The Hard Worker (El Hombre Muy Trabajador) - Tiny Gray-Garcia - Bog

The Hardworker- El Trabajador Fuerte A childrens book for all ages. This revolutionary children's book follows Don Roberto, - an Afro-Boricua houseless, disabled, hard-working elder who collects, sorts, and redeems cans, bottles and cardboard to survive. He, like all unhoused people in the US is constantly harassed by racist and classist police, corporate recycling companies and many of the residents and business owners in the neighborhoods and communities he does his work We follow his police harassment and eventual incarceration and release. His redemption location eventually faces closure and thanks to the intervention of a young conscious boy's act of interdependence, vision for change and liberation, elder and child launch a poor people-led collective recycling coop. The book written by Tiny, who herself has struggled with houselessness, poverty, criminalization and unrecognized labor among other things, created it to address the themes of racism, classism, police brutality, Black/Brown and Poor peoples criminalization, unity and liberation. As well, she created the book to resist the stereotypes about unhoused people and introduce the idea that recyclers and other poor workers are actually workers- not the things people usually say and think about poor people. As well, as a poet and teacher herself, she hopes the book can be used to teach young people and all people to realize the corporate idea of who "owns" trash and the reality that poor and unhoused peoples are criminalized for the sole act of being unhoused and poor in this racist place called the US