09 01 2021

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NEWS IN BRIEF DHS causes panic among some families The agency sent letters contradicting recently announced changes to its rapid rehousing policy

BY WILL SCHICK will@streetsensemedia.org

The Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum Presents:

Stories for Change — Food Justice Edition 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. // Online Demi Mohamed and Sara Hernandez have lived and worked as essential food workers in DC- witnessing and servicing a rapidly gentrifying city and a food system that is increasingly designed for the wealthy. Step into their shoes. They will both be on-hand after the performance to share more about their perspectives. Supported by The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Register free via Zoom: tinyurl.com/SFC-food-justice THURSDAY, SEPT. 2

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Right to Housing Meeting: Cancel the Rent!

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CORRECTIONS In our Aug. 18 edition, the article “DC Council passes the Budget Support Act” incorrectly stated that an amendment proposed by At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman to reinstitute spending restrictions at DCHA failed on a 5-8 vote. In fact, the amendment passed 8-5. The article has been updated online.

Based on that same report, our cover story last week, “Why are 255 households on the DC Housing Authority’s waitlist for ADA-compliant housing?” also incorrectly stated that Silverman’s amendment had failed.

(The amendment reinstated a rule requiring DCHA to obtain approval of its board of commissioners for any expenses over $250,000, which Silverman argued would bring more transparency to large development deals.)

We correct errors large and small. Read more about our editorial policies at streetsensemedia.org/ethics.

If you find an error or otherwise want to be in touch, please contact editor@streetsensemedia.org.

Some families living in rapid rehousing (RRH) received letters in the mail last week informing them the D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS) would be terminating their rental subsidies on Oct. 31. The letters, dated Aug. 17, contradict an earlier announcement made by the agency’s director, Laura Zeilinger.

While DHS allowed more than 1,000 families during the pandemic to stay in RRH beyond the program’s usual time limit, Zeilinger said in an Aug. 12 interview with Street Sense Media and The DC Line that the affected RRH families should expect to receive a six-month notice before the agency stops paying its portion of the rent.

When asked about the conflicting messages, DHS said in a statement that the letters were sent to approximately 20 families informing them of their pending termination from the program. These families had already received final hearings from the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) prior to the pandemic, according to DHS, and the notices — similar to ones sent out to the same families previously — were meant to serve “as a placeholder as DHS works to finalize the exit strategy.” OAH is an administrative court that decides cases regarding access to benefits such as unemployment compensation and rental subsidies like RRH. However, some of the local families who received the letters felt confused and caught off guard by the sudden news. DHS now says all families who received the notice are being sent updated letters informing them they have six-month extensions.

Megan Smith, a single mother who has two boys aged 3 and 8, said the letter was just one in a series of disappointments she has had during her family’s participation in the program.

After receiving notice of the October deadline on Aug. 25, Smith called her case manager to ask for clarification, but her case manager was also confused by the letter. Smith said she has not received an updated notice as of Aug. 30.

Despite having been in the program for over 30 months, she said it was not until April 2020 that she finally received a case manager. Later that year, Smith turned to her case manager for help after multiple shootings in her neighborhood. In October, Smith was unloading groceries from her car when she saw a vehicle going down her street make a sudden U-turn. The vehicle sped down the street with its windows rolled down while someone inside started blindly firing a gun into the air. Scared, Smith tried to dash to her house but tripped and injured both her legs. Smith said shootings occurred frequently in the neighborhood and it was not safe for anyone to live there. On another occasion, someone shot out her car’s front window. Although the case manager helped the family move to another neighborhood in January, Smith’s youngest son developed trauma and has anxiety.

Caring for her two children during a pandemic has made it hard for her to keep her physical therapy appointments and find a stable job, Smith said.

“I honestly haven’t even had a whole year to get myself together,” she explained. One year is the time limit for RRH subsidies, with the option of a six-month extension if authorized by DHS. If you are in the rapid rehousing program and received a notice about your subsidy ending in October, please contact us at will@streetsensemedia.org or 202-596-9845.

This article was co-published with The DC Line.

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NEWS

DC-based artist contributes to international campaign that centers Indiginous leadership on environmental protection

BY BENJAMIN GUTMAN @benjgutty

L

ast month, the convergence of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples with the release of a dire Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report created the natural groundwork for the Seattle-based Indigenous advocacy nonprofit Nia Tero to launch its latest media campaign. “Thriving Peoples, Thriving Places” seeks to secure Indigenous guardianship of vital ecosystems through global activism.

Six original portraits of Indigenous women leaders were commissioned for the campaign from D.C.-based artist and former Street Sense Media volunteer Tracie Ching. In addition to online access where the artwork is free to download, Ching’s posters are being displayed in five cities worldwide: Seattle, New York City, London, São Paulo, and Washington, D.C. In addition to the portraits, the series includes typographic posters made up of words and phrases like “Justice,” “Collective humanity,” “Global wisdom,” “Powerful,” and “Amplifying matriarchs.”They have appeared in temporary “stunts,” including digital mobile displays, as well as in semi-permanent capacities such as mural-size installations and walls covered in the various posters.

The project’s global outreach aims to bring Indigenous leaders to the forefront of humanity’s fight against climate change, which the IPCC report said has occurred at an “unprecedented” pace and is due “unequivocally” to human influence.

Displaying the faces of Indigenous activism and resistance on an international stage is essential for the recognition of their continued contributions to safeguarding essential ecosystems, according to Nia Tero’s creative producer Jessica Ramirez. Thriving People’s, Thriving Places is the second collaboration between her organization and the art activism nonprofit Amplifier.

In preparation for the campaign’s release,

activists with Nia Tero showcased the digital portrait of Indigenous Filipina activist Vicky Tauli-Corpuz in front of the U.S. Capitol during the weekend of July 23. “The whole point was to bring these powerful images in front of iconic D.C. institutions as recognition of the value that these Indigenous leaders bring to the table,” Ramirez said.

D.C. was a particularly important staging ground for the campaign, as leaders in the nation’s capital continue to say Indigenous land rights and climate change are important while implementing policies that harm both.

On April 22, the Biden administration led a virtual climate summit with 40 world leaders.

However, the president’s previous promises to address the concerns of Indigenous leaders and tribal governments rang hollow when the Biden administration said in a court filing that it would not shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“The whole point was to bring these powerful images in front of iconic D.C. institutions as recognition of the value that these Indigenous leaders bring to the table.”

Jessica Ramirez, Nia Tero Years of Indigenous-led protests in D.C. and across the country have opposed the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines, which most recently included a march through Chinatown in April and an August protest outside the National Museum of the American Indian.

Meanwhile, the lack of a substantive response

A poster featuring Indiginous Filipina activist Vicky Tauli-Corpuz displayed in front of the U.S. Capitol.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NIA TERO.

from politicians reaffirms the dissonance between rhetoric and policy decisions.

“Climate change is not going anywhere until we address it from an Indigenous lens and we hope that this campaign builds traction over time and its relevance will continue to be there as long as decision makers don’t do what it takes in order to support the [Indigenous] leaders who have the solutions to these problems,” Ramirez said.

The Nansemond Indian Nation in Southern Virginia, through the leadership of Assistant Chief and Environmental Program Director Keith Anderson, has made Indigenousled campaigns to protect the local ecology a top priority in the protection of Virginia tribal territories. According to Anderson, the Nansemond River and its distributaries, which run through Nansemond Indian Nation territory, make up one of the most contaminated river basins in Virginia and are fit for neither recreational use nor human consumption. “To help combat that we have started an oyster preservation project … to help improve the water quality, filter the waters and bring back a healthier ecosystem,” Anderson said.

The harvesting of oysters has been a central component to the Nansemond way of life for centuries and their preservation, through the Chesapeake Oyster Alliance, is a perfect example of addressing environmental degradation through an Indigenous-led strategies. However, decades of hard-fought advocacy on behalf of Indigenous land sovereignty have only recently ended in legislative victories that recognize the mere existence of local Indigenous tribes. In 1985, the Nansemond Indian Tribe gained state recognition and in

2018, the Nansemond people were finally recognized at the federal level.

Furthermore, the enacted legislation has not always been enforced. The tribes of Southern Virginia have been unified in their fight to uphold the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which states that land developers that come across human remains must stop their work immediately. “Through a lot of the destruction and development that’s going on in Virginia, there have been a significant amount of Indigenous remains that have been discovered,” Anderson said. “Most of those remains have been in the vicinity of shorelines or river beds, where erosion is heavily taking place. We are obtaining local funds to help maintain, at least on a temporary basis, the integument of those areas, so more research can be done in order to protect those remains and artifacts.”

Much like the activists who created “Thriving Peoples, Thriving Places’’, Anderson believes that as the original stewards of these lands, Indigenous people should occupy leadership roles in land preservation and environmental protection. Despite an extended delay in governmental recognition or implementation of this approach, intertribal unity between the newly federally recognized Virginia tribe and more established tribes out west has led to a critical transfer of both finances and knowledge. The result has been the establishment of successful environmental programs within East Coast tribes like the Nansemond Indian Nation.

National and global solidarity between Indigenous communities and their allies fighting for similar goals — land sovereignty, environmental leadership, and protection of

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A poster featuring Indiginous Brazilian leaders Sônia Guajajara, Célia Xakriabá, and Nara Baré displayed next to the Washington Monument.

understanding, and respect needed to take action.

“I just want them to remember the images,” she said. “I would love it if [the images] would kind of haunt them and go in the back of their minds to remember that these people exist.”

Just as Ching’s visual art aims to project the power and diversity of Indigenous women leaders, Anderson’s long journey as the executive director of the American Indian dance troupe Red Crooked Sky has focused on a similar objective through another form of art.

Red Crooked Sky has representation from more than 70 tribes, which helps the group dissipate its audience’s potential unconscious stereotypes of Indigenous people as a monolith.

“When any audience sees us, they see nations and persons of different hues, color, hair styles,” Anderson said. “So again, it shows that we have always been a very diverse people and it shows the beauty of that.”

While neither Ching, Ramirez, nor Anderson have the ability to control how people feel or what they do after engaging with their artistic activism, they say centering communities on the front lines in the fight to save the planet will only gain in importance in the years to come.

After all, Ramirez said, there’s not a lot to lose when you don’t have your land.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NIA TERO

Indigenous culture — constitutes a winning strategy in the unification of all human beings in the fight against climate change, which “transcends everything,” Anderson said. It’s also the backbone of Nia Tero’s international campaign.

Equally as important to Nia Tero for the campaign was the projection of the faces of Indigenous resistance in Brazil’s largest city São Paulo. The Brazilian Indigenous leaders included in the campaign are Sônia Guajajara, Célia Xakriabá, and Nara Baré, the first woman to lead the Coalition of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon. These three women have been at the forefront of the fight to reaffirm the implementation of article 231 of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, which recognizes Indigenous “rights over the land that they have traditionally occupied.”

Unfortunately, the lack of Indigenous participation in the Brazilian policy-making sphere has left this legislative protection vulnerable to corrupt politicians who adhere to the whims of agribusiness over the constitution.

The far-right Jair Bolsonaro regime, backed by the U.S., has opened the Amazon up for unprecedented levels of access to multinational corporations eager to exploit the region’s mineral wealth and agribusiness potential.

One such corporation is Minnesota-based agricultural giant Cargill, named “the worst company in the world” in a 2019 Mighty Earth report for its continued environmental destruction and evisceration of Indiginous land sovereignty in the Amazon. In 2019, activists protesting against the Line 3 pipeline staged a rally outside the Minneapolis home of Cargill’s chief executive officer, David MacLennan, in a gesture of solidarity between the fight to protect

Indigenous territories in northern Minnesota and the Brazilian Amazon.

Similarly, “Thriving Peoples, Thriving Places” is designed to unite regional struggles for Indigenous land sovereignty under the umbrella of one unified global movement.

“What hit me the most was the interconnectivity of it,” said Tracie Ching, the D.C.-based artist.

“These activations went up in all these different parts of the world with all these people having similar struggles, asking for the same thing, but wearing different faces — we were all connected at that moment by this campaign.”

Ching, who gained professional notoriety for her portraits of superheroes for Marvel Studios, was overjoyed by the opportunity to depict heroes fighting for their culture and the planet in the face of climate change. She attributes the human willingness to engage in activism with the inherent trait of associating visuals with feelings, which can trigger action.

Along with its potential to inspire action, Ching noted the ever-present influence media has on how people perceive the world.The creation of powerful portraits of Indigenous women leaders alters the traditional narrative of portraying revolutionary activists as male.

“If you’re fed a certain kind of image over and over you think that’s all there is, so it’s important for me that those images exist to make sure we accurately represent what is out there and what is possible,” Ching said.

She felt a close affinity with the campaign as a woman with Indigenous Hawaiian roots.

While her connection with the illustrated icons comes from a personal stake in the fight for the protection of Indigenous lands, Ching believes that individuals exposed to powerful visuals are better positioned to develop the passion,

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A poster depicting Gunn-Britt Retter, an Indiginious (Saami) cultural worker and politician from Scandinavia. POSTER COURTESY OF NIA TERO, DESIGN BY TRACIE CHING.

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NEWS

The disturbing history of how conservatorships were used to exploit and swindle Indigenous people in the US Šá’s report and Congressional testimony documented numerous examples of abuse.

Breaches of trust were documented in which attorneys or others appointed conservators took money or lands from Nation members for their own businesses, personal expenses or investments. Others schemed with friends and business associates to deprive “wards.”

BY ANDREA SEIELSTAD The Conversation

Pop singer Britney Spears’ quest to end the conservatorship that handed control over her finances and health care to her father demonstrates the double-edged sword of putting people under the legal care and control of another person.

A judge may at times deem it necessary to appoint a guardian or conservator to protect a vulnerable person from abuse and trickery by others, or to protect them from poor decisionmaking regarding their own health and safety.

But when put into the hands of self-serving or otherwise unscrupulous conservators, however, it can lead to exploitation and abuse.

Celebrities like Spears may be particularly susceptible to exploitation due to their capacity for generating wealth, but they are far from the only people at risk. As a lawyer with decades of experience representing poor and marginalized people and a scholar of tribal and federal Indigenous law, I can attest to the way systemic inequalities within local legal practices may exacerbate these potentially exploitative situations, especially with respect to women and people of color.

Perhaps nowhere has the impact been so grave than with respect to Indigenous people in the United States, who were put into a status of guardianship due to a system of federal and local policies developed in the early 1900s purportedly aimed at protecting Indigenous people receiving allotted land from the government. Members of the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma – Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations – were particularly impacted by these practices due to the discovery of oil and gas under their lands.

Swindled by ‘friendly white lawyers’ A conservatorship, or a related designation called a guardianship, takes away decisionmaking autonomy from a person, called a “ward.” Although the conservator is supposed to act in the interest of the ward, the system can be open to exploitation especially when vast sums of money are involved.

This was the case between 1908 and 1934, when guardianships became a vehicle for the swindling of Native communities out of their lands and royalties.

By that time, federal policy had forced the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from eastern and southern locations in the United States to what is presently Oklahoma.

Subsequent federal policy converted large tracts of tribally held land into individual

‘Plums to be distributed’

The Osage Nation were once among the wealthiest people in the world.

IMAGE COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

allotments that could be transferred or sold without federal oversight – a move that fractured communal land. Land deemed to be “surplus to Indian needs” was sold off to white settlers or businesses, and Indigenous allotment holders could likewise sell their plots after a 25-year trust period ended or otherwise have them taken through tax assessments and other administrative actions. Through this process Indigenous land holdings diminished from “138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres by 1934 when allotment ended,” according to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation.

During the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation and of the Five Civilized Tribes were deemed to be among the richest people per capita in the world due to the discovery of oil and gas underneath their lands.

However, this discovery turned them into the victims of predatory schemes that left many penniless or even dead.

Reflecting on this period in the 1973 book “One Hundred Million Acres,” Kirke Kickingbird, a lawyer and member of the Kiowa Tribe, and former Bureau of Indian Affairs special assistant Karen Ducheneaux wrote that members of the Osage Nation “began to disappear mysteriously.” On death, their estates were left “not to their families, but to their friendly white lawyers, who gathered to usher them into the Happy Hunting Ground,” Kickingbird and Ducheneaux added.

Lawyers and conservators stole lands and funds before death as well, by getting themselves appointed as guardians and conservators with full authority to spend their wards’ money or lease and sell their land.

Congress created the initial conditions for this widespread graft and abuse through the Act of May 27, 1908. That Act transferred jurisdiction over land, persons and property of Indian “minors and incompetents” from the Interior Department, to local county probate

courts in Oklahoma. Related legislation also enabled the the Interior Department to put land in or out of trust protection based on its assessment of the competency of Indigenous allottees and their heirs.

Unfettered by federal supervisory authority, local probate courts and attorneys seized the opportunity to use guardianships to steal Indigenous estates and lands. As described in 1924 by Zitkála-Šá, a prominent Indigenous activist commissioned by the Secretary of Interior to study the issue, “When oil is ‘struck’ on an Indian’s property, it is usually considered prima facie evidence that he is incompetent, and in the appointment of a guardian for him, his wishes in the matter are rarely considered.”

The county courts generally declared Indigenous people incompetent to handle more than a very limited sum of money without any finding of mental incapacity. Zitkála-

Activist and writer Zitkála-Šá.

IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

One such woman in Zitkála-Šá’s report was Munnie Bear, a “young, shrewd full-blood Creek woman … [who] ran a farm which she inherited from her aunt, her own allotment being leased.” Munnie saved enough money to buy a Ford truck and livestock for her farm, with savings remaining in a bank account. Once oil was discovered, however, the court appointed a guardian, who appointed a co-guardian and retained a lawyer, each of whom deducted monthly fees that depleted Bear’s funds.

During the period of her guardianship, she was unable to spend any money or make any decisions about her farm or livestock, nor did she control her bank investment.

Zitkála-Šá’s report displays the extent of this practice: “Many of the county courts are influenced by political considerations, and … Indian guardianships are the plums to be distributed to the faithful friends of the judges as a reward for their support at the polls. The principal business of these county courts is handling Indian estates. The judges are elected for a two-year term. That ‘extraordinary services’ in connection with the Indian estates are well paid for; one attorney, by order of the court, received $35,000 from a ward’s estate, and never appeared in court.”

Wards were often kept below subsistence levels by their conservators while their funds and lands were depleted by the charging of excessive guardian and attorneys’ fees and administrative costs, along with actual abuse through graft, negligence and deception.

Reports like that of Zitkála-Šá’s resulted in Congress enacting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. This put the Indian land that had not fallen into non-Indian hands during the federal policy of allotting plots back into tribal ownership and secured it in the trust of the United States. It also ended the potential for theft through guardianship.

But the lands and funds lost as a result of guardianships were not restored nor did descendants of those swindled ever enjoy the benefit of their relatives’ lands and monies either.

Andrea Seielstad is professor of law at the University of Dayton.

Courtesy of The Conversation / INSP.ngo

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AT A GLANCE

Indigenous guardians blockade logging operation

BY MIKE GRAEME // Megaphone

J

ust over a year ago, forest protectors sounded the alarm when in a remote region of southwestern Vancouver Island, logging road-building crested the mountains into the last unprotected intact old-growth watershed on Indigenous territories.

Soon after, six camps comprising blockades and lookout stations — including a “headquarters” at Fairy Creek near the small town of Port Renfrew — had been erected and fortified on Pacheedaht and Ditidaht territories to prevent logging company Teal-Jones Group from further harvesting.

The 2,000 hectares of rainforest around Fairy Creek is the last unlogged old-growth valley in the region (except for parks). British Columbia defines “old growth” as trees more than 250 years old. Some of the yellow cedars and Douglas firs near Fairy Creek are hundreds and even thousands of years old.

On Sept. 15, 2020, B.C. released the recommendations of its own Old Growth Review Panel, which include “immediate responses to ecosystems at very high risk.”

However, the B.C. government has yet to step in to protect the last remaining 3% of high-productivity ancient forest on the island, nor has it demonstrated a feasible action plan for funding Indigenous communities — which have been forced to depend on logging their territories due to a long history of colonialism.

During the early days of the action camps, the band council of the Pacheedaht First Nation remained publicly silent on the Fairy Creek issue. A revenue-sharing agreement with British Columbia means the nation is compensated for logging in its territory, including in Fairy Creek.

Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones and young Pacheedaht Hereditary Chief Victor Peter emerged among those who were outspokenly in support of the blockades.

This year, on April 12, the Pacheedaht Band Council — which has signed benefit agreements with Teal-Jones Group — released a statement condemning any third-party activism that impeded logging operations on the territory. The logging company holds the tree farm license to the area where nearly all of the protection camps are located. In hopes of continuing operations, Teal-Jones applied for a court injunction to remove blockaders.

The injunction was granted and on May 18, Royal Canadian Mounted Police moved in to the Caycuse Camp on Ditidaht territory to begin enforcing the court order. Police called for land defenders to stand down and leave the area. More than 130 forest protectors were arrested during the first two weeks of enforcement.

Photojournalist Mike Graeme has been on the ground covering the conflict. He spoke with Indigenous land defenders ƛapisim (Aya Clappis), from Huu-ay-aht (Nuučaan̓uł) and Somali descent, and xʷ is xʷ čaa (Kati George-Jim) of T’souke and W̱ SÁNEĆ. George-Jim, who is also the niece of Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones, was forcefully arrested on the third day of the injunction enforcement.

She and Clappis have been working for Indigenous sovereignty and land defense by strengthening kinship ties, honoring the Indigenous laws that are connected to those family relationships and revitalizing Indigenous networks of resistance against resource extraction projects — such as oldgrowth logging — on unceded Indigenous lands. This is part one of an interview with them.

Mike Graeme: From old-growth logging, to oil and gas extraction, the foundations of colonialism — and the governments and industries that perpetuate it — consistently pit Indigenous communities against themselves, undermining Indigenous laws, governance and sovereignty.

The provincial and federal governments often cite Indigenous band council approvals as justification for

giving the go-ahead for resource extraction projects. We’ve seen it through the Wet’suwet’en conflict and now we’re seeing it in Pacheedaht. For Indigenous Peoples, how do these blockades go beyond saving one forest?

Kati George-Jim / xʷ is xʷ čaa: These colonial systems put us in a position where there is no choice while the traditional systems that we have had to depend on for our entire existence as Indigenous Peoples to this coast are actively being disrupted by this government.

With what’s happening on the ground in the West Coast territories of what is now known as Vancouver Island, it needs to be known that this is by design: to have band councils, to have the Indian Act system be placed on our peoples, to be placed on the land in order to exploit and rape the land. It is not a mistake.

This system is meant to undermine our family structures, is meant to rip our children from our families and from the land.

Band Nations are upholding this system over the people, over the land. We cannot be fooled into thinking that logging the last ancient forests will help us get to a just future. Without the land, how can we practice who we are? How can we have a relationship with every generation before and after us?

For the provincial government — this NDP government and every settler government before — that has been the directive: to divide our peoples, and to make everything scarce.

Aya Clappis / ƛapisim: The immediate issue is debt and money because of conditions of colonialism. Canada has forced our communities into poverty and now weaponizes this poverty and the Indian Act’s band council system to push Indigenous Peoples to commit extreme forms of violence against their own land in order to survive.

Can you speak to the broader picture of colonial violence, including how violence against Indigenous lands equates to violence against Indigenous bodies?

AC: We’re never going to seek justice across all these different fronts if we’re not thinking holistically and thinking in this mindset of a broader network of how oppression operates, of how colonial resource extraction operates.

Resource extraction — those back roads, those isolated logging roads — contribute to missing and murdered women, girls and two-spirit folks. They’re all connected. And so separating violence on the land from violence against Indigenous bodies is only going to produce glimmers of success and protection and also lead to other non-beneficial precedents to the long-term goal of liberating people and upholding our Indigenous sovereignty.

KGJ: It is no mistake that the violence industry inflicts on the territory is simultaneously enacted towards Indigenous people. The colonial system has violently targeted women, queer people, children, and our family structures. We are in an abusive relationship with the Canadian State. And if settler governments and industry continue to exploit the land unchecked, we will not see an end to the systemic violence.

It is important for everyone to connect those dots. It is to the benefit of the logging industry, LNG, pipelines — all of these extraction industries — for this violence to be permitted. And when Indigenous Peoples stand up for their lands, they are criminalized and incarcerated by the police and the colonial courts.

It is those Indigenous leaders and people who seek that sovereignty, that we need to look to, give care to, and stand behind those leaders defending against that violence.

Courtesy of Megaphone / INSP.ngo

Reginald Scott PHOTO COURTESY OF REGINALD SCOTT

BIRTHDAYS Reginald Scott Sept. 6 ARTIST/VENDOR

Gerald Anderson Sept. 7 ARTIST/VENDOR

ACCOMPLISHMENTS Wendell Williams

Expert guest on the “Voices of the Homelessness” monthly podcast.

Listen: tinyurl.com/VOH-ep5 ARTIST/VENDOR

VENDOR PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENTS • The Street Sense Media office will be closed Monday, Sept. 6, for Labor Day. • Anthony Crawford’s memorial service will be held in the Church of the Epiphany on Thursday, Sept. 16, at 1 p.m.

• Moving forward, there will be a 2-day delay on all Vendor App payouts.

• Vendors can bring in a complete CDC vaccination card for 15 papers.

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NEWS

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz on her lifelong fight to empower Indigenous peoples and have their rights recognized by governments

BY ANN-DERRICK GAILLOT International Network of Street Papers

W

hen I ask Vicky Tauli-Corpuz how she got started in organizing and activism, she takes me back to the Philippines in the 1970s. The World Bank, at the request of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was funding a dam project on the Chico River in the Cordillera region. North of Manila, the region has been home to and protected by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years, including Vicky’s people the Kankanaey Igorot. Building with no input from or notice given to nearby Indigenous communities, the dam project threatened to destroy their sacred lands, their culture, and displace thousands of Indigenous people.

Seeing the impending destruction, Tauli-Corpuz, already involved in anti-dictatorship and anti-Vietnam War efforts while a student in Manila, organized with other Indigenous students. Soon, the Indigenous peoples of the Cordillera were united in resistance efforts against the project. Despite violent retaliation from the Marcos dictatorship, their opposition forced the World Bank and government to abandon the Chico River dam project. “We have our own traditional systems where people come together to talk about the issues that are affecting them, and then to think of plans of action,” she remembers.

“These are very traditional systems that our ancestors and elders have been doing. And that’s how we decided that one way for us to fight the dictatorship is to organize ourselves and organize the communities where we come from, and that’s how we learned. It’s really learning by doing.” From then on, TauliCorpuz continued organizing and creating networks between Indigenous peoples in the Philippines.

By the early 1980s, Tauli-Corpuz began working with the United Nations to set up a framework for protecting Indigenous rights globally. The result was the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Seven years later, Tauli-Corpuz was appointed the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In charge of meeting with Indigenous leaders all over the world, she reported on the human rights abuses Indigenous peoples face as they fight to protect their lands as well as their successes in asserting their sovereignty and protecting biodiversity.

Today, Tauli-Corpuz juggles many roles as she continues to struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and environmental conservation the world over. One of those is as a member of the board of directors of Nia Tero, a Seattle-based nonprofit focused on securing Indigenous guardianship of vital ecosystems. She is also one of nine Indigenous leaders honored in the organization’s “Thriving Peoples. Thriving Places.” campaign, in association with non-profit design lab Amplifier.

Tauli-Corpuz spoke to INSP from Baguio, a city in the mountains of the Philippines’ Cordillera region, about Indigenous sovereignty, environmental conservation, and what gives her hope as the struggle continues.

INSP: What changes have you seen over the past few decades as far as how Indigenous people are shaping global dialogue on conservation and fighting climate change?

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz: Indigenous peoples came together precisely because of similar problems that we all face in

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz (COURTESY OF NIA TERO)

terms of states violating our rights to control and have a say over how our lands and territories are being used. That’s what brought us to the United Nations to work for the drafting of a UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [beginning in 1985]. The whole period was a period where we decided that the international community can indeed have the capacity to influence decisions of states to be more respectful of human rights.

So we did that. We linked up with the UN Commission on Human Rights. Even before we got the Declaration, [we] said we would like to be involved in ‘92 when the Rio Earth Summit happened. I was there and several Indigenous peoples were there. And we tried to influence the convention on biological diversity to put paragraphs [in the resulting documents] that will recognize our rights and our contributions to biodiversity.

So we, and when I say “we” that’s Indigenous leaders who were involved in this process, thought it will be better if we are engaged actively in the convention [and that they] respect Indigenous peoples when they try to meet the goals of the convention. And that’s how we engage.

The impact is that there are now active Indigenous caucuses: the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Biodiversity, which is involved directly in engaging with the convention.

There is also one in the climate change arena. And those of us who had the possibility of becoming members of the

government delegations, we also agreed to become part of the delegations so that we are there directly shaping and making the language that we think is relevant for us. [For example], I became a member of the government delegation for the climate change convention when the REDD+ discussions were happening about reducing emissions from deforestation.

Now there are several decisions that have come up from these conventions which say that the rights of Indigenous people should be protected, their traditional knowledge on how to conserve biodiversity and protect biodiversity should be enhanced further and recognized, and direct participation of Indigenous peoples in making decisions and policies at the national level should also be encouraged and in the implementation of these programs and actions at the national and the local levels.

So I think that’s the impact. At least the participation of Indigenous peoples is there. But of course, the implementation is still a big question mark. You have to struggle still at national levels to make sure that Indigenous peoples are involved, to get them invited when these discussions are happening, [to make sure] the work that Indigenous peoples are doing (which they have been traditionally doing) is also recognized and support is provided in terms of recognizing the rights to their lands and territories, in terms of resources, as well as technologies.

So that’s basically, I think, where we are.

Can you speak more to the connection between conservation and Indigenous sovereignty? How do you explain the importance of that connection to people who want to support conservation but don’t consider Indigenous sovereignty?

I think that the way to explain that is to really show the evidence. The World Bank came up with a report which says while Indigenous peoples occupied 22 percent of the world’s territories, 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity are found in these territories. So that’s one fact that has already been established by scientists and acknowledged now in several reports that we see.

[Another] one is showing that in many of these communities, Indigenous governance systems are in place. [Places recognizing] the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples to self-govern and to determine their economic, social and cultural development are the places where you can also see this kind of a reality.

As Special Rapporteur, I went to Mexico and Ecuador.

The people who have these autonomous municipalities came to talk to me, and they told me that they have marked their communities and they can show to the government that it’s their communities which have the highest levels of biological diversity. But it’s because they are able to govern in their own states and municipalities. These people from Mexico came to me and they told me that it’s their autonomous government, their sovereignty, that ensured that this biodiversity and the forest are still kept in a better shape compared to other territories.

Even in Brazil, for instance, there’s this famous Xingu National Park. Actually, the territories of Indigenous peoples where they live which are not part of the Xingu National Park are better kept. They have higher levels of biodiversity. There’s very little deforestation happening. So, I think that’s the way to link sovereignty with biodiversity protection and conservation.

And that’s why I always tell the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] people, why don’t you document all of that? You have all the possibilities to document these realities, but it is us Indigenous peoples, we have to be the ones who will do the documentation. We have to beg some academic institutions to help document this. But if we are able to work together to [create] all the reports about this, then it will really enrich the evidence that is needed to convince other people to support the demands of Indigenous peoples to have their rights over their lands and territories and the right to sovereignty to have rights respected by states and by corporations as well.

What was one concern you came away with from your time as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?

The overarching concern for me is really the nonimplementation of the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples, which means the recognition of Indigenous peoples to their territories are not happening in the way that we would like to happen. Titles are not provided, no demarcation is happening.

And even in countries where demarcation has happened, in Brazil, for instance, the Bolsanaro government totally disregarded many of these because they came up with a law which says those who haven’t delineated their lands before 1989, before the constitution was created, cannot have a claim over their territories anymore. So there are many legal steps being taken by states to undermine the implementation of and the protection of the rights of Indigenous peoples to their lands and territories. And those who try to fight to protect these rights and to fight against their displacement, against the entry of destructive government projects, they are the ones who are arrested and put in jail.

So while our governments have signed onto these conventions and even the declarations which protect the rights of Indigenous peoples, it’s really an uphill battle all the time.

It’s only when Indigenous Peoples are strongly organized,

not think that they are really in very bad shape. They are in deep, but I don’t believe that it’s hopeless. We’ve lived over how many thousands of years, and we will be able to do it.

And I think bringing them to communities who are doing whatever they can is also inspiring. I remember as a young activist, we visited many communities. And that’s where I learned that as long as the community is intact and they really have a collective view of what they would like to be, things will be moving in the ways that they would like. These kinds of immersion activities, where the young people are brought to dialogue [with] the older ones and come up together with some common plans. It’s what we need to do, because we cannot afford to lose young people.

Many of these people are very intelligent. They should use that intelligence to really do what matters.

What are the resistance movements people can look to for guidance or encouragement now?

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz (COURTESY OF NIA TERO, DESIGN BY TRACIE CHING)

they are empowered, that they manage to get some gains. But the governments will not go out of their way to do it. And then, because the last remaining [natural] resources in the world today are found in Indigenous territories because they have protected these lands, those resources are magnets for corporations to collude with governments to take over these resources and lands.

That’s why [Indigenous leaders] are also linking hands with allied organizations, institutions who understand this problem. It really takes a concerted effort not just from Indigenous peoples, but from human rights defenders, from people who simply believe that Indigenous people should be allowed to continue living in the way that they would like to in protecting the territories that they live in. That’s the kind of effort that I’m trying to do now, trying to reach out to academic institutions, to NGOs, civil society [organizations], other social movements, so that we’ll be able to really forge our strength and get the states and the corporations to respect and protect the rights of Indigenous people.

What would you say to people, especially young people, who are getting the impression from media coverage and social media that it’s too late to meaningfully combat climate change, or basically that we’re doomed?

I think that you have to give hope, and the way that we give them hope is by showing communities are able to survive and adapt to these changes precisely because they are working together. They are conscious about how their actions will have an impact, not just now, but on the future. It’s important to show the young people that things can be changed. I think that if we are just resigned to the doom and gloom, that’s that.

But our role, especially as elders, is to give the young people hope that if they are able to continue these practices, use the technologies, use the knowledge, the sciences...that will allow us to survive, but at the same time to recover and restore the ecosystem to what we would like it to be.

That’s why the interlinkages between the young people and the elders, and of course the role of Indigenous women and women in general, [is important] in terms of promoting these values of nurturing, compassion, empathy. All these values have to really be taught to the young people so that they will

In the US, of course, we have the resistance against the oil pipelines, for instance, in the Dakotas. I think that’s a good example to see [because the pipeline] was stopped. It’s the same in Canada. In our communities here in the Philippines, we managed to stop some mining companies from coming into our territories. We fought for a national law on Indigenous peoples’ rights that says that the free prior informed consent of Indigenous peoples has to be paid whenever any projects are brought into their territories. And in Latin America, the Indigenous municipalities that are autonomous, you can see what they did. This Purepecha village in Michoacan, in Mexico, it was the women who really started the fight against their forest being destroyed by the drug cartels. They joined their hands together, they put up barricades, and then they started to stop the logging trucks from coming in. And the men, of course, eventually joined them. The government joined them. They kicked out the corrupt government officials who were the ones in power and colluding with these drug cartels.

In Colombia, you can see this with some of the autonomous municipalities as well. They have protected their territories.

They insisted that they run their own schools. And so they are the ones teaching the young people before they go to the university in Bogota. And I’ve met young people who are very bright. The children of one of the Indigenous leaders [in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta] — one is an astrophysicist, one is an ethnobiologist — and they finished [school], but they went back home and they started to do work in their own territories.

I was so inspired by that.

So there are really very many examples of Indigenous peoples trying to assert their rights and showing good results for it. And if we are able to really talk more about that, show those kinds of good examples, then I think that people will rethink and will be more concerned in how to build stronger communities. At the end of the day, that’s really what we’re looking for. Stronger communities who are united, who are able to assert their rights and who are able to build their own capacities to run their own governments and their own justice systems and education systems. And if they are able to do that, then why should the government penalize them for doing that?

In fact, I was telling them at the Mexican government, you should be very thankful that even without much resources, they set up their own system. They have their own Indigenous guards, which protect the security of the community, and they do not even receive any salaries from you. So these are examples of the kind of empowerment that we should encourage communities to do, and not just to be leaving it to Indigenous peoples. Because I think that really can happen in whatever community that is.

Ann-Derrick Gaillot is a freelance journalist and writer based in Missoula, Montana. Find more of her work at annderrickgaillot.contently.com. Courtesy of INSP.ngo

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OPINION

Back-to-school isn’t just for kids — parents need more education, too

BY SANDRA L. JACKSON

This is the time of year when many people are turning their attention to children heading back to school. As the president and CEO of House of Ruth, a D.C. nonprofit that supports women, children, and families, I know that back-to-school efforts are essential not just for kids, but also for parents — many of whom never had the opportunity to complete school themselves.

We empower people to rebuild their lives and heal from trauma, abuse, and homelessness. As a part of that work, we spend much of our energy on education, because education is crucial to our clients’ securing work, earning an income to support their families, and finding success in life — and domestic violence can put all of this on hold.

We help our clients create their own plan when they first move to House of Ruth. Then we meet with them, weekly or more often, to help them achieve their education goals.

This can include completing a GED, or earning an associate or a bachelor's degree, or learning how to manage money or a household. We partner with the Washington D.C. YWCA financial literacy class, teaching our clients everything from how to open a bank account to managing their money. We are proud of how many clients leave us earning money in a job or earning more than when they started.

When I was in my second year as leader at House of Ruth, in 2016, a news program featured one of our clients for Mother's Day: A woman who went to culinary school while living with us and then got a job working in the White House. We also encourage our women clients to think outside of “women's work” and apply for well-paid jobs in construction, as we have had clients hired in jobs working in male-dominated fields.

Here's a story about how our focus on education is helping a mom and a daughter finish school. Before they came to House of Ruth, Kristina and her daughters were homeless and living in a shelter in a hotel in D.C. They had a long commute from the shelter to the girls' school. Kristina's abuser kept showing up during the commute and threatening them. Kristina would contact the police and let them know she had a restraining order, but he kept appearing. The danger and fear continued until they found us.

Two years ago, Kristina and her daughters moved into our supportive housing for survivors of domestic violence. With newfound security and a true support system through our staff, Kristina was able to ground herself and begin to pursue education and training that will set her up for long-term independence. As of

today, Kristina has already earned a medical assistant certification and a medical office administration certification, and she is finishing up the requirements to earn an electronic medical records certification. She is proud of these significant accomplishments and is looking forward to beginning a career in the healthcare industry.

Both of Kristina's daughters are now thriving. Her oldest daughter Mia* is a senior in high school. She is a thoughtful, accomplished young woman who recently wrote an excellent essay on the struggles and challenges of going through homelessness while in school. Mia has a strong grade-point average, and her hard work has truly paid off. She was accepted into eight different colleges and recently made the decision to attend a local university.

Kristina says House of Ruth has helped her "be able to be the best me that I can be for myself and for my children." Going back to school was never an option for her before. She and her girls went from being terrified daily to feeling safe and secure. Unlike their previous temporary shelter in a hotel room, the apartment at House of Ruth gave them a safe space to live normally and create a home.

Kristina says "being able to live, and to live safely, has just been awesome." She says the support system they have now makes her feel like the sky is the limit.

And there is so much to be excited about and look forward to as Mia approaches her high school graduation and makes plans for college.

As many of us know, school doesn't end when you complete your final degree. Life is an education — every day — and House of Ruth is a proud partner with the clients we serve. *name changed to protect privacy. Sandra Jackson, MSW, LICSW, LCSW-C, is president and CEO of the House of Ruth.

The silver lining of Biden’s botched Afghan withdrawal

BY JEFFERY MCNEIL

When I see the media become apoplectic over Joe Biden's bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, something doesn't add up. I believe they’ve realized Biden is a sinking ship, and now they are staying far away from him.

While the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" crowd is still praising him for this catastrophe, Biden's biggest allies — even Angelina Jolie! — are now openly criticizing him. Those still defending him will look to history like stumbling buffoons. To shamelessly protect Joe Biden and his administration shows that progressives, whom I call Regressives, are more concerned with politics than empathy.

On every side of the political spectrum, the motto was “leave no one behind” in Afghanistan, until this oaf of a leader left Americans in the hands of the Taliban, not to mention the Afghan people. Seeing images of children hanging onto the wheels of an airplane as it was taking off and dropping to their deaths struck the conscience of anybody who cares about humanity.

It’s unacceptable, watching British and French soldiers risk their lives to rescue our citizens from Afghanistan, while the Biden administration negotiates with Taliban leaders on a withdrawal date. I don’t care that Trump started negotiations with the Taliban — Biden did not have to keep humoring this despotic regime when peace talks failed.

Of course, everyone was tired of the money wasted in Afghanistan. But after trillions of dollars and 20 years spent, Kabul crumbled in days, despite Biden’s assurances that it would take months if it happened at all. It’s disgusting seeing some in Washington still playing politics when real

lives were being sacrificed for political purposes. this path of policies Americans didn’t want, I wouldn’t While Biden’s Afghanistan disaster gave Americans a be surprised if the American flag over the residence is black eye on the world stage, I believe Americans needed replaced by the Chinese, ISIS, or Black Lives Matter flag. this gut punch. Now it is time for Congress to do what is This isn’t about Joe Biden, it's about us. Our laws don’t right and file an article of impeachment. come from unelected hacks like Dr. Anthony Fauci. We The left didn’t even like Biden -- they would have the people pay for this corrupt government, and it's our voted for a potato if it had a chance of defeating Trump. duty to never cower or accept weak, feckless leadership.

Biden fit the bill, he seemed like America’s grandpa, he Our government went rogue and it’s time to let politicians ran on healing and taxing the rich. Plus he seemed feeble know they serve, not rule. and old, and could be manipulated to the radical left's Time for people to call your senators and members of agenda. He told the Leftist base what they wanted to Congress to start greasing the skids to remove Joe Biden, hear: A $15 minimum wage, free community college, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi from being anywhere and a public option for healthcare. near the switch box.

Americans may finally step back, take a deep breath Jeffery Mcneil is an artist and vendor with Street Sense Media. and assess the destruction we caused because hating Trump was more important to the Left than taking what's good and improving on it.

- Have an opinion about how homelessness is being addressed in our community?

What’s happening - Want to share firsthand experience? is no longer - Interested in responding to what someone else has written? comical. Just as this administration pulled Street Sense Media has maintained an open submission policy since our founding. out of Afghanistan, We aim to elevate voices from across the housing spectrum and foster healthy debate.

Biden needs to be pulled from the Please send submissions to opinion@streetsensemedia.org.

White House. If we continue down

Join the conversation, share your views

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ART

The future of life’s hope

BY CARLTON JOHNSON, a.k.a. “INKFLOW” // Artist/Vendor

Hope turns to long life No time to spare for hard times We only look for hope.

The monarch butterfly

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSHUA J. COTTEN ON UNSPLASH.COM

BY BRIANNA BUTLER Artist/Vendor

The monarchs are a beautiful orange, yellow, and black. Their resilience lands there on magical grounds where they commune with each other. They leave in the fall for a long journey south. They stop off in flowers to eat and fertilize some plants. They can induce a wintry cold for a small amount of time. Some stay yellow and some change to orange. The yellow ones love tomato plants, it gives them the energy to fly long distances. The Monarch is territorial in different places and will fight back when another insect corners them. When they fly south they fly in swarms by hundreds. When you see these remarkable, elegant, flyers think of their conquering spirit to stay fine and last another year. I have a tip for you: plant pretty flowers or a garden to allow them to continue to come through and reveal themselves to you in spring and summer months.

The chosen one

BY RON DUDLEY, A.K.A. “POOKANU” Artist/Vendor

God send me all the chosen people Not the asleep but the awoken people God send me all the chosen signs God gave me all these chosen lines God said I am the chosen one Then gave me a chosen son.

I ask my son, “Do you see chosen things?

“And do you really know what ‘chosen’ means?”

“Do you see chosen numbers and symbols?

Do hard things to other people seem simple to you?

Do simple things to other people seem hard to you?”

That's when I knew I was chosen from God

Less than Supreme

God chose me to get rid of this curse God chose me to deliver these words God chose me to deliver this science God drove me to a beach on an island

BY FREDERIC JOHN Artist/Vendor

As summer’s hiatus Becomes due status; Scalia still gone.

Alito’s alive, and Amy Coney’s sphinx like Smile, prevails.

Our land swelters…

Polls in a welter!

Somebody asks Is there hope.

For a citizen to Freely VOTE? (God bless us all)

God chose me to be humble and wise God chose me so I can see through the lies God told me, “If you don't work, you don't eat” God chose me to stop the mark of the beast.

God chose me to be able to talk, talk to a tree And God chose the tree to be able to talk back to me.

God chose me to keep the peace on his land God chose me to save and not kill a man

PHOTO COURTESY OF CLAIRE ANDERSON ON UNSPLASH.COM

God chose me to be a spiritual being God chose me to see what others are not seeing.

God chose me because I'm not in a rush Because my heart is pure, I'm the one he can trust Chosen one.

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ART PATTY’S SKETCHBOOK:

Missing my mom STORY AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY PATTY SMITH Artist/Vendor

M

y mother’s name was Catherine, she went by “Cathy” Clay. As the years go by, and it has been four years since she died, I miss her so much. When she was alive, we celebrated every holiday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both when I was home with her, and afterward when I would go back home on a holiday.

Mother’s Day this year was not the same without her. All the things that I miss about her were rattling around in my mind.

There are just too many things and I can’t count them all.

When I was about 12 years old, we lived on Jacksonia Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I had asked her for permission to go to Jefferson’s playground.

She let me go. I climbed and played on the swings. I climbed the apple trees and ate the apples, that was the favorite thing for me to do. One day, I fell off the swings and skinned my knees. I ran so fast home, crying all the way.

Once inside the house, mom bandaged my knees and kissed me just to make the pain go away. Love of mom.

So I’m a little late writing this, here’s to all moms on Mom’s Day. I wanted someone to know that, like everyone else, I, too, loved and still love my mom.

STREETSENSEMEDIA.ORG

Letter of appreciation to all my customers

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Ask for God’s guidance

BY KENGNIE JULIENE

BY TONY WEST

Artist/Vendor

Artist Vendor

I have been a vendor with Street Sense Media for six years. I am from Cameroon, in central Africa. I need help because with part of my income I pay a school for orphaned children there. I am an orphan, I lost my family. They passed away. I came to America to have a good life because in my country there is too much trouble.

I appreciate my customers’ donations in support of me. And I am happy after everything going on this past year, for seeing my customers on 16th Street, 18th Street, and near the K Street Metro. May God bless you all 21 times and keep you safe in this troubled time in our world.

Every day I see you come my way, most of you shining bright like the sun rose to begin another day. I can see in your eyes, we all have street sense. We use it every day.

Thank you for your support. God blessed me when you took your time to greet me today. And I thank God for meeting my brothers and sisters at Street Sense.

I was on crack for over 20 years.

Never thought I would get my life back. I was always depressed and felt hopeless.

It was when I started reading my Bible and believing in God when my life started to change. I don’t smoke crack no more. I feel happy.

I go to MBI Health Services. I have a case worker and go to anger and coping skills class. I’ve learned to take positive advice from people and hang with positive people.

Ask God to lead you. Don’t try to lead yourself.

The August Day

BY ROCHELLE WALKER Artist/Vendor

The last of summer and the beginning of fall, together we stand and together we will fall.

The beaches are full and the water is cold, the weather is hot and our gardens are getting old.

We will always remember the barbeque cookout: hamburger, hot dogs, and potato chips, too.

But the changing of seasons has come.

And the last of summer has begun.

Summer coming to an end

BY SYBIL TAYLOR // Artist//Vendor

I enjoyed the rainy days to cool off and catch a fall breeze To think things over, read a book, listen to my music Spending time with my cats, talking and feeding them Going to the library to relax Taking a trip to Six Flags

I enjoyed my summer very much, relaxing Though in September will be the family visit to my dad's grave It will be much cooler summer fun, summer joy Let's enjoy these last hot days before fall arrives Everybody enjoy your summer, stay cool Enjoy the walks, enjoy the flowers, enjoy the trees, enjoy nature at its best Always THIS IS MY SUMMER PLAYLIST: 1) “It's Summer” by The Temptations 2) “Hot Fun in the Summertime” by Sly & The Family Stone 3) “The House Rising Sun" by The Animals

PHOTOS BY SYBIL TAYLOR

Summer joy going to the beaches, going boat riding Going in the swimming pool to cool off Enjoying ice cream, popsicles, cold watermelon, and fruits Ice cold drinks, sparkling waters Summer fun enjoying seafood: crabs, lobster, scallops, oysters, and salads Summer food and enjoyment Just laying back in the pool enjoying the cool breeze

Having A/C or fans And cooling centers for everybody, including homeless people, to get out the heat Enjoying the morning choir of birds singing and chirping The bees humming The insects that fly around Our squirrels, our pigeons, our water animals Our dogs, our cats, our zoo friends — all loving the summer

Summer fixins.

Summertime in the city Full of fun, full of joy and laughter along the way Full of smiles and cheers, full of enjoyment Those hot days soon will be coming to an end, due to Fall arriving soon

1 4 // S T R E E T S E N S E M E D I A // S E P T. 1 - 7 , 2 0 2 1

OnlineCrosswords.net This is the Daily Crossword Puzzle #4 for Aug 31, 2021

Find the solution at https://onlinecrosswords.net/88544

FUN & GAMES

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Author Gene Weingarten is a college dropout and a nationally syndicated humor columnist for The Washington Post. Author Dan Weingarten is a former college dropout and a current college student majoring in information technology. Many thanks to Gene Weingarten and The Washington Post Writers Group for allowing Street Sense to run Barney & Clyde.

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