there's always a they - will take it away!

Note To readers: The only way to keep Project 20 alive and well is to keep asking for it and if you get "pushed" into a DPW contract refuse it and call POOR Magazine @(415) 863-6306. To read more journalism on issues of poverty and racism by the folks who experience it first-hand go on-line to http://www.poormagazine.org