Juneteenth: ‘Bout Time We Recognize

by Jazzie O. Gray

Juneteenth—also known as Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Black Independence Day, Emancipation Day and Juneteenth National Independence Day—is the annual commemoration on June 19 of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. President Biden first officially recognized the federal holiday in 2021, but Juneteenth has been celebrated since 1865. So why did it take so long to acknowledge the freedom of all African Americans in this country nationally? Let’s look at its 150-year history and illuminate its importance today.

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Without a Home: A Good “12, 13 Years Now”

by Robert Gumpert

19 May 2022: Anthony Covarrubias – Utah and Alameda.

Name and age: Anthony Covarrubias, 37

Date: May 19, 2022

Place: Alameda and Utah streets

Without a home: “A good 12, 13 years now.”

What does home mean?  

Home is changed for me now.  Initially it was a house with my parents and brothers and sisters,

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Lying Down and Waking Up a Slave in Texas

by Pariah a.k.a. Robert Cooper

It’s poetic…

In Texas, we’re trapped in pits with small widdows.

Inside these cells, we’re funding our own imprisonment;

the chains are encrypted inside the chips and soup sales.

We’re inside of an identity crisis believing our souls out of favors,

So we accept the chains;

believing a greater change will come save us…

Can you dig that?!?!

I guess that Willie Lynch Syndrome dies hard in some places.

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A Preventable Tragedy

by Quiver Watts

Coalition on Homelessness Statement on Officer-involved Double Fatality on May 19, 2022

Rising rents and a lack of stable, affordable housing have pushed many people into homelessness in San Francisco, like they have in cities up and down the West Coast. Living without stable housing is difficult and traumatizing, and it has long-term health consequences for those forced to endure it. With no door to lock and no safe place to rest, unhoused people live without the fundamental stability and safety a home provides.

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Star: On the Loneliness of Living Unsheltered

by Martha Cast

On a lazy Sunday on Solano Avenue in Berkeley as I am strolling into my favorite coffee shop, I meet a woman who goes by the nickname Star. Star is a woman in her fifties of Latin-American descent who tells me she moved to the Bay Area from New York City over 20 years ago. In the beginning she is reluctant to talk to me and tells me I can write an article about her,

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