Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia

Born and raised in Frisco, Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, and formerly incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher, single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled mama, Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. She has created her own re-mix/glossary of the colonizers language, including the notion of WeSearch. She has launched several ground-breaking WeSearch studies revealing the money lost by poor people when their belongings are stolen (seized) by PoLice, and has authored over 200 stories and blogs on poverty, racism, incarceration and displacement. 

Tiny founded Escuela de la Gente/PeopleSkool -- a poor and indigenous people-led skool for folks with race, class and formal education privilege through the Race, Poverty and Media Justice Institute. She also co-founded Family Project, an inter-generational learning project, with Jewnbug Kealoha Hall, as well as several cultural projects such as the Po Poets Project/Poetas POBREs Proyecto (co-founded with Leroy Moore), welfareQUEENs, the Theatre of the POOR/Teatro de los Pobres, and Hotel Voices (co-founded with Tony Robles), to name a few. 

Tiny is the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America (City Lights Press), and is the co-editor of A Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution. Her second book, Poverty Skolaship: Poor People Theory, Arts, Words and Tears -- A Peoples Text was recently released. 
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In 2011, Tiny co-launched The Homefulness Project - a landless peoples, self-determined land liberation movement in the Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin territory known as Deep East Oakland, CalifaZtlan, Turtle Island, with communal housing, a community garden, and sliding-scale cafe. That same year, she co-founded a liberation school for children, Deecolonize Academy, with several other mamaz and uncles in struggle.

Tiny has spoken, taught and performed in academic settings from Smith College to Swarthmore. She has created curriculum for a broad spectrum of folks, including co-teaching a class at UC Berkeley on Community Reparations and Decolonization based on her curriculum and original research.

www.tinygraygarcia.com
www.racepovertymediajustice.org
www.poormagazine.org

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