Memorial rededicated as part of Nikkei celebration

Photo courtesy of Murase Associates

Street Roots vendor joins memorial with poetry

The Japanese American Historial Plaza, with its solemn pillars and rolling landscape, is an award-winning monument to our past, a place of respite and remembrance, and a place to both acknowledge and educate.

As part of the Oregon Nikkei Endowment 20th anniversary this year, ONE is hosting a rededication of the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Tom McCall Waterfront Park this Friday. The Plaza was originally dedicated in August 1990 to remember the hardships of Japanese immigrants during World War II and honor the bravery of the Japanese community. The poetry of Lawson Inada, among others — including Street Roots vendor Leo Rhodes — will be read as part of the ceremony.

Beginning at 5 p.m. at the Plaza, the celebration will include special guests Justice Michael Gillette of the Oregon Supreme Court; Lawson Inada, Oregon Poet Laureate 2006-2010; the Minidoka Swing Band; Portland Taiko, and many others.

A special collaborative project between Portland poet and writer Kaia Sand, Sisters of the Road, Street Roots, Transition Projects, Inc. and Oregon Nikkei Endowment will be part of this event.

The celebration then continues at the Bill Naito Legacy Fountain, just steps away from the Plaza, with a musical performance by The Slants. Crafts, food and beer will be on hand celebrate this award-winning landmark.

Tickets can be purchased at www.oregonnikkei.org.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Homelessness, by the book

Understanding three decades of homeless-creating policy and what we can all do to change it

By Israel Bayer
and Monica Beemer

It’s hard to cut through the never-ending news cycles that bombard us daily to deliver a message. If your organization lacks resources and political clout, it becomes even harder to be heard. If the message has anything to do with human rights and homelessness, forget about it.

In a time when many Americans find themselves on the brink of economic collapse, individuals and families are looking at a horizon dotted with issues that affect their way of life but feel absolutely powerless to do anything about it.

The media, in all its forms, delivers headlines by the second about natural disasters, the global economy and soldiers who die fighting for a war we barely understand. Meanwhile, in households from Peoria to Portland, the realities of daily life set in; loss of jobs, massive foreclosures, and the loss of unemployment benefits — ultimately, for hundreds of thousands of Americans, the loss of any safety net whatsoever. Homelessness.

In 1979, the Department of Housing and Urban Development spent $77.3 billion in today’s dollars developing and maintaining housing to ensure all people could afford a place to live. Yet since 1995, the federal government has done nothing while more than 500,000 of these units have been lost, and an additional 335,000 could disappear this year.

In 2009, roughly 3.4 million families experienced foreclosures — 60 percent caused by unemployment. This year, as many as 3.5 million people will experience homelessness in the United States — a number that has been increasing since the Wall Street collapse and government bailout of the banks, and in the midst of the Bush administration’s 10-year plan to end homelessness. To put this into perspective, the federal government’s discretionary military spending is at $663.8 billion dollars.

The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), a group of grassroots homeless organizations based in California and Oregon is releasing an in-depth updated version of “Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures.”

The popular report was first released in 2006, and has been a become a staple for politicians, scholars, think-tanks, poverty organizations and the general public to track the rise of modern-day homelessness. From the Ronald Reagan era in the 1980s, when the federal government dismantled the social safety net, to the present day, the report outlines the past three decades of policy failures that have led us to this point.

Poetry Tuesday: Aged Earl Grey

by Therresa Kennedy

We had no money, so we asked for the free cup of hot water,
Water for the tea, the ‘aged’ Earl Grey in my pocket.
After we had sipped the grey-gold liquid, we stopped being angry,
We stopped the looks, the stares, the accusations, we stopped
And just sat, smelling the tea and our empty wallets seemed
To condemn us a little less.

Extra! Extra!

Strike a pose, Portland! It’s the season to see and be seen, whether you’re sipping Moroccan tea or an exotic brew, feet in the air or buried in the grass. The weekend is about to begin, so start it off right with a brand new Street Roots. Here’s what to expect.

Yoga time: Practice gives women a new peace, and a new view on life from behind bars. Amanda Waldroupe visits the Living Yoga class at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility to learn how the centuries-old discipline is helping women find balance.

Kings and Queens of Pioneer Square: Tony Schick takes us inside the world of the chess community at Pioneer Courthouse Square, where people fill the faux pillars with nonstop games.

Homelessness, by the book: The Western Regional Advocacy Project has released it’s latest edition of “Without Housing,” which will outlines three decades of homeless-creating policies and what we can all do to change it.

The Other Side: Photographer Stephen Kerpen gives us a peak at his exhibit on the lives of Palestinians and Bedouins living in the Occupied Territories.

A little food and sympathy: Farmers markets help Oregon Trail Card holders stretch their dollars on local produce.

Plus, commentaries from Art Garcia and Ruth Kovacs, and the poetry of Leo Rhodes, part of a special rededication ceremony for the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Plus, a shockingly positive editorial to boot! Your vendor has it all within reach for the always-low price of $1.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Hard rain’s gonna fall: What we’re losing in the state’s latest financial fallout

By Israel Bayer, Amanda Waldroupe and Joanne Zuhl, Staff Writers

Only weeks after Gov. Ted Kulongoski released his budget — the leveling off a $577 million deficit — the Dear John letters went in the mail: Thousands of letters informing the elderly, disabled, the sick and the poor that the state can no longer support the assistance they receive for basic needs.

The state Department of Human Services, which oversees assistance to the state’s most vulnerable populations, is absorbing well over $158 million dollars of this budget gap. Calling them cuts seems inadequate to describe the damage done. The governor’s reductions, which by law have to be across the board, also mean a reduction in the amount of federal funds leveraged because of state spending. In the end, what is cut at the state level is often only the tip of the iceberg in what is lost to the program.

In this edition, Street Roots is highlighting 15 state programs affected, and in some cases completely dismantled  — most of them within the Department of Human Services, but housing as well. The programs include alcohol and drug treatment, homeless assistance programs, and an entire system working with seniors and people with disabilities. The cuts are also completely turning what’s left of a mental health system upside down, not to mention the slashing of the state’s HIV, sexually transmitted disease and tuberculosis programs.

What we’re charting here is only a portion of the cuts affecting Oregon’s poor. There are many others, but this gives an overview of the catastrophic impact these decisions will have on our neighbors and neighborhoods. The information on the programs and the impact are taken directly from the state’s matrix on the budget cuts, and unless specifically noted, include both the cuts from the state General Fund as well as the losses in federal and “other” funding for this fiscal year. Agencies are operating under these cuts now as the majority of these budgets went into effect July 1.

As tough as these current economic challenges are, analysts project a $2.5 billion dollar gap in the coming fiscal year. It is hoped that with the information presented on pages 8 and 9, you will better understand what this is costing us, and what will be at stake next year when we can expect even more reductions in services to those in need, barring intervention.

In addition to the programs we’ve highlighted here, there are many more, not the least of which are reduced support for educating our children and our corrections network.

By year’s end, more than 60,000 people in Oregon will have exhausted their unemployment benefits. Without the prospect of gainful employment, many will be forced into the safety net of the programs listed above. They may be family, friends or neighbors to you. They may be you.

Seniors and People with Disabilities Division

Medicaid Personal Care Program, $2,375,705 cut: This and other in-home assistance are getting relief from $17 million in emergency funding from the state through June, 2011.

Nearly 1,200 Oregonians (882 aged and physically disabled clients and 292 developmentally disabled clients) receive this service at an average cost of $250 monthly. Effective Aug. 1.

Impact: Reduction would eliminate in-home personal care services that help maintain independence and dignity, such as bathing, eating, dressing and mobility.

In Home Care Program, $25,708,247 cut: Provides seniors with personal assistance, such as food preparation, housekeeping, shopping, etc. Effective Oct. 1: This and other in-home assistance programs are getting relief from $17 million in emergency funding from the state through June, 2011.

Impact: The program will be reduced by 75 percent. An estimated 10,500 seniors will lose personal assistance services, and may no longer be able to live independently and need to move to nursing facilities or other care settings.

“Regarding Oregon Project Independence, if you have a client who is in their 80s who needs help with housekeeping a few hours a month — people who live independent, want to and need a little bit of help. If you take away that help, at some point soon they’re going to end up in a nursing home. It costs taxpayers a lot less to pay for the couple of hundred a month to pay for in home than it does the $5,000 to $7,000 a month in a nursing home.

I hope taxpayers and the public understand. The scary thing about it is we all know somebody who is a senior citizen. And we probably all have tangential connections with someone with a disability, or a child with autism. These cuts are going to hit home in a way that really everybody is going to feel.”

— Dave Austin, Multnomah County Department of Human Services

Bike Portland’s Jonathan Maus keeps the gears turning on the city’s two-wheeled vision

By Israel Bayer, Staff Writer

Bike Portland is an example of how a dedicated individual, a camera, a computer and a blog can blossom into a platform for a specific topic and shoot ahead of newspapers and nonprofits that invest millions of dollars to engage and educate the community. In this case, the topic is biking, and that individual is Jonathan Maus.

Starting in 2005, Maus, an avid biker, created BikePortland.org, a daily news blog that covers biking in Portland. In the past five years, Maus, a former public relations consultant, has trained himself in journalism and photography and now runs one of the most popular bike blogs in the region and possibly the world — reaching 8,000 to 16,000 people daily on the latest news on biking in the Rose City.

Israel Bayer: Can you talk a little bit about Portland’s Bicycle Plan for 2030, and where we are headed as a community?

Jonathan Maus: I think the big thing is that’s it’s just a plan. It’s a great plan, the best in the country, but still, it’s just a plan. The only real money that’s been talked about for the plan has been handled poorly and created negative attention. When it comes to actually doing the things that we need to do to achieve what’s in the plan the revenue is just not there.

From a technical perspective (the plan) doesn’t go far enough. In 2005, Mayor Sam Adams and some of the best and brightest from Portland went to Amsterdam and began to talk about how Portland could be modeled after European cities. But if you look at the plan, we do very little to model ourselves on cities in Europe.

We know we have to create separated bikeways from vehicle traffic. More people don’t bike because they don’t feel safe. If we had separation more people would bike. It’s simple.

Sharing a vendor’s view of the world

By Becky Mullins, Staff Writer

Allen Bennett Jr. is a Portland native, a Street Roots vendor and the owner of one of the most contagious smiles in the Portland metro area.  Allen’s positive attitude and huge smile make it hard for one to believe that he has been experiencing homelessness for seven years now.

When Allen explains how it happened that he began to experience homelessness, he reflects back seven years and says, “Basically my apartment was shared with roommates and they ditched on me. I tried to maintain the apartment by myself but soon found that I could not afford the apartment on just one income and was forced to give it up. I slept in my car for some time. However, after five years of this the car broke down, and I could not afford to fix it. Now I sleep wherever I can find a dry spot without the police shoving me out.”

Allen was a mechanic for more than four years and now wants to go into construction. He says he likes how he feels after a long day of hard work. He likes puzzles and figuring out how things work. About a year ago, while at work, Allen went to pull a heavy box down from a high shelf and ended up tearing major muscles in his left arm. He was told that it could take years of healing before he has full use of his arm again.

Since Feb 25, Allen has been selling Street Roots at Common Grounds coffee house. He is an early bird and arrives at 6:30 a.m., taking a break for lunch at noon and returning to sales an hour later, sometimes selling papers as late as 10 p.m. when the coffee house closes. Allen has been saving most of the money he earns from selling Street Roots for a deposit on an apartment for himself and his partner Kim. The two of them have been together for a year and a half now, supporting each other while experiencing homelessness.

Allen very much enjoys meeting customers that are new to Street Roots and customers who are regular readers of Street Roots.  “I like that people have accepted me at my location, and it feels so good when people say good morning and smile at me.” The staff at Common Grounds coffee house are very supportive and kind and I even sweep the sidewalk every other day. I want my location to look good, feel good and be free of debris, and so do the staff, so we work together to keep it that way.”

When asked about what he would like customers to know about Street Roots, Allen said that he not only uses his money for simple things, such as purchasing food, clothing and sometimes renting a hotel room, he also said, “Vendors are quite different. We all come to Street Roots for different reasons and with very different stories as to how, but most important, please know that the paper can help you see into my eyes and see the world as I do.”

Vancouver’s supervised injection site providing a safe place for changing lives

By Amanda Waldroupe, Staff Writer

Vancouver, B.C., knows how to deal with heroin addicts.

Vancouver is the home to North America’s only supervised injection site, and the world’s largest. Called Insite, it allows addicts to bring in their own drugs — more often than not, heroin and cocaine — and inject them in a booth supervised by nurses. Addicts can stay at Insite after injecting as long as they like afterwards; nurses are constantly available to provide immediate medical care if someone overdoses or experiences related medical issues. Clean needles and condoms are made available to users.

Insite is in a three-story building. The first floor is the supervised injection site. The second floor is a detox program serving 12 people, and the third floor houses an 18-bed drug recovery program called Onsite. Insite was intentionally designed that way to encourage people using Insite to enter recovery programs, and it also makes it as easy as going up a flight of stairs.

Insite opened in 2003 and is a partnership between the Portland Hotel Society, an affordable housing provider, and the city’s public health agency, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

Insite’s founding was a direct response to an escalating public health crisis in Vancouver. During the 1990s, there was a rampant and increased use of injection drugs, fatal overdoses, and transmission of HIV and Hepatitis C. Ground zero is an area in downtown Vancouver known as the “Downtown Eastside.” The area is five blocks by about 15 blocks wide, and it is home to Vancouver’s poorest and most vulnerable residents, including an estimated 4,000 to 7,000 injection-drug users.

There were 201 overdose deaths in Vancouver in 1993. That number had hovered between 30 and 50 in the prior decade. HIV infection increased along with the overdose deaths — in 1996, there were 2,100 cases of HIV transmission, and a United Nations report found that the Downtown Eastside area had an HIV rate of 30 percent, compared to Canada’s rate of 0.2 percent.

“These two things literally created a recognized health crises,” says Russ Maynard, Insite’s program coordinator.

Maynard says there was a recognition that increasing the number of needle exchange clinics would not help to solve the overdose and health crisis. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), a grassroots organization, formed and began pressuring Vancouver’s local government to open a supervised injection site modeled after sites already in operation in Europe and Australia.

“The luck is having a health authority and a city hall that, at that particular time in history, seemed to be open to new ideas,” Maynard says.

Since opening, Insite has had more than 1.5 million visits. There are 12,000 people registered with Insite (though not all of them may be using Insite at once). In 2009, Insite had 276,178 visits by 5,447 individuals. There were 484 overdoses, but no deaths. Insite made 6,242 referrals to social-service agencies, including housing placement and drug treatment programs.

Maynard says Insite’s biggest asset is not that it prevents overdose deaths or is an integral piece to Vancouver’s public health system. But rather that it allows people to change their lives. He frequently gives tours of Insite to the public, and he remembers one tour that he gave when a woman using Insite’s services began answering questions from the group and speaking with them.

“You don’t know what this place means to me,” Maynard remembers her saying. “They treat us as if we’re normal.”

Amanda Waldroupe: In what way was harm reduction available to the community before Insite opened?

Russ Maynard: There would have been street nurses walking around with a shoulder bag. There would have been needle exchanges. VANDU (the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users) and other organizations would have had harm reduction classes to some degree. The problem is that it was piecemeal.

A.W.: How does Insite work?

R.M.: The first time you come in you have to register. The registration process is very unencumbersome. You’ll be handed a clipboard and directed to fill out 20, 30 questions. Obviously, if you have literacy issues, you’re dope sick, or have mental health issues, that can be a Herculean, if not impossible, task. (It’s) designed around the population. It asks for your birth date, which isn’t giving a lot of information. It asks your gender. It asks your ethnicity. Then you will make up a handle or a pseudonym. We don’t need your real name. We just want to get you in. That is very reflective of the bottom up design (of) Insite.

Hopefully your wait is very minimal. One minute, two minutes. They’re called into the injection room. The door is locked. They walk in. Right away, there’s a computer on their left. They self report to the nurse what they’re using. There are 12 booths. Staff are walking the floor back and forth about two feet from the booths. They are sitting in a cubicle with a large mirror in front of them, a stainless steel tabletop and two walls. That mirror does a few things. If they are stimulated, it allows them to have a sense of what’s going on behind them. It (also) allows them to look at themselves. If you’re homeless, you don’t have a mirror. You can see the sores on your face, your gaunt look. Staff are right there (if they overdose) and are intervening within minutes. They are trained to recognize the signs.

A woman demonstrates the injection process. The booths have mirrors to encourage another level of awareness toward recovery

AMA calls the hiring of Assistant Chief a ‘slap in the face’

Via the The Albina Ministerial Alliance…

The Albina Ministerial Alliance (AMA) Coalition for Justice and Police Reform today called Chief Mike Reese’s hiring of Portland Business Alliance Vice President Mike Kuykendall to an Assistant Chief job at the Bureau “a slap in the face.”

At a meeting with Chief Reese on June 17, the steering committee of the AMA Coalition urged Reese to hire a person of color to such a high-level civilian position in the Chief’s office to show his commitment to the community, in light of there not being any Commanders of color and just one recently-promoted Captain who could have been promoted to the position. The AMA and other members of the community had also encouraged Mayor/Police Commissioner Sam Adams and former Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman to diversify the command staff.

Instead, after Reese had the job of Assistant Chief of Services reclassified to a civilian position on the Wednesday, July 14 City Council consent agenda, he appointed Kuykendall, who is white.

Reese’s personal relationship with Kuykendall, which includes their membership in a band called “The Usual Suspects,” as well as Kuykendall’s background in the District Attorney’s office and at the Portland Business Alliance, gives the appearance of insider influence.

“In the same way Mayor Adams selected Chief Reese without input from the community, Reese has now picked an Assistant in direct contradiction to input from the community, and without doing a broader search,” said Pastor T. Allen Bethel of the Coalition.

“When he says he is trying to rebuild relationships damaged in the last 8 months by police shootings, ‘beanbagging’ a 12-year old, and the union march on City Hall, instead he has given us a slap in the face.”

Some members of the Coalition also worry about Kuykendall’s advocacy of the “Sit/Lie” laws, which target poor and homeless people in the downtown core. “If Reese is trying to build trust in our communities, he should not hire someone who is seen as not representing our communities,” said Bethel.

Via Street Roots…

Kuykendall was profiled in Street Roots in 2007. Street Roots and other homeless advocates have had strained relationships with the Portland Business Alliance during Kuykendall’s tenure. Disagreements were mostly over the city’s sit-lie law, and SR calling for public oversight of the Portland Patrol Inc., a private security firm that enforces public policy in downtown parks contracted by the Alliance.

In 2009, Street Roots joined the Portland Business Alliance in the hopes of improving relationships with downtown businesses. The membership was in exchange for advertising in Street Roots. Months after the agreement, Kuykendall accused Street Roots of yellow journalism because of an editorial it had written, and told the organization that the Alliance could no longer run ads in the newspaper. The reaction spurred a flurry of bad PR for the Alliance, and continued to put a strain on Street Roots and the Alliance’s relationship that has lasted to date.

Posted by Israel Bayer

New SR Rose City Resource Guide (July-Dec.) on the streets

New Street Roots Rose City Resource Guide is on the streets. Make an order or visit us at 211 NW Davis (7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mon-Sat.) to pick yours up today.

Film follows mother’s perspective on Juarez’s murdered women

By Daniela Pastrana, Street News Service

“Sometimes I’m cheerful, but other times I see no reason for working in the community or even for life,” said Paula Flores, who has become the symbol of the fight for justice for the hundreds of women who have been murdered or disappeared in this northern Mexican border city.

“Sometimes I hit bottom,” admitted Flores, 52, said, speaking in her home. Her voice was subdued and her sad gaze rested on some point out in the desert that surrounds the Lomas de Poleo neighborhood. Located in Ciudad Juárez’s western outskirts, it is a long way from the city center — and poverty is more than evident.

Protesters say Gov’s cuts sending us ‘back to the 1970s’

About 200 people rallied at noon today to protest Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s budget cuts to human services, saying the cuts will have a devastating effect on the state’s most vulnerable populations.

The cuts, part of a $158 million slashed from the state’s Department of Human Services, includes major reductions to programs that help seniors and people with disabilities stay in their homes, and mental health programs and other services intended to help people live independent of institutions. (An in-depth look at the cuts is outlined in the current edition of Street Roots. Buy one from a vendor today!)

“With these cuts, we’re going back to the 1970s when I was first injured,” says Choi Marquardt, who neck was broken in a car accident when she was 15. “I was placed in a nursing home when I was 17.” (Photos after the cut.)

Navigating the inequities of mental health system

By Jenny Westberg, Contributing Columnist

Keaton Otis died on May 12. We know police shot at him 32 times. We know the other victim, Officer Christopher Burley, and we know he’ll survive. We know so much about a few moments. Now, thanks to the courage of Keaton’s parents, Felesia and Joseph Otis, we’ve heard about other moments in this bright, creative young man’s life — and the illness that may have led to his tragic death at only 25.

Keaton had a mood disorder. According to reports, a nurse practitioner consulted by the Otis family said he likely had schizoaffective disorder. And he needed help. But Keaton Otis wasn’t interested in getting treatment, and his parents were desperate. Instead he shut himself away from friends and family. He was convinced that people were plotting against him. He stopped eating and lost 50 pounds. Many families in our community have faced this situation. The U.S. Surgeon General reported one in five people have a diagnosable mental illness during the course of one year. We all know someone who’s dealing with mental illness or addiction. But what if it’s your son or daughter in crisis?

Poetry Tuesday: A Roof of Stars

by Dharma Bum

Space is our body and our being
We breathe the air that we are
See with the eyes of being
See the Oneness among us
See that the skin line is not the borderline
See that We are vast and quicker than light
See the far and rising sun rising in the Awareness that we are
If you take away the labels
You take away the limits
Science says it’s so
The bible says it’s so
The Dali Lama says it’s so
The dead poets at my ear say it’s so
The speechless newborn babies
The innocent via electro shock
The ancient echoes East of Eden
The rock of ages
The voice of prophets
The ice age dreamers
The roaches waiting to inherit the Earth
The Immaculate hearts under water
The evergreen forest
The horizon that goes on forever
The ALL say, it is so!
So don’t take my word for it
I’m just the empty trumpet of the wind
Turn your eyes inside out
Expose your bone marrow to fate
Let space have its way
Die a quiet death
Clear seeing will arise where a brain used to be
You will know that the grave and the cradle are one
You will find rest and flowers will sprout everywhere!

Poetry Tuesday: Untitled

by Norm Santana

Felt kinda sorry
For the dude
Even though it
Was amusing in
It’s own way
He was screaming and
Kicking this parking meter
As if it were a guy
Who stole his coat
Or something
He said:
“you don’t get it man
This bitch owes me”
He screamed as I
Turned around and
Walked away:
“hundreds! Thousands
Of dollars! Years! Years
Of paying these things!
All I need is eighty cents!
And I want it now!”
He was still screaming when I turned the corner