⚖️ The Gutter Report: How America Criminalizes Poverty but Pardons Corporate Theft
📸 The Courtroom
👩🏾⚖️ Talia Teneyuque standing in court, accused of turning food stamps into baked goods for survival.
🍪 The Bake Sale
🍫 Brownies, cookies, cakes — the very hustle now called a felony.
📚 The Case
Name: Talia C. Teneyuque (Saginaw, Michigan)
Charge: Misusing her Bridge Card (food stamps) to buy ingredients for baked goods sold at community events
Timeline: Jan 2022 – Sept 2023
Bond: Released on $50,000 bond
Max Penalty: Up to 10 years in prison + $250,000 fine
The state says she “misused” about $1,800 in benefits. Prosecutors want a felony conviction.
⚖️ Poverty on Trial
God forbid a Black woman tries to rise above poverty — the system will try to hang her for it.
This isn’t about flour and sugar. It’s about control. The law says benefits are for survival only — never for growth. The second you flip crumbs into bread, you’re “fraudulent.”
Meanwhile, corporations rob taxpayers for billions through subsidies, wage theft, and tax evasion, and America turns the other cheek.
🔎 Double Standards
$1,800 in food stamps → felony charges, courtrooms, headlines.
Billions in corporate theft → settlements, tax breaks, applause.
That’s the double standard: when the poor hustle, it’s a crime. When the rich hustle, it’s “innovation.”
🥖 Bread and Legacy
What Talia did was the definition of survival: take the little you have, multiply it, and feed your people. That’s entrepreneurship in its rawest form.
But the system doesn’t want that kind of independence — not from the gutter.
🚨 The Bigger Picture
This case is bigger than one woman. It’s about how poverty itself is criminalized. They’ll give you crumbs, then punish you if you turn those crumbs into bread.
This isn’t fraud. This is America putting poverty on trial.
Not for clicks — for clarity.
Good morning and Godspeed.
— Elliott Carterr
