Meet our vendors and what matters to them

Street Roots vendors are a proud and determined bunch. They laugh, cry, dream and struggle like anyone. Vendors come to the newspaper from many different experiences and circumstances. Some will move on quickly and find work. Others work to gain stability, and strive to find some humility in the world. The sad reality is some will not make it until winter— caught in the fight of their lives, literally. But they keep going. Every day. Working and building relationships in the community. We are a family bound together by the newspaper.

We ask some of your neighborhood vendors today the top three things that mattered to them on the streets.

Here is their response…

Festival of Resistance

Regular Street Roots columnist and Right 2 Survive member Julie McCurdy (she also has a poem and column in the current edition) wanted to invite readers out tomorrow to the Festival of Resistance, a celebration and preparation to take back the rights of people experiencing homelessness. The event will follow the May Day event tomorrow afternoon— which Street Roots is a sponsor of.

Extra! Extra!

Keeping Portland weird can be a full-time job, or you can do what comes naturally and see what happens. That’s how Street Roots comes together, with the help of dozens of volunteers and dedicated vendors who tomorrow morning will have your favorite newspaper hot off the presses. Here’s a peak inside:

Say hello to ‘Working’ Kirk Reeves: You know him as the guy in the white tuxedo who plays trumpet at the on-ramp to the Hawthorne Bridge, but there’s a fascinating man underneath that Mickey Mouse hat. Joanne Zuhl reports on who “that guy” really is.

Groups converge in advance of summer’s street youth activity: Homeless youths and others organize to give a voice to kids on the streets and prepare for the contentious months ahead. Amanda Waldroupe reports on the work being done at both ends of the spectrum.

You’ve got questions… 211Info has the answers — for an increasing number of people needing information and assistance. An interview with 211Info’s CEO Liesl Wendt.

Award-winning Medford man takes his art on the road: For most, when they think of somebody that would be part of an art contest worth $250,000, they would not think of a poor man, a homeless man, as one of its participants. Artist/ driver Aaron Heideman aka “The Man in the Van” proves this theory wrong.

Travel journalist’s writings follow lifelong spiritual journey: Leah Ingram interviews Pico Iyer on his particular mix of spiritualism and travel.

Plus, columns by Julie McCurdy, Leo Rhodes, Art Garcia and a host of other cool stuff to check out. But hurry, this issue is bound to go fast. Just remember to take a moment to give your vendor a smile and a “thanks.” It makes all the difference in the world.

April 30 Editorial: SR once again weighs in on sidewalks

First let us say that we commend Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Amanda Fritz for their efforts to create an ordinance that has split the issue of sidewalk management right down the middle. All parties involved are not completely satisfied.

Regardless of the rhetoric being slung, the business community is not happy with this ordinance — it doesn’t go far enough. From some homeless and civil-rights activists’ perspective, it goes to far.  It doesn’t help that both weekly newspapers have handpicked what homeless advocates they would like to give voice to, while ignoring others who have had a voice in this fight over several incarnations — giving the general public little context to decipher the complexity of this issue.

Like it or not, the use of our public sidewalks and how it relates to people experiencing homelessness, public safety and business downtown, has devolved into a decade-long quagmire that some of the smartest minds in our city have yet to figure out.

We’ve heard the whispers — Street Roots is sitting this one out. Must be political. Not so. Anyone who reads SR knows we work to present and dissect ways for the region to improve its systems and approaches to fighting poverty. We’re neither naïve nor entrenched in blind ideology. We know the streets. We live them.

In March, SR gave recommendations for the ordinance, saying we supported the stalemate with the following suggestions: to fund two or three homeless outreach workers, to dedicate funding for a neighborhood non-uniformed police officer to work with outreach workers and organizations working with people experiencing homelessness, and to organize a response team made up of homeless outreach workers who respond to calls regarding people experiencing homelessness and poverty and mental health issues in non-emergency situations on sidewalks during peak hours. We also ask for a six-month review of the ordinance to determine its effectiveness.

And while some of these recommendations have been considered, and even implemented (police working with mental health and homeless outreach workers), the language used around the ordinance by the city is once again drifting off onto a slippery slope of blatantly targeting people on the streets with law-enforcement instead of harm-reductions models like those outlined in our recommendations.

For one, aggressive panhandling is not a crime on the books, but it is regularly described in that context.  Saying that, assault is against the law, and should be met with zero-tolerance. SR doesn’t want anyone, regardless of their housing status, verbally and physically assaulting anyone on Portland’s sidewalks. It’s everything we’re not.

We are disappointed that we haven’t evolved enough as a city that we can’t get beyond the simple notion of framing policy that will ultimately mean not targeting poor people. When this kind of language is used, it usually means it’s being used for a reason. If that reason is to target people on the streets, then history tells us that this ordinance, if passed, will end up right back in the courts and be ruled unconstitutional, and we’ll all be having this conversation again (and again). And honestly, it doesn’t matter much what SR thinks anymore, that’s just the way it is.

Read the ordinance and the FAQ here.

Casey Neill’s Pacific trail

By Israel Bayer, Staff writer

Casey Neill’s music and songwriting, like so many great storytellers before him, tells the tale of the haunted working poet in search of something that lay both far and away and within each of us, both beautiful and tragic.

Neill, a humble and detailed man, along with an all-star group of musicians called the Norway Rats, is set to release “Goodbye to the Rank and File” with the local label and online music magazine In Music We Trust.

“Goodbye to the Rank and File” is Neill’s second album with the Norway Rats, a band currently made up of some of Portland’s best-known musicians, including Jenny Conlee with the Decemberists, and Little Sue, a singer and songwriter and country music icon. It will be Neill’s fifth full-length album.

The music that accompanies Neill’s stories blends many genres, including traditional Irish, punk, folk, and rock-n-roll. On “Goodbye to the Rank and File, Neill says the sound is more nostalgic, harnessing an old industrial rock-n-roll feel, which is fitting for the stories the album has to tell.

“This album in many ways is about the people that you lose along the way, or the people that disappear in one direction or another in all of our lives,” Neill says. “It really has this sense of we’re all still here, years on. We’ve all done and continue to do our best.”

Anchoring the album, says Neill, is the song “Guttered.”

“It’s about being engaged and working to make the world a better place for a long period of time,” Neill says. “He or she finds themselves in 2010, and the world has changed dramatically in a short time period, in lots of good ways and lots of bad ways. And how one internalized adapting to the world around them. At different times in our lives we have legs underneath us and are doing great things, and other times you’re struggling to just get through and lost. I think this album touches on all of those things. It’s really about perseverance.”

smoking lucky strikes in a snow covered graveyard
you watch your breath spill into the air
the night gives no shelter & the wind it cuts through
you and you look up at the sky & swear
at the winter stars and their indifference to you
dizzy from the drink and that shaky homegrown
you pull your wool hat over your eyes and lean against a headstone
ain’t it like that when you’re guttered & there is no where to go
ain’t it like that when you’re guttered you walk the graveyard in the snow

Final sidewalk ordinance and three-page FAQ released by City Hall

Amanda Fritz’s office just released the final Sidewalk Management Plan ordinance and a three-page overview of the law that will be voted on tomorrow.

Final ordinance: FINAL SMP Ordinance_4.29.10

FAQ:Sidewalk Management Plan FAQs FINAL_4.29.10

Posted by Israel Bayer

Q4 & 5: Homelessness and small business

Q4 & 5: 30 percent set aside and small business

Housing placement agency moves east — along with their clients

By Amanda Waldroupe, Staff Writer

Celebration was in order on Friday, April 16 in an unassuming looking, one-story building off NE 82nd Avenue and NE Halsey that once housed a sketchy bridge club and boxing ring.

The day marked the grand opening of JOIN’s new location. It is a momentous occasion for JOIN, a small, social service agency providing outreach and housing services to Portland’s homeless.

The organization’s prior location is enough answer why. Located off of SE 17th Avenue a little bit too close to the railroad tracks, the “Brooklyn JOIN,” as it is now called, was small, cramped, and the building was old and in need of repairs.

“We were working in a much less than ideal circumstance,” says JOIN’s executive director Marc Jolin. “It was too small for what we were trying to do. People came in cold and tired, and it was almost impossible to find a place to be quiet. It didn’t really meet people’s needs well.”

Now there are six bathrooms for homeless people, two showers, and a large, well-lit day space where families can spend time together. A small conference room serves as a library and a quiet space for people to read, fill out paperwork, and use a computer.

American Gun Culture, Pacific style

By Cassandra Kolsen, Contributing Writer

The weight of the loaded Glock is greater then I had expected, certainly heftier then its ‘plastic’ reputation might lead one to assume. It’s mid-afternoon, Ross Eliot, editor-in-chief and publisher of American Gun Culture Report, a politically open-minded discourse magazine about firearms and protection of the Second Amendment, is giving us a quick run-down of basic handgun safety.

“A lot of design and engineering goes into making your hand feel comfortable on the trigger,” Eliot tells us initially. “Always be conscious of it. Remember to keep your finger off the trigger unless you mean to use it.”

Even when we all know a gun is unloaded, he is adamant. “Watch your finger. Keep it off the trigger. Do you know that’s safe? Always check. Whoa, watch where you point that; check the barrel a second time.”

It sounds so simple. But my finger is nervous. The power it suddenly holds is seductive, almost to the point of revulsion. Eliot says you probably aren’t going to kill somebody outright with a handgun, unless the victim is left to bleed to death. Somehow this information does not make it seem any safer.

Each of our party of four has already handled all of the three guns we will shoot, a Glock 17 (the full-size 9mm), a Springfield XD subcompact, and a SigSauer 220 (a .45).  Now, with real bullets in their chambers, the tools have become their own entity.

The English Pit is a public outdoor shooting range in Vancouver, Wash., that has been around since the 1940s. It is exactly what the name describes — a pit of grey sand and gravel, outfitted for target practice. At the entrance, a cheerful man in a blue button-down shirt patterned with sailboats and lighthouses takes our money, makes sure everyone is equipped with eye and ear protection, and goes over the rules. He winks when he tells us to have a good time.

Since this is the Pacific Northwest, great trees sway around the pit’s top perimeter, creating a giant globe of nature. Their roots sprout a story or two above our position, their branches rustling in the wind is the only sound aside from gunshot. There are no birds, no insects. There is only silence broken by random, frequent explosions and plants touching in the movement of nature.

My first shot is with the Glock, chunky and awkward in my grasp. I close one eye, aim down the barrel.  Gently I caress the trigger, trying to gauge how much it will take without reacting. It fights back, as tense as I am, wary of what is to come. I pull harder. Even knowing what will happen, the force of the shot is shocking.

“Fuck.”

Squaring up, I hold my arms, my wrist steady. I cock my head and keep both eyes open.  My index finger is electric. It happens again. This time I let slip a little blasphemy. Already I smell sulfur on my person, thick and sweet.

I’m glad we are the only group shooting, having forgotten how easily startled I am, especially now, armed and wasting bullets. Eventually I hit the target. I am beginning to feel the ground beneath my feet. My stance is steady.  If the shock of the expelling bullet gets me every time, at least I am begin to feel the trigger, begin to know where it pulls and when.

Of the three pistols, the Springfield is my favorite. Light and compact, it fits into my palm the best. This would be an easy weapon to conceal. The Glock, despite its thug reputation, is unwieldy, hard.  The .45 is notably the most powerful, I can feel the bullet being propelled, the force of it moving through my whole body, out my feet and back into the ground where its metal came from.

As I stand aiming, I keep thinking to follow-through, like in sports. Follow the shot through.  Relax.  Let the gun fire, retract, be one with the explosion. But it is not a ball loose by only the force of my own hand. There is smoke, there is fire. There is a very loud bang.  Aside from a slip of my index finger, these actions are out of my control. I have nothing to do with it — the gun will follow-through, or not, of its own volition.

American Gun Culture Report, Issue No. 1 has a picture of a girl smiling at the camera while happily hugging an AK-47 on its cover. First printed in December 2006, Ross Eliot wrote the then-zine completely on his own, as a tool to garner attention and support for his project.

Now in the fifth issue, the Report is full-size, in color and black-and-white, has several contributors, and is sold in several major cities across the country. Perhaps because it is not specifically conservative, most people call it liberal. Undeniably, it has a counter-culture skew. But while it does not cater to the exclusive audience to which most other gun press speaks, it also does not seek to exclude them.

“I was the guy looking for the alternative gun magazine,” Eliot says, cleaning guns on his dining room table. Shooting fills a gun’s barrel with gunk and powder.  The solvent to remove it reeks of pure alcohol.

Most gun press are very much the same.  Right wing, male dominated, sales driven.  This is not only regressive, states AGCR’s mission statement, it is boring, and AGCR promotes journalism outside these social confines.

“I will frequently meet people who don’t fit into stereotypes … who tell me none of their friends know they have a gun, they don’t want to be associated with people who own guns, but have a gun under their bed,” Eliot says. “I want to create an environment for people like that to come out and really connect.”

Phlush and waterless urinals + new PSA

Phlush held an event tonight at the Orchid Salon to feature an exhibit of waterless urinals. Speakers from Recode Oregon, Cloacina.org, and NW Edgewater spoke along with Milepost 5 artist in residence Jay Critchley.

Around 30 people from around Portland came to the educational packed event and enjoyed food donated from local eateries in Old Town China Town.

Waterless urinal put together by Cloacina.

Co-founders of Phlush, Carol McCreary and Lan Nguyen talk to supporters.

Phlush who bills themselves as Portland, Oregon’s public restroom advocates also unveiled a new PSA tonight put together by Fashion Buddha.

Check it out. It rocks!

Posted by Israel Bayer

Denying life will only make you miserable

By Michael Hopcroft, Contributing Writer

Do you suffer from mental illness?”

“No, Doctor. I enjoy every minute of it!”

Of course, nobody really enjoys being mentally ill. But this very old joke illustrates something vital about coping with any disability: having a sense of humor about it, and about life in general, is vital if you are going to survive it.

Humor can be many things to a person with mental illness. Humor can be a refuge from self-doubt. It can be a safe way to interact with other people, especially friends. It can be reinforcement at times when the illness appears ready to overwhelm you. Humor makes life more livable.

Q3: Barbour, Fish, Nichols

From the

April 16, edition of Street Roots

Question three: What plans, if any do you have to address the city of Portland’s severe shortage of affordable housing options for families in need of ADA access?

Q3: Youth, and public safety

From the April 16, edition of Street Roots

Question three: The issue of youths on the streets has generated a lot of discussion of late. As a city commissioner, what is your solution to the friction occurring between the needs of youths on the street, business concerns and public safety?

An unconventional community: Support SR this spring!

What makes Street Roots successful is the community support behind the organization.

SR operates on a humble budget of less than $200,000. For your investment in SR, the Portland region gets one of the best grassroots newspapers in town- informing readers through professional journalism and opinions on issues that affect the community.

The newspaper also offers individuals experiencing poverty a platform to be recognized and published, and offers the community an understanding of people struggling to survive.

SR works with more than 400 individuals experiencing extreme poverty over the course of a year to improve their quality of life and to find community through the vendor program. Last year, SR helped scores of people avoid becoming homeless and helped others access housing services. SR sits outside the traditional framework of the social-service network, but the work we do is no less important. We help take some of the strain off an already burdened system, while offering individuals income that supports the local economy.

It’s springtime in the city. That means SR vendors are out and about in force, working to sell a copy of the newspaper, and to build a relationship that keeps you coming back. They do it with a paper in their hand, and often a resource guide for the next soul who needs a little hope and a roadmap to reach it.

But really, it’s about more than delivering interesting news and opinions, or the resource guide. It’s about being stewards of our collective urban landscape.

George, a vendor who sells in front of Powell’s downtown, brings stories to the newsroom of helping individuals dealing with mental disabilities and helping guide them to the necessary resources. In the way George talks about selling the newspaper and helping people on the streets, it’s as if he was a paid social worker on a mission to help individuals, instead of a SR vendor who shares their ranks.

Ted Jack, who sells near City Hall, now has housing after living on the streets for more than a decade. To give back, he makes bologna and cheese sandwiches each morning to pass out to other individuals on the streets while he sells the newspaper. George Mayes, who sells at the courthouse, makes birdhouses for his customers. Leo Rhodes, who has become a staple in the Hollywood neighborhood, sits regularly with other vendors and talks about their experiences.

“I get excited when customers greet me or ask me questions about being a vendor and what they can do to help the homeless,” says Kim, who sells in east county. “I feel like a little kid in a candy store when someone actually greets me.” For some, selling the paper reminds us of our shared humanity, and that we all have something to offer.

Lastly, SR doesn’t shy away from advocacy efforts. Street Roots is actively engaged in building a political movement to support housing in our community, while working to ensure that the general public, foundations and government are aware and informed about alternative revenue streams to support that movement.

Through journalism and advocacy SR is helping push the conversation along about a future housing levy in our community, and is currently working with the Multnomah County to create a system for the region to officially count individuals that have died on the streets. On the front end, it gives dignity to those who have passed. On the back end, it helps build a case for government to access more resources for people on the streets. Without your support, this wouldn’t be possible.

We’re asking you to support SR this spring with a one-time or recurring donation online or by sending a check to 211 NW Davis, Portland, OR. 97209. We promise you that your hard-earned money will go to good work.

SR is imperfect. We work with some of the hardest brothers and sisters on Portland’s streets. We are opinionated, rough around the edges and often times running on empty – be it from the lack of sleep the night before or the lack of resources to do what we do, both as individuals and as an organization. But one thing is for sure: From our vendors, volunteers and staff, and you as the reader, we are a community. It may not always be pretty. But like spring, it’s both beautiful and temperamental. Thank you for being a friend. Please give today!