 East Oakland, California, or Occupied Huchin, the site of Poor Magazine, a non-profit media, arts, and education organization. It is December 7th, 2023, a Thursday, the day of the week dedicated to the Sliding Scale Cafe, a program to redistribute free groceries, free produce, hot meals, and household items to those most in need. The preparation begins as early as 7 a.m., as people begin to arrive before noon. The program is most directly targeted at black, brown, and indigenous individuals from the community. The word community is especially key and an idea Tiny Garcia, a founder of Poor Magazine, emphasizes. I'm Tiny, daughter of Dee, a badass boricua, poverty scholar, for without whom there be no me. I'm a soltera and a welfare queen. I'm a comadre, a co-founder, along with my mom. We went through many different systems of so-called support and non-profit-eering, anti-social work, and other systems, and ended up on the street in LA, Occupied Tongva, came up to the Bay Area thinking it would be better, ended up in a worse situation. Despite being initiated years after their founding, the idea of the Sliding Scale Cafe was always part of the ethos of Poor Magazine and is rooted in what she calls interdependence. But I want to say that Sliding Scale Cafe is something that came out of the original visions of Poor Magazine. As poor people, we practice what I call radical interdependence. We don't have to be taught. We don't have to go to a seminar and sharing and all this mess because we automatically know that we need to take care of our fellow relatives, that if you don't have food that and I do, then we're both going to eat. The Sliding Scale Cafe has not been without its obstacles, however. The pandemic only worsened existing inequities, but this only strengthened Poor Magazine's resolve to serve their community, especially mothers in need. After the pandemic, more people became in a dire situation, but we say that the pandemic of poverty and poor life's terror was here all along. So that's why we started it from day one, which was back in 2011. We started the Poor Mamas or Poe Mamas Diaper Fund or Poe Mamas Pagnale Fund, where we give free diapers away because diapers costs a ridiculous amount of money and they end up in the landfill, but that's another conversation. But when I was pregnant with my son, I was in a situation where I couldn't afford diapers. And so again, as we began the process of building homefulness in 2011, we began gifting the Vodio here, gifting them with whatever we had and whatever we could acquire, because as we oftentimes say, us poor people give everything we have away at the Sliding Scale Cafe. Poor Magazine is a grassroots, non-profit organization that depends upon the generous support of the community. For ways to get involved or keep up to date with their events, you can visit poormagazine.org or their social media handles.