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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 26, 2009)
14 • v teg f u jy» A I 1 I t t i i m MMN! 4 street r o o ta jA Education * Dialogue * Independence A frank discussion about addiction and the streets eyes that h e’s dealing, with things I can neither capture nor describe. I t has come to my attention that My point is, nothing is black or white bp some o f your vendors are alcoholics and drug the streets; it’s just different shades of grey. addicts. I f this is true, I ’m sorry to hear that. I So when we talk about addiction; and was under the impression that buying your alcoholism, we have to talk about the paper you were helping them. You maybe atmosphere surrounding people’s lives. helping a few but riot a ll and fo r that reason I Are' some vendois using or drinking? Yes. will not buy your paper. You really^should let Are there reasons that Street Roots or the public know about Portlanders should judge this kind of the people that sell your behavior? Depends. Should we seek to get papers and the people the help they need? Absolutely. problems they have. Street Roots is not a direct service. We The money they make believe in helping people help themselves - is going to there both through sellingthe newspaper and addiction and not socialization (relationships) and by providing By Israel Bayer helping them.” individuals with the resources and Having an honest knowledge that must for people. (See www. and open discussion rosecityresource.org) about alcoholism and drug addiction is For some, Street Roots doesn’t,work. It < always hard, specifically in the context of takes dedication and very hard work to day homelessness. It’s even harder when an ip and day out be at a specific location to 1 organization creates an alternative economic sell the newspaper. We don’t allow people to engine for people living on the streets, like be aggressive and when they are, we work a street newspaper. with vendors, business owners and readers, Selling Street Roots is hard. There’s no to correct the problem. < question that the individual sleeping under a We ask the vendors to be kind and bridge tonight or in a cheap motel, after courteous and treat people like they expect selling Street Roots all day, has put in a hard to be treated. We also ask that vendors do day’s work. There’s alot of ways to make not use or drink while selling Street Roots. money on the streets, and selling Street But we do not attempt to police their Roots is an honest one. behavior once they are done selling the Why do people experiencing newspaper. homelessness and poverty ask for your Should we? It’s always been a tough dollar, specifically Street Roots vendors?' question. The answer we’ve always landed The answers are as colorful as the people on is no, we Shouldn’t punish a minority of that walk through our door. The short vendors who may use some .money made answer is survival, but there’s more. from the sales of Street Roots for drugs or Some have been slamméd by booze. Here’s why: circumstance, the recession or an If a Street Roots vendor chooses to have unforgiving health care, system. Some of the a beer Or smoke a joint after work, for § new faces of homelessness have been 7 either leisurely or medicinal purposes and is traffietí" at’ffre'idea'of"havffig ib ’seli a w s s r " ”" not On the streets because of their newspaper. addiction, howz does that make him or her One vendor, possibly in his 50s, recently any different than the average Portlander? told me he wasfrerrified to ¿ell Street Roots Street Roots is. pot a charity, but instead a because of the humiliation it would bring. method of work to earn an income. Why is a A He had grown up in Portland and workecf homeless person that works held to higher most of his adult life here. “What if I see standards? We believe it’s because people people I used to work with or old high don’t have a home. By default, drinking beer school friends? It will kill me on the inside if or. wine is illegal. Does that make someone I see these people,” he told me with a not worthy of,working? We'don’t think so. cringe. I had no logical answer for The man. Street Roots vendors and people One vendor has been on the streets since experiencing homelessness deal with the he was 14 years old. He’s now in his 20s. realities of the streets every day of their Last month a Portland Police officer came lives. Often times that means being exposed to Street Roots to talk to me about him. to hard drugs like crack cocaine or heroin? The police officer told me the vendor had It’s not hard to find. become a nuisance downtown and had At Street Roots, we call it living on both apparently said something smarmy to a sides of the gun. On one side are the drug precinct commander while trying to sell him dealers and the drugs themselves, and on a paper. We agreed that the vendor was out the other side are inhumane laws targeting of line and that Street Roots would talk to homeless folks. him and let him knew that’s not OK. It’s We tend to believe that if a vendor is about respect. using after selling Street Roots, it’s better What both the officer and I agreed on is than the alternative. They are not stealing that Street Roots shouldn’t give up on him. from anyone to get their fix and they don’t He could still go either way. Would it be a have to hustle anything other than paper to life of hard knocks, or will this young man be on the up and up. go on to chase his dreams someday? Time It may seem twisted, but we would rather will tell. be able to engage a vendor who is using on Everyone has a different story. Some a day-to-day basis than have that person be have been abused both physically and shoplifting or breaking into somebody’s car sexually and their adult life has been spent to get money for a fix. (Such stories were lost at sea — trying to capture some form of highlighted in Tye Doudy’s award winning dignify they lost as a youth. column called Addict’s Almanac that ran in One vendor in his 20s has just come back Street Roots in 2008.) from two fours in Afghanistan and is The person dealing with a hardcore sleeping on the streets. You can see in his B addiction has the opportunity to be B irW B S i. This story was posted on our blog, www.streetroots. wordpress.com, Read people's responses on page 15 as note landed in my e-mail yesterday hii frc a reader: from influenced by other vendors and staff in a positive way, while having to maintain the discipline of selling the newspaper. We also encourage people to deal with their feelings and emotions by expressing themselves through art, poetry and opinion pieces in the paper. We also engage folks on the resources that do exist for help. It’s more or less a harm reduction approach. Do we always get it right? No. One Street Rootsvendor and dear friend died of a heroin overdose in our doorway. Did we ehable person of h o t do enough?”’ 2" Should we have not allowed him to sell papers? It weighs on our minds. ‘ On the flipside, dozens of vendors have gone from tising to getting clean and sober while with the newspaper and with the help of our friends in the region. What we do know is that the vast majority of our vendors use the money made from selling Street Roots to better their lives. A handful of vendors with either criminal and/or eviction records pool their money every week for hotel rooms. Some use the ' money to buy organic food they can’t find at many services. Some buy bike trailers and adequate camping gear. Others use the money to supplement medical costs or to rent a studio apartment g So, are we honest with the public at Street Roots about drugs and alcohol? We believe so. For every person dealing with an addiction on the streets it’s a different road. For some people it takes a day to climb up the mountain, fqr others a week or month or possibly even a lifetime. At the end of the day, without an adequate health care system, a supportive social network and ultimately a will to live, it’s all for naught. Street Roots does its best and can never in good faith turn our backs on those who may be walking a thin red line. It’s a conversation that must continue. , Ted Jack, a regular . Street Roots seller, has been sober fo r more than two years. He draws on his own experiences with addiction to . help others in the sam e situation. STREET ROOTS PHOTO Read up on previous stories a t our blog, www.streetroots.wordpress.com
