Rocket Poetry

Rocket Poetry has moved

2008-02-13T21:46:00.000-08:00

Rocket Poetry has moved -

Lakota Sioux Secede From US, Declare Independence

2007-12-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

Indepedence declared

The Bonus Army interview

2007-11-11T12:23:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of interviewing Paul Dickson a couple years back for Street Roots and Real Change. If anyone is looking for recommended reading material about an inspiring and troubling time about veterans in American History, this is the book for you.

The Bonus Army, an American epic by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allan, tells one of the many stories of the post-war lives of disgruntled American veterans.

During the summer of 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, the Bonus Army was born in Portland, Ore. with 200 men. It would end with more than 45,000 World War I veterans flocking to Washington, D.C., in one of the greatest moments of nonviolent civil disobedience our country has ever known. Demanding pay promised to them eight years earlier, veterans, many with their families, squatted in 20 makeshift shantytowns and tent cities known as Hoovervilles.

Fearing the veterans were controlled by communists and would turn violent, the federal government intervened. Led by President Herbert Hoover and Generals Douglas MacArthur and George Patton, the authorities drove the veterans out of Washington with tanks, tear gas, and bayonet-tipped rifles and then burned down the camps.

The actions performed by veterans that summer had a profound effect on the practice of civil disobedience in America, even though the tale of the Bonus Army was one left out of many history books. Paul Dickson, co-author of The Bonus Army, talks about how this story from the past still has implications today.

Real Change: Can you describe what the Bonus Army was, and why it came about?

Paul Dickson: The Bonus Army was the biggest public event of the Depression. The Bonus Army is about a group of guys who had fought in World War I and had been promised a bonus, which they hadn’t gotten. Each soldier received $1 a day during the war, and a $1.25 if you were overseas. They had to buy their uniform and war bonds with the money, and then it was promised to them immediately after the war. Most of the soldiers were making much more than this before being drafted.

Let’s say you were a shipyard worker. You would have gotten paid between $16 and $17 a day. After the war, Congress agreed that soldiers wouldn’t get their pay until 1945, and that seemed to have settled it. But in 1932, a group of veterans headed up by Walter W. Waters organized 200 of his buddies, who decided to hop freights back to Washington, D.C., to go lobby for the bonus they were promised. They left Portland with what they had on their backs and an American flag. By the time they reached Washington they had picked up 10,000 veterans.

The men in the Bonus Army thought anyone had the right to go to Washington and lobby for their rights. To the average American, these guys deserved to get paid. The big companies had gotten paid after the war, money was going to foreign countries who had been devastated, and the Bonus Army believed the people who had fought the war deserved to be paid, too.

Here, a week after leaving Portland, the Bonus Army began to realize that people were welcoming them as warriors of the Depression, just as people in France had welcomed them as Yanks, referring to their service in the World War.

RC: Can you talk about some of the highs and lows the Bonus Army faced on their journey from Portland to Washington, D.C.?

Dickson: At first, people were afraid of them, but they started to realize they were not a threat. They were just a group of veterans going to get paid. Part of the resistance from Americans was based on race. There were 800,000 blacks (African-Americans) who fought in World War I, and the Bonus Army was Black and white alike. The country had never seen anything like this before.

The message it sent to the power structure was loud and clear. Most congressmen, especially from the South, grew up believing races would never be able to get together and organize, but the Bonus Army did. The federal government, from the time the Bonus Army was on the freight trains headed east, had infiltrated the group. Some of the intelligence reports said the Bonus Army had “Negros, people with Jewish features, and poor whites” all working together — the establishment was very nervous.

They ran into various authority figures who didn’t want them, but by and large, the people loved these guys. You have to take into account the times. There were so many homeless people just wandering around the country looking for work, but there was no work. Well, the Bonus Army were wandering too, but they wandered with a purpose. Most Americans viewed these guys as heroes, not only because they fought in World War I, but because they had the courage to go get things straightened out. And they were nonviolent.

Once in D.C., the camps were pretty much self-governed. We have found evidence that 20 camps existed. Waters created a leadership group that ran them as military camps: no drinking, no guns, [so] nobody could say they were bums. In fact, records show the crime rate went down when they were in Washington. The worst you could say they were doing was panhandling.

RC: According to the book, most of the camps in D.C. that summer were not segregated. In fact, in a time when the Ku Klux Klan had influence in D.C., and Blacks and other minorities were being oppressed around the country, the Bonus Army was working together. What message did that send to the country?

Dickson: It’s interesting — nobody knew about it. The blacks were invisible to the country. During that time, period papers didn’t acknowledge the black community. For example, the Negro baseball leagues were extremely popular, but no paper in the country covered the leagues. But the African-American newspapers took notice, reporting that thousands of black and white families were living side-by-side. There was no Jim Crow in the Bonus Army. And this was 1932.

RC: Can you talk about some of the different sympathizers who helped the Bonus Army?

Dickson: Almost all of the great journalists and writers of the time were sympathizers. In fact, you would have reporters writing news stories with pro-bonus slants, while editorial boards were coming out against the veterans.

Also, Walsh McLean, one of the richest women in the world, was fascinated by the group. One night she went into a restaurant and ordered 2,000 sandwiches, and got a thousand cartons of cigarettes and passed them out to the people. It was like a scene in a Woody Allen film.

You have to understand the place was like a huge carnival. There were musicians, jugglers, speakers — the people of Washington loved it.

They also sold their own newspaper the same way Street Roots is doing, and they would make up postcards and sell them.

Despite what was going on in the world, they were a hopeful group in a time when people didn’t have any hope. They had no money, no jobs, nothing, and they set out to change it.

RC: General Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and a young Dwight D. Eisenhower all took part in sweeping thousands of veterans out of the nation’s capital. All of this before they would be thrust into history forever. MacArthur disregarded orders from the president on the conduct of the sweeps, something he would later be reprimanded for during the Korean War. Can you expand on some ironies of these circumstances?

Dickson: I think it reflects what kind of men they would later become. The day of the sweeps, Patton was on horseback with a saber.

MacArthur was acting like it was all-out warfare. It was ridiculous. His orders from the president were to get them out of downtown, but he went in and burned many of the camps to the ground along with people’s only possessions — cars, clothes, photographs — you name it.

Eisenhower, however, is documented saying that this was wrong and it was a police matter and it wasn’t the job of the military to be dealing with civil affairs. Eisenhower was a thoughtful logistics man. History would later reveal all of these things.

RC: One of the main arguments the federal government made to sweep the encampments was of communist activity in the camps. Communists and fascists had active members in the Bonus Army, but the majority of the veterans were just average American citizens. What are your thoughts about this?

Dickson: You have to take into account the time period. The wheels were coming off the country, a lot of people were flirting with communism and fascism. Nobody knew how history was going to turn out — there were about 150 communist veterans in the camp. When federal agents tried to prove all the men in the Bonus Army were criminals, radicals, and communists, they pulled up people’s records. The only thing many of the men were guilty of is vagrancy. Their only crime was being out work.

The men, women, and children living in the camps were not communists. They didn’t want to overthrow the government, they just wanted their bonus.

RC: What did the Bonus Army accomplish for the longterm?

Dickson: I think the biggest thing they did was pave the way for the G.I. Bill after World War II. History has shown us that governments take people from the working and poor classes of society and ask them to fight great wars, and then dump them back into those societies. After World War II, veterans coming home were at least offered benefits. It helped create the middle class. If you’re going to ask a person to fight, it’s only right that the government should take care of them — the Bonus Army was just one example of this throughout history.

RC: Looking at all of the federal cuts to veterans benefits, and having more than a half a million veterans sleeping on the streets every year (according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans), do you see a correlation with the past and our current conflict?

Dickson: The business of war is a terrible thing. What has to happen is a new GI Bill of Rights. If they need education, medical care, and financial support, they should get it. But as I’m sure you are aware, that’s not the direction we are headed.

After the Bonus Army was swept away, many newspapers and policymakers thought they should just go home, but they had no home, so they spread out in camps all over the country. And there are remnants of those camps with veterans living in them in cities all across the United States still today.

Buy the book at through the Powell's reading list and 7.5% goes to Street Roots!

Bonus Army

Hard times in the Western division

2007-11-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

Eight games through the season, it's clear West coast teams can barely compete.

The combined record of teams west of Denver, including the Broncos is 18-30. If you include all of the teams in the two western divisions, it's 22-42.

The Seahawks are still in the drivers seat, but until we can find a way to run the ball, we are screwed in the playoffs. Arizona is done. S. F. may have a late season comeback w/the returning of Alex Smith - even though I thought the 49ers were over-rated to begin with. My hometown Rams are stranded out in no man's land.

Someone tell me again why the Broncos chose to bench Jake Plummer last year for Culter? The Charges, anyone...
Kansas City is having a better showing than anyone gave them credit for, which is not a lot, and the Raiders, well, it's another long year in Oakland. Maybe the Warriors will give Oaklanders something to cheer for.

Pat Riley slams Blazers, Hawks

2007-11-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

Riley gives Nat some ammunition for December 6th

from the Miami Herald

A beautiful rainy football weekend in Seattle

2007-10-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

A beautiful rainy football weekend in Seattle w/my great friend John and his pops. Oregon wins. Seahawks crush St. Louis 33-6 today!

Qwest Field is an amazing atmosphere for football fanatics. Every year I go, it gets better and better. You can't beat the view and the seats were amazing.

Taking the Rocket Poetry back...

2007-07-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

Since Street Roots has its own blog now -

Street Roots blog

So, I guess I can do whatever I want with this Rocket Poetry thing.

Sometime in 1995 at the age of 20 is when I wrote my first poem that I thought was worth a shit. I had written lots of scribbles before, but for the first time in my life I actually thought it was possible to do nothing but bum around the country, do drugs and be a published poet. I mean, Neil and Jack did it right?

Of course, the buzz eventually wore off and it got harder and harder to get high, so I took more drugs - which didn’t help the getting published part. The writing was great or was it? I don’t remember.

At 20 I was pretty much wide-eyed and full of shit. Most of my friends were either going to college or learning a profession. I was following the last years of the Dead and bouncing between small towns in Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois – working shit jobs and trying to find myself. I hadn’t mastered the hammer and nail, nor did I know rat’s ass of the English language. What the hell was I thinking when I thought about taking up writing as a profession?

The problem was living in places like Bentonville, Arkansas, Neosho, Missouri, and Bunker Hill, Illinois you didn’t exactly have an audience. The attitude was if you wrote poetry, you were a queer motherfucker and don’t come around here with that silly shit. Ok, I said. Well, what if I write about what the people in these small towns are experiencing? Nothing ever came of that except that I tried to capture those times the best I saw them. And while I’ve had my assed kicked by good ole boys more than once in my life, I can honestly say it wasn’t because of the poetry.

I eventually left out to Denver and eventually the west coast. And of course most my working class friends give me shit and think I have forgotten about my shit-stained roots – being a writer and all. These are some poems from those times…

Wal-Mart poem

Wal-Mart is having a sale
John Wayne war movies
Two flags for a dollar
Get your supplies, 22, and shells

Limp dick pills, tread mills, hurry on down
We have dog collars, and video games too
Learn yourself young how to kill (with a joystick)

Come on mama, Wal-Mart is having a sale
Ten local businesses for the price of two

Reduced prices in hardware
Tire shops, oil lube, boob tubes, photos and more
Netting, sewing, arts and crafts,
Hunting and fishing, grocery goods
A super sale in sports ware
Jewels for the shopping fools
Wayne Newton CDs, DVDs and over-seas sneakers along with the glue

Come on kids Wal-Mart is having a sale
School supplies at the corporate rate
#2 pencils, pens, pads, paper, magic markers and a wallet for dad
Buy an USA Pride T-shirt
United We Stand in an outfit made by a seven year old girl

Have you heard Wal-Mart is coming to a town near you?
They’ll be happy for you to work in blue for the yellow tag sales
You’ll be dancing to the minimum wage department store blues
10% off all the guns and knives and camping gear too
You may need the supplies when the benefits don’t help you through
Smiles, drug tests, and non-Union shifts
Come on America, Wal-Mart is having a sale!

Twisted Moments Of Reality

A gentle rain falls in the silence of the evening light
Chilly winds whistles in our ears
A special announcement on the AM radio interrupt Jack Buck’s play by play
As the weatherman secretly gets his kicks
Storm warnings and tornado tips

The trees wallow and the stop signs clap
The wind whips up
Smiling, clutching our hats
Watching the lightning flare up the sky
Laughing and hearts pounding
Suddenly ‘twas black as night

It begins to hail and the thunder pounds
Our emotions strong like the barking dogs heard miles away
In the distance a rising moon peaks through a dangling telephone wire
The streetlights swagger and the fire engines howl
Running through the streets....
Spreading the news!
“A Train Is Coming! It Brings Hell!”

Hearing the far off moan from a cow
Dirt flies ten fold like Midwestern soil feels to the plow
Bloody hands
Bent mettle racing reaction
Off your feet!
Find shelter on the dime!
Swinging debris…
Young girls screaming!
That prairie shaking wind robbing us blind!

Coming back to our senses
Drizzle, evening light
Soaking wet
Breeze races down our spine
A split second to recall what laid before our eyes
Only asphalt foundation with lifetimes of accomplishment swept through time
As poor Mr. Farmer John’s early harvest crown, uprooted!
Throw all ‘round, spread out over this town
The power company and police walking the streets
Not gaining anything
Echoes....
Hollers!
Frowns.
As Mrs. Peacocks one hundred year old home lie on her 75-year old soul, calm and dead.

Keep It Going Through the Night

Cold and hungary
A life longer dream died tonight
Thought of a song, think I’ll cry
Keep it going through the night

Israel rode louder and longer
A foul battle cry somewhere in the Pennsylvania night
Canyons and water filled with blood
Sixty-men listened to the riddle torn Apache Chief
before the devil in the blue uniform came calling from above
Keep it going through the night

Mother Jones, mother time knows no boundaries
Another family dries their eyes of the developer’s lies
Seal way farmers deed. Who is proud?
Wall Street spells out Satan’s victory
Land and legends left to crumbs
Felt it well above the forts and bends
The Illini’s death for the Detroit skyline
Sew a nations lifeline on the flag
Become an empire short to none
250 years later watch it crumble to the mud
Keep it going through the night

Santa Domingo brought death and blood
Rebels and God brought the light
Nat Turner and federal blockades
Dixie is alive tonight, not like when Fort Sumter cried
The rush of Sherman’s ride - killers killing killers in full stride
Generations of denial, bloodshed and carpetbagger con lives
Keep it going through the night

At the market, bombs and Fed lies
Working wages for the bread lines
Kissing snakes, clones on parade
Weather patterns and the 700 Club bring donations
If its’ the end of time what do your fear?
Some busker singing of a better land, maybe west
Down the forgotten coast on a foggy tide
Calling out to those who have no pride
Keep it going through the night

Flash lights and tackle boxes
Some realness behind the light
Catfish pull my line down dark
where simplicity meets the deep
Mercy give me a break, art is all I see in anything
Keep it going through the night

Friends with who I grew, people who inspire
Tears and lovers lost in life, missed in flight
Flying above the hardened people touched by night
Foreign wars and tornado alarms
Talk radio, and LSD out under the stars
Out on the farm you play it loud, play it hard
Avoid lineage and enjoy the crowds
Tearing down relations with backwards mouths
Create trusting barriers and watch them fall
Keep it going through the night

Lunches packed, cliquey clack
“Do you remember me?”
“No, well let me think awhile back.”
As the sweat drips down the bill of your hat
Working under a hot Oklahoma sun
A poet’s lunch, smoking grass, tit for tat
This life deals the cards you may play
If you don’t show for the game
Your life can become a prop
An actor acting with no name
Keep it going through the night

And if you’re afraid, it’s OK!
More have gotten through than expected to
Don’t let them get to you
Drive somewhere off the map
She’s painting, I’m writing
Its worth it today, tomorrow really can’t say
Balancing this reflection, it bends and cracks
Beware my friends of the unseen attacks
Keep it going through the night

Ask City Hall to create oversight for private police

2007-07-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Demand accountability and oversight over private security guards!

Nearly 1,000 park exclusions have been issued in Portland public parks since November by private security guards without the public’s oversight.

The idea that a private institution, in this case, Portland Patrol Inc., has the capacity to enforce public policy that is upheld in a court of law without the public knowing their training procedures or what discretion security guards are using is unacceptable for Portlanders. Public parks and sidewalks belong to all of us and should not be controlled by private institutions that hire a private police force to patrol Portland.

Private security oversight could be rolled into the current Independent Police Review (IPR) — minimizing the bureaucracy that would be created by inventing a whole new system. The infrastructure for the IPR is in place, and could be the channel for people to reach the city and citizen oversight groups with regard to policing the private police.

Read more and find out what you can do -

Street Roots Act Now!

Sneak peek at tomorrow's Street Roots.

2007-07-12T17:14:00.000-07:00

Street Roots has two great cover articles this month about the shape of Oregon's grassroots environmental movement and Blackwater, a private militia working around the world. Nearly 1,000 park exclusions have been issued in public parks since November by private security guards in Portland without any public oversight - that's right, a 1,000!

Other featues this month include a look at prison rape, immigrant rights and a bunch of rag-tag journalist types that are rolling into town for the North American Street Newspaper Association annual conference. Get all of this and more in your issue of Street Roots out tomorrow!

Street Roots vendors have been withstanding the heat over the past few weeks selling the paper. Often times in the winter, sales spike due to what we call the charity buy. “It’s raining, it’s cold. Those poor homeless people.” People give a $1 and throw the newspaper away. Grrr….

By and large, most of you read the newspaper and we love you for it! The only reason I bring up the charity buy is that it’s odd that people have pity for poor folk when they are cold and wet, but don’t really seem to care when they are scorching in the hot sun. What’s up with that? Of course, I’m not talking about everyone, but that’s the word on the street.

Street Roots is lucky to have a private security guard across the street from us now. They’re so hard to come by these days. Looks like he’s from Securitas. According to their Web site, they are the largest and most respected security company in America. We feel safer already.

The Bush administration continues to amaze us with its inability to get things done. From the environment to homelessness, this administration has crippled any real efforts to make substantial change in domestic affairs — not to mention that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal government should be ashamed of its fascist enforcement on immigration. And while Democrats pander to constituents about the issues facing us along the border, we must not forget the real reason we have people seeking refuge in the U.S., a faulty trade agreement that punishes the world worker seeking a decent job to feed their families.

Nearly eight years ago on the streets of Seattle, a group of people carried a very strong message to Democrats and Republicans a like — fair trade, not free trade. That message couldn’t be more true today. As the folksinger Todd Snider says, “Who wants to work a minimum wage job? Do you want to do that? I wouldn’t trade that for my crooked hat, my gangs or guns, or a waist full of pagers to spend the day serving rich, white teenagers.” And to be honest, I wouldn’t trade it for a camp in the West Hills or under a bridge somewhere, either. It’s sad, but true, and all too real on the streets of Portland.

Street Roots hires two new staff members - new edition out tomorrow!

2007-06-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

The new edition of Street Roots hits the streets tomorrow. The lead story takes a look at the global street newspaper movement after its recent 2007 conference in Poland. Other features include a look at veteran journalist John Pilger's new film War on Democracy and much more. Street Roots speaks out against Republicans statewide who killed an affordable housing bill out of spite and Jay Thiemeyer leads us on another journey with Raymond the Gunsmith from New Sharon Maine.

Street Roots is proud to welcome two new staff members into the organization. Matthew Deschaine will start in July as a freelance journalist helping the organization maintain quality journalism on issues that matter ranging from environment, labor, poverty to local, county and state government.

Also coming aboard is Eddie Barbosa, a former Street Roots vendor who will take the helm of the Rose City Resources and office manager position. Barbosa has had a fascinating journey going from attending Stanford University to experiencing homelessness to working as a bi-lingual interpreter for local hospitals and volunteering with Street Roots.

He will be helping Street Roots transition the resources to a newly formatted, pocket size resource guide that will be available to people on the streets, on-line and to organizations working with people experiencing poverty, including social service agencies, police, hospitals, local city and county government and first responders including the fire and emergency services. He will also be working with vendors in the office and helping maintain day-to-day operations with the organization.

The organization received an Achievement Award from the International Network of Street Papers at a recent conference in Poland for networking and growing public awareness. We are proud members of the global street newspaper movement and continue to work towards raising awareness locally and abroad about a range of issues effecting people living in poverty.

The summer fund drive is coming to an end with Street Roots raising nearly $10,000. We are still short of our goal of $20,000, but appreciate all the love and support people have given to the organization.

The organization is hosting the North American Street Newspaper conference in late July. Newspaper from around North America and representatives from the International community will be present. Several individuals locally will be leading workshops and taking part including consultant and Street Roots board member Bruce Anderson, News Editors with the Portland Mercury, Scott Moore and Amy J. Ruiz, Nick Budnick with the Portland Tribune, and Dave Tomaro with the Statesman Journal in Salem. We would also like to thank Food Front, Tazo Tea, the Bureau of Housing and Community Development and the City of Portland, the Alberta Food Cooperative and the Society of Professional Journalists for helping sponsor the event. You all rock!

Sneak peak at the new Street Roots tomorrow

2007-05-31T14:49:00.000-07:00

The new issue of Street Roots will hit the streets tomorrow. The cover story this issue includes an in-depth look at rural and suburban housing in Clackamas County and around the state. It also includes an update on private security downtown and news pieces on key measures that need a nudging along in Salem, including a new housing fee that's in the works. All of this and much more in tomorrow's Street Roots.

Street Roots has raised nearly $4,000 in its first two weeks on the Summer Fund Drive. We are excited to be working with readers to continue to bring you news from the streets. Money raised through the fund drive will go towards outreach to improve the quality of the newspaper.

We are developing a series of roundtables with vendors, people experiencing homelessness and poverty, potential readers and gearing up for an extensive readers survey in the fall. We are also looking forward to unveiling a newly formatted Rose City Resource Guide in partnership with 211 Info and the City of Portland. We will be hiring a full time staff to be the organization’s resource specialist and to help vendors. And we will be adding four more pages of news and commentary to the paper.

None of this would be possible without generous supporters like you. We thank you for believing in vendors by buying and reading the newspaper, while building relationships with people on the beat.

Thanks to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development the organization is in the process of developing a wallet size "Know your rights" guide specifically for people experiencing homelessness. Education is the first step to taking power back.

The organization also is working with the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center and Sisters Of The Road to develop a complaint system for private security agencies in the City of Portland. Complaint forms will be available for Portlanders throughout the city in the coming weeks and we hope to document the need for transparency and oversight of private institutions that enforce public policy, often with taxpayer money.

It’s important for Street Roots to note that the investigative articles we’ve been generating on private security is about a larger institution at play. Our reporting is not about individuals and hard working people doing wrong, it’s about the public getting the accountability it deserves. If you have thoughts on these important issues, please feel free to drop off letter to the editor at streetroots@email.com. Your voice matters!

You can find out more about the organizations Summer Fund Drive on-line at

Summer Fund Drive

Homeless sweeps inhumane

2007-05-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

People experiencing homelessness are scattered throughout downtown tonight after homeless sweeps. I spent the evening walking around talking to people and I was moved to write this long-winded piece.

Homeless advocates for decades have argued that sweeping people experiencing homelessness is inhumane. Reagonomics sent millions of people living in poverty onto the street in the 1980's and it's remained that way. With the rise in homelessness came a myriad of laws that have been used against people on the streets, including the camping ordinance and the sit-lie laws. Laws that already existed like trespassing; urinating in public, and public drunkenness became tools to use against an underclass of people living on the streets.

For years in urban America the shelter model was used as a way to minimize the rise in homelessness, and continues today. The thinking was that you could shelter someone and try to connect individuals to the outside world – services, a job, etc. This model created an industry of warehousing people.

The new thinking is to use a model called housing first. You first house an individual and then you connect them with the outside world. Thus, the 10-year plan to end “chronic” homelessness. Chronic means that you’ve been labeled by people in power as being a public nuisance if you have been homeless for more than a year, therefore you receive priority in getting housed. The federal government has set up guidelines in which local governments have to comply with to get funding to house the chronic. Portland is being regarded as one of the most successful cities in the country after claiming to house nearly 70% of the individuals labeled as such, with a 40% decrease in overall homelessness.

Here’s the problem. Portland is on the upswing of the 10-year plan to end homelessness. Providers are settling into the new system and getting results. Old systems, like the shelter model is looked at as being archaic, while the new housing first model is being implemented. Problem is there’s a transition and we as a city are moving way to fast for several different reasons.

In the rush to claim success we are pigeon holing ourselves into a no win situation that is resulting in the same old business – sweeps of homeless people, sit-lie laws and targeting poor people as being public nuisances. One side (the police, shelter providers) want more shelter space for people they move along, the other side doesn't think that's necessary because of the housing first model, but has stood in silence while people are criminalized for being homeless.

In the move to house people through the 10-year plan to end homelessness we have seen great strides. Erik Sten and the BHCD are kicking tail, maximizing resources, implementing great programs and working with harm reduction models that meet poor people on an even keel. The Affordable Housing movement is also breaking ground with developing millions of dollars of funding streams we haven’t had.

Here’s where the rubber hits the road. The Portland Police and the Portland Business Alliance want homeless people gone, yesterday.

The PBA just struck a deal that exchanged our civil rights for a hand-full of benches. The bathrooms are heading for a debacle and there’s no day access center in sight. Not to mention several other cities are jumping on the bandwagon and the SAFE committee is being used as a political football for being one of the only accomplishments the mayor’s office has pulled off lately. Not to mention it is yet another tool for private security downtown to do whatever they want and not answer to anyone.

The police are caught in a no win circumstance. They are on the front lines of dealing with people on the beat. There’s been violence on the street; the neighborhoods and businesses are throwing a fit because Old Town/Chinatown is looking like a fallout zone of addicts, people experiencing mental health, people on the streets and dealers – which all get lumped into one even though if you do this work you know the difference. Not to mention, one of the places that was swept today was a social service agency (a shelter), further polarizing people on the streets and the idea that we have poverty industry that doesn’t get to the heart of the problem – probably because it’s true.

The longer I do this work, the more I’m convinced that we can never have a social justice movement in this town from the ground up if social service providers are more worried about their own agendas than the human rights and dignity of the people we serve. Dignity Village is the only example we can point to when a group of people had the self-determination to stand up and say, no, we have a right to exist. That kind of organizing on the ground is sorely missing and no non-profit can spearhead this kind of movement in an age of federal guidelines and fundraising goals.

Oppression is oppression. And asking someone without a home to move from a sidewalk or camp with no other alternatives, weather it’s by the boot, or with a smile and a warning, is still a human rights violation.

So where to begin? First off, the half a million dollars or more we spend on private security for poor people in downtown would be better spent by hiring outreach workers and providing housing. We don’t need armed guards patrolling our streets. We need community organizers, and mental health workers - people that can speak the language and individuals that can police themselves working with the poor. This is not a slam on the police. One of the things I constantly hear in my conversations with police are they are tired of being a social workers. So let’s hire more social (outreach) workers, not spend more money on faulty programs that criminalize the poor.

In the seven years I’ve been doing this work no program developed through community policing – alcove abatement projects, fencing off bridges or not allowing people to sleep on the I-405 corridor has solved any of the problems of homelessness. We still have thousands of people sleeping on our streets, many in downtown, unwanted and pushed around like cattle depending on what season it is. Sweeps are not an answer. Curfews are not the answer. Drug-free zones are not the answer. Shelters are not the answer. People and a shifting of the resources we have are the answer.

And this gets back to the 10-year plan to end homelessness. While the federal government is calling the shots concerning funding, they are not calling the shots on how we create political will to end homelessness and treat people on the streets. If we as a community continue to sweep the problem of homelessness from one neighborhood to the next we will undercut any real effort to mobilize the public and to create trust in having people come inside. Where are all the people going to go tonight? They're going to go to surrounding neighborhoods, walk the streets with no sleep and be told in the morning they can’t sit or lie on a sidewalk. They will become prey to the very system that claims to be helping them.

I was appalled tonight to see so many people just wandering around Old Town/Chinatown with no place to go to rest. I walked around tonight talking to at least two-dozen people that said they didn’t know where to go to sleep tonight. People are scared, tired and weak.

Community policing is not a successful model when you take away the rights of the individual citizens by creating more laws. It’s a success when we can work together to solve problems that present themselves to the community.

The sweeps this morning and tonight by the City of Portland are inhumane and something we as a progressive city should be ashamed of.

Be a sponsor for the North American Street Newspaper Conference in Portland!

2007-05-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Street Rooters,

Street Roots is writing to invite you, your business and/or organization to take part in the 2007 North American Street Newspaper Association conference happening Thursday July 26th through Sunday July 29th at Portland State University.

The 2007 North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) conference brings together more than 37 newspapers from cities throughout North America. This years gathering of street newspapers from around North America promises to be an exciting conference with a focus on networking and technical assistance.

Individuals, businesses or organizations can donate items listed on the conference promo flyer attached in this e-mail or you can make a cash donation towards items on the list. Sponsorship levels are below.

Each sponsor will be recognized with its logo or name in the newspaper, in promotional materials, and on more than 100 t-shirts given to conference attendees and local supporters. Each individual or business will also be given special thanks at the conference itself.

If your business or organization is interested in trading a sponsorship for advertising please inquire with us. If you are an individual and wish to donate towards the conference you can donate advertising space for your favorite non-profit. See below.

Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to possibly partnering with you on this exciting event.

Sincerely,

Israel Bayer
Director
Street Roots

Sponsorship levels:

The Street Pulitzer sponsorship: $5,000

A $5,000 donation will get you a “Street Pulitzer” at the 2007 North American Street Newspaper Association conference. Sponsors that receive a Pulitzer for $5,000 will be given thanks in a specially designed page in Street Roots, along with being recognized with your logo or name in promotional materials, and on more than 100 t-shirts given to conference attendees and local supporters. Each individual or business will also be given special thanks at the conference itself.

If you are a business or a non-profit you will also receive six months worth of free advertising reaching nearly 20,000 readers a month. If you are an individual that receives a Pulitzer for the conference you can donate advertising space to your favorite non-profit or business.

The gutsy journalism sponsorship: $2,500

For a $2,500 donation you will receive “The gutsy” sponsorship. Sponsors that receive a “Gutsy” for $2,500 will be given thanks in a specially designed page in Street Roots, along with being recognized with your logo or name in promotional materials, and on more than 100 t-shirts given to conference attendees and local supporters. Each individual or business will also be given special thanks at the conference itself.

If you are a business or a non-profit you will receive three months worth of free advertising reaching nearly 20,000 readers a month. If you are an individual that donates $2,500 for the conference you can donate advertising space to your favorite non-profit or business.

“You go now!” sponsorship: $1,000

For a $1,000 donation you will receive the “You go now!” sponsorship. Sponsors that donate $1,000 will be given thanks in a specially designed page in Street Roots, along with being recognized with your logo or name in promotional materials, and on more than 100 t-shirts given to conference attendees and local supporters. Each individual or business will also be given special thanks at the conference itself.

If you are a business or a non-profit you will receive one month worth of free advertising reaching nearly 20,000 readers a month. If you are an individual that donates $1,000 for the conference you can donate advertising space to your favorite non-profit or business.

I probably shouldn’t, but it’s a great cause sponsorship: $500

For a $500 donation you will receive the “I probably shouldn’t, but it’s a great cause” sponsorship. Sponsors that give $500 will be given thanks in a specially designed page in Street Roots, along with being recognized with your logo or name in promotional materials, and on more than 100 t-shirts given to conference attendees and local supporters. Each individual or business will also be given special thanks at the conference itself.

Poor boys and girls sponsorship: $100

For a $100 donation you will receive the “Po’ Boys and Girls” sponsorship. The sponsorship will be given thanks in a specially designed page in Street Roots, along with being recognized with your logo or name in promotional materials, and on more than 100 t-shirts given to conference attendees and local supporters. Each individual or business will also be given special thanks at the conference itself.

We’re broke already sponsorship: $50

For a $50 donation you will receive the “We’re broke already” sponsorship. We’re broke already” sponsorship will be given thanks in a specially designed page in Street Roots, along with being recognized with your logo or name in promotional materials, and on more than 100 t-shirts given to conference attendees and local supporters. Each individual or business will also be given special thanks at the conference itself.

All donations are tax-deductible.

For more information contact Israel Bayer at streetroots@hotmail.com or at 503-228-5657

Trust me, I'm a rent a cop in the Merc...

2007-05-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

The Portland Business Alliance continues to work in a veil of secrecy around private security downtown - as featured in this weeks Mercury.

Trust me, I'm a rent a cop

Street Roots perspective was recently captured in the Oregonian.

Transparent oversight needed

A sneak peak of tomorrow's Street Roots

2007-04-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

Build a relationship with a vendor, help support that person and get some great news to boot!

This issue of Street Roots is jammed packed. Cover stories include a Q & A with Romeo Sosa with VOZ over the growing tension between businesses and the day laborer community. Also covered is an in-depth update on the on-going SAFE/sit-lie saga, along with a news piece on the Pangaea Project and a great look at the lack of TV election coverage. Street Roots also chimes in on Portland's four ballot measures! Columns this month include Paul Boden with the Western Regional Advocacy Project in San Fran and an open letter to City Hall by Copwatch's Dan Handelman. Act Now! asks people to take action to stop predatory loan sharks from ripping off the poor!

(For those of you wondering about the breaking story "Uniform Accountability" in the last SRs about the Portland Patrol, a private security group contracted by the Portland Business Alliance enforcing public policy (More than 300 park exclusions since November) in public parks with absolutely no public oversight - don't worry, there's more to come in future editions of SRs!!! Today's the last day to get this issue!!!)

Street Roots, along with the North American Street Newspaper Association, is featured in the Utne Reader this month. The article is a great look at the growing movement of street papers in North America and around the globe. The article also charges that street newspapers throughout North America are straying away from our grassroots upbringing in favor of “moving product.”

While it’s true street papers, in particular Street Roots, has moved to a more professional design and journalism – we have not moved away from our grassroots base. Several years ago vendors came to Street Roots and asked us to recreate the newspaper in a way that individuals would be proud to sell it.

We redesigned the paper with the help of professionals in the field. We hired a professional managing editor that has dedicated her life to community journalism. And we decided to broaden the scope of our news coverage to include a wider social justice movement. Over the years, Street Roots has featured regular columns by Sisters in Action, the Oregon Law Center, Northwest Constitutional Rights Center, Sisters of the Road and many more. We also decided as an organization to cover topics including immigration, environment, media consolidation, labor, and the war, along with issues related to poverty — locally, nationally and internationally.

Both the North American Street Newspaper Association and the International Network of Street Papers, a network of 80 papers in 27 countries, created the Street News Service. The news service allows street papers to share content worldwide. We can now rely on the voices of people on the ground around the globe, and not just those of Americans or high-minded intellectuals relaying messages from beyond our borders.
Street Roots, along with a growing number of street newspapers are starting to gain a voice in their respected communities by covering hard news, offering opinions, art and poetry from the streets and by incorporating the communities collective voice. For years homeless groups have been alienated from larger movements like affordable housing and labor because we where concentrating solely on the homeless individual — not what leads to homelessness. Now we are concentrating on both.

Is it possible to create new dialogues about issues that effect the entire community, including the poor, through collective journalism? We think so! And we hope to bring you that change through the pages of the newspaper — because that’s what we do. Thank you for being a part of that experience!

Berkeley following Portland's model for sit-lie...

2007-04-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

According the Berkeley News, "In addition to creating or expanding four drop-in centers across the city, the measure created a detox center that uses acupuncture and funded both a city guide program and a short-lived public donations program, according to Jane Micallef, housing and homeless services manager with the city’s housing department.

Bates’ current proposal is largely composed of suggestions for further expansion of services, and his office emphasizes that the proposal is "not intended to be a crackdown. But, without offering specifics, it says a new approach is needed.

"What we’re doing now is not working as well as it needs to work," said Cisco DeVries, Bates’ chief of staff. "The mayor believes that enforcement has to be a part of it."

Citations for violations of city codes governing street behavior--such as lying on sidewalks and urinating in public--are not officially tracked by the Berkeley Police Department, but in general there are fewer than two a month, said Berkeley police Officer Ed Galvan.

"Usually we try to work out other measures for compliance with people," he said. "Some of those ordinances are there as a last resort."

The cities of Santa Cruz and Palo Alto have each passed ordinances with language similar to Measure O, and Portland is currently considering a similar draft. All three are mentioned as models for Berkeley in Bates’ proposals. "

Read the full article...

Berkeley News

Portland Business Alliance hands are in too many cookie jars!

2007-04-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

Matt Davis reports, "The PBA board's only contingency [for giving this money] is that they want to make sure all the recommendations of SAFE are being met," said Mike Kuykendall, the PBA's head of safety and security, referring to the ordinance. "So, if one of those went away, then the [money] would go away." Read the article here:

Buying sit-lie

Wowzers... sounding a little impatient. Street Roots continues to think the ordinance is an unfortuntate exchange for direct services - especially if the Portland Patrol (paid for by the PBA) will be able to issue warning to people sitting or lying on sidewalks. How is it that the business community continues to lobby for laws, help write the laws and then be able to lead oversight groups that look at those very laws? Can we say conflict of interest? Who cares about $150,000 - maybe next we can limit free speech if an interest group builds us a $150,000 free speech park - how about it?

Here's Street Roots take on the PPI who will have a major influence in how the sit-lie is enforced.

Private police need public oversight

Street Roots and NASNA featured in the Utne Reader

2007-04-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

Street Roots along with the North American Street Newspaper Association is featured in the latest edition of the Utne Reader. The article called "Homeless Newspapers Head Uptown" is an interesting take on the street newspaper movement in North America. It asserts that street papers are doing more celebrity coverage to increase appeal and may be losing our grassroots appeal.

"For some street papers, this means a move away from a grassroots, participatory medium and the professionalization’ of the sector," says Kevin Howley, DePauw University professor. The article goes on to say papers are shifting to a more "middle class" content - local, national, international and entertainment news that grabs readers' interest.

While it's true Street Roots and other papers are shifting news content to appeal to a broader readership - I was under the impression that being able to network with other papers worldwide to deliver in-depth local, national, and international news was a sign of building a grassroots movement, not appeasing the middle class. I mean being able to bring the voices of community organizers and poor people from around the world to the streets of Portland through other street papers does seem a little trite - maybe we should go back to white intellectual professors telling us what's happening on the ground in Africa and South America, and stick to just covering homelessness in Portland. I mean, none of this stuff is connected, right?

The article goes on to talk about the international street newspaper movement and the work of more than 100 papers worldwide. Jake Thomas, a local Portland writer does a good job for the most part.

Street Roots most opinionated issue ever on the streets!

2007-04-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

Street Roots most opinionated issue ever includes columns from the ACLU slamming the sit-lie ordinance, the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center's take on private police downtown and a column from a member of the Charter Review Commission. Cover stories include "Uniform Accountability" about private security downtown and a great piece on the strong mayor front with opinions on all sides, and from Seattle City Council member Peter Steinbrueck. Street Roots editorial calls for public oversight of the Portland Patrol Inc. and Act Now ask readers to call Senators to say no to fast-track legislation that would export thousands of Oregon jobs.

Street Roots editorial: Private forces need public oversight

The hallmark of any government is transparency and accountability to the public it serves, but when public entities privatize services, there is almost always a compromise. Currently, the city has downtown security contracted through the Portland Business Alliance, a private organization serving business interests in downtown Portland. The PBA, in turn, contracts with another private company, Portland Patrol, Inc., to provide that security. There is no direct contract between the city and the armed guards patrolling the downtown area, even though they are monitoring our streets with the power to exclude people from public parks (They’ve issued more than 300 exclusions this winter). And as a private entity, the security personnel are not under the authority of the Independent Police Review or the Citizens Review Commission, which review complaints by citizens against police officers.

John Hren, CEO of PPI, assures us that his company has a good record and very seldom receives any complaints about security performance. Indeed, the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, the regulatory agency for private security firms, (What, never heard of them?) says it has received no complaints.

But the underlying issue is that the citizens of Portland should have oversight on how their public policies are being implemented, including channels of redress for problems that arise. And equally important, that process needs to be accessible to everyone. Even for the most government savvy citizen, navigating the channels of police oversight in Portland can be a time-consuming challenge. For people living through crisis situations, surviving on the streets, it can be impossible. Given the barriers of time, money and accessibility, it is virtually assured through privatization that people on the streets who feel that their rights were violated by security officers have no independent redress at their disposal.

This summer, the City Council is expected to reinstate the sit-lie ordinance, a measure strongly supported by the PBA. It will ban people from sitting or lying on the sidewalks in the downtown and Lloyd Center districts from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Most of the time, it will be the private security forces that will engage the people on the streets. It’s time for the city to engage in their oversight.

So many of the ordinances directed at the streets are open to the discretion of individual police officers. And in those gray areas is where some people have been squeezed. For example, through public oversight of police, we are able to know of disturbing racial disparities in drug-free zone exclusions and police stops. It’s a matter of public record and discussion. As a result, we have a city committee addressing racial profiling, involving police officers and social justice advocates. Consider how this would play out in the private security sector. Right now, it wouldn’t. But if security officers are out there reporting for the police, issuing park exclusions and questioning people on public property, the public should have equal opportunity to get answers in return.

Directors Desk: The Street Roots and Dignity Village benefit was a success. While we didn’t pack the place, Artis the Spoonman and Jim Page gave us a wonderful performance. Bob Brenner, a Street Roots vendor, opened up the night and brought the house down. You can catch Bob playing and selling Street Roots in front of the downtown library. Thanks everyone for coming out to the show!

We would like to thank Lee Larson and the Larson Legacy for donating $15,000 to the organization this month. The money will go toward empowering vendors and improving the quality of the newspaper — two key components of our strategic plan.
The Street Roots special edition on New Orleans was one of the organization’s better selling papers. Vendors had customers buy several papers at a time to hand out to friends. We hope we were able to engage the public long enough to look at the newspaper as a professional news source, not a charity buy for homeless folks. People experiencing homelessness have pride. Street Roots vendors have pride. We work hard to deliver interesting and important news to Portlanders so vendors have a product they believe in and readers have a credible news source.

This issue includes stories on the strong mayor charter reform debate and a look at Portland Patrol — a private security group that has the power to give exclusions in public places. Both stories are by journalist and Managing Editor Joanne Zuhl. Zuhl came to Street Roots four years ago as a volunteer after working for 14 years at daily newspapers. She has made the newspaper what it is today. The organization tends to focus on vendors and the issues at hand, but we couldn’t do what we do without Zuhl’s experience and fire. More so, the organization couldn’t be what it is today without the many writers who take the time to write for the newspaper. Whether it’s a beautiful poem or piece of art inspired by the streets, or columns written by professionals in their respected fields – we couldn’t put out a quality newspaper without the zeal of everyday people working to change the world in which we live.

That brings us to you, the reader who buys the newspaper from vendors throughout the Portland region. We thank you for taking the time to not only buy the newspaper, but to read the newspaper. It’s clear to us the people who work with individuals on the streets who don’t read our paper vs. those who do. Thank you for keeping us in your rotation of news in a world full of endless media and distraction. We can change the world we live in together – through education, relationship building and by taking action!

Music and fun with Street Roots & Dignity Village tomorrow night!

2007-04-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

Haven't bought your ticket for Jim Page and Artis the Spoonman for tomorrow nights show - no worries. You can purchase tickets tomorrow at Street Roots, 211 NW Davis in Old Town/Chinatown or buy them at the door at 7:30. The show starts at 8:00 promises to be an experience!!!

To clarify - the show is 21 and over. Sorry for an inconviences.

Thanks for your support and we hope to see you tomorrow.

Please feel free to pass along to friends!!!

Many thanks,

Israel Bayer

What: Benefit for Street Roots/Dignity Village with Jim Page & Artis the Spoonman
When: Thursday April 5, Doors open 7:30PM, show starts 8:00PM
Where: Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St.
Tickets: Tickets can be purchased through Street Roots at 503-228-5657, or at the Clinton Street Theater Box Office

Artis the Spoonman: The spoonman is a living myth. From the bars and streets of Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan, Sydney, London, Dublin, Munich and Singapore, to the theatres of Broadway, the stages of international and national television and the recording studios of Frank Zappa and Soundgarden his spell bounding, faster than the eye can track spoon playing will change your life or at least your ideas on cutlery. Referring to Artis the Spoonman Frank Zappa said, "You haven't got a commercial bone in your body."

Jim Page: Jim is one of the most talented, and respected songwriters to ever come from the Pacific Northwest. Jim has been on the scene for more than twenty years and his reputation continues to grow. He has shared the stage with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Michelle Shocked, Leftover Salmon, and Mickey Hart. Robert Hunter says, "If Jim Page aint the bastard son of Woody Guthrie I'm T-Bone Walker"

We want to give a special thanks to The Portland Mercury for sponsoring the event!

A night of music and fun...

2007-03-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

Street Roots would like to invite you, your family, friends, and estranged relatives for a night of music and fun with Jim Page and Artis the Spoonman at the Clinton Street Theater!!!!

What: Benefit for Street Roots/Dignity Village with Jim Page & Artis the Spoonman
When: Thursday April 5, Doors open 7:30PM, show starts 8:00PM
Where: Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St.
Tickets: Tickets can be purchased through Street Roots at 503-228-5657, or at the Clinton Street Theater Box Office

Artis the Spoonman: The spoonman is a living myth. From the bars and streets of Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan, Sydney, London, Dublin, Munich and Singapore, to the theatres of Broadway, the stages of international and national television and the recording studios of Frank Zappa and Soundgarden his spell bounding, faster than the eye can track spoon playing will change your life or at least your ideas on cutlery. Referring to Artis the Spoonman Frank Zappa said, "You haven't got a commercial bone in your body."

Jim Page: Jim is one of the most talented, and respected songwriters to ever come from the Pacific Northwest. Jim has been on the scene for more than twenty years and his reputation continues to grow. He has shared the stage with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Michelle Shocked, Leftover Salmon, and Mickey Hart. Robert Hunter says, "If Jim Page aint the bastard son of Woody Guthrie I'm T-Bone Walker"

We want to give a special thanks to The Portland Mercury for sponsoring the event!

Street Roots Special Edition to hit the streets tomorrow

2007-03-29T16:44:00.000-07:00

A Street Roots special edition on New Orleans, 18-months after will hit the streets tomorrow. The edition takes an in-depth look at individuals living in Portland displaced after Hurricane K. It also has two major features by civil rights attorney, professor and writer Bill Quigley on what's happening on the ground in New Orleans. Also included is a feature on the owners of the Orleans Candle Company in North Portland, a column on small businesses from a former Bureau of Housing and Community Development staffer Kim Powe, who now works with Mercy Corp in New Orleans - along with a look at the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans.

Why New Orleans? Why in Street Roots? That’s a question we discovered, pondered and rediscovered over the past three weeks of putting this special edition together.

New Orleans is a reflection of America in the early 21st century; a time when we wage war on foreign soils, when we discriminate against the poor and homeless in our own cities and send poor people to jail by the thousands for being addicts. It illustrates how everyday people cannot afford to live and shop in the very neighborhoods where generations before them lived. A time when public housing is sold to private developers, and deals that affect poor people are made on the basis of projections and funding streams instead of logic and integrity.

The issues affecting the Gulf Coast have been covered in every major newspaper, magazine and TV outlet in the United States during the past 18 months. Still, we find ourselves removed from another dark chapter in our country’s history. Unfortunately, the more we look to the Gulf region for answers, the more apparent it becomes that New Orleans has become a symbol of our own neighborhoods. Decades of redlining and land grabs by developers yield millions of dollars in profits in urban cores while citizens are pushed to the outer rings of cities and into the suburbs. In New Orleans, hundreds of thousands of people were scattered to the four winds, much like the Trail of Tears more than a hundred years before. In Portland, thousands of working families and poor people are forced out of their neighborhoods and must live with the economic environment created by individuals removed from the poverty they seek to eliminate by any means necessary.

Putting together this special edition, we were burdened with the fact that we couldn’t bring the entire story of the people of New Orleans to the streets of Portland. We could, however, bring you certain aspects of a story that is far from over. We’ve worked hard to bring you snippets of the stories of people living in Portland from the Gulf region, and of what’s happening in New Orleans today.

Street Roots believes in people. We believe in hope and laughter. We believe that no government entity or business interests should let profits outweigh people. We believe it is our obligation to report on what’s happening on the ground today, 18 months after Hurricane Katrina — because the closer we look at New Orleans, the more we see in ourselves.

How Portland gets it wrong and San Diego gets it!

2007-03-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

While Portland continues to travel down an expensive and ineffective path of criminalizing the homeless, San Diego has found the right formula to protect the human rights of people experiencing homelessness.

San Diego is the first city in the country to create Homeless Courts as a non-punitive form to deal with quality of life laws that target people without homes.

Homeless Courts

Last month San Diego made the right decision to allow people experiencing homelessness to sleep on public property without the fear of being woken up or moved along by law enforcement. According to Union Tribune, Mayor Jerry Sanders, who in the past opposed creating homeless “free zones,” called it a “fair and equitable solution to a large societal problem.” City Attorney Michael Aguirre said San Diego has taken “the leadership in the state of California” on homeless sleeping issues.

Union-Tribune article

San Diego's decision to allow people to sleep was based on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled in favor of six homeless persons challenging Los Angeles’ sit-lie law may have a bigger impact on quality of life laws targeting homeless people than first thought.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California challenged the city's practice of arresting persons for violating a municipal ordinance, which says that "no person shall sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or public way."

The court ruled it was illegal to prohibit people from sleeping on sidewalks because the city did not have enough shelter space. The case is under appeal, and LA police continue to enforce the law in a town that has an estimated 90,000 people living on the streets.

Today's Portland Mercury has a balanced look at the sit-lie ordinance debacle in Portland. Oregon American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Legislative Director Andrea Meyer—a member of the SAFE Committee—is still opposed to the ordinance. She says, "I'm very pleased that other folks are beginning to speak out about this," she says. "Certainly we would hope that council would not only take their concerns into consideration, but also consider the ACLU's concerns and consider a different approach."

Sit and spin

The article also quotes my director’s desk on Rocket Poetry saying Street Roots thinks the city should scrap the up and coming ordinance and start anew.

Director’s Desk

I think it's fair to say it's time Portland looked at out of the box philosophies when dealing with laws that target homeless people. It's getting harder and harder for cities to defend the practice of not allowing people to sleep and rest on public property when thousands of people remain homeless after shelters beds are full.

My question is why in a liberal city like Portland can't we find alternatives that are innovative and humane when working with people on the streets?

New edition of Street Roots on the streets!

2007-03-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

Last year’s U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in favor of six homeless persons challenging Los Angeles’ sil-lie law may have a bigger impact on quality of life laws targeting homeless people than first thought.

Six people experiencing homelessness, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California challenged the city's practice of arresting persons for violating a municipal ordinance, which says that "no person shall sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or public way."

The court ruled it was illegal to prohibit people from sleeping on sidewalks because the city did not have enough shelter space. The case is under appeal, and LA police continue to enforce the law in a town that has an estimated 90,000 people living on the streets.

The City of San Diego recently announced that people experiencing homelessness will be allowed to sleep on public property between the times of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Officials in San Diego say the city was more or less forced into a settlement when a federal court ruled that a ordinance prohibiting sleeping on the sidewalk was illegal because the city didn't have enough shelter beds.

Is it possible to repeal Portland’s anti-camping ordinance using the 9th District’s ruling on sit/lie? According to Adam Arms with McKanna/Bishop/Joffee & Sullivan, “The 9th circuit embodies the idea that you can not criminalize basic human life sustaining activities. As a human being without a home you have to sleep somewhere. The LA ruling could be used to shed light on the camping ordinance and the ways its enforced to criminalize life sustaining activities.” Arms should know, he spent years defending the homeless with the San Francisco Coalition for the Homeless, and was the attorney who represented peace activists in Portland back in 2003 when the sit-lie was found unconstitutional. Since then, sit-lie has been in turmoil.

The new sit-lie ordinance that has been proposed by a committee would ban people from sitting or lying on a sidewalk in downtown and in the Lloyd Center district during the daytime. In exchange for the law targeting homeless people the city has agreed to create a day access center, public restrooms and park benches downtown. Problem is there’s no access center for people and city council agreed to not move forward with the law until all of immunities are in place. In the meantime, the business community is getting impatient and street kids are organizing a group of homeless people calling bullshit.

Street Roots tends to agree with the street kids and thinks the city should take it all off the table and start anew. This time with a law that doesn’t ban people from existing or at least that allows people to sleep undisturbed downtown on public property, including parks. Who knows, maybe the LA ruling can force the city to allow people to sleep downtown - because it certainly doesn’t seem to be concerned that people’s human rights are being violated.

The current SRs looks at the organizing activities and protests by homeless youth on the streets this week. The issue also has great columns by Marvin Mitchell, Jay Thiemeyer and Alejandro Queral with the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center on the Racial Profiling committee - and much, much more...

* Don't forget about the Street Roots April 5, benefit with Artis the Spoonman & Jim Page at the Clinton Street Theater. Tickets available at Street Roots for $15 at 503-228-5657 or purchase tickets at the Clinton Street Box Office on SE 26th & Clinton.

Discussion on homeless count/10-year plan tonight on KBOO

2007-03-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

Tonight on KBOO – 90.7FM from 6-7pm

Hole in the Bucket, a radio show about homelessness and poverty hosted by Michael Anderson and Jay Thiemeyer will be discussing the recent homeless count and the second year of the 10-year plan end homelessness -what was achieved and what was not.

Featured guests are myself, Will White and Sally Erickson with the Bureau of Housing and Community Development and Marc Jolin, the Director of JOIN

Street Roots begins news series on KBOO

2007-03-09T17:08:00.000-08:00

In collaboration with Street Roots Newspaper the KBOO Evening News presents the first in a bymonthly series that will highlight key articles in the most current issue of Portland's only street advocacy newspaper.

This week:
A new center for youth called FUEGO opens in southwest Portland;

A physician and biochemist talks about doctor complicity in the use of torture by U.S. Military intelligence. JOANNE ZUHL reports.

Street Roots/KBOO

Buy books on-line at Powell's and 7.5% goes to Street Roots

2007-03-09T13:01:00.000-08:00

Street Roots is proud to announce a partnership with Powell's books through our website. Buy a wide selection of books that has inspired Street Roots and its supporters, and 7.5% of each sale goes directly to Street Roots.

We have selected a wide variety of books for our supporters. Interested in varying viewpoints on religion, politics, and the food we eat? Want to know the history of homelessness over the past century, the good, the bad and the business of flowers, ideas for your urban organic kitchen, or the history of vegetarianism since the 1600's?

Get the popular Zinester's Guide to Portland, or Chuck Palahniuk's Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon by going to the Street Roots home page

Street Roots

Scroll down to the right hand side of the home page and browse the Street Roots reading shelf.

Thank you for supporting Street Roots

Local homeless squaters rights activist are organizing a sit-in/rally

2007-03-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

This was just sent as a press release to Street Roots.

Local homeless squaters rights activist are organizing a sit-in/rally against the sit-lie ordinance at waterfront park. We would love to see people come in solidarity and speak about their opinion on this bill they are trying to bill. The Mayor is saying that the 10 year plan to end homelessness has dropped 30% thinking that the plan has been successful when as many people getting off the street there are as many getting on the street. The sit-lie ordinance is being voted upon this month of March. With this bill being past no one can sit or lie down in the downtown area.

Most homeless youth can go to selters but when shelters are full kids are forced to sleep outside. And most elder homeless folks are to old to go into shelters were youth are if their shelters are full. Forced to sleep under bridges were they are brutalized in their sleep or arrested and brutalized by police and or PBA funded clean and safe. This brutal actions have lead to deaths of many homeless and mentally disabled kids and adults many like the well known James Chasse who was kicked in the ribs for urinating in public when there is no bathrooms for public use.

We are fed up with the mistreatment help us help you.

March 14th
2:30 pm
Waterfront park
In between Hawthorn and morrison bridge
Bring a sign against sit-lie and bring your smiles and friends

New issue of Street Roots on the streets!

2007-03-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Street Roots bumperstickers are selling fast. Ask your neighborhood vendor for the stickers and show your support of Street Roots by putting one on your car, school folder, filing cabinet, bike, co-workers’ desk or all of the above!

Monica Goracke with the Oregon Law Center held a “Know Your Rights” training this month with vendors. More than 20 vendors were in attendance asking questions about their rights regarding sleeping out doors and selling the newspaper. A big thanks to Monica for taking time out of her busy schedule to do a training for us.

We are excited to announce a benefit concert with Jim Page and Artis the Spoonman sponsored by The Portland Mercury on Thursday, April 5, at the Clinton Street Theater. Jim and Artis are both world-renowned Northwest musicians living in Seattle. We appreciate their energy and them coming down for the show. It seems like a perfect fit for SR and Dignity Village to be doing a benefit concert together considering that more than seven years ago the first planning meetings for starting a tent city in Portland happened at Street Roots. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at Street Roots by calling 503-228-5657 or at the Clinton Street Box Office at 2522 SE Clinton. By coming to see some great music you will be helping the organizations go a long way in continuing the work we do in the community. (For more information, see the ad on page 3.)

Street Roots is also excited to announce that we will be hosting the 2007 North American Street Newspaper Association conference from July 26-29 at Portland State University. Representatives from more than 37 papers throughout North America will converge on the City of Roses. The conference’s focus this year will be on technical assistance, capacity building, messaging, and networking. Look for more information and ways to get involved in upcoming issues of the paper and on our Web site, www.streetroots.org. If you are a local business or donor and wish to contribute by becoming a sponsor, please give us a call or e-mail us at the office. We will be soliciting donors and businesses to work with us to create T-shirts, promotional materials, breakfasts, lunch and dinners. Last year’s international conference in Montreal was a hoot and we are planning for the same in P-town this year.

This issue's feature is on Fuego - an organization tapping into traditional healing practices to reach at-risk youth. Also - a great Q & A with Bioethicist Dr. Steven H. Miles called The Tortuter's Apprentice, and a piece by Heather Lyons with the Bureau of Housing and Community Development. This week's editorial has Street Roots take on the recently released homelessness numbers. You can read the editorial here:

Homeless figures only paint only part of the picture

Street Roots/Dignity Village Benefit April 5 with Jim Page and Artis the Spoonman

2007-02-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

What: Benefit for Street Roots/Dignity Village with Jim Page & Artis the Spoonman
When: Thursday April 5, Doors open 7:30PM, show starts 8:00PM
Where: Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St.
Tickets: Tickets can be purchased through Street Roots at 503-228-5657, or at the Clinton Street Theater Box Office

Artis the Spoonman: The spoonman is a living myth. From the bars and streets of Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan, Sydney, London, Dublin, Munich and Singapore, to the theatres of Broadway, the stages of international and national television and the recording studios of Frank Zappa and Soundgarden his spell bounding, faster than the eye can track spoon playing will change your life or at least your ideas on cutlery. Referring to Artis the Spoonman Frank Zappa said, "You haven't got a commercial bone in your body."

Jim Page: Jim is one of the most talented, and respected songwriters to ever come from the Pacific Northwest. Jim has been on the scene for more than twenty years and his reputation continues to grow. He has shared the stage with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Michelle Shocked, Leftover Salmon, and Mickey Hart. Robert Hunter says, "If Jim Page aint the bastard son of Woody Guthrie I'm T-Bone Walker"

We want to give a special thanks to The Portland Mercury for sponsoring the event!

You can check out more information here:

Clinton Street Theater

Come enjoy some great music and support Street Roots

2007-02-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

Dear Street Rooters,

Street Roots would like to invite you out for a night of great folk music with the one and only – Todd Snider. Todd has been called one of the best songwriters of our time.

Todd Snider will be playing the Aladdin Theatre next Tuesday, February 27th at 8:00P.M. Portions of the night’s proceeds will be donated to Street Roots. The organization will also be tabling and handing out new Street Roots bumperstickers for those in attendance.

Opening up for Todd will be Oregon songwriter Rachel Harrington.

"Todd Snider is a true songwriter, with the heart and humor of John Prine, the wild unpredictability of Roger Miller, and a fresh, original spirit and freedom of imagination that's absolutely his own." - Kris Kristofferson

For more information on Todd Snider or to purchase tickets click here:

Todd & Rachel bio, purchase tickets

Wait, there’s more! Mark your calendars! We will be announcing later this week ticket sales for a benefit concert with Artis the Spoonman & Jim Page for Street Roots & Dignity Village, co-sponsored by the Portland Mercury at the Clinton Street Theatre on Thursday, April 5. For more information or to reserve tickets call Israel at 503-228-5657.

Stop the federal dismantling of critical homeless housing programs

2007-02-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

President Bush’s 2008 Budget Request would slash up to 185,000 affordable housing units over the next 10 years. While the president and his cronies at Housing and Urban Development continue to tour the country applauding local efforts to end homelessness in 10 years, the reality continues to spill over in the form of more and more housing units being lost. Earlier this month, the president’s proposed HUD budget was $35.2 billion, 8 percent below last year’s budget. Finish reading and Act Now!

Act Now

Portland Business Alliance has the pulpit to call for a transfer fee

2007-02-19T12:14:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks the Portland Business Alliance has seen print in most newspapers throughout the city for their role in helping downtown get public restrooms and a day access center.

The Alliance has pitched in $45,000 for the day access center and is offering to maintain public restrooms for free. We applaud their efforts. But to listen to the Portland Business Alliance, you would think they are leading the way to end homelessness in downtown themselves. Unfortunately, the organization continues to insist a law is needed that will ban people (homeless) from downtown sidewalks.

We want to get behind the PBA — and in fact Street Roots may end up partnering with them through the Rose City Resource Guide — but we still have more questions than answers. Finish reading...

Street Roots editorial

Esplanade, almost perfect urban walk...

2007-02-17T15:22:00.000-08:00

Another beaut in p-town - Steel Bridge from the Esplanade. Walk was great - the best of the best are out today! We walked the esplanade, and back around the Waterfront - the view is great, but the underpasses along the esplanade are in bad need of some kind of art - poetry, murals, something, something... it needs a bit more funky art to make it the perfect urban walk.

This issue of Street Roots, Feb 16 edition

2007-02-16T11:56:00.000-08:00

You’ll notice the organization’s 2006 Annual Report in the middle of this edition of the paper. One of the goals we set last year was to make the organization as transparent as possible, and the Annual Report being incorporated into the paper is one step closer to that goal. We hope you take the time to look over the report, which details Street Roots’ future goals, financials, and core functions. We appreciate all of you who donated your time, money and wisdom in 2006.

The Act Now on the back page blew up on the Portland Mercury’s Blogtown last week with community members debating the pros and cons of the real estate transfer fee. We still stand by the notion that people selling or buying a home can afford a few extra duckets to help create more affordable housing in our state. We, as a community, should demand the abolishment of the Realtor-supported ban that has crippled any real effort to create money needed to address affordable housing needs in our community.

The organization is excited to announce a benefit concert for Dignity Village and Street Roots with Artis the Spoonman and Jim Page on Thursday, April 5, at the Clinton Street Theater. We are very happy to be working with both artists. Frank Zappa said of Artis, “He doesn’t have a commercial bone in his body.” And it’s true. Artis is an amazing individual, and only the best spoon player in the entire world. One of our vendors, Bob Brenner, will be opening up the night. More information will be available in Street Roots and through our co-sponsor, The Portland Mercury, in March.

New Street Roots bumper stickers will hit the streets this week featuring our logo and Soup Can Sam. Bumper stickers will cost $1, with 80 cents going directly to your local neighborhood vendor. We encourage you to show your support by putting them on something you own for all your friends to see!

We also want to say thanks to the anonymous donor who gave us $7,000 this week. Wow — maybe Robin Hood does still exist. And, last but not least, we are proud to welcome new board members Marvin Mitchell, Bruce Anderson, Chelsea Clark-James, and Eddy Barbosa. Thanks for continuing to be a part of the Street Roots family.

Also in this issue of Street Roots - one of our vendors, Frankie Smith goes for more Gold Medals in this years Oregon Special Olympics, and a feature on the new Day Access Center being created by the SAFE committe. There's also a great piece by Alejandro Queral with the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. Sisters of the Road responds to the Mike Kuykendall interview, and Street Roots calls for the Portland Business Alliance to lead the way for a transfer fee in the region.

Buy your paper today from a local vendor in the Portland Metro Area.

PBA vs Street Roots

2007-02-09T15:40:00.000-08:00

Larry's blog over at Oregon Live has a piece on the PBA vs. Street Roots. We did not include an editorial attached to the piece because we've been very up front about being against the SAFE ordinance. I think the interview speaks for itself...

Oregon Live

You can pick up a copy of Street Roots from a local vendor at Powell's, Whole Foods, Nordstrom's, New Seasons, Food Front and many other locations.

Open the way for the real estate transfer fee in Portland

2007-02-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

A real estate transfer fee is a small, one-time assessment — typically less than 1 percent — on the sale price of a home that is dedicated to fund affordable housing. For example, a 5 percent transfer fee, with the first $100,000 of the home sale price exempted, would amount to $500 on the sale of a $200,000 home. That equals around one cup of coffee a month for 30 years to help thousands of people gain housing and employment through economic development opportunities. Read more…

Act Now

Pre-Super Bowl Walk with roomies at Sauvie Island

2007-02-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

This week in Street Roots

2007-02-02T20:45:00.000-08:00

It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the homeless front. The mayor pulled the sit/lie ordinance off the table until park-benches, restrooms and a day access center are in place. While everyone and their brother continues to tell Street Roots that a sidewalk law banning people from sitting or lying on a sidewalk is a fair trade for direct services, we don’t buy it. It’s wrong, and we believe it eventually will be ruled unconstitutional.

The organization’s Act Now section has received great responses from readers. This week’s Act Now section includes a call for legislators in Salem to vote down a ban on creating a real estate transfer fee. A transfer fee in Portland and around the state would lead to millions of dollars of affordable housing for Oregonians. Oregon is one of only 13 states in the nation that don’t have a revenue stream through the one-time fee on sales transactions — we should change that. The source of money allocated for affordable housing through the real estate fee would go a long way to help our neighbors, friends and family to secure an affordable roof over their heads. That’s something we should all get behind. Portland’s real estate market is hopping, and it wouldn’t hurt for those who are benefiting to share in the spoils of becoming a modern 21st century city.

Street Roots vendors in the Pearl have been feeling the love. Sales are up in a neighborhood that five years ago use to host large numbers of homeless people sleeping in random doorways. You won’t find a homeless person sleeping out in the Pearl these days, but you will find several Street Roots vendors. Thanks to everyone who lives in the Pearl — in a strange kind of way.

It won’t be long before Old Town/Chinatown where Street Roots resides experiences the boom the Pearl is experiencing. In five years, will homeless people still be allowed to sleep out in doorways of businesses that allow them? I doubt it. Some argue that with the abundance of services in the neighborhood that people of all classes will always be welcome. Can a neighborhood like the Pearl and homeless services co-exist? That's the million dollar question, and you can bet someone will have the money to answer it.

This week in Street Roots: "Why is Mike Kuykendall on the cover of Street Roots." The Portland Business Alliance VP defends the organizations reputation when it comes to the streets. Other tid-bits from the issue include Mardi Gras: Made in China, a film about young women who make the very beads women in the US show their boobs for - as both world's are introduce to the other. Columnists this issue include Paul Boden from the Western Regional Advocacy Project in San Fran, Jay Thiemeyer, and Ruth Kovacs.

Beautiful day at Kelley Point

2007-01-28T17:04:00.000-08:00

A beautiful day at Kelley Point...

Street Roots vendors

2007-01-20T12:17:00.000-08:00

A few of the hard working Street Roots vendors waiting for the paper this week.

This issue of Street Roots

2007-01-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

Director’s desk

Thank you, Street Roots readers. We have met our $20,000 goal for the Winter Fund Drive! We appreciate each and every donation made to the organization throughout the winter fundraiser. Your contributions are helping Street Roots upgrade its technology in the office and address staffing needs with the organization. Your contributions are also helping vendors sell additional items, including buttons, postcards and bumper stickers.

Your suport plays a part in dispelling the myth that homeless people are lazy. Each issue we work hard to tackle subjects that matter to the world in which we live. And with each issue more than 60 vendors work just as hard selling the newspaper. This morning, I arrived at the office with more than 2 inches of snow on the ground. I expected vendors to take the day off and remain in the office, conversing and playing dominos. Two hours later, not one vendor was left in the office – all of them went out to sell the newspaper in the pouring snow. I asked, "Why are you going out today?" And one vendor responded, "It’s only snow. The people need their Street Roots, eh."

The simple act of buying and reading the newspaper is one step closer to breaking down NIMBYism about people living in poverty. We believe in people, and we thank you for believing in us.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough. Street Roots is proud to unveil Act Now to our back pages this issue. In each issue, the organization will profile a social-justice cause that readers can take action around. We encourage other organizations, and individuals to point us to campaigns, legislation and upcoming actions to get readers involved. Sometime in 2007 we will link the Act Now back page with on-line action items that will allow readers to send letters, or take action through the Street Roots Web site.

Our first Act Now is a project developed by three Portlanders who are helping raise awareness about Adel Hamad, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who many believe has been unfairly detained for more than five years. His story brings to light the abolishment of habeas corpus (the right to a fair trial) by the United States government. Without these basic rights, we as a society continue to allow our representatives to strip away the basic human rights we deserve. We encourage you to Act Now!

Project Hamad:

Project Hamad

Also: This week in Street Roots has an in-depth feature on immigrants and refugees living in Portland, columns by Alejandro Queral with the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center and Michael Anderson with Affordable Housing Now. Also included is a street vendors take on the cities new SAFE ordinance, and an excellent op-ed piece about Lt. Robert Bedgewood from the Portland Fire Bureau. Not to mention Soup Can Sam.

Oregon Business Magazine/Street Roots

2007-01-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

I just returned from Kansas City, and St. Louis. Wow. It's nice to be back in Portland. I'm on the run, but here's a piece Chris Lydgate recently did for the Oregon Business Magazine on myself, and Street Roots.

Oregon Business Magazine

WW blogs Q & A about SAFE, Homeless Memorial Day

2006-12-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

The Willamette Week ran a great Q & A with Genny Nelson today on its blogwire about her involvement with the SAFE committee. Check it -

Genny Nelson Q & A

And yesterday the WW blogwire ran "To live and die on Portland's streets," about the up and coming Homeless Persons Memorial Day.

Homeless Memorial

It should also be noted that Sisters of the Road is co-hosting the 2006 Homeless Persons Memorial Day on Thursday at Outside In. For more information on this you can go to

Sisters events

The spin factor - sit/lie

2006-12-16T09:37:00.000-08:00

Over the past week newspaper headlines across the city about new recommendations for the homeless have read, "A better plan for vagrancy? - Homeless - The mayor gets agreement on an approach that some say is a miracle on Southwest Stark Street," "Portland set to give 'sit-lie' law the boot," and "SAFE plan a good first step."

On Dec 13, the city adopted recommendations from a committee of 24 diverse groups called Safe Access For Everyone. The recommendations provide alternatives on how Portland should deal with "vagrancy," in the downtown corridor, and in the Lloyd Center District. Read Mayor's press release.

Mayor's press release Dec 13,

Street Roots strongly disagrees with certain aspects of the recommendations.

Street Roots editorial

PortlandMercury Blog

The proposal made the Winners section of the Willamette Week saying, "Yes, the city's homeless won some love with Mayor Tom Potter's announcement Monday that City Hall's new livability/street nuisance initiative includes a center open during the day for them. But we're cheering just as loudly for the initiative's plan to open public restrooms downtown. That late-night walk from the bar to the car just got a little easier."

WW Winners & Losers

How is not being allowed to sit on a sidewalk after you have no place to sleep (camping ordinance, curfews in parks, park exclusions, etc., etc.) is a winner is beyond me. But I'm in agreement - the restrooms are a great thing for all of us.

The saddest thing about this whole ordeal is how the media has not really done any kind of homework. The SAFE committee packaged the recommendations, and the ordinance for the Mayor's office, the Mayor's office packaged the SAFE recommendations for the media, and the media just published it. No historical perspective about how these same laws have utterly failed in other cities, the costs involved, and the impact on individuals who will be moved along. None of the stories included a quote from someone experiencing homelessness, much less that no homeless persons were present in the SAFE workgroup.

S. Renee Mitchell's column in the Oregonian on Dec 13 says, "Portland's latest homeless initiative, called Street Access for Everyone (SAFE), is not intended to make downtown more attractive for people who spend money in the retail shops and restaurants, work in the high-rise office buildings or pay the costly rents. It's about us being more tolerant of the grungy and disconnected youth, the mentally ill adults and the illegal immigrants who hang out downtown and at Lloyd Center with their dogs, addictions and various forms of social dysfunction."

Renee's column

In the Mayor's press release last week he says, "There will be a temptation by some to see this as a way to target our homeless, or remove unwelcome groups from high visibility areas. Instead, what these reforms will do is ensure that our city remains a diverse, urban environment by not forcing anyone to leave its sidewalks or streets,"

Unfortunately, nobody has highlighted the fact that the ordinance as recommended by the committee states, "Enact a “High Pedestrian Traffic Area” ordinance that prohibits anyone from sitting or lying on a public sidewalk between 7 am and 9 pm in defined High Pedestrian Traffic Areas. Violators will be warned, and could receive a non-criminal citation in West Side Community Court, with the possibility of fines up to $250, community service and/or referral for appropriate services/treatment. The initial affected areas with be the “Fareless Square” in downtown Portland and the Lloyd District. Other districts may apply for inclusion."

Portland has around 4,000 people on the streets on any given night. The day center included in the package deal will have the ability to serve around 150 individuals. The restrooms are great, but I'm still skeptical on how the city is going to build enough benches for the remaining 3,850 people who are homeless once the new day access center is filled up.

It just doesn't add up.

News stories and editorials over the past week.
Oregonian:

Portland set to give the "sit-lie" law the boot

A better plan for vagrancy

Portland Tribune:

Trib editorial

OregonLive/Street Roots

2006-12-07T19:51:00.000-08:00

A little dated, but a good piece on Street Roots by Larry Norton on Oregon Live from November 21.

Old Town/OregonLive

It's my sidewalk, I can sit if I want to!

2006-12-03T22:46:00.000-08:00

On December 13th City Council is most likely going to vote for a new sit/lie ordinance, which outlaws sitting, lying or putting one's belongings down on a sidewalk in downtown, and on the eastside in the Lloyd Center District. You can read more from the Nov. 2, issue of the Portland Mercury

SAFE-ing

The old ordinance titled the Obstruction as Nuisance ordinance was declared unconstitutional in 2003. In short, the city rewrote the ordinance, but the police and the Portland Business Alliance didn't like it. It was too restrictive. The ordinance was reworked by the SAFE (Safe Access for Everyone) committee - a group of 27 stakeholders representing different factions throughout the city. The committee has made their recommendations, and everything is fine, right?

Nope, wait a minute, everything is not fine. The SR editorial from Nov 1 sums up why the recommendations fall short.

SR editorial

More than that, aren't we rushing to some major conclusions?

The committee has set some goals in exchange for making it illegal to sit, or lie down on a sidewalk.

1.) Implement a Plan that lays out a plan to create a Day Center for people on the streets.
(2.) Provide adequate public seating, and benches for people to sit, or lie down on.
3.) Implement a public restroom plan to implement more public restrooms downtown.
4.) Implement an oversight committee to make sure the deals go down.

On its face, it's great. Am I for a Day Access Center, of course, more benches, yes, public restrooms downtown, absolutely. Am I for creating an environment where people on the streets, and other groups of people can't hang around, absolutely not? I thought we are trying to keep Portland weird. Did I miss something?

A day center is an approach that has been tried since the Civil War on homeless folks. Ultimately, it fails every time unless it's a place where people on the streets have power. Try creating a Union Hall for people and you might be on to something, but just another resting spot without real solutions is a wash. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying it's not a great thing. I'm just saying it's not a solution. And more so, what happens when people who are sitting, or lying on a sidewalk don't want to go to a day center? Are we saying poor people shouldn't have the same access to a public sidewalk as anyone else? Of course not, that's where the public benches come in.

Ok, so we have around 2,000 people on the streets at any given time in Portland. Are you telling me a few benches sprinkled in a downtown that will be dealing with mass construction on sidewalks over the next couple of years is sufficient for people who don't want to go to a day center? Seems like a stretch to me.

On to public restrooms. The same poor people who won't be allowed to hang out on sidewalks, and will be "recommended" to go to a day center can finally have restrooms available to them after they are asked to leave the area? I don't get it.

The bottom line is the we have leveraged 2,000 individuals civil rights in exchange for projects a smart city would already have in place.

If you ask me, sit where you want. And take them to court if they tell you differently!

Alejandro Queral interview

2006-12-03T22:34:00.000-08:00

In case anyone missed the interview by Joanne Zuhl with Alejandro Queral from Northwest Constitutional Rights Center on racial profiling, and police accountability.

Interview

Donate to the Street Roots Winter Fund Drive!

2006-11-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Street Roots supporter,

The organization has raised nearly $5,000 in the first two weeks of the winter fund drive. The organization has set a goal of raising $20,000 for technology, staffing and the vendor program before December 31st.

Street Roots has been opening up every morning at 7:30a.m. since 1999. We’ve never been closed, not one day. It’s important to all of us to have consistency, and while we’ve not always had the resources to do the things we’ve envisioned, we’ve always stuck together. Each morning you will find up to 20 vendors in the office drinking hot coffee, getting warm, and discussing politics, sports, and their up and coming work day.

Portland has developed relationships with hundreds of vendors over the years. When asked what matters most to vendors they have responded with a professioanl newspaper, extra cash, and last, but not least - customers themselves.

People tell Street Roots, I buy my paper from my favorite vendor in Hollywood, on Alberta, at Trader Joe’s in the Northwest, on Hawthorne or in downtown. Being able to build relationships with one another is one of the most powerful aspects of the organization, and vendors have built relationships with 7,000 unique individuals that buy the newspaper every two weeks in Portland.

One of the goals we have set for this fund drive is for the vendor incentive program. When asked what vendors want from the organization we hear a variety of things - a color paper, a weekly paper, and more items for vendors to sell. Street Roots takes what our vendors say seriously. Beyond being the eyes, and ears of the organization, vendors are the heart. We are looking at what it would mean to go to a color format. Is it possible to go weekly in a couple of years, and what it would mean to expand our coverage of social justice issues locally, and internationally?

In the short term, we are focusing on what’s tangible, which includes providing extra items for vendors to sell on the beat and expanding coverage with the newspaper.

In 2007, we will be providing buttons, bumper stickers and other sales items for vendors to sell to make additional income. Of course, none of this is possible without the communities support. We hope you will take the time this holiday season by making a donation to Street Roots.

Donate

Thank you readers for your consideration and dedication to the community.

Sincerely,

Israel Bayer
Director
Street Roots
211 NW Davis
Portland, Oregon 97209
503-228-5657
streetroots@hotmail.com
www.streetroots.org

Be a Block Captain!
The organization also has 20 volunteers serving as Street Roots Block Captains throughout the Portland region. Each captain is asking 20 friends, co-workers, and/or neighbors to donate $20. If you are interested in being a block captain please contact me in the office at 503-228-5657.

Mission: "Street Roots is a grassroots newspaper assisting people experiencing homelessness and poverty by creating flexible income opportunities. Through education, advocacy and personal expression, we are a catalyst for individual and social change."

http://www.streetroots.org/about_us/fund_drive.html.

Todd Snider interview

2006-11-12T17:11:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure to interview Todd Snider for Street Roots last month. Todd grew up in Beaverton, and is now being called one of the best songwriters of our time. Enjoy

Todd Snider interview

Get out and support Affordable Housing in P-town!

2006-10-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

Via Affordable Housing Now...

Tomorrow morning at 9:30 at the City Hall, the City Council will vote on an ordinance to establish a 30% set aside policy for affordable housing in Portland’s Urban Renewal Areas.

With the passage of this set aside, AHN will have secured upwards of $20 million annually to provide safe, secure housing for hardworking families, people of color, seniors and people with disabilities in Portland.

Though AHN still has some concerns about establishing income requirements to assure funds go to housing for those at the lowest incomes and instituting effective accountability mechanisms for the set-aside, this set aside ordinance is a tremendous accomplishment made possible by all of your collective support and advocacy.

Come to City Hall tomorrow at 9:00 (the hearing begins promptly at 9:30) and help us push the set aside across the finish line. The proceedings will last 45 minutes to an hour, so AHN is limiting our testimony to a few AHN representatives, but your presence is still critical to show support for this set-aside.

The October 18, 2006 City Council meeting will be held at City Council chambers (Portland City Hall, 1221 SW 4th Ave). For more information on the set aside, go to

Set a side

or contact Michael Anderson via email or at (503) 335-9884.

Affordable Housing NOW! is a coalition of over 40 organizations and hundreds of individuals whose goals are to secure new resources for affordable housing for the Portland Metro area by building a movement large enough to make funding for affordable housing for people with low incomes a political priority in the Metro area. To learn more about Affordable Housing NOW!, go to:

Affordable Housing Now!

Community Alliance of Tenants
Office: 503.460.9702
Renters’ Rights Hotline: 503.288.0130
www.oregoncat.org
Oregon’s only tenants’ rights organization. Made possible by members. If you’re a tenant who cares about your rights, get involved.

Become a Street Roots Block Captain today!

2006-10-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

You can become a Street Roots Block Captain today. Street Roots is looking for volunteers to be block captains in November and December to help raise money for the organization.

The organization has three major goals this fundraising season. The first is creating a sustainable vendor incentive program that would allow vendors the option of buying addition items for sale with the newspaper, including Street Roots buttons, stocking caps, posters, and bumper-stickers. “Any additional sales opportunities would be welcome by vendors,” says Jamie McDermott who sells the paper at Powell’s Bookstore, and in Northwest. “I have regular customers who would love it.”

The second goal includes technology upgrades for the office that would allow us to have a more professional newspaper, and offer a better support system to the vendor and volunteer programs.

The third goal for the organization is hiring a third paid position in 2007. If Street Roots is to become a real force in the community concerning activism, and economic development than the organization has to have proper staffing. We have been running on blood, sweet, and tears for more than six years – we are ready to turn the corner.

Street Roots is proud to bring readers a voice that matters from the street, and to have put more than $1 million dollars into the hands of poor people since 1999. None of this could be possible without readers and supporters like you. Your contributions to the organization matter - we are asking for your help to reach these goals. We are asking 25 households to ask 20 neighbors, and friends to donate $20 dollars to Street Roots. Each block captain will be given an educational packet from the organization to help with the project. If you, your partner, or housemates are interested in making a difference this winter please contact me at 503-228-5657, or e-mail me at streetroots@email.com

It’s getting cold again. Street Roots welcomes clean sleeping bags, coats, stocking caps, gloves and hand warmers. Donate items for the vendor program today by contacting the office, or by going to our wish list at www.streeetroots.org

Income guidelines are needed for 30%

2006-10-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

Being back in Portland has been great. Getting use to paying $1.70 a bus ride is nuts. How the hell did that happen? The rainy season is nearing and I'm looking forward to getting back into this blog thingamagig.

Here's my latest digs from the new issue of the paper...

Street Roots is thrilled to be taking part in the Autumn Moon Festival, where more than a dozen social service agencies, and local businesses, along with the Old Town/Chinatown Neighborhood Association, and the Portland Development Commission will be welcoming a newer and more vibrant neighborhood with the opening of Davis and Flanders as walking streets. Unfortunately, for many small organizations such as Street Roots, we wonder if we are celebrating the beginning of our own demise. There’s no stopping the development of Old Town/China Town. The question has become, how do we want to create a lively neighborhood without becoming the Pearl?

While the Pearl has its charm, really, it’s not about Portlanders so much as it is about welcoming new and wealthy members to our community – which is fine, so long as you balance the efforts with innovative urban development. In the Pearl, this was not done. Sure, Central City Concern was able to leverage its capital to create some affordable housing. We appreciate that. Still, at the end of the day, we should be talking about what it means to require developers to give X amount of dollars for every square foot built in downtown to 0-30 percent affordable housing. Or what it means to be offering incentives for African-Americans being displaced from North Portland to move downtown instead of Gresham.

Visionaries abound, but Portland has to be smart and innovative about the changes that are occurring throughout the downtown region. What good is a downtown without mixed incomes, diversity of color and vibrant sidewalks?
Currently, the 30 percent now being directed toward affordable housing from the PDC seems like a win for Portland. The city now needs to set firm income guidelines for the 30 percent, saying exactly where that money goes.

Street Roots is headed into a new round of strategic planning next month. Your insight matters to us, whether it’s from an editorial perspective or from a vendor perspective. We are working hard to bring the more than 70
vendors in the Portland region a professional product, so they are better able to make money. We want to hear from you. What would you like to see from Street Roots in the future? Please send comments to streetroots@hotmail.com, or to 211 NW Davis, Portland, OR 97209.

Street Roots Summer Fund Drive!

2006-08-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

Dear friends of Street Roots,

Street Roots is in the middle of its summer fund-drive. Our goal is to reach $10,000 by September 15. We have currently raised $2, 124.00. We need your help to reach this goal.

The goal of Street Roots is to put money directly into the hands of poor people, while empowering people to take control of their own lives through flexible employment opportunities, socialization, creative expression, and advocacy.

“It helped us so much. From selling the newspaper we were actually able to save enough money to get an apartment,” says Annie Mitchell, a vendor with Street Roots. “It gave us a chance to make an honest living.” Street Roots has more than 60 vendors selling the newspaper in the community.

Street Roots was recently featured in the Willamette Week

for its coverage of issues that connect to the entire community. Our hope as an organization is to provide Portland with professional alternative media, while establishing more incentives for vendors experiencing poverty. Your donation will go towards strengthening the organizations capacity to empower vendors, and publish a biweekly newspaper.

Thank you for your generous support,

You can also donate on-line at

www.streetroots.org

Sincerely,

Israel Bayer
Street Roots
Director
211 NW Davis
Portland, OR. 97209

Mission: Assisting people experiencing homelessness and poverty by creating flexible income opportunities. Through education, advocacy and personal expression, we are a catalyst for individual and social change.

Still recovering...

2006-08-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

Still recovering from the First Annual Rough Branch Writers Retreat in the beautiful Hoh Rain Forest. Rough Branch is an organic farm I have frequented over the years, and it's one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Rough Branch had writers from Seattle, Portland, and Cincy in town for the weekend. The workshops consisted of authors, journalists, and editors from Real Change, Street Roots, the Peninsula Daily News, and the Seattle PI. Mostly though, we just got smashed. On Saturday, we camped on 3rd Beach near LaPush, and continued the debauchery, and to be honest, we are all better for it, run on sentences or not...

While it will take me a week to recover, I am already looking forward to the Second Annual Rough Branch Writers Retreat.

Street Roots in WW

2006-08-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Street Roots in the WW this week.

New Roots

Seatown

2006-08-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

Seattle has been one of the sweetest experiences of my life. It’s also been isolating. I’m writing two pieces about my last year, one, a personal piece, the other work related.

I’ve come to learn that you can tell a local by the size of their calves. It doesn’t matter if you’re big, little or somewhere in between, if you walk the hills of Seattle everyday you have some calf muscles going on. And the bicyclists in this town are just sick.

Most of my time in Seattle has been spent, in my opinion, in one of the greatest neighborhoods in the country – Capital Hill. Most days and nights were like a fun filled “R” rated movie – loaded on caffeine and marijuana, coffee and art – street kids, tramps, do-gooder yuppies, and young people - a rowdy bunch at the very least.

Capital Hill is full of coffee houses like none you have ever experienced. People slamming espresso’s at all hours of the day and night is not uncommon. Trying to figure out who is on speed, and who had one shot to many is a little harder to navigate. The neighborhood is lined with hipster bars, clubs, and working class taverns.

My apartment was directly across from the City Market, and a gay karaoke bar on Bellevue and Olive. It wasn’t uncommon to go to bed at closing time to the sounds of Copacabana being sung by bar patrons. Listening to drunkards wandering home after closing time became nightly ritual. The story line was always the same. The ending just kept changing from night to night.

I made some great friends in the coffee houses on Capital Hill - the former Director of the ACLU of Texas, a wise older man with a bowl full of stories who has seen more than most. Young Microsoft guru’s my age making more money than you can shake a stick at, co-workers, and street people became friends - a collage of class and creativity. Seattle, like many of its west coast counterparts is a blend of the richest and the poorest people in the country.

And while Capital Hill is a great neighborhood, who could ignore the 1-bedroom apartments being converted into condo’s, and being sold for $750,000. Holy shit on a stick - $750,000. Who are these people?

JM who was in town for a year from Baltimore was my savior though. We waded out the record setting rainy season with Seahawks football, March Madness, political talk, microbrews, and other treats. Being in Seattle for the Super Bowl run was a great experience. In the midst of the rainy season this town came alive.

I also spent a lot of time in the International District, where a fluent Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Cambodian population call home. There’s no better combination than a hot bowl of cheap pho, and some green tea bubble tea during long rainy days.

On visiting Seattle: If you come to visit Seattle once, ok, sure, Space Needle, Pike’s Place Market, the waterfront piers, the amazing public library, and the jam-packed streets of downtown. Come twice, and should be out in the kick ass neighborhoods of Seattle – Capital Hill, the International District, Fremont, Ballard, White Center, and West Seattle – this is where the freaks, geeks, gangsters, hipsters, bikers, factory and dockworkers, and young people call home. Things are happening all around, all of the time.

Of course, I can’t argue the fact that Seattle can be a cold, sexest, and overpriced town that makes you want to puke. The public transportation is sacked – not because of the bus system itself, but because a city this size needs trains, and trolleys, and lots of them. The Mayor has become known as Mayor Gridlock for his lack of innovation with public transportation.

The majority buses in and around downtown are ran on bio-diesel, or electric energy, and only San Francisco reproduces more of its waste for a city its size. The city has beaches, great public art, and a thriving music scene. Its ferry system is one of the best in the world, and you are only a hop, skip and jump from Vancouver, Victoria, Port Townsend, Olympia, the San Juan Islands, the Cascades, and the Olympic Mountains.

Seattle also has one of the most out of the box street fairs outside of New Orleans in the Fremont Fair, great bookstores, food, and people of color from all over the world. No doubt, the recipe for a lot of run-on sentences.

In May, I moved from Capital Hill to West Seattle to live with my good friend Damon, and his 8-year old son visiting from Galesburg, Illinois for the summer.

West Seattle is a happening place where the whities live, and White Center is a happening place where everyone else lives. I love them both. Most nights this summer have been spent at Alki Beach, or Lincoln Park, a park overlooking the Puget Sound to the West. It’s spectacular!

My Saturdays have been spent watching Ty for the day while Damon works. Mariner and Sounder games (sorry Timber fans), Gameworks, hanging out at the beach, playing baseball and soccer, and hanging out at the fountain at the Seattle Center have been our haunts. I underestimated what an 8-year old kid can do for your life. What a blast!

The last few weeks in Seattle have been sort of surreal, and they always are right before you are about to move to another place. Part of your mind is focused on the tasks at hand, while the other is focused on what’s coming up over the horizon.

I will be glad to finally be living in the same town as my good gal. We have spent nearly a year traveling back and forth from Portland in a long-distance relationship. My peeps at Real Change, and Street Roots have joked that that’s the real reason I’m jumping at the chance to come back to Portland. I’m looking forward to being back at Street Roots and pounding the pavement in Portland, like I have in the "Rat City" (and they are big) for the past year and half.

PS. While this recollection of Seattle leans more on the optimistic side, I could never forget the 33 days of straight rain, and starving for half the year on pasta and butter, still, it’s the good memories that pull you through. Forgive any spelling errors - Top Pot is closing and I've lost my wi-fi for the time being.

Back to P-town...

2006-08-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

It’s been weeks since I’ve updated this blog, and even longer since I’ve had the chance to catch up on the local blogsphere. Seattle in the summer time is fantastic, and work has been crazy – not to mention being in front of a computer on long summer nights just seems wrong.

My time at Real Change is winding down, and it won’t be long until I’m back in the City of Roses. It’s official. I’ve been hired back as the Director of Street Roots starting on August 21st. After nearly 2 years of working with Real Change, the North American Street Newspaper Association, and with the University of Washington on-line history museum – I will gladly be returning to Portland to help the organization move forward.

I will be posting my experiences over the last year in the coming days. Stay tuned…

Street paper featured in the Wall Street Journal

2006-07-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

The street newspaper in Washington D.C. (Street Sense) was featured in the Wall Street Journal on June 30th.

"The monthly paper, run out of a rented room at the downtown Church of the Epiphany, follows the general business plan set by many of the 24 publications in the North American Street Newspaper Association, a trade group of papers focused on homelessness. Street Sense is sold by a roving crew of 45 vendors, most of them homeless, who pay 25 cents a copy and sell the paper on the street for a dollar. A diligent vendor with good curb appeal can make $60 a day, Ms. Osuri says. Last month, the vendors sold 11,500 copies out of a run of 13,000."

WSJ article

International Street Newspaper movement continues to grow

2006-06-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the International Street Network of Papers (INSP) conference in lively Montreal, Quebec. Montreal is a wild city, and it was great to be able to spend a week with street newspaper participants from five continents around the world. The international community officially voted in the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) as official members.

In fact, Portland’s own Joanne Zuhl, Managing Editor of Street Roots was voted by membership to represent North America on the INSP’s Board of Directors. She has her work cut out for her with the new board being charged with coming up with a new voting structure, and the many projects that the INSP has in the hopper. Currently, the voting structure is one paper, one vote, but due to the overabundance of papers from North America and Europe a new voting system has to be put in place to better represent all of the regions of the world.

Papers vary in size, and mission, but all have active vendor programs that help people living in poverty help themselves by offering alternative means to gain employment and to have a voice. In many countries in Africa the papers are dealing with 60-80% unemployment, in South America newspapers are working with the thousands of youth, and street gangs, in Europe, the rising tide of immigrants, and a growing homeless population, even with national health-care systems, is disturbing.

New projects this year include papers from the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Norway, Colombia, and Liberia.

Some of the more innovative projects include, Big Issue, Australia (weekly), which has more than 800 vendors and is distributed in more than four cities. The Big Issue, Liverpool (weekly) has more than 300 vendors in 20 cities and townships. The paper also has a social service arm, street outreach teams, and housing programs. Biss, in Germany has a funeral fund for vendors, which pays for burial costs, a tombstone and a party. Journey Home in St. Petersburg, Russia has been at the forefront at making the hundreds of people freezing to death on Russia’s streets last year an international issue. L'Itineraire, Montreal has developed a kitchen similar to that of Sisters of the Road in Portland, and has developed a street outreach team for homeless youth. Out of that project a hip-hop homeless youth DVD has been produced and will be being sold by vendors.

The Big Issue in Capetown will be hosting this year’s Homeless World Cup, which partners with the INSP. More than 32 papers had papers at last years Homeless World Cup. The idea is to bring together poverty and sport to raise awareness about the growing gap between the rich and the poor worldwide.

The Street News Service (SNS), which is a joint project of NASNA and the INSP is growing as well. The service hopes in the coming year to be publishing more than 17 languages represented in more than 70 street papers worldwide with an annual combined circulation of more than 55 million.

The organizations goals this year include new voting structures, global representation on the board of directors, the SNS, resource sharing, staff trades, networking and building a global campaign to fight poverty. The organization will also be focusing on Africa in 2007, with five papers set to start up.

All the members of the International community were very welcoming of the North American papers. With the merger also comes resource sharing. North America is the only continent to have a regional model. NASNA is an example other regions will be looking at to build their regional networks.

Several newspapers walked away with awards from this year’s conference, including three people from the Pacific Northwest. They included Joanne Zuhl, Managing Editor of Street Roots, Lester Gray, columnist with Real Change in Seattle, and myself for the work with NASNA.

Overall, the conference was amazing. I made many new friends from places like Oslo, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, San Paulo, Capetown, Monroe, Osaka, and many others from around the world.

Real Change and Street Roots felt very humbled, and part of a growing movement of social justice – making the term "Think globally, act locally" a continued goal of our organizations. In fact, the new Street Roots, coming out this Friday will be the International edition. Check it out.

For more information check out these websites, and support your local neighborhood vendor! It's making a difference all over the world and we are getting organized!!!

Thinking globally, acting locally - street paper association launches new site

2006-05-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

The North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) just launched it’s website today. It still has a few bugs, but for the most part we got it up and running.

NASNA

The volunteer organization continues to grow with representation in 26 cities throughout North America.

Three newspapers from the Pacific Northwest belong to NASNA, including Street Roots, Portland, Real Change, Seattle, and The Rising Times in Spokane.

In June, the organization will be merging with the International Network of Street Newspapers (INSP) in Montreal, Quebec, during the annual conference. The merger will create more than 120 papers worldwide in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, North and South America.

INSP

Both organizations have created the Street News Service, a weekly updated newswire for street papers around the world.

Street News Service

NASNA’s major goals for the coming year is building a solid Technical Assistance program for existing, and start up papers in North America, while continuing to share resources in a number of capacities. More to come…

Check out the new site, and see what it's all about.

Marginal Notes by Jay Thiemeyer, review

2006-05-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

Jay Thiemeyer could have died invisibly, laid out on some abandoned rail-yard or doorway for some security guard to find dead and bloated from the years of hard living, like thousands of people do each year in America – but he didn’t.

Jay knows about going down the road feeling bad, and he reflects upon his life in his just-released first collection of poetry,"Marginal Notes." Jay’s relentless pursuit of knowledge, and living on the edge of a broken down system, has given us a rare, and creative look inside the insanity of living on the streets while grasping the realization of the Reagan Revolution during the fall of America’s great industrial era.

The poetry in "Marginal Notes" takes us on adventures and hardships – living in alleys, doorways and "weed patches" in urban and rural Dixie — to the streets of Eugene and Portland where he would continue to battle his demons in the form of 100 proof Vodka, and an unjust system that dealt out the realities in which Jay lived.

For some progressives, Jay’s life seems more like a Charles Bukowski rant than that of an honest and dedicated human being fighting poverty with every breath. But Jay has never been afraid to speak truth to power to those on the left, and right, who often times can’t grasp that with poverty comes, "All she had come up with was: ‘Niggas ain’t actin like colored people’," told in the poem, "Morning Woman."

But that’s exactly who Jay is, and his poetry reflects this in "Dangling Time" about two people on the streets who hung themselves together off the Steel Bridge in Portland, "Two young people died by hanging from a black steel bridge/ monument to its monument/moment to moment; late/ summer day, autumn bridge plus/ young frozen blood."

"Marginal Notes" also contains two prose pieces that reflect Jay’s experiences. "Looking for Dave at Blanchet House," and "ID" that walk you through what it’s like to bounce around like a pinball from service to service to get an ID:

"We don’t do IDs on Monday, he explains. You need to come back tomorrow at 1. p.m. Next day I come back at 1 p.m. They take five people. There was a line, but it was short. I get to the counter and say I want the ID He counts five people ahead of me. He points to my pinhead and says, ‘You’re no. 6. You don’t get no ID You gotta come back tomorrow at 1.’And out the door I go. Missed by a nose. But I know what to do now. I’m getting close in to that wise blood now. Tomorrow is gonna be the one. That tomorrow is gonna get it, sure enough."

Somewhere between a Rambling Jack Elliot ballad and an Upton Sinclair piece, you find Marginal Notes, carrying the torch from those who have walked down those unimaginable streets before. You won’t find a more raw, creative, and unique observation of the streets than this — a clear view of what it’s like to truly live on the road and deal with the realities of taking life several steps too far.

WE STOOD OUT

i supposed i could feel
my soul at that hour
outside the Rescue Mission
cramped warehouse of us, dregs,
we'd been informed
in detail just the night before
while we waited for our meal
and rest.
Dregs and hindrances. We stood out
of the oppressive staleness and steam
of the shelter, where the burnt out
scamps and rogues, deranged, decayed,
the dying among us went to die.
in spite of what you might read,
the shelter does not adjust one
for a new life.
It acquaints the unwary
with a foretaste of death,
the smell of it, the bleating
sound of it, the seemingly endless
night of it, the noise.
leaving each morning
crowding the sidewalk,
we went to be away awhile.
for protection from the past perhaps
or just the night before.
the moaning of burning souls in mind,
the mercy of the gods.

-- Jay Thiemeyer

Taking

Heathman Hotel--$22.00
for all-night parking

on the wet pavement
i stoop down
2c for the taking

-- Jay Thiemeyer

"Marginal Notes" is available online at

rainy nights press

or by mail at:
rainy nights press
P.O.Box 12004,
Portland, Ore. 97212

or at these locations:

Reading Frenzy
921 SW Oak St.

Black Rose Collective Bookstore
4038 N. Mississippi

Did HUD secretary sack contract for Bush critic

2006-05-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

Alphonso, say it aint so... maybe some media attention can finally be diverted to the 10-year plan to end homelessness, and the housing crisis in the U.S.
According to CNN, “Jackson told the real estate conference he killed a deal with a prospective HUD contractor after the owner told him he had "a problem with your president," the Dallas Business Journal reported earlier this week. Even though the contractor had "made a heck of a proposal," Jackson reportedly said, "he didn't get the contract."
"Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president?" Jackson was quoted as saying. "Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."
The remarks prompted Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey to call for Jackson's head. In a letter to Bush, Lautenberg said imposing "political litmus tests" for government contracts violates federal law, "undermines the integrity of our government and leads to the waste of taxpayer dollars.
"If the secretary's statements are an accurate report of his actions, it would be appropriate that he be asked to promptly resign from office," Lautenberg wrote.”

CNN story

Sit/lie to be extended six months

2006-05-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

According to the mayor’s office the obstruction as nuisance, otherwise known as the downtown sit/lie ordinance is set to be extended by six-months. It is due to sun set on June 15, after an 18-month pilot process. A vote for the extension will come before the council on May 24th.

The downtown ordinance has served few functions over the last 18 months, with only 19 tickets being handed out - eight of which were out of downtown leading to all of them being thrown out of court. Of the 11 remaining, one was found not guilty, and the rest did community service, or served time due to other factors.

Interestingly enough, the Portland Business Alliance requested a six-month extension for the ordinance in a letter addressed to the mayor and the council on May 1. The letter also requested the PSAC committee,

heavily influenced

by the PBA, be assigned to look at the ordinance and suggest recommendations.

Instead, the mayor’s office has chosen to develop a separate committee that will look at a broad base of public nuisances, and public safety issues. The committee will have representatives from varying interest groups, including business, and community activists.

People around the table say this is just the beginning of a much larger process to develop a strategy citywide that will target several criminal behaviors. Will sit/lie, and other ordinances go citywide? We will have to wait and see. The mayor’s office claims they are trying to come up with solutions that will avoid the criminalization of its own citizens. Let’s hope so, but don’t count on it.

Portland is at a critical point in deciding what the future of the city will look like. Will we turn into the next Pleasantville, sweeping away social problems on the surface, or will we become a city that can truly invite a healthy urban experience?

While the business community continues to scapegoat people on the streets, and other social ills being experienced around the globe, the people of Portland feel much safer than what we are led to believe.

According to the Neighborhood Citizens Survey conducted in 2005 by the auditor’s office, people in Portland don’t support the constant talking points put out by the Portland Business Alliance, and others saying we have a public safety problem. In fact, the survey shows just the opposite.

Survey

So why are countless city staffers, neighborhood, housing, and homeless advocates, and others spending hundreds of hours, and tax payer money on the issue of public safety in Portland? And why does the PBA continue to lobby for stricture laws downtown when people already feel safe? And why are we looking at possibly expanding these systems citywide when the ones we have in place are failing?

Seems to me we are chasing the end of a rainbow that simply doesn’t exist.

You can also check out Monica Gorack, from the Oregon Law Center's take on sit/lie in the latest Street Roots

Monica Goracke

And the Mercury story

Worse in L.A.

And more on the national perspective at

Sit/Lie ruling from 9th District Court

The fear patrol is at it again (Street Smarts-sit/lie)

2006-05-08T23:49:00.000-07:00

The Downtown Public Safety Action Committee (PSAC) is made up of on-going representatives from various interest groups from the downtown and Old Town/Chinatown Neighborhoods to identify areas of public safety, and serve as an advisory committee for the implementation of long-term community-based strategies to address these identified issues.

Members of PSAC include the Portland Business Alliance, the police bureau, neighborhood representatives, Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI), city hall staffers, homeless agencies and advocates.

The following are excerpts from a document scheduled for review by PSAC this month. (It’s unclear who would use the language for a PR campaign against panhandlers - possibly the Portland Business Alliance, ONI, or maybe the Portland Oregon Visitors Association.)

“Street Smarts
- Plan ahead and know where you’re going. Before leaving your hotel, request directions from the concierge or doorman. Ask the hotel’s staff to recommend safe, well-lighted routes.
- If you need to ask for directions on the street, look first for a green-jacketed Portland ambassador, a police or security officer, or other public employee.
- Whenever possible, travel with a friend or fellow conventioneer when sightseeing, shopping or going to and from meeting facilities.
- Use common safety sense. Be aware of your surroundings. If you feel unsafe, step into a shop or store. Look for a police officer or security personnel.
- Keep close watch on your personal belongings.
- If you have an emergency, call 9-1-1 for Police, Fire, or Emergency Medical Services. You can use any pay phone for free, or use your cell phone.

Panhandling: We all feel compassion for those in need. However, please do not encourage or reward panhandlers by giving money. A simple “No, sorry” is a sufficient reply to requests for spare change.

Aggressive panhandling is illegal in Portland. If someone confronts you or blocks your path and demands money, you do not have to comply. Such intimidation can be reported to the police by calling 9-1-1. Intimidating behavior may also be reported to the Downtown Clean & Safe office.”

Really the group is about spreading fear, as is outlined in the document above. Why would anyone want to visit Portland after reading something like this? Poor people have a right to ask for money (free-speech), organize, and take up public space – it’s that simple. Public space is for everyone.

So, in honor of Street Smarts, I’m asking Portlander’s, and tourists to personally give your extra pocket change to panhandlers downtown this summer.

Even more troubling, PSAC is set to look at the renewal of Portland’s controversial Obstruction as Nuisance ordinance, otherwise known as the sit/lie ordinance that prohibits a person from sitting, or lying on portions of a sidewalk downtown. Many believe the law is selectively enforced against poor and homeless people.

The ordinance has been a political football for years. After the ordinance was declared unconstitutional in 2004, city hall, and varying interest groups, including Sisters of the Road, and Street Roots signed on to an 18-month pilot project that would show outcomes of the ordinance.

The ordinance is set to sunset on June 15.

In a letter sent to the mayor and council on May 1, Portland Business Alliance President, Michael R. Kuykendall says, “The Portland Police Bureau has been able to issue only five citations under the ordinance, and members of the downtown business community and residential communities regularly indicate that the criminal behavior intended to be controlled by the ordinance has only worsened since its passage.” Funny, I thought the ordinance was meant to enforce obstructing a portion of a sidewalk, not to “control criminal behavior.”

The letter sent by Kuykendall goes on to recommend an extension to the current ordinance, while the PSAC working group is, "tasked with conducting this review, and making recommendations to Council.”

Rumor has it, Kuykendall wants to replace the current ordinance with one that has teeth.

The Portland Business Alliance already heads up the flawed Real Change, Spare Change - a program that encourages people to give money to individual homeless agencies instead of panhandlers through a voucher program downtown.

While some will argue this is good process, the reality is the committee is lopsided in the favor of pro-business, and law enforcement. Only Sisters of the Road stands in the way of changing the minds of the PBA, multiple agencies, and the police bureau. And in a feel good town like Portland, that means the damage control patrol are swinging into full gear.

The mayor’s office is smart enough to know that while the committee may hold all the cards for the future of the ordinance, several attorney’s, and dozens of organizations locally, and nationally are keeping a watchful eye on the outcomes of the recommendations by the committee.

You can also check out an article on panhandling in Street Roots from June of 2004, PSAC, and Portland's Real Change, Spare Change program for more context.

Changin' Spangin'

PSAC

Real Change, Not Spare Change

Homeless and housing activists in Seattle continue to roll...

2006-04-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

Philip Dawdy, with the Seattle Weekly may be one of the only mainstream journalists in the country to question the 10-year plan to end homelessness, and continue to bring attention to people on the streets. Today he reported that, “The fracas between the city and SHARE/WHEEL resulted from seemingly simple federal requirements forcing the city to collect personal data on homeless people and the group's insistence that turning over such data would violate the civil rights of the homeless. On April 12, the group and the city reached a brokered agreement after six hours of negotiation and months of public disagreement. Under the agreement, SHARE/WHEEL will turn over required data to the city once a month with the proviso that if individual homeless people refuse to provide data, the city won't cut funding for SHARE/WHEEL.

Rhodes of SHARE/WHEEL says the group's willingness to stick with a threat to erect more tent cities in the absence of shelter funding made the difference. "We're willing to stick together rather than lose our shelters," he says.”

You can read the article here:

Weekly article

The news comes only a month after affordable housing advocates won a major victory in the “Downtown for All!” campaign, which successfully lobbied for the city to force developers to give $18.94 per square foot built downtown to go towards affordable housing.

In a separate article this week in the Weekly, Dawdy also reported, “It's one of those things chock-full of screwy symbolism that you just cannot let pass: In June, the city's Human Services Department, which administers homeless programs among a slew of other social services, will move from its present down-at-the-heels Alaska Building offices on Second Avenue to the heights of the Seattle Municipal Tower, where city staff will literally oversee homeless programs from the 60th floor—in the glassed-over cap just two stories from the top. That will make Al Poole, HSD's director of survival services, the highest-situated government official in the city — hell, the entire state. Above Poole's perch are two investment firms. His boss, Patricia McInturff, will be two floors below him. Judging from the staggering views of Mount Rainier and the Olympics up there, the survival services staff ought to survive quite well — and perhaps think of themselves on a Mount Olympus from which they can toss thunderbolts at those who fail to get on board the 10-year plan to end homelessness.”

Ouch!!!

Sit/lie ruling from 9th Circuit Court

2006-04-17T17:06:00.000-07:00

The LA Times reported on Friday that the “Los Angeles' policy of arresting homeless people for sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks as "an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter" violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and punishment, a federal appeals court ruled today.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, decided in favor of six homeless persons, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The suit challenged the city's practice of arresting persons for violating a municipal ordinance, which states that "no person shall sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or public way."

LA Times article

According to an attorney familiar with the ordinances in Seattle and Portland the ruling doesn’t change much for those cities due to the way the ordinances are written.

This comes at a time when several homeless organizations on the west coast, including Portland’s Street Roots and Sisters of the Road Café, and Seattle’s Real Change have shifted their focus of working on Civil Rights issues locally, and have teamed up with organizations in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles – with the idea of building a social movement that has more influence and vision.

The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) was born in San Francisco several months back when the former Executive Director of the San Francisco Coalition for the Homeless invited members from homeless organizations together to build an organization that could work together on Civil Rights, and housing issues up and down the west coast.

Last month, WRAP produced an extrodianary piece that

(WRAP article)

ran in more than seven street newspapers in North America, and was featured on the

Street News Service

that outlines how the Federal Government has created a rats nest concerning housing.
More to come…

Seattle is building towards the sky - on the ground, the fight continues

2006-04-06T20:09:00.000-07:00

Housing activists in Seattle are celebrating this week after winning a battle in an on-going tug-of-war with developers over the future of Seattle’s downtown. In a new plan spearheaded by City Council member Peter Steinbrueck, Real Change and SAGE, $18.94 a square foot built by developers will go toward affordable housing.

According to the Seattle Times, “That fee could help build 600 units over 20 years…A similar fee already charged to office towers could produce another 2,000 units, according to city planners.”

Affordable housing is only a small part of the larger plan. Seattle can expect to have 50-60 more high-rises built downtown in the next 20 years. Read more about it here.

Seattle Times article

And while this comes as a major victory to housing advocates, attention is being diverted to the outcomes of more than 200 shelter beds ran by SHARE/WHEEL, a lefty shelter provider. The organization also runs two tent cities.

The city has threatened to cut the shelter beds because the group refuses to take part in Safe Harbors (HMIS) – a data management system meant to track people on the streets to curb duplication in services. In return, SHARE/WHEEL is threatening to launch three tent cities in Seattle’s public parks.

Real Change has come out in solidarity with SHARE/WHEEL – considering 8,000 people are homeless in King County. You can read more about Real Chang’s take on the issue here:

Real Change take

Rumor has it SHARE/WHEEL has offered to compromise with the city, agreeing to take a monthly count of people who would be required to sign their initials, and date of birth on a sign-up sheet. The monthly tally sheet would then have clear directions for the peer ran program that people can opt out of signing due to privacy concerns - all of which is pissing the city off.

A closed-door meeting will be mediated on Monday between the city, and SHARE/WHEEL by outside parties. One advocate says, while human service providers have different feelings on the issue, the general consensus is - the city should work with SHARE/WHEEL because they’ve acted in good faith. If not, “Everybody’s going to be fucked, because it’s going to hurt the implementation of the 10-year plan to end homelessness. Two-hundred more people would be sleeping on the streets.”

The next week should reveal more.

Housing and homelessness red hot in Seattle

2006-03-25T13:55:00.000-08:00

The homeless and housing front in Seattle is red hot!

A showdown between local tent cities, and shelter provider, SHARE/WHEEL, and the City of Seattle may have implications for future organizing efforts around the country concerning a data collection system called Safe Harbors – otherwise known as the Homeless Management Information Strategies (HMIS). The computerized database collects individual information about people obtaining services: name, date of birth, race, and gender.

According to the Department of Housing of Urban Development (HUD), “Unsheltered homeless people are an important subpopulation of homeless persons and their characteristics and needs must be accommodated within any strategy to reduce homelessness and help eliminate chronic homelessness. Collecting good baseline data about this subpopulation is essential to understanding the causes of homelessness and to designing effective responses, and can be used as a basis for comparison in future years.”

HMIS is a means to collect data on this “subpopulation.” The question has become what if homeless people don’t want data collected on them? Some organizations, including SHARE/WHEEL cry civil liberties. Some providers, and cities around the country say this argument is overblown. Unfortunately, due to domestic spying scandals, and a rash of civil liberty violations at a Federal level cities don't have much of a leg to stand on - especially considering this is a HUD requirement being doled out by so-called experts in Washington DC.

Regardless, the message being sent to human-service providers is clear - don’t implement HMIS, than get your funding cut.
Many grassroots non-profits around the country have bellyached about implementing HMIS, but very few have resisted.

SHARE/WHEEL operates 250 low-cost shelter beds, and two tent cities throughout the Seattle Metropolitan Area. The organization has refused to take part in Safe Harbors (HMIS), prompting the city to cut $270,000 worth of funding. The funding cut was due to take place April 1.

This week, the city extended that deadline another month, hoping to find answers to the political storm developing in the city.

A bitter battle has been brewing for months, after the Raging Grannies hosted a die-in at City Hall protesting the cuts, and SHARE/WHEEL has promised to erect three new tent cities in public parks if the cuts take place.

Other shelter providers are facing cuts as well. You can read more in an editorial this week from Real Change, and the Seattle Weekly’s coverage at

Seattle Weekly article

Real Change editorial

Meanwhile, homeless and housing advocates are pushing hard on the city, and it’s developers to step up to the plate and offer $20 a square ft. to go towards affordable housing in the new downtown density plan.

Over the last couple of months organizing efforts have made some amazing strides towards reaching this goal. After a successful t-shirt (Developers stole my city and all I got was this lousy t-shirt) drive gaining lots of media attention, thousands of e-mails, rallies, public events, and meetings with city officials spearheaded by housing advocates, the battle is finally coming to closure on April 3.

Word on the street is, housing advocates are going to get $17-19 a square foot going towards affordable housing – an amazing feat when you consider the power brokers advocating against this are the business and realtor associations.

Seattle Times

Seattle PI article

Real Change article

The fight is far from over. Contact Seattle City Council members, and the Mayor today and ask for $20 a square foot to go towards affordable housing, and ask that the city reconsider it’s funding cuts for SHARE/WHEEL.

Sally Clark, (206) 684-8802, sally.clark@seattle.gov
Richard Conlin 684-8805, richard.conlin@seattle.gov
David Della 684-8806, david.della@seattle.gov
Jan Drago 684-8801, jan.drago@seattle.gov
Jean Godden 684-8807, jean.godden@seattle.gov
Nick Licata 684-8803, nick.licata@seattle.gov
Richard McIver 684-8800, richard.mciver@seattle.gov
Tom Rasmussen 684-8808, tom.rasmussen@seattle.gov
Peter Steinbrueck 684-8804, peter.steinbrueck@seattle.go
Mayor Greg Nickels, (206) 684-4000

Get out this weekend, and say, "No to the War"

2006-03-13T23:24:00.000-08:00

With the barrage of bad news coming at us these days, I find myself rediscovering every few months just how crazy things have gotten. It goes in cycles of being dumbfounded, pissed off, numb, and back again. I'm back again.

We’ve all been told about the anti-war protestors who spit on soldiers after coming home from Vietnam – an occurrence that right-wing conservatives have thrown back into the faces of progressives over dinner table debates since the 1960’s. I’m still not sure where that came from, but you really can’t argue the point to someone who is willing to bring it up in the first place.

Thirty years after Vietnam a lot has changed concerning veterans.

More than 50 veterans, a dozen of which are Iraqi and Afghanistan war veterans are running for office across the country –all but one of those candidates are Democrats. One woman, Tammy Duckworth, a candidate for Congress running in Illinois lost both legs in Iraq as a helicopter pilot. Let's hope the Dems don't mess this one up...

More so, while progressives set around the proverbial water troth, and bitch about the far left’s failure to mobilize an anti-war movement, veterans have stood up and sparked the waning push to stop the war. It’s not a fire yet, but there’s sparks.

At the other end of the spectrum, religious fanatics are being just that, fanatics. At a soldiers funeral in Flushing, Michigan five protestors who believe America is being punished because of homosexuality heckled a procession by yelling out, "Thank God for dead soldiers," according Yahoo News. Check out the story;

Thank God for dead soldiers

Yeah, wow...

Most cities across the country are holding rallies. Get out - if not just for the walk, bring a drum, the kids, a yo-yo, your latte's, whatever, but make some noise, yo...

Demonstrate to Stop the War on the 3rd Anniversary of the US Invasion of Iraq  Saturday, March 18, 2006--Rain or shine!

1 PM: Rally at the Federal Building, 2nd and Marion, Seattle
2 PM: March through downtown and back to the Federal Building
The route will pass by Westlake Center, and will return for closing remarks to the Federal Building.

Rally speakers include: Mrs. Eman Khammas, Iraqi human rights activist, Celso Tolman, member, International Longshore & Wharehouse Union (ILWU), Rev. Gwen Hall, Jorge Torres, College Not Combat campaign, Music by Jim Page

The camel's back is breaking

2006-03-10T01:39:00.000-08:00

I would like to preface this post by saying I have nothing against the idea of religious organizations working to end poverty. We all come different experiences, and backgrounds, and do good work, but…

The Bush Administration, and Homeland Security’s recent actions, calling for corporate America to open it’s pocketbook to faith-based charities is the latest example of why we are headed into the lion’s den concerning poverty in America.

By backing such inane policies such as the 10-year plan to end homelessness, and the idea that charity models can save America from millions of people falling between the cracks - poor and working people are being led like lambs to the slaughter.

More so, the move to shift funding from non-religious organizations to religious charities is another example of the Administration working to bridge Church and State.

"One of the things that really inspires me is when I get to meet folks who are on the front line of changing America one soul at a time,” says President Bush, according to Knight Ridder Newspaper. “Government can pass law and it can hand out money, but it cannot love."

He went on to say, “I believe all of us, no matter if we're private or public, ought to allow religious organizations to compete for funding on an equal basis, not for the sake of faith, but for the sake of results.”

Another article by the Christian Post quotes, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff saying, “Faith-based and community organizations played an “instrumental role” in response to Hurricane Katrina. They continue to be an essential partner in helping victims in the Gulf States region rebuild their lives and communities.”

Homeland Security has used the New Orleans debacle as a wedge to creep into the lives of poor people by arguing that military, and Homeland Security can be responsible for responses to natural disaster. The truth is, we have yet to see justice for the lack of response to Katrina, and the Administration is using New Orleans to promote it’s own agenda not only through Faith-Based approaches, but through programs like Homeless Connect, a volunteer event geared towards serving the homeless. It’s an insult to poor and working people everywhere.

The Federal Homeless agency’s Web site has touted the Homeless Connect as being “central to the community response to Hurricane Katrina, continuing to grow as an effective means of providing services and engaging the entire community.” Have we already forgotten scores upon scores of people died because of the lack of response? Economic racism is still being doled out to thousands of gulf-coast citizens scattered across the states.

The following are excerpts from a press release issued by the White House yesterday on the subject of Faith Based Initiatives:

"The President's Initiative Is Producing Real Results For Americans In Need

Continued Increase In Federal Dollars To Faith-Based Organizations. Recent data from a review of more than 23,000 grants provided by the U.S. Departments of Heath and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Justice (DOJ), Labor (DOL), Education, and Agriculture, and the U.S. Agency for International Development showed:

Helping The Poor Access New, Effective Programs. President Bush has created programs that mentor children of prisoners, train re-entering prisoners, treat addicts in the program of their choosing, discourage at-risk youth from gang activity, and provide technical assistance to small organizations seeking to help more people in need. From 2002 to 2006, President Bush requested $1.35 billion for these targeted initiatives, and Congress has appropriated $742 million. The President's 2007 budget calls for an additional $323 million for these programs, including funds for a new effort combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in minority communities.

Victory In The Federal Courts. Two important recent Federal Court decisions upheld President Bush's approach to FBOs and their rights. In American Jewish Congress v. Corporation for National and Community Service, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the right of AmeriCorps grant recipients to teach religious and secular subjects in religiously affiliated schools. In January 2006, the Supreme Court declined review of the decision, leaving the Court of Appeals' ruling intact. In October 2005, in the case of Lown v. Salvation Army, a Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that churches and religious organizations retain their hiring autonomy when they receive Federal financial assistance. The court recognized FBOs do not become an arm of the government merely by receiving funding to provide social services.

Protecting The Rights Of Faith-Based Organizations. In February 2006, President Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which reauthorized welfare reform for another five years. The legislation also extended for five years a policy called Charitable Choice, which allows faith-based groups providing social services to receive Federal funding without altering their religious identities or changing their hiring practices.

Ending Discrimination Against Faith-Based Organizations. During the President's first term, Federal agencies promulgated fifteen final rules, including general rules covering funding from seven agencies; three regulations implementing Charitable Choice statutes; a DOL regulation implementing the amendment of EO 11246; and three regulations changing discriminatory language in specific HUD, Veterans' Affairs, and DOL programs. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Commerce published an interim final rule in August 2005 strengthening the Department's commitment to a level playing field for faith-based and community organizations. These regulations all clarify FBOs' eligibility to participate in Federal social service programs on the same basis as any other private organization and prohibits religious discrimination by distributors of Federal funds.

Compassion Following The Gulf Coast Hurricanes. The compassionate response of faith-based and community groups to Gulf Coast hurricane victims is a reminder of the vital importance of these groups and the President's Initiative. The new DHS Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives will help integrate faith-based and community organizations into Federal, State, and local emergency response plans, enabling cooperation between these grassroots groups and various levels of government in disaster response efforts."

The Chicago Tribune reports that through the new faith-based approach, “When Chicago's Night Ministry opens a temporary shelter for homeless teenagers this spring, it can thank the White House for $50,000 in "compassion capital.”

More than $600 million has been cut from the Housing and Urban Development’s homeless assistance programs - while HUD and other Human Services organizations are allocating "compassion capital" to programs from Head Start to recovery programs, to organizations dealing with homelessness.

I would urge anyone who donates money to organizations working with people in poverty to do your homework, and chose accordingly.

While I’m not arguing against organizations that use a charity model, history has proven time and again that charities do not save people from poverty – only jobs, and stable living conditions save people from poverty. The livelihoods of America’s poor and working people are being sold out from underneath us in the name of God, and bread.

The service worker getting paid minimum wage today shouldn't be tomorrow’s homeless person, and the homeless person today shouldn't have to chose between being served by an institution, and a low-wage job offering no way out of poverty. To quote an old Union phrase, “We want bread, yes, but we want roses too!” And we want some affordable housing, jobs, and health-care to boot!

Street Newspapers – Who said a vendor’s not a worker?

2006-03-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people in the community will ask, “What do street newspapers do for the homeless?” Instead the question should be, “What do homeless people do for our community?”

I’m still amazed some social service programs resist recognizing street vendors as workers altogether. Both Street Roots, and Real Change take pride in their editorial professionalism. Both Adam Hyla, Real Change, and Joanne Zuhl, Street Roots head up those respected departments, and like any publication – it doesn’t come easy.

Both papers are proving that while on one hand, you can have a program meant to benefit poor people, on the other, you can have a professional alternative newspapers – not a charity, but a quality product meant for the community at large.

Last year based upon paper sales Real Change in Seattle, Washington put $500,000 directly into the hands of poor people. The vendors selling the newspaper in Portland gained nearly $200,000 in a much smaller market. More or less, both newspapers are responsible for generating (not taking away) nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in the Pacific Northwest’s economy in 2005.

Some critics argue that selling a newspaper is not enough to get people off the streets. For some, that’s a true statement, but it’s not entirely true. Several vendors at both papers sell more than 1,000 papers a month – sometimes as high 1400 equaling around $1,000 dollars for that vendor. All of those vendors have been able to end their homelessness through the sales of the newspaper.

A large number of vendors sell from 200 to 800 papers a month, while several sell anywhere from 50 to 200 papers. The majority of vendors are homeless, but many are living in some form of low-income housing.

For people on the streets the benefits are being able to control their own labor by setting hours, and spending money how they choose. For example, you won’t find the majority of vendors in a line waiting for services (unless it’s for housing) – they can buy meals, hygiene essentials, and other items from the money made by selling the paper.

While most vendors do access services, they tend to be more health related than say, for a meal at a soup kitchen. Some vendors double it up by accessing services that provide basic necessities, and saving the money made by paper sales for greener pastures, so to speak.

Here is a quick and dirty of the things I saw vendors spending money on this week at RC: rent, medicine (not covered), animal care, hotels, car, RV, travel expenses, gas, hygiene items, public transportation, the movies, a walkman, nice clothes, identification, packages home to love ones, often times kids, or grandkids, and yes, sometimes beer, and tobacco. Funny, the list doesn’t sound all that different than most of my housed friends, and family.

It all comes down to choices, and hope, both things that are sorely missing in the massive social service industry we’ve built for poor people. It’s ironic that one of the urban myths associated with being homeless, or poor is that poor people are products of “bad choices” made in life. In response to this thinking, institutions have stripped those choices from poor people, and replaced them with mountains of bureaucracy – hours and regulations, visitor restrictions, waiting lists, long lines for services, etc.

When you don’t have a pot to piss in, your only choice is to do for yourself – and from my standpoint I see hundreds of vendors working, and trying to do something for themselves and for the community.

Of course, some vendors, or co-workers may say, “Israel – he’s full of shit.” But hey, that’s there choice.

So the next time you hear someone say, “Real Change, get your Real Change! Street Roots – hot of the presses!” Buy a paper, and give it a chance – you might be surprised.

Zoned Out - who wins and who loses in downtown

2006-02-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

The debate over the Seattle’s downtown density plan by Mayor Greg Nickels heated up this week, after more than 120 people attended a forum at the Gethsemane Lutheran Church on Thursday, hosted by Real Change, the Seattle Alliance for Good Jobs and Housing for Everyone (SAGE), Seattle Human Services Coalition, Transportation Choices Coalition, and Meals Partnership Coalition, called – Zoned Out: Who wins and who loses in the new downtown plan.

The forum was kicked-off by an interactive trivia game facilitated by Joshua Heim, from Meals Partnership Coalition called, “Wait, wait – don’t evict me.” If attendees answered questions correctly, they received a t-shirt provided by Real Change saying, “Developers stole my city, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

Four City Council Members attended the forum, including Peter Steinbrueck, Jean Godden, David Della, and new appointee, Sally Clark, along with a hodge-podge of housing activists, low-income renters, journalists, union organizers, and other concerned citizens.

The mayor’s new plan is meant to be an environmental friendly plan to thwart sprawl, and bring high paying office jobs, and new residents downtown by building more densely situated, and taller buildings with open green space. On it’s face, it looks like great urban planning, but it’s social ramifications fall well short.

Housing advocates want $20 per square foot sold by developers to be diverted to an affordable housing bonus for new residential buildings. The current plan is slated at $10.

Power brokers say if ten more dollars are added to the plan for housing, developers will go elsewhere.

Council Member Steinbrueck disagrees, saying, "The decision was determined behind closed doors with no public involvement, no input, no council, no staff, nobody. I didn’t even know these meetings where going on,” said Steinbrueck. “It’s like walking into a permit office, and deciding what I’m going to pay for my permit.”

After inquiring about profit margins with the developers Steinbrueck in his own words said, “the developers responded with it’s none of your f*@#ing business what we make downtown.”

It’s at that point that Steinbrueck commissioned a new study for the plan. The difference between the mayor’s, and Steinbrueck's plan is 1.6%. The mayor’s plan for $10 a square foot going towards affordable housing would cut into the developers pockets by 1%, compared to the new plan for $20, at 2.6% “Is that going to drive developers away? I don’t think so,” says Steinbrueck. “That’s pocket change.”

Condos downtown are currnetly being sold from $500, to $2100 per square foot.

Sharon Lee, the Executive Director of the Low Income Housing Institute, who also spoke at the forum said, “It’s an outrage that it’s another year with no more money for the 10-year plan to end homelessness, no more money for housing in South Lake Union, housing in the International District, and housing in Pioneer Square. These are all downtown neighborhoods crying out for affordable housing.” Lee encouraged people to not only look at the density plan itself, but to look at the city budget for significant resources for low-income housing.

Tim Allen, a security officer living in low-income housing talked to the audience about his experience of living and working in downtown for more than 19-years, and being forced to move out of the downtown that he loves.

Allen's presentation highlighted the irony of being a security officer working to protect the very office buildings, and condominiums that have priced him out of the market.

Transportation/environmental/labor impacts of the new plan:

Fearing a ripple of sprawl in surrounding areas - many believe the new plan; minus adequate public transportation would be a nightmare.Critics argue that if we’re not careful we may find ourselves looking more like Atlanta, or Los Angeles, than the utopia sought.

According to the mayor’s website “by 2024 it is projected that this area will produce 50,000 new jobs, and over 22,000 new housing units.” Due to an archaic transportation system people who can’t afford to live in downtown will have to drive - thus attributing to sprawl, and more pollution.

One of the questioned posed during the “Wait, wait – don’t evict me” was if you take the bus from a location in the suburbs, and work at a job downtown at 5:30AM - when would you have to leave to be on-time? The answer was the night before, with more than 2 hours of idle time before your shift even starts the next morning. Thousands of workers already face this dilemma.

In a joint press release with former Vice President, Al Gore on February 16, Nickels said, “We have a lot to be proud of in Seattle. But we have a lot of work left to do. We will continue to show the world that we can power a city without toasting the planet. The time to act is now."

Never-mind, the mayor axed an extensive monorail plan last year, and now wants to build a tunnel for cars marked in the billions to replace of the Alaskan Viaduct due to traffic congestion.

Could Oregonians feel the ripples of more growth in Seattle? The answer is yes.

Seattle dumps around 900 million tons of garbage in landfills out of state in Arlington, Oregon, a town 140 miles east of Portland on the Columbia River.

According to Brent Stav, Senior Public Relations Specialist with the Seattle Public Utilities, commercial office space and restaurants account for the cities leading waste provider at 40%, meanwhile apartments, condos, and single occupancies, which will be the majority of the 22,000 new housing units, yield the least in recycling – with only 25% of those individuals recycling at all.

The City of Seattle currently recycles around 40% of all the waste produced. San Francisco recycles more than 60% of its waste, while Portland is at 54%. While the city may be ahead of the curve, it’s far from being the leader in the fight against global warming as claimed by the mayor.

More so, Seattle is a union town, but many fear the 50,000 projected jobs will not come with fair-wages, and health care. Union leaders are asking the city to step up to the plate, and require construction companies, and developers to hire at a fair wage. Not to mention thousands of service industry jobs that will be created to fulfill the influx of high-paid office workers in the new plan. Union organizers are ready to pounce.

Council Member Steinbrueck, followed Sally Clark, who was less than inspiring at Thursdays event. “We are putting a human face on the issues we are discussing,” says the council member. “This issue is not about a city for tall, it’s about a city for all," pointing to the banner behind him saying, “A Downtown For All.”

The sky is the limit; it's whose sky that has become the question.

Portland's plan to end homelessness held hostage by feds

2006-02-20T16:49:00.000-08:00

Nearly 30 cities, including Portland, have participated in the San Francisco-born Project Homeless Connect.

Project Homeless Connect is a day-long event bringing together an assortment of social services, public officials, and community volunteers to offer a smorgasbord of services to people experiencing poverty.

In December, 26 cities participated in a National Project Homeless Connect Day. According to the Bush Administrations Interagency Council on Homelessness “most participating communities organized one-stops run by volunteers offering homeless people assistance with housing, health care, legal issues, benefits enrollment, treatment and other basic needs.”

At each event, San Francisco is averaging more than 1,000 people seeking services, and volunteers from the community who show up to help the homeless during the event. Last month Portland’s first Connect drew hundreds of volunteers, and nearly a 1,000 people seeking services.

The usual suspects are spearheading the program nationwide - led by Bush’s right hand man on homelessness, media savvy Phillip Mangano, executive director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Other homeless council members at the federal level include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and Jim Towey with the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, to name a few — all experts, no doubt, on ending homelessness.

The agency’s Web site has touted the project as being “central to the community response to Hurricane Katrina, continuing to grow as an effective means of providing services and engaging the entire community.” I’m not sure if anyone has informed the agency that the post-Katrina response has been disastrous.

10-year plan to end what? (homelessness)

Meanwhile, the National Alliance to End Homeless, a non-profit in Washington D.C. that prides itself for dreaming up the idea of the 10-year plan to end homelessness, released a report this month praising the administration for adding $209 million to the Housing and Urban Developments homeless assistance programs. It also pointed out its disappointment with the $600 million dollar cut from the department’s budget.

According to the report, the administration is proposing cuts reducing housing assistance for the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including the elderly and persons with disabilities. Two major rural housing programs were cut by $256 million, along with proposed cuts of $261 million to the public housing capital fund. The Community Development Block Grant is also on the chopping block, which funds work programs for low-income individuals.

The report also states, “The administration is proposing deep cuts to several programs that support low-income households, including cuts to the Medicaid program that will affect its ability to serve chronically homeless individuals, the elimination of the Community Services Block Grant, and $500 million in cuts to the Social Services Block whose programs stabilize families and prevent homelessness.

Back to Project Homeless Connect

Project Homeless Connect was developed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and company. Some insiders say the project is window dressing for Gavin’s pursuit of greener pastures projected in his political future. In other words, the project can’t fail — at least in the public’s eyes. That’s why it’s not surprising that a “thank you” is noted on the Council’s Web site personally thanking Gavin for the blueprints of the program that is now making its way around the U.S.

But in reality, neither the 10-year plans nor the Homeless Connect programs offer much hope for people experiencing poverty in the U.S. — something insiders are well aware of.

Already, organizations around the country handing out vouchers for housing first programs highlighted in the 10-year plan are scrambling to figure out how exactly they are going to keep people in housing considering there isn’t any housing, and the vouchers only last for so long.

Forget about the thousands of people waiting for Section 8 vouchers – they’re no longer a priority. At the end of the day, targeting the chronically homeless has become more of a public safety issue than a housing issue. This is not about a right to housing, it’s about getting the undeserving poor off America’s streets – while millions of unemployed and underpaid workers struggle for existence.

Politicians and vested agencies have been able to manipulate the debate through the process of the 10-year plan to end homelessness. Recognizing this, many grassroots organizations have shifted their energy into building strategic plans, creating think tanks, and strengthening alliances for the future.

It took a hurricane to expose poverty to the larger public, but even in the storm’s lingering aftermath, the national public still refuses to address poverty honestly and effectively. By shielding themselves with a veneer of 10-year plans and service conventions, cities are complicit in the federal government’s shortsighted policies that will perpetuate poverty for generations. And, as we’re witnessing in New Orleans, no amount of volunteers and one-stop shops can plaster over a system that’s crumbling at its core.

Published in the current edition of Street Roots.

My opionated take on the po po, and social services...

2006-02-15T23:49:00.000-08:00

I just watched some of Seattle’s finest arrest a crack dealer. I also witnessed a white officer jab a black man in the ribs several times. At least a dozen people walked by. I smoked a cigarette. No one really paid much attention. The police read him his rights, put him in a squad car, and hauled him off to King County. The neighborhood went about its business - life in the city, right?

Every month I do a series of trainings for the newest recruits with the Seattle Police Department. The young officers have just finished at the academy. They will be hitting the streets in the next week, or so. I’ve been asked to represent Real Change, and give a brief overview of homelessness and the newspaper.

My training follows a social worker talking about detecting child neglect, and abuse, and a man who works with the State of Washington. His job is to uncover fraud committed by poor people who take advantage of the system. Out of respect, I’ll keep my opinions to myself on the latter. Although, I will say the idea that people experiencing homelessness, and poverty are at fault for wasted tax-dollars is sickening. We live in a corporate culture that has brainwashed society into blaming poor people for wasting billions of dollars that are going towards war profiteering, and tax-breaks for the rich.

Yeah, we’ve all heard the argument before – the welfare mom who keeps having kids to make money off the state, the homeless guy who wants to be homeless, and the immigrants who come to steal jobs away from American workers.

A recruit setting next to me today couldn’t have been more than 19 years old. He was quiet, and respectful. All of the recruits are respectful. It’s not so much the idea that police officers have it out for poor people – it’s more about the culture they are introduced into. Every time I do trainings I get a different vibe. Sometimes the group is responsive, and eager to learn and respectful to what you’re saying, other times it’s like talking to a brick wall.

A kid walking out into the world armed with a gun and a badge is one issue. It’s the information entrenched into young officers minds that is the real danger. The recruits are armed to the teeth with disinformation provided by various institutions about why poor people are the enemy.

The Serge that brings the recruits in is an interesting fellow who always shows respect. You can tell he’s a hard man, and no doubt seen some crazy shit in his life.

Being a lefty writer, freak, and organizer I have been on both sides of that fence.

I’ve been on the side explaining to an officer that yes, that was the last of the pot found in the car. Only for the officer to come back and say, “What the hell is this? I thought you said that was it?” - Oops. (Funny thing was, they overlooked a film canister full of pot, and the next day after spending the night in jail we drove away laughing.)

I’ve also witnessed cops kicking the shit out of protesters at the Naval Yards when I was arrested at the WTO, and being interrogated for hours because of my political beliefs.

On the flip side, in Portland, we (fellow organizers) spent a lot of time working and negotiating with the police bureau trying to reach common ground on how laws where being enforced with people on the streets. Sometimes, you couldn’t help but think that the Commander, or the liaison for the police department was setting across from you thinking, “What the hell are we doing wasting our time with this fool?” Knowing full well that it didn’t matter what we said, or did, they where going to do what they wanted, and that was that. Other times we made real strides, and built the necessary relationships with the po po.

No doubt, the police in urban environments spend a lot of time being makeshift social workers for a system that is broken. I don’t believe that most police officers enjoy moving people on the streets from one place to another, or having to take a junkie into the station. They are good people. Of course like anything, you have your assholes, often times hardened from years on the job.

You see the same thing in the social service world. Sometimes social workers who treat poor people like they need to be fixed drives me batty. When I hear the word client, or customer in the social services it makes me want to cringe. We’ve built a system that acts as if people should be grateful for their own human rights.

And more so, when you talk on topics such as this with people in the field they freeze up, and get defensive. They start treating you like the crazy one. Then comes the lecture about how somebody somewhere is the reason that this is all happening, and people are just doing there job. Fair enough. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a loaded game, and it’s going to take more than good soldiers following blindly to create real change, pardon the pun. The political will to end fight poverty doesn’t start with the police, nor the social service industry – it starts with the people who are sucking wind.

It’s not a radical notion that being poor is a social product of a broken system. Continuing to treat both junkies, and poor people like clients and criminals, filling our county jails with people experiencing mental illness, and adding to the largest prison industry in the world is the real fraud that should be being investigated.

But hey, nobody asked me, that’s why I write to you on this humble little blog that could.

Tickety-tack the ref's on crack

2006-02-06T18:39:00.000-08:00

Seeing that in my first blog I predicted a Seahawks win, I’m forced to at least say a few words. I write this on my way back from Portland after watching the Super Bowl with friends in the Rose City. I haven’t had the stomach to read the sports page yet today.

I can only imagine the headlines - “The Bus goes out in style,” “Three plays win game,” and “One for the thumb.”

How about, “Officials sport new uniforms – black and yellow pinstripes.”

I jumped out my seat on more than one occasion watching the Seahawks drive up and down the field on Pittsburg's fumbling defense only to watch in disbelief as Seattle was jacked in the worst officiated Super Bowl I've seen.

The pass interference call against Seattle in the end zone was like calling Michael Jordan for traveling in Game 7 of the NBA finals. Did you see that love tap? Ah, position.

And let’s see - a penalty on the quarterback for tackling a defensive back below the knees after an interception. What?

And let’s not even talk about the goal-line stand. Can we say 4th and inches? Yes, it was 4th and inches. Finally, when the officials almost called Hasselback for a fumble in the 4th Quarter while the Steels celebrated with four minutes left to go I accepted the Seahawks loss to the almighty Steelers in what I’m calling “The tickety-tack the ref’s on crack Super Bowl XL.”

Yes, two missed field goals, dropped passes, bad coaching – yeah, yeah, yeah.

Believe it, or not I’m not a fanatical football fan. Well, yes I am.

Rocket poetry, politics and the Seahawks

2006-01-29T18:33:00.000-08:00

Blogging has allowed writers like myself to in one swoop highlight other published work, archive material, and offer my humble opinions about the world around us.

The rocket was a nickname given to me – one of more than a dozen I’ve gathered over the years. The poetry is just that, poetry. So, we have Rocket Poetry.

Where the catfish meets the road has more than one meaning during these uncertain times. I love catfish, and the road is just fine by me.

I’ve been watching Seahawks football for18 weeks now. One week away from the Super Bowl, and I write this blog thinking to myself - what do normal people actually do on Sunday afternoons?

One of the reasons I love the Pacific Northwest is sports take a back seat to politics, and the arts, including music. While there are a number of people sporting Seahawks gear around town, for the most part – people could care less. I was in a bustling coffee shop this morning, and went to lunch at a busy café today. Didn’t hear a whisper about the Super Bowl. Instead of Super Bowl wagers, I heard people debating how many months before we saw impeachment hearings. I heard 10 months, more than a year, and that it will never happen.

The Dems have to take back some seats in the House and Senate this year. And working people and progressives have to push the Dems who can’t just fall in line behind the Republicans who are kicking the shit out of anybody who gets in the way.

In Oregon, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Vermont Green Party candidates are hoping to steal some seats at local and state levels. Let’s hope people have gotten over the Nader scapegoat syndrome. Seattle has little patience for a 3rd party – it’s Democrat from top to bottom. It’s also one of the most expensive cities on earth. You tell me.

Personally, I’d set up shop in Little Rock, and hire a couple of thousand community organizers from Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Missouri. Start spreading the word. “We want our country back.” The Dems have to take back the Midwest, and the mid-south. It can be done. You just have to have the right people on the ground organizing. You can’t have a college liberal from out of state walking into some trailer park in Missouri more worried about the cockroaches in the kitchen, and the pit-bull tied up in the yard than talking to people about taking their lives back. You have to have people that speak the language on the ground doing the work – something that was sorely missing the last election season.

Katrina’s winds and high water busted more than a hole in the levies in New Orleans – it busted a hole two miles wide through the institution itself – throw in a failing war, millions of underpaid workers, housing shortages, and it being ok to spy on people like me, an American citizen, and avid football fan, we have a giant shit burger. I would call that a catfish on the road. In fact, I would call that a whole lot of catfish on the road.

Of course, all this doesn’t change the fact that I will be jumping up and down like a crazed monkey next week during the game. The young unknown linebackers from Seattle are going to shine. People from around the country have been saying the Hawks are soft. More than 2,000 yards on the ground, and 50+ sacks doesn’t seem all that soft to me. Seattle beats Pittsburg 27- 21.

As for the impeachment, I’d say by Christmas the impeachment of the President of the United States will be a discussion topic in more than just coffee shops, and café’s in liberal Seattle, and other islands sprinkled throughout the country.

(I'm also including works published elsewhere in my first post. Enjoy.)

Blogging in Iran - a book review

2006-01-27T21:41:00.000-08:00

We Are Iran: the Persian Blogs
By Nasrin Alavi
Soft Skull Press, 2005

Iran is proving to the rest of the world that, thanks to the power of weblogs, no totalitarian government will ever again be able to suppress the ability of people to communicate their inner thoughts, desires, political beliefs, or views on history and current events.

And more so, it’s becoming impossible for dictatorships to keep information from the outside world out of their subjects’ daily lives. To break the mind control of those in power, all you need is a computer and access to the Internet.

Two-thirds of Iran’s population is under 30, and for the most part technologically savvy and more than willing to share opinions about topics ranging from dating to how to avoid detention from the state or harassment from the neighborhood militia’s “Morality Police.” Iran’s blogsphere allows a public debate on key figures, politicians, poets, and pop icons.

“You have heard the story of my generation many times. A generation who grew up on bombs, rockets, war, and revolutionary slogans,” one anonymous blogger writes in Nasrin Alavi’s anthology of the Iranian blogosphere. “Who can forget? For my generation, talking to a member of the opposite sex was akin to adultery, and its punishments are better left unsaid. These are just partial moments in all of our bitter lives: each and every one of us could write a book about them.”

The Internet in Iran has become a beacon of light for journalists and editors who refuse to abide censorship.

Part of the movement has grown beyond its borders. In September 2001, Hossein Derakhshan, a young Iranian who had recently moved to Canada, set up one of the very first weblogs in Farsi, his native language. In response to a request from a reader, Derakhshan posted a how-to-blog guide in Farsi. Derakhshan currently writes in both English and Farsi on his popular blog Editor: Myself at www.hoder.com.

By 2002, more than 100 newsprint and online publications were shut down by the government. Hundreds of journalists and editors went to prison during the crackdown. In 2003, Sina Motallebi was the first blogger in the world to be imprisoned for the contents his blog. Motallebi spent 23 days in prison and credited his release from pressure mounted through the Iranian blogosphere. He has since been exiled and lives in Holland with his family, where he is an advocate for free speech.

Many journalists and editors did not return from prison, but those who did became even more determined to utilize the Internet as a means of distributing the news. Some of them went underground or began to use pen names or post articles and opinions anonymously. Astonishingly, Iran has the fourth-largest web community in the world today.

Alavi also sheds light on the fact that Iran is one of the most educated and literate countries in the world. Ironically, the very educational programs established after the 1979 revolution that forced people to read, write, and study Islam are now responsible for millions of young people’s ability to utilize the Internet and read and write whatever they choose.

“I keep a weblog so that I can breath in this suffocating air,” wrote an anonymous poster. “In a society where one is taken to history’s abattoir for the mere crime of thinking, I write so as not to be lost in my despair. So that I feel that I am somewhere where my calls for justice can be uttered. I write a weblog so that I can shout, cry, and laugh, and do the things that they have taken away from me in Iran today.”

We Are Iran: the Persian Blogs is for anyone who wants a glimpse not only into Iran’s modern-day culture, but at the tools that will be used for years to come for critical thinkers and common people who are all too often cast aside by the powerful elite.

Published January 2006, Real Change, Seattle, Washington.

Interview with Genny Nelson, co-founder of Sisters of the Road

2006-01-27T21:39:00.000-08:00

Genny Nelson has been a community organizer working with people experiencing poverty in Portland since 1972. She is the co-founder of one of the nation’s most unique gathering places for individuals to barter for a hot meal and build community, Sisters of the Road Café. Today, 26 years since its inception, the café serves more than 300 people a day.

Nelson has spent her lifetime organizing with a philosophy of nonviolence and gentle personalism, earning her comparisons to the late Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Mother Teresa, who worked with the poor in Calcutta, India.

Nelson has co-authored a manual about how to replicate Sisters of the Road Café, and is currently writing a memoir of her life’s work. In 2001, she spearheaded a project involving 600 one-on-one interviews with people experiencing homelessness in the Rose City that will be published in book form next year.

Earlier this month, Nelson traveled to Washington D.C. to accept an award from the National Caring Institute for her lifelong work in the community.

Real Change: Can you tell us a little bit about the philosophy of Sisters of the Road, and how it has evolved over the years?

Genny Nelson: The philosophy came from my experience with the Catholic Worker Movement. When we open the doors, we are going to ask people to practice non-violence, and gentle personalism, a philosophy [movement co-founder] Peter Marin brought from France with the idea that we don’t need a government authority to tell us how to be good people.

When we open the doors in 1979, I think a lot of people on Skid Row expected us to be like any other group in the neighborhood. We weren’t. One story I remember is when this woman came in, and she was a prostitute, and she made that known to me. She was scared and hungry, and 10 minutes later this guy walked in and was acting like her pimp. And we said to him, you are welcome to stay and have a cup of coffee, but you can’t tell this woman what to do, not in this café. So the man ordered up a cup of coffee, and eventually left.
Those experiences at Sisters got around on the streets, and people soon realized that in Sisters, it’s not going to be business as usual. And over the years, it’s the people on the streets who have mentored us. And we don’t have the level of incidents of violence as we had in the early days.

Real Change: Can you tell us a little bit about the award you have received from the National Caring Institute?

Nelson: Last summer I got a call from the Caring Institute saying, “Congratulations, you’re a nominee for a National Caring Award.” In the 1980s Val Halamandaris, founder and executive director of the Caring Institute, had an opportunity to meet Mother Teresa when she was in the U.S. He asked her what she thought was the greatest need in America. She told him in the United States you have a great poverty of spirit, and that’s what you should concentrate on.

Mr. Halamandaris was very inspired by that, and decided to honor individuals making a difference in people’s lives. On Nov. 7, Sisters’ 26th birthday, we got the news that I had won the award. I asked them how they found out about me. The gentleman I spoke with told me they had been tracking me for a long time (laughs).

Real Change: What are some of the accomplishments you’ve seen over the years on the homeless front?

Nelson: As much as I would like to say there have been multiple accomplishments, I think homelessness has gotten worse, not better. When I started my work in ’72 in [Portland’s] Old Town/Chinatown [neighborhood], which was a skid row at the time, all of the hotels were still open. A person’s pension or Social Security check could pay the rent in one of those hotels, with money left over for an eatery, or maybe even a show once in awhile.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s no romance about Skid Row. Were these stellar places to live? No. But the person who rented a room with their own income could build relationships with the people next door to them and maintain their self-esteem. You had very few people who were actually homeless.

But once we hit the ’80s we started to lose that housing. Portland didn’t lose as much as some cities; we had enough foresight to say let’s keep some of these in place. But hundreds if not thousands of rooms where lost. In the ’70s, with minimum wage, you could rent a modest place, but in the ’80s minimum wage stopped keeping up with the cost of living, and the cost of housing skyrocketed, and it hasn’t stopped. Also, accessing a room in a hotel didn’t require case management. Now in low-income units, rules are strictly enforced. For instance, the hours you can receive guests. In my apartment my landlord doesn’t tell me I can’t have a friend over after 10 o’clock. Over time it wears on a person’s dignity.

Real Change: Do you think the institutions that we’ve built for poor people are enabling them, or helping them get on with their lives?

Nelson: Unfortunately, I would say the former. I would never say any institution is all bad, or has a monopoly on the truth for that matter.

However, whatever model you use, if it doesn’t share power with the consumers then it’s not going to lead to systemic change. What we’ve created by institutionalizing homelessness is a constituent base that too often feels entitled to services, or ashamed. People are not encouraged to do things for themselves.

What Sisters has found is that a first-time customer may walk into the café and ask us why they have to pay or barter for their meal. They might even have attitude about it not being free. They may have to come back in a few times before understanding their mutual participation makes a difference. And that’s when they can begin to organize for lasting change for their own life and the others around them. Sisters has always said we are all in this together.

Real Change: Sisters was instrumental in being the first nonprofit café to pass federal legislation so people experiencing homelessness could use food stamps for a hot meal. Can you talk a little bit about those efforts?

Nelson: That was an organizing effort that came straight from the streets. When we opened in 1979, Sisters could take food stamps from elders, and people on disabilities, but people experiencing homelessness could not use their food stamps for a hot prepared meal. People would tell us, “What use are they?” The food you could purchase with the stamps had to be cooked up. Folks would exclaim, “I’m outside with a sleeping bag. I don’t have a can opener, much less an oven and stove.” It was that simple. People asked us to take a look at this issue.

Sisters did an inquiry with the Department of Agriculture. We sent them a proposal for a pilot project that would allow us to accept food stamps from people dealing with homelessness in exchange for a hot, cooked meal. We got in touch with Mark Hatfield, who was an Oregon senator at the time, and he set up a meeting for us with representatives from the Department of Agriculture, and an aide in his office. Mind you, this was during the Reagan administration, when ketchup was a vegetable.

So we went to the meeting and the USDA reps humiliated us. They couldn’t grasp why this proposal would work, and even if it did why anyone would want it. After the meeting, Sen. Hatfield's aide apologized for how we were treated.
Ultimately, it put a fire in the belly of the senator. He worked diligently on this issue, and got it attached as an amendment to Reagan’s drug bill. There was no way it wasn’t going to get signed.

It took two years. Sometimes we think the system is so vast and unchangeable, but two years when you’re thinking long-term isn’t that much time for a campaign to change policy for a nation forever.

Real Change: What would you say to the next generation of people who are committing their lives to systemic change around the world?

Nelson: Take hope. At this point in my life I think systemic change is the only approach that makes sense. We are learning what that will take. Build authentic relationships across the barriers that constantly separate us by race and class. Work in partnership, share power. Create a culture that supports a paradigm shift, including changing the underlying values, beliefs, and assumptions.

In other words, if you always think the way you’ve always thought, you will always get what you’ve always got. Working together does not mean the absence of conflict; expect it. Struggle, reflection on that struggle, and love can transform the world.

Published in January 2006, Real Change, Seattle, Washington.

Interview with Portland City Commissioner, Erik Sten

2006-01-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

City Commissioner Erik Sten has been questioned for his positions on the takeover of PGE, public financing, and the 10-year plan to end homelessness. Local media, political adversaries, and traditional business critics have kept Sten on the ropes for most of the last year, but in his nine years at City Hall, foes have never taken him out of the game.

Street Roots recently talked with Sten about the lagging business climate in Portland, homelessness, and what the future holds for the City of Roses.

S.R.: What do you say to those Portlanders who are whispering, "Where is Erik Sten?"

Sten: I didn't expect the amount of backlash I received with all the issues around PGE. I realized this had nothing to do with getting electric rates down, it was all about who is in control of things. PGE is owned by out-of-state interests. You can't even get to the people who own the utilities. Some of our leadership is hiding behind a structure that has been gone for 10 years. I think it's a generational piece, and I'm not sure if some of the longtime players in the community have their pulse on what's happening.

I've felt very good about the work that I do. If you keep doing the same things, you aren't going to get anything done, and we chose to push things. I have been surprised at times, and to be honest, a little hurt by how nasty the backlash has been. But it's so obviously orchestrated by moneyed interest that I'm fighting. What I find from Portlanders is that everyone is engaged and talking about the issues. There are two worlds out there - those who chose to put a spin on everything, and the rest of us, and I love working with the rest of us.

S.R.: What about the left asking, "Where is Erik Sten?"

Sten: Well, the problem with the left is why I love being on the left, and that is you always want more. I love that, and I have that myself. Everyone has his or her own opinion. When people in the progressive community are pushing and prodding I take it for what it is - a desire for a better world, and I share that desire.

It's also why we have horrible leadership in this country up and down the ladder. We don't tolerate failure, and you compare that to the business world where people fail all the time and it's just written off in business models. If you go to any successful business, they're going to tell you that you have to take risks, therefore you have to fail. You just have to succeed more than you fail. In politics, if you try something and it doesn't work, people come after you. The rational thing for politicians to do is to not try anything, so that has led us to where we are. I think we have a great team at City Hall willing to try new things, and that excites me.

S.R.: What are some the biggest challenges for city government in 2006?

Sten: On issues like transportation, parks, and affordable housing, we have a lot of momentum. I think we have some great strategies, it's finding a way to implement them.

I still think we're lacking a shared strategy between business and the community. I don't say city government and business because I think in a lot of ways city government represents the community. We need a shared thesis, and I'm willing to give a little bit, but we need to be on the same page and that continues to be a struggle.

In the next five years we have to have a source of funding for affordable housing. And it's not going to happen if we just show up to work each day, and punch the clock. It's going to take some real leadership, a lot of great organizing, and some luck. It's going to take efforts at all levels.

Housing problems are getting worse with prices going up. For example, with the real estate transfer fee - there's a relatively influential group of real estate agents that has formed a coalition to fight their industries on this issue. That's very hopeful. There's a lot of talk among progressive people that we should only support those real estate agents with our business. If people buy into that kind of thinking we will see some changes in the coming years.

S.R.: In a lot of ways, Portland has gotten off easy with the 10-year plan to end homelessness. Some cities are facing a fight with major providers refusing to take part in the Homeless Management Information System, and advocates crashing planning meetings. The administration and HUD seem to be lost at sea on the issue of homelessness and housing. Are you confident this plan will do what it says it's going to do - end homelessness in 10 years?

S.R.: I always flinch when we say we're going to end homelessness in 10 years, but I don't think we can aspire to anything less. We can't set a goal of anything less than ending homelessness, and we're not going to get to that goal without the greater community helping the homeless reintegrate themselves back into society.

HUD right now is extraordinarily hypocritical. They're requiring us to write 10-year plans at a time when they are cutting resources. A big part of the issue is human. It's being able to build support systems and relationships with people.

One of things I've felt with Portland's strategy is - let's show people better outcomes with existing resources, and build their trust to go for the bigger ideas, such as a (real estate) transfer tax. People's willingness to help on this issue is very high; their confidence that anything is going to change is really low. If we show some results, then more people will step up to the plate.

S.R.: In Seattle and San Francisco there are panhandlers on almost every corner, and those downtowns are swimming in commerce. Why are stakeholders in Portland hell-bent on blaming the city's business woes on panhandlers and homelessness? They're almost fixated on panhandlers and homelessness.

Sten: I think we've wasted a lot of time on the homeless merry-go-round on discussions about downtown crackdowns. My feeling is that there are some bad actors on the streets, and we should be more careful in enforcing the laws. We're always looking for an easy out. There's an idea out there that if you outlaw something such as sitting you will solve the problem, and there's no evidence of this. I don't support some of these laws philosophically, and even if you did, it doesn't mean it's an effective approach. I think we're missing the point in these discussions.

S.R.: It's interesting to me to see business think tanks in other cities on the West Coast talking about how do we boost trade and build relationships with Hanoi and Hong Kong, but in Portland business lobbyists seem almost fixated with the idea that panhandlers are the problem.

Sten: It is an excuse to worry about the wrong things. I agree that there is some other conversation that's being avoided by continuing to talk about these issues, but I also think really aggressive people who cross the line do hurt the homeless plight and you have to go after the criminal element.

S.R.: Will six police officers chasing junkies around Portland, a half-million dollars, some jail beds, and a curfew on the south Park Blocks bring Portland's economy back to life?

Sten: I think there are two issues that are in play. One is economic, and the other is that there is a perception that things have gotten out of hand. I've heard this from progressive people who I don't consider reactionary - so I support the mayor on what he's doing, but I'm not all that optimistic that it's going to solve the issue. Again, we need to take care of the bad apples, but I'm not optimistic that busting panhandlers or someone selling marijuana in the Park Blocks is going to turn the business climate downtown around.

S.R.: Looking into the future, what do you think the city will become in the next 25 years?

Sten: I think we have the opportunity to be one of the more interesting cities in the world. Twenty years from now we are going to have to be much more diverse and international in our thinking, incorporating a much more local business climate. We have to be able to support our local agriculture. People are working now on bringing local agriculture into the schools.

In a way, that's symbolic of Portland, because it would help our economy, our health and the quality of life. We could really be a place that gives residents a place to be a part of a global atmosphere while working in a local economy with a sense of place and community. To me that's the goal. There's no doubt the world is getting smaller every day. Our business partners are going to be on an international stage. On the other hand, what's killing our community is the lack of production. We can't have an economy where we just have all these things imported without living-wage jobs. We have to find that balance.

This whole thing about buying PGE is a great example. There's this whole idea that it's the government versus the private sector, and that's completely wrong. The electric company is a citizen-granted monopoly, and some of the richest people in the world, such as Warren Buffet, are trying to buy PGE to pull Portlanders' money out of your pocketbook to send straight into his bank account.

The public ownership is a way to keep a couple hundred million dollars in the Oregon economy. We need to keep more money here because that leads to better wages for workers.

S.R.: The lack of diversity in Portland is alarming. Are there think tanks in Portland looking at the idea of how do we attract people of color from around the country and the world?

Sten: What you have to do is create a sense of tolerance in community. Once you do that, other things will happen. I'll be honest - it's troubling. The success of a city is a reflection of diversity, and that's something we have to strive toward. We have to create an economy that all kinds of people from all cultures want to be a part of.

S.R.: Are the traditional business communities and the young entrepreneurial business community, which almost seems like its own engine, working together?

Sten: More so than ever, there's not one business community in Portland, which is great in the sense that we have more creative voices. It's very different than 20 years ago, especially with some of the issues we've been talking about. The Portland Business Alliance tends to get caught in these more dogmatic positions.

One of the things that happens in bigger cities, like a Seattle with Starbucks and Microsoft, is they can make things happen quickly. Businesses can expand, hire, take political position and give a lot of money to the community.

We don't have a strong enough business community to move strongly when they need to. Most of the business leaders are baby boomers who are in the second half of their careers. Most of them came up in the '70s when things where booming, and think if we continue to do the same things it will work. That's just not the case.

S.R.: What your favorite way to relieve stress?

Sten: Right now I love hanging out with my toddler. He's 21 months, and he doesn't think about any of these things, so that's fun. I play a lot of basketball and I have a love for novels.

S.R.: Will the Trailblazers make the playoffs this year?

Sten: I'm going to say yes, but that feels like a false campaign promise. You have to keep in mind, I grew up in Portland - I've never stopped rooting for them. I'm a big Telfair fan. As a short guy, I really like the short guys (laughs).

S.R.: Mayoral ambitions?

Sten: Yes. You know, I'm really happy with Mayor Potter. Working the last few years in politics, it's a bit unpredictable, so yes, down the road, it's a possibility.

Published in November of 2005, Street Roots, Portland, Oregon.

The Bonus Army, interview with author Paul Dickson

2006-01-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

"The Bonus Army," an American epic by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allan, tells one of the many stories of disgruntled American veterans after war.

During the summer of 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, the Bonus Army was born in Portland with 200 men. It would end with more than 45,000 World War I veterans flocking to Washington, D.C., in one of the greatest moments of non-violent civil disobedience our country has ever known. Demanding pay promised to them eight years earlier, veterans, many with their families, squatted 20 makeshift shantytowns and tent cities known as Hoovervilles.

Fearing the veterans were controlled by communists and would turn violent, the federal government intervened. Led by President Herbert Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur and George Patton, the authorities drove the veterans out of Washington with tanks, tear gas and bayonet-tipped rifles and then burned down the camps.

The actions performed by veterans that summer had a profound effect on American history, like so many untold struggles left out of the history books in the classroom. Street roots got the chance to talk to Paul Dickson, co-author of "The Bonus Army."

street roots: Can you describe what the Bonus Army was, and why it came about?

Paul Dickson: The Bonus Army was the biggest public event of the Depression. The Bonus Army is about a group of guys who had fought in World War I and had been promised a bonus, which they hadn't gotten. Each soldier received $1 a day during the war, and a $1.25 if you were overseas. They had to buy their uniform and war bonds with the money, and then it was promised to them immediately after the war. Most of the soldiers were making much more than this before being drafted. Let's say you where a shipyard worker. You would have gotten paid between $16 and $17 a day. After the war, Congress agreed that soldiers wouldn't get their pay until 1945, and that seemed to have settled it. But in 1932 a group of veterans headed up by Walter W. Waters organized 200 of his buddies, who decided to hop freights back to Washington D.C. to go lobby for the bonus they were promised. They left Portland with what they had on their backs and an American flag. By the time they reached Washington they had picked up 10,000 veterans.

The men in the Bonus Army thought anyone had the right to go to Washington and lobby for their rights. To the average American, these guys deserved to get paid. The big companies had gotten paid after the war, money was going to foreign countries who had been devastated, and the Bonus Army believed the people who had fought the war deserved to be paid, too.

Here, a week after leaving Portland the Bonus Army began to realize that people were welcoming them as warriors of the Depression, just as people in France had welcomed them as Yanks," referring to their service in the World War.

s.r.: Can you talk about some of the highs and lows the Bonus Army faced on their journey from Portland to Washington D.C.?

P. D.: At first, people were afraid of them but they started to realize they were not a threat. They were just a group of veterans going to get paid. Part of the resistance from Americans was based on race. There were 800,000 blacks who fought in World War I and the Bonus Army was black and whites alike. The country had never seen anything like this before.

They ran into various authority figures who didn't want them, but by and large, the people of the country loved these guys. You have to take into account the times. There were so many homeless people just wandering around the country looking for work, but there was no work. Well, the Bonus Army were wandering too, but they wandered with a purpose. Most Americans viewed these guys as heroes, not only because they fought in World War I, but because they had the courage to go get things straightened out. And they were non-violent.

Once in D.C., the camps were pretty much self-governed. We have found evidence that 20 camps existed. Waters created a leadership group that ran them as military camps - no drinking, no guns, nobody could say they were bums. In fact, records show the crime rate went down when they were in Washington. The worst you could say they were doing was panhandling.

s.r.: According to the book, most of the camps in D.C. that summer were not segregated. In fact, in a time when the Ku Klux Klan had influence in D.C., and blacks and other minorities where being oppressed around the country, the Bonus Army was working together. What message did that send to the country?

P.D.: It's interesting - nobody knew about it. The blacks were invisible to the country. During that time, period papers didn't acknowledge the black community. For example, the Negro baseball leagues were extremely popular, but no paper in the country covered the leagues. But the African American newspapers took notice, reporting that thousands of black and white families were living side-by-side. There was no Jim Crow in the Bonus Army. And this was 1932.

So, while many people around the country didn't know about desegregation in the camps, the message it sent to the power structure was loud and clear. Most congressmen, especially from the South, grew up believing races would never be able to get together and organize, but the Bonus Army did.

The federal government, from the time the Bonus Army was on the freight trains headed east, had infiltrated the group. Some of the intelligence reports said the Bonus Army had "Negros, people with Jewish features, and poor whites" all working together - the establishment was very nervous.

s.r.: Can you talk about some of the different sympathizers who helped the Bonus Army?

P.D.: Almost all of the great journalists and writers of the time were sympathizers. In fact, you would have reporters writing news stories with pro-bonus slants, while editorial boards were coming out against the veterans.

Also, Walsh McLean, one of the richest women in the world was fascinated by the group. One night she went into a restaurant and ordered 2,000 sandwiches, and got a 1,000 cartons of cigarettes and passed them out to the people. It was like a scene in a Woody Allen film.

You have to understand the place was like a huge carnival. There were musicians, jugglers, speakers - the people of Washington loved it.

They also sold their own newspaper the same way street roots is doing, and they would make up postcards and sell them.

Despite what was going on in the world they were a hopeful group in a time when people didn't have any hope. They had no money, no jobs, nothing, and they set out to change it.

s.r.: General Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and a young Dwight D. Eisenhower all took part in sweeping thousands of veterans out of the nation's capital. All of this before they would be thrust into history forever. MacArthur disregarded orders from the president on the conduct of the sweeps, something he would later be reprimanded for during the Korean War. Can you expand on some ironies of these circumstances?

P.D.: I think it reflects what kind of men they would later become. The day of the sweeps, Patton was on horseback with a saber.

MacArthur was acting like it was all-out warfare. It was ridiculous. His orders from the president were to get them out of downtown, but he went in and burned many of the camps to the ground along with people's only possessions - cars, clothes, photographs - you name it.

Eisenhower, however, is documented saying that this was wrong and it was a police matter and it wasn't the job of the military to be dealing with civil affairs.

Eisenhower was a thoughtful and logistic man. History would later reveal all of these things.

s.r.: One of the main arguments the federal government made to sweep the encampments was of communist activity in the camps. Communists and fascists had active members in the Bonus Army, but the majority of the veterans were just average American citizens. What are your thoughts about this?

P.D.: You have to take into account the time period. The wheels were coming off the country, a lot people were flirting with communism and fascism in the country. Nobody knew how history was going to turn out - there where about 150 communist veterans in the camp. When federal agents tried to prove all the men in the Bonus Army were criminals, radicals, and communists they pulled up people's records. The only thing many of the men were guilty of is vagrancy. Their only crime was being out work.

The men, women and children living in the camps were not communists. They didn't want to overthrow the government, they just wanted their bonus.

s.r.: What did the Bonus Army accomplish for the long-term?

P.D.: I think the biggest thing they did was pave the way for the GI Bill after World War II. History has shown us that governments take people from the working and poor classes of society and ask them to fight great wars, and then dump them back into those societies. After World War II, veterans coming home were at least offered benefits. It helped create the middle class. If you're going to ask a person to fight, it's only right that the government should take care of them - the Bonus Army was just one example of this throughout history.

s.r.: Looking at all of the federal cuts to veterans benefits, and having more than a half a million veterans sleeping on the streets every year (according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans), do you see a correlation with the past and our current conflict?

P.D.: The business of war is a terrible thing. What has to happen is a new GI Bill of Rights. If they need education, medical care, and financial support they should get it. But as I'm sure you are aware, that's not the direction we are headed.

After the Bonus Army was swept, many newspapers and policymakers thought they should just go home, but they had no home, so they spread out in camps all over the country. And there are remnants of those camps with veterans living in them in cities all across the United States still today.

Published June 1, 2005, Street Roots, Portland, Oregon

Fear and Loathing in No Po

2006-01-27T21:30:00.000-08:00

Gentrification: The process of renewal accompanying the influx of middle class people into deteriorating areas that often displaces earlier, usually poorer residents – Merriam Webster Dictionary

“There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul in sickly air. People can be slaveships in shoes.” — Zora Neale Hurston, author, 1891-1960

Headlines of North and Northeast Portland have erupted once again in newspapers across the city. For the most part, in what the city calls the most diverse neighborhoods in Portland, headlines have portrayed the region as a battleground of police shootings, homicide, and gang activity.

Of late, very rarely has the issue been talked about in the context of poverty, class, race, education, the current state of the economy and gentrification. North and Northeast Portland are not only home to many social problems most urban environments face, but they’re home to a growing number of, for better or worse, hipsters, yuppies, radicals, self-proclaimed freaks, hippies, yippies and young families.

“You know, they call it urban renewal, but I call urban removal,” said Charles Santos, an organizer with ROOTS, an acronym for Reclaiming Our Origins Through Struggle. ROOTS is an organization working to organize people of color in Portland. “It’s a shift of people from the suburbs moving into our neighborhoods. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Alberta corridor or the Boise-Elliot neighborhood, the Pearl district or all of downtown, poor people are being pushed out of this city.”

“They’ve got all these new businesses in the neighborhood (Boise-Elliot) being set up, said Santos. “I go to the video store, the coffee shop, the bar, the breakfast place, and I see no black people working in these establishments. There’s something wrong with that picture.”

Certain neighborhoods are designed to be kept that way in the name of urban renewal, Santos said. “When developers and the private sector come in they start making that money, money, money. It’s all about that money, it always has been.”

Santos is not the only person to echo these views. According to affordable housing advocates and other neighborhood members in Northeast Portland, the neighborhood has suffered from decades of segregation, redlining, racism, and false representation by the media.

“I have had discussions with long-time African-American residents who feel a sense of hopelessness about the high level of redevelopment over a short period of time,” said Jason Graf, co-chair of the Boise Neighborhood Association. “A sense that their community is breaking apart and there is nothing they can do about it.”

Graf suggested some creative solutions for the neighborhood. “Reducing crime through active neighbor participation is one way to coalesce as a neighborhood, because everyone feels the impact of crime,” Graf said. “There has been discussion about minority business recruitment and spreading the wealth through strategic action by using tools that are available and maximizing the benefits that have the potential to increase within the Interstate Urban Renewal Area.”

Patterns of history

In the ’30s and ’40s, the real estate industry began to define the meaning of a white segregated neighborhood as one that did not have a black-occupied residence within four blocks. Real estate agents held to their code of so-called ethics, and followed the condition on many deeds that homes in white neighborhoods were not to be sold to blacks. The result of such racial manipulation was a physical boundary dividing blacks from whites.

Vanport, a city named by combining Vancouver and Portland, was created in 1941 for the building of liberty ships for Great Britain and later the U.S during World War II. The city, no longer in existence, was sited on what is now the Columbia Slough. Vanport at one time had a population of 50,000 during the height of World War II. 35,000 people, mostly poor and jobless, migrated to the area to work in the shipyards.

By 1948, Vanport’s population had dropped to an estimated 18,500 people, including 5,000 African-Americans. That year, massive floods destroyed Vanport, leaving 15 dead, dozens injured, and 18,000 homeless. It was by far, the worst housing crisis Portland had ever faced.

When the flood turned Vanport into a lake, all available housing was pressed into service, but still many low-income people — many of whom were black — were left homeless. Some were taken in by families in the metropolitan area. The resettlement of the flood victims, in the absence of any direct action taken by the city housing authorities, created patterns of segregation with relocating the homeless into Northeast Portland.

The 1950s and 1960s were a time of revitalization in the diverse North and Northeast neighborhoods. On the surface, this goal promised to have a positive affect on the neighborhoods, much like the Interstate Light Rail project of today. In reality, the city of Portland leveled neighborhoods to allow for industrial growth, thereby adding to the housing shortage. For example, in the 1950s, people in the central Albina neighborhood lost their homes to the building of Memorial Coliseum and Interstate 5.

Development continues to push lower income people to the rim of the city.

“What we’re seeing is low-income people from North and Northeast Portland are being displaced into suburban areas, like Gresham, Beaverton and Clackamas,” said Teresa Huntsinger with the Coalition for a Livable Future.

“The communities that they are moving to are not equipped to handle the influx in poverty,” Huntsinger said. “There aren’t as many services for people living in poverty. One example of that is the lack of transit access for people encountering poverty.”

“The county needs to allocate funds for emergency rent assistance to people outside of the city of Portland, still living in Multnomah County.” said Kelly Caldwell, an affordable housing organizer with the East Multnomah County Housing Advocates.

“Right now the City of Portland funds the Transitions to Housing program through the county, which offers a variety of services for people in poverty,” Caldwell. “What is happening is that if you live on one side of the line you get services, but if you are on the other side of the line you don’t get services. This is happening to the same people who are being pushed out of Portland.”

Huntsinger said that patterns of gentrification are continuing in North and Northeast. The Interstate Light Rail is one example, in that it is raising property values and pushing lower-income families further beyond the city. The Coalition for a Livable Future has been advocating for affordable housing in the area. But, Huntsinger said, “It’s too little, too late.”

Ironically, one of the new stops on the Max line will be the Expo Center, formerly the North Portland Stockyard and the site of an assembly center for the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II. More than 3,700 people of Japanese descent from the Portland area were detained there, many of whom lost their business and their homes due to relocation stategies by the United States government.

The line will then travel across a long viaduct over the Colulmbia Slough, the same area in which displacement occured by the floods more than 50 years ago. It will then descend into the Delta Park/Vanport station where travelers can view a memorial of the assembly center for the relocation of Japanese-Americans.

The 1980s began a long downfall for the residents of North and Northeast Portland. The Reagan era brought high unemployment rates, homelessness, and frustration, followed by dramatically reduced property values in the neighborhoods.

Redlining in North and Northeast Portland has gone on up until the 1990s. Redlining is the practice of refusing to serve particular geographical areas because of the race or income of the area's residents. While the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1976 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 outlawed the practice of redlining, there is evidence that the practice continued illegally in Portland into the 1990s. Some advocates believe it still happens today.

Today, after decades of struggle, the same frustrations resonate within the minority community.

“I believe there is mistrust of city agencies, especially PDC (Portland Development Commission), from long-time residents and business owners, and that this hinders redevelopment and the creation of new minority businesses,” said Graf. “A strategy and recruitment of minority business that coordinates the investment incentive from PDC and other grant programs, coupled with outreach and coordination from the African-American business association and other minority businesses, is missing in all of the gentrification of Mississippi Avenue and Boise neighborhood.”

“They come and want to clean up the neighborhoods,” Santos says. “The question is, who are they cleaning it up for? It sure isn’t all the good people who have been screaming, hollering, and kicking for all these years to clean up the neighborhood. They jack up the prices and suddenly we’re not kicking and screaming about cleaning up the neighborhood anymore. Instead, we’re crying out that we can’t pay our rent and we’re going to have to find a new place to live.”

Color coded

On any given weekend morning you will find dozens of people sitting in front of the Fresh Pot, a local coffee shop, and Gravy, a new breakfast restaurant on Mississippi Avenue, reading books and congregating among themselves. Most of them are white.

“If there were 10 black people hanging out in front of the Fresh Pot, the police would be up in here,” said a woman who preferred to remain anonymous as she pointed toward Fresh Pot. “Then the neighborhood would say, ‘oh, we got a gang problem. We need to clean this up.’ It’s OK to hang out and talk music in front of the record shop if you are white, but if it was a hip-hop record store they would say, you all are gangsters. That’s racism.”

Some new residents in the Northeast have charged to the assumption that real estate agents have not properly warned new residents of the crime in the neighborhood.

“People need to do their research,” said Walter Garcia, Crime Prevention Program Coordinator with the North Portland Neighborhood Services. “The tools are all out there. If I go buy a product at the store I’m going to research the product that I buy.”

“I don’t think that (North and Northeast Portland) are worse than any other part of Portland.”

Garcia said he didn’t think race had anything to do with the perceptions of the neighborhoods. Although he did say there are perceptions of the poor. “It’s not a race issue, it’s a social-political issue.”

“The fact of the matter is we are a city and we are going to have crime,” said Art Hendricks, with Portland’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement. “But if you were to compare today’s crime statistics with statistics in 1995, we are as safe today as we’ve ever been.”

Hendricks went on to say he felt the mainstream media has played a major role in creating fear in North and Northeast Portland concerning crime. “If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead,” said Hendricks. “If Channel 12 news doesn’t have a violent crime to report in Portland, they’ll report one in Salem. It’s sensationalized journalism. Do we have calls for people shooting off guns in Southeast Portland? Yes. Does that make the front page? No.”

Although, Hendricks did go on to say the police and the city often are blamed for mishaps. “Is it the police’s fault for answering calls for people committing crimes? No. It’s their job, that’s what they do, and that is never going to change.”

“We need an honest commitment to overhaul the system. We are still stuck in the 1980s in this city,” said Maria Johnson with the Latino Community Network. North and Northeast Portland is one of many pockets living with the larger problems of entrenched prejudices.

“I think within the police force and in the schools we see institutionalized racism,” Johnson said. “Minorities are not offered the same opportunities in our schools. Latino kids are herded through ESL programs and lose out because their skills are underestimated by the system. There are significant changes that government has to make. We hear a lot of promises from the institutions, but no implementations.”

Johnson went on to say that with the police, various groups have given recommendations over the years on how to deal with different cultures, minority groups, and the mentally ill, and yet nothing has happened.

“When people look at me they say, ‘oh look at that black guy,’” said Santos. “Before I’m a drummer, I’m a black drummer, and before I am a man I am a black man. I’m reminded of it every time I get on the bus.”

Published in April of 2004, Street Roots, Portland, Oregon

Vets in America's Urban Trenches

2006-01-27T21:26:00.000-08:00

Twenty-six years after his turbulent experience in the jungles of Cambodia and Vietnam, Timothy Buchanan became homeless. It’s been nearly 32 years of hardship and anguish for a man who left the United States and traveled 10,000 miles to fight for his country in one of the longest conflicts our nation has ever known.

Buchanan was exposed to the chemical Agent Orange on more than one occasion and has post traumatic stress disorder. He talks softly when he says, “I got peppered with that stuff (Agent Orange) over and over again.

“I’ve been pretty unstable, due to stress and the streets, for a long time. I’ve dealt with flashbacks and nightmares since I left that place. I just started to talk about my experiences in the mid-’90s, but now that I’m ready to let it all out, rarely do people want to listen.”

Looking out with eyes that have seen more trauma than any one person should have to see in a lifetime, Buchanan begins to tell a story hundreds of thousands of men and women, around the world, unfortunately, can relate to.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, estimates that nearly 300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night in the United States. In addition, more than a half-million veterans experience homelessness in a given year More than a dozen veterans are homeless or have experienced homelessness at street roots.

According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, there is a complex set of factors contributing to homelessness for U.S. veterans. A large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with the lingering effects of post- traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, compounded by a lack of family and social support networks.

With an estimated half-million who experience homelessness in a given year, the VA estimates that it reaches only 20 percent of those in need, leaving more than 400,000 veterans without services.

According to the 2002 US Conference of Mayors, 1,368, 11 percent of the people living on the streets in Portland, were veterans. In another report, put out by Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development, 182 were said to be emergency housed in the shelter system, bring the number to more than 1,500.

And the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans reports that the first veteran from the current conflict in Iraq has hit the streets in Boston.

“My gut instinct tells me that because of the economy and the lack of affordable housing, there will be a significant difference in the time veterans start becoming homeless, compared to Vietnam War veterans,” said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The average time between soldiers coming home from Vietnam and then becoming homeless is about 12 years, Boone said.

“The other factor that wasn’t there for Vietnam veterans that is there today is that more guardsmen and reserves are being called up that have families,” Boone said.

“Veterans are coming home much more abruptly than they did in Vietnam, it may be a lot harder to support your family with the economy the way it is,” she said. “We think there’s opportunities to prevent homelessness with veterans.” Prevention starts at the Department of Defense, according to Boone, but she said it’s just not happening.

Many homeless veterans and advocates in the field say veterans coming out of the military should be given the proper counseling and services needed to enter back into society.

“If they would have admitted the damage Agent Orange would have done to me and given me the proper therapy for being ‘on vacation’, if you know what I mean, than maybe I could have done better in this life.

“I went as crazy as a bed bug after seeing what I saw. I was awful sick when I got back to the states, but I was no longer under any impression that we were saving the world from communism. I thought by going to war I could prove myself to be a man. I was raised on that John Wayne bullshit, and that’s exactly what it is — bullshit.

“I think being homeless has a lot to do with my experience in Vietnam,” Buchanan said. “When I got back, the VA didn’t care about me. For years, I would go in to receive help and they would just call me a dope addict. I self-medicated because of the constant pain I was in.”

“I was hit four times by an AK in the first burst, and was hit once with friendly fire by the 2nd platoon as they came in from the rear. I got gangrene and then they cut my leg off a week later.

“We were chasing an NVA (North Vietnamese Army) regular into the bush in Cambodia. He popped up and fired and then took off running like the dickens,“ Buchanan said. “He led us right into an ambush and they nearly overran us. We had several skirmishes in the area. We overtook an NVA base camp and killed a hell of a lot of men.”

“The thing that has always bothered me about all of this is that I couldn’t help feeling like the Red Coats, ya know,” Buchanan said. “We weren’t protecting anybody from anything. We were the invaders and we didn’t have a cause. The only cause was survival for soldiers and that’s a dangerous circumstance to be in.

Buchanan went on to note that Ho Chi Min was promised a free election after World War II from his allies in the China-Burma-Pacific campaigns, but when it came to time for a free election, the French and the United States “spit in his face.”

“We had no chance of winning that war from the get go,” Buchanan said. “What happened was meant to happen. That’s what made it all seem so insane at the time. It’s been a long trip that’s for sure.”

According to the Indiana School of Medicine, during the Vietnam War, psychological breakdowns on the battlefield were as low as 12 per 1,000. But in 1973, when direct American troop involvement in Vietnam ended, the number of veterans with psychiatric disorders began to increase tremendously. They began to show symptoms such as intense anxiety, battle dreams, depression, and problems with interpersonal relationships long after their combatant role in the Vietnam War had ceased.

“Veterans on the streets range in ages from in their 20s up to people in there 60s in Portland,” said Don McDowell, a veterans case manager at Transition Projects. “Some get out of the service and have difficulty finding a job despite their military services.”

“In Portland there are adequate resources available to veterans, its just a matter of connecting the veterans to the services,” said McDowell. “The issue is there needs to be more stock in affordable housing. Oftentimes, veterans have pulled everything together, they’ve gotten a job, a decent wage, but then there isn’t housing available for people.

“Vets need guidance. They need a case manager to champion them and act as a resource for them,” said McDowell. “As long as they don’t start using and keep their job, they’ll make it. If they start using (drugs) again they go back to square one, and quickly they’ll go back to the streets.”

Some advocates believe that a more progressive system could be put into place to deal with substance abusers, especially for vets who may have come home with an addiction, like many did from Vietnam.

“You shouldn’t have a system that punishes vets on the streets for using,” said one advocate who declined to be named.

“It’s a system that punishes people who have seen horrific things or who may be in extreme pain for using a drug to self-medicate. It’s crooked and wrong. Who are we to say, ‘We’re very proud you went and risked your life for your country, but because you’re a user the punishments will be prison and homelessness.”

“We are seeing more Gulf War veterans on the streets in Portland,” says Don Hanson, a Vietnam vet and the career services coordinator with Central City Concern. “In some cases, Gulf War Syndrome is playing a part. Some were probably exposed to chemicals and the VA is recognizing that more and more. There are a lot of diseases attached to Vietnam and the Gulf War.”

Of the 697,000 U.S. troops who served during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, more than 100,000 have registered with the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Department of Defense, saying they have health concerns.

While most of these veterans have been diagnosed with a variety of conditions, more than 15,000, or about 20 percent of those examined, have undiagnosed symptoms, which commonly include fatigue, muscle and joint pains, headaches, memory loss, skin rash, diarrhea and sleep disturbances.

There’s no record of how many people are on the streets from the Persian Gulf War or any other conflict the United States has been involved in.

“There’s more and more people who are on the streets since the Vietnam era and that’s probably since some of us are dying out,” says Hanson.

Carl Roberts is a veteran of the Air Force of the Vietnam War era and was a member of the Oregon National Guard for 10 years, who served in Honduras during the Iran Contra affair. Roberts, like many other veterans street roots interviewed said alcohol and drugs were major factors in becoming homeless. What is overwhelmingly apparent while doing these interviews is that almost every veteran street roots spoke to developed an addiction for alcohol and drugs while in the military.

“I volunteered for the military when I was 17 years old,” says Roberts. “My mother was raising five kids and we didn’t have a lot of money.”

“It took me many years to understand what happened and the realization of the violence I had witnessed in the military. It took me 20 years just to come to the realization I was lovable, because of things I had experienced. I was just a puppet. The non-violent philosophy at Sisters of the Road has helped me learn how to respect myself.”

“They program you in the military,” Roberts went on to say. “They need services to de-program you when you leave, because you can’t just turn it off. It’s a healing process that should be supported by the VA. When a police officer shoots someone or sees something violent they put him on administrative leave for evaluations. When a person is involved in a violent interaction in the military, there’s no support network. When you’re back in society, it’s very hard to adapt.”

Published in December of 2003, Street Roots, Portland, Oregon

From Doorways to Dignity: the story of Dignity Village

2006-01-27T21:19:00.000-08:00

Dignity Village has battled through a turbulent past to arrive where it is today. Imagine a group of homeless people empowering themselves to the point where they took control of their own lives, and organized and developed a vision for a better future for not only themselves, but for people in similar circumstances all over the world.

After more than three years of battling critics, neighborhoods, police, angry newspaper columnists, shelter providers and a reluctant city hall, Dignity Village has come to a crossroads in their evolution for a better tomorrow. By the end of October, the Village will present a detailed proposal to the city that will decide the future of more than 60 people who live at Dignity Village.

Tent cities have popped up in Toronto, Eugene, and Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara, Calif., in the past two years. In October, one appeared in Vancouver, B.C. Most faced strict enforcement by city officials and have been swept by police. In Seattle, tents can only stay for three months before moving on to the next location, and can return to that same place only once every two years. No more than 100 people can live in the tent city, and private owners or churches must donate the land.

Portland’s Dignity Village is the only city-sanctioned tent city in the United States. Its two-year lease agreement with the city to reside at Sunderland Yard expired at the start of October, prompting the latest proposal.

“I see Dignity Village building new structures — getting things up to code by getting smoke detectors in the structures,” said Tim McCarthy, outreach coordinator and dignity’s treasurer. We’re going to build platforms for everything 18 inches off the ground to keep us off the water and the rodents out. We’re out here on the river and next to a compost pile and next to a field, so it’s natural to be dealing with nature. Our proposal will be detailing many things.”

Besides trying to get structures off the ground and up to standards with fire codes, they will be implementing a data system to track demographics of Village residents, including who becomes housed.

The proposal will also detail a plan for the future, staying true to its vision to become a green, sustainable village. According to Jack Tafari, the chairman of Dignity Village, the group would like to get past some of the short-term deadlines to allow the village room to work toward a long-term goal, instead of always having to prepare for the next hurdle.

“They (Dignity residents) have a proposal coming to the city,” said Marshall Runkel, an aide with Erik Sten’s office. “Then the city is going to have to consider the proposal and then come back with an answer.”

Runkel said one of two things could transpire. One scenario would be Dignity Village would not be able to stay at Sunderland Yard. Another would be that the village could stay with certain conditions. Runkel went on to say the village would have to make improvements regarding safety at the site.

“Some days its been really hard to see how it could ever succeed, other days I’ve been amazed at what Dignity has been able to achieve,” Runkel commented. “It’s an extraordinary thing. The success of the village has come from support from the community. It’s one of those things that makes Portland, Portland.”

Dignity pays the city $2,000 in rent each month for the site on Sunderland Yard, and maintains portable toilets there for around $17,500 a year. It also pays more than $5,000 a year for garbage services. Most of the money that supports Dignity Village comes from people in the community.
Approximately half the money comes from a single donor, Leland “Lee” Larson, who heads up The Larson Legacy, an organization that contributes to more than 20 organizations around the world, including street roots. Larson walked into the camp after reading an article about it and was immediately transformed into a supporter.

“We have some concerns over ventilation and fire hazards at the site,” said Ty Kovatch, the chief of staff for Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard. “Randy would like to see smoke detectors in every structure. Overall, though, he was impressed with the people and the rules that they have developed. People are getting up and going to work and doing a lot better than they have in a long time.”

Many critics continue to downplay the village’s success, others have hailed the village for the accomplishments they have been able to achieve.

“Dignity's key success is that it has been able to provide a safe place with all the basic services to at least 60 people a night for the past two years. And it has done so at little or no cost to the public,” said Marc Jolin, a village supporter and attorney with the Oregon Law Center. “The Village provides the kind of stability and personal support that people experiencing homelessness often need to get off the streets and back into permanent housing.”

Regardless of which side of the fence the community may be on, ultimately, it may come down to a city council vote in the coming months. In the weeks and months to come, only the city will be able to decide the fate of Dignity Village at Sunderland Yard.

“We’re hoping the city will see a way to allow us to continue in our efforts to build community and a model that may help other people like ourselves in Portland, and all over the world,” said Tafari.

History

“Have you heard the good news, homeless people? We are coming out of the doorways, coming out from under the bridges. We are setting ourselves up a tent city. We are coming in from the cold,” wrote Jack Tafari in street roots in November 2000, one month before the tents were pitched on public land.

The first meeting of the campaign, Out of the Doorways, was on Oct. 12, 2000. The village was born out of street roots and homeless activism because of the lack of shelter space in the city. On Saturday, Dec. 16, 2000, a group of eight men and women pitched five tents on public land and Camp Dignity, later to become Dignity Village, was born. Two days later, the police and fire marshal forced them to leave. The group fled from the muddy field beside the Broadway Bridge. They marched off to an industrial site under the Fremont Bridge with a shopping cart parade, where the next phase in the battle for Dignity continued.

In the first few months, village members ran a serious of articles, poems and opinion pieces in street roots to inform the general public what the camp was all about. Within weeks, the camp had become a media phenomenon on TV and radio stations throughout Portland and the nation. Images of people in wheelchairs and the shopping cart parades were brought to people’s living rooms. The groups tactics escalated with every relocation to gain more attention in the community. Most newspapers in Portland covered the camp as being underdogs who had no true vision or way to sustain themselves. The Oregonian editorial board waged a campaign against the village that exists still today.

“The first few weeks were both chaotic and exciting,” said Bryan Pollard, former managing editor for street roots and former spokesman for the village. “There was apprehension about how the police would respond but we had contingency plans for a variety of situations. The police responded more gently than we expected, I suppose partially because we had numbers and were obviously organized.”

The second site under the Fremont Bridge lasted five days, until the day after Christmas. In another shopping cart parade, they moved to the Waterfront under the Morrison Bridge on the east side. The group lasted about three weeks in the cold of winter at the Waterfront. They then ended up on River Place on Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday in January of 2001.

The group agreed to leave River Place a week later, after negotiating for a spot back under the Fremont Bridge. The group lasted there for nine months before splintering into three factions.

One group went to Rancho Dignity, a forty-acre farm outside of Portland. “We used Rancho Dignity as a temporary holding place for the aged and infirm,” said Tafari. Another group occupied a field near the French-American school on Naito Parkway, otherwise known as the Field of Dreams. The camp was swept on Sept. 11, 2001, and several members of the Homeless Liberation Front, a radical group in Portland that reclaims public lands for the public use, were arrested for camping. The third group went to Sunderland Yard, where Dignity Village currently resides.

“We eventually all coalesced on Sunderland Yard, but the mood was very, very bitter about being driven out of town,” said Tafari.

“The first winter was hell at Sunderland Yard,” said McCarthy. “It was cold and nasty! The wind coming off the river in the winter is brutal. The first winter we were in tents. One of the reasons we starting building structures was because of the elements. Our tents were collapsing because of the weight of the water. We took control, and starting building structures out of necessity. Last winter was much better after the structures were built.”

Many critics believe that Dignity Village has done nothing for themselves, but villagers and supporters see it differently.

“In the last two years we’ve built a straw bale house with the help of the Lynda Doleman and Mark Lakeman with the City Repair Project,” McCarthy said. “We’ve erected a windmill, and built a dome structure as a community space. We’ve built raised beds for flowers and vegetation with about 20 grade schoolers with the Environmental Middle School. We’ve also built a moveable shower system using a tankless water system and constructed homes from donated scrap materials for villagers.”
In addition to these accomplishments, many other organizations and supporters have helped along the way. The Community Cycling Center comes out twice a year to do bike workshops in exchange for bikes. Outside In visits the village twice a month to give check-ups and refer people to doctors or hospitals. The village also has a monthly poetry reading and potluck.

It’s been two years at the current site, and although villagers were bitter in the beginning and many feel the current site is not the best location, the village has survived.

Vision

One of the many critiques of Dignity Village is that they have no vision. Many believe they just want to live in tents out on the edge of town, but according to villagers, they have had a vision from day one; “To create a safe, sanitary, self-governed place to live as an alternative for Portland's poor, an alternative to the over-burdened shelter system where there are about 600 shelter beds for about 3,500 homeless people, an alternative to sleeping alone in the doorways, under the bridges, or in the jails where we are occasionally housed for urinating in public, jaywalking, or camping. Our vision is to create a green, sustainable urban village, built by and for ourselves using mostly donated and/or recycled materials, solar and wind power, composting toilets, and growing our own organic food in our gardens and on our farm.”

When asked if they serve a necessary purpose for transitioning people into housing, McCarthy said they have gotten twelve people into housing in the past three months.

Michael Harrison, the media representive for Jim Francesconi said their office hasn’t seen anything that shows that Dignity Village has been an effective model.

“Jim has always felt that city resources are probably more effective in transitioning people off of the streets through other assistance programs, including drug and alcohol and mentally ill services.”

When asked about rumors of displeasure between the Portland Department of Transportation, which has authority over Sunderland Yard, and Dignity Village, Harrison said that the transportation department knows that the majority of the City Council is for the village. “City Council is elected to make these kinds of decisions,” he said.

“Dignity Village is a prototype for livability and sustainability for everyone who lives in this city,” said Mark Lakeman of the City Repair Project. “In addition to addressing homelessness and poverty, Dignity Village is fighting for social justice and [against] violence against women. The future of the village has always been to move ahead to build a village and to take the rest of society forward into a cooperative culture.”

Other critics contend that Dignity Village would not be good for neighborhoods. When the village was potentially moving to a parking lot on Thirtieth Avenue and Powell Boulevard, neighborhood members, Dignity Village, and village supporters got into a heated debate with the Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood. At one point, homeowners who were outraged at the thought of Dignity Village moving into their neighborhoods turned on renters who supported the village.

“After meeting fierce opposition from the neighbors, threats of fire-bombing, the city agreed to allow us to remain on our current site, provided we paid rent,” said Tafari. The Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood’s response was typical of most in the village’s effort to find a permanent home. But that tide could be changing.

“The question is, where do you go when your income is insufficient to afford housing, when there are not adequate services or shelter space to meet your needs, and you get ticketed for sleeping outside?” said Amy Dudley, a neighborhood community organizer with the neighborhood coalition Southeast Uplift.

“In the Homelessness Working Group's community conversations on homelessness, neighborhood association members have praised the hard work of the people at Dignity Village to create a self-reliant solution to the lack of affordable housing and sufficient services coupled with policies that make it illegal to sleep outside. Community members have also critiqued the policies, priorities and funding decisions that criminalize the homeless and keep people in poverty. Dignity Village is one of many solutions out there that require all community members to take a look at their role and responsibility in working to end homelessness”

Many homeless advocates also believe that some of the pressure being put on City Hall to get rid of the village comes not only from people such as radio host Lars Larson, home-owners, and key figures who work behind the scenes, but also from within the homeless service community. In particular, shelter providers who see Dignity Village as a threat to their current system, which has nowhere near enough shelter beds for people sleeping on the streets. However, the homeless advocates street roots talked to said that Dignity Village was in no way, shape or form a threat to the shelter system, but instead, just another slice of the pie in working to get people off of the streets. “It’s counterproductive to have a shelter system that doesn’t want to see people on the streets empowered,” said an advocate who requested not to be named. “We all need to be working together.”

Yet, Ron Williams, director of community outreach with the First United Methodist Church that runs Goose Hollow Family Shelter, recently wrote a letter to the Portland Tribune and The Oregonian stating that “Dignity Village should be shut down as uninhabitable hovels that are not suited for human habitation.”

Destiny

The effectiveness of the village has always been a raging debate in Portland. “At the time, the community feeling was very mixed. We had people coming out of the woodwork wanting to help us and support our struggle, but there were also many people who didn't think it was the right approach or it wouldn't work,” says Bryan Pollard. “These detractors have always fascinated me because people have the energy to criticize and cast doubt, but rarely have the creativity or character to propose a better way.”

“Dignity Village was the vanguard, and continues to stand up for themselves and everyone who is homeless, exclaiming, and explaining that there is not enough shelter or affordable housing for everyone who is homeless in Portland,” said Genny Nelson, the director of crossroads, and co-founder of Sisters of the Road Café. “The current system punishes them all for that reality. Dignity Village has provided crucial transitional housing for many of its members. They have been a safe place for men and women to stay, with access to e-mail and a working phone, while they have waited for permanent housing. They are an example of an oppressed people’s self- determination.”

Michael Anderson, communications coordinator with the Community Development Network, supports the village’s triumphs in the face of adversity. If the city takes the tent city away as a housing option, then the city should come up with another alternative.

“Closing Dignity before other housing options are available is wrong,” Anderson said. “Dignity Village is a great example of human ingenuity in the face of crisis. With a lack of existing viable housing, the folks who created and are living at Dignity created an alternative. This alternative does not undo the crisis; it provides a workable solution to the crisis for its residents.”

Wendy Kohn and her company Kwamba Productions are making a documentary about Dignity Village. Her work there has made her a strong supporter of the tent city’s mission.

“Dignity Village provides us with an opportunity and context to discuss the issues, and find out if perhaps there are ways we can all get together to solve community needs and issues,” Kohn said. “Dignity Village is trying to create one possible cost-efficient solution to the problem, and the input of business owners and developers would be most valuable.”

“To understand what an accomplishment the Village truly is, you have to visit it,” said attorney Marc Jolin. “You'll see a community alive with activity. People building and maintaining Village structures with recycled materials and renewable energy, holding community meetings, cooking and helping each other with personal issues, providing guided tours to visitors, and doing all the work of administering a 501(c)(3) corporation. And then consider that all this is managed on an entirely volunteer basis by people who, until recently, have been living on the streets. The village has a lot of supporters that provide critical assistance, but ultimately the Village is a fantastic example of homeless people helping themselves by helping each other and by providing an important service to the rest of the community.”

Published in October of 2003, Street Roots, Portland, Oregon