OPINION | While some Street Roots vendors return to selling the paper, others need to shelter in place. There are ways to support them, too.
That afternoon in early March when Raven Drake walked me to her tent next to I-5 North created the roadmap for how Street Roots would endure and adapt to the pandemic.
We knew sales would be down as we all began to grapple with the gravity of COVID-19, so we created, with Raven, the Coronavirus Action and Prevention Team as a way vendors could make additional income. It was inspired by Raven’s tent. She had a medical tent set up to isolate anyone at neighboring camps.
Within days, we decided to halt the print run and go digital-only. We didn’t know enough about the spread of the virus to continue.
The action team got us through these past five months, and it continues now as a new and intrinsic portion of Street Roots, borne of crisis.
But now that we understand much better the spread of COVID-19, we have made the decision to go back to print. We spent weeks creating a health video with vendors and then certifying them to go back to selling. When we would play the video in the office, sometimes I’d hear vendors laugh, enjoying the ingenuity of other vendors.
At least it’s not dry content, I’d think. One vendor said to me, “This is going to be fun. We get to be creative.” This, of course, is at the heart of why Street Roots survives. We recognize the creativity necessary for survival and learn from the unhoused how to do this as an organization.
This week, going back to print was indeed emotional for us. Many staff members reported waking up in the middle of the night, wondering what we were forgetting. There’s this responsibility of public health that we all carry. We need to do this right.
But there’s also this profound sense of how we are always anchored at Street Roots — our vendor program, our newspaper, Rose City Resource. That’s who we’ve always been — even before we were Street Roots, as our predecessor paper, the Burnside Cadillac. It was one of the early papers in an international street newspaper movement that began soon after the now-defunct Street News out of New York; the still-running Street Sheet out of San Francisco; and the Big Issue out of London, which has spawned many other Big Issue street newspapers around the globe. It felt emotional to go back to who we are.
We are moored, which also helps us innovate.
So this week was also a homecoming for staff, vendors, the action team, and you, the readers.
One man ran down the streets joyfully yelling, “Street Roots is back” before getting in line to pick up his new issues. Throughout the day, Venmo transactions came in, most for vendors with their badge numbers, but a few with messages that demonstrate a mutual aid that pulses through our community.
“Just showin some love. Saw ya on the news,” wrote Coby Wright, referring to a segment that Maggie Vespa reported on KGW, showing the vendors’ first day back selling. “You guys sound awesome. Coffee on me, give a few papers away, whatever. Keep up the good work.”
DIRECTOR’S DESK: Roll the presses! Street Roots is returning, and you can pay with Venmo
This is not a simple story of return. It never is. More than 1,000 copies of our special publication — a magazine about homelessness in Portland during the pandemic — went out on the first day.
But also, one vendor went out to sell and by the next morning had sent me an email telling me it’s just too frightening to be out there. She’s too medically vulnerable, and she is, fortunately, housed so she can isolate. Although we’re pleased with the numbers of Portlanders we see wearing masks, there are also people not wearing masks.
We work closely with other street newspapers in the International Network of Street Papers, convening often to share, thanks to our very own Israel Bayer’s leadership (he now heads the North American bureau). We hear from many North American papers that sales are at around 60% or so. Street Roots was the last to go back to print.
We will work to get assistance to vendors who are at risk or are struggling with low numbers. Your support is the bridge for us to do this.
Please know that if you aren’t able to go out and you continue to read our digital news, you can also contribute to the vendors who can’t return to selling, showing them you are in it together. Some people set up recurring donations to make this happen.
And for those who are back selling, we are working to find new posts, realizing, for example, that grocery stores are a key place now. Desmond Hardison, a leader at Street Roots from our earliest days who canvasses for us and still vends at Green Zebra in North Portland, is taking on a new task, “warming up” posts by starting to sell near grocery stores where vendors haven’t sold before — and then mentoring vendors to take over. He’s an extraordinary leader.
It’s been five months since I visited Raven in her camp along the interstate. So much has happened since then. Tina, who camped with her, moved into housing in March and joined our Street Roots staff. Raven helped launch the C3PO camp villages, realizing a dream that she and Tina shared to have a camp that supported people who are trans. She became the health coordinator of all three camps, employed through a city contract with JOIN, and she continues to be based at Street Roots.
She did all this — helping more than 100 people find stability in the camp villages — while camped in her green tent situated alongside the interstate. There are a number of Street Roots vendors living in the camp villages, and they report how incredible it is to feel safer, not as worried about who’s approaching in the night. I’ve witnessed the boost to mental health.
And then, on July 21, Raven moved into her own apartment.
First, she sent me a text: “I got the apartment, I get the keys at 4 pm.”
I responded unabashedly. “OMG OMG OMG OMG.”
Over the past couple of weeks, she tells me little snippets of updates as she transitions from the streets to housing — the sudden quiet, for example. Other people sometimes talk about the challenges of sleeping in the bed, and some people sleep on the floor for months. Some feel the walls closing in, or have trouble with indoor air, no breezes.
But Raven has mostly been relishing this time — her showers, her tea. She painted a picture of calm for me when she told me, “I enjoy sitting on my little deck at night drinking tea in the cool of the evening.”
These are complicated days. Just as I can celebrate that Raven is now indoors — and we’ve seen a handful of vendors move into housing over the last few months — I also swallow deeply as I grapple with all the evictions that are ahead, all the people who will end up on the streets.
We always live at paradox at Street Roots. We know that we need to celebrate each individual beautiful moment while realizing that there’s a scale of horror, too.
Sometimes, like this week, when we watched so many unhoused people attempt to be as safe as possible in this pandemic while also earning an income, it’s just a turbulent yet beautiful wave of emotion.
And fittingly, Raven popped over on the first day, simply to volunteer, wanting, as always, to offer that solidarity.
It’s a solidarity we feel throughout the community.
Stay with us. It’s hard out there. We’ve got each other. We love you, Street Roots readers.
Street Roots is an award-winning, weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2020 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404.
"street" - Google News
August 14, 2020 at 11:37PM
https://ift.tt/2E01gky
Kaia Sand | Back to print, back to our roots - Street Roots News
"street" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Ql4mmJ
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment