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…
Posted by Israel Bayer
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This picture post is a beautifully sobering example of the need to listen to every voice, and do our best to help each other so they no longer will have to be in pictures like this.
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It really pulls at your heart. I have met a few of these folks and really would like to get some REAL help for them, not just crumbs off the table. Instead of results oriented efforts, our city leaders politicize their situation and use it for a photo op. When I go to the forums I hear all about the socialist plans for these hurting people, plans that DON”T include real opportunity. Plans that sound like the same BS they smear every election year. I’m sick of it. We need to rally up for real change not chump change.
When you do the math it is insane, look at the RAC center. The figures I have seen (and they never meet a budget) say that they will create between 50 and 90 additional beds for around $60,000,000. A third grader could see that this is about a million dollars per bed. The Metro area has seen unemployment last year reach about 120,000 – another 122,000 just fell off the chart and 38,000 jobs in Portland went away last year. This kind of planning will not bring them back. That’s great if you are in the social services business and want to build up the unemployment and homelessness. Their next project could be to increase hunger, also good for their trade.
In my rounds of talking with citizens I sense that your following is more interested in opportunity than in Legacy Projects. It seems that they are more interested in a hand up than a hand out. The Election Day tripe that we hear won’t create that, it does just the opposite. That $60,000,000 could make a real difference if we move past the monuments and start helping our fellow Portlanders – for real.
The Projects I have helped to launch have had huge impacts on tough situations. It is tougher to put it together in the states than it is abroad because of the politicizing of people who have hit hard times, often as a result of government mismanagement. If we connect the dots you often find you are looking for help from the very people that caused the problem, or one of their clones.
At Bethany House we kept the government out of it and let the real American generosity run it. The results have been amazing. In Fiji we had the privilege of leaders who really wanted help for their people. With a 3 month training program and a knowledgeable and supportive bureaucracy we were able to graduate 1200 street youth in one year and find employment for 1,000 of them. A lot of good people and businessmen pulled off an amazing victory. Many of the youth went on to college.
There is hope and there are answers, I have participated in them, but you won’t find real answers with unreal bureaucracies. I hope we can move this all forward. Our problem isn’t really about how much our city spent, it’s how they spent it that is taking us down.
With Hope – Mike
This is inspiring and sad, poignant, and life-affirming all at once.
I have been blessed the past few years to get a chance to know some of you personally. I feel honored by it.
Y’all are amazing, and have my complete admiration and respect.
Beautiful faces and words and demands and dreams and struggle and experience! Thank you for sharing this with all of us.
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