14
street roots
Jan. 6, 2012
Let’s not go blindly into that next session
Turning
Brendan Lee
As she turned,
Seasons came,
Seasons passed.
Her breath cool wind,
Calm soothing hot night.
Her voice in song birds.
A love song,
A hopeful song,
A future song
A past song,
A present song.
Turning of leaves,
Cooling of night
Turning morning,
Turning day,
Turning night.
ALISON MCINTOSH
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
oo many Oregonians today are forced
to choose between paying rent or
buying groceries or medicine. Too
many of us are busy looking for work,
holding down two or three jobs, hunting for
an apartment or affordable day care, or
trying to hold off a foreclosure. Many others
of us are trying hard to sleep through the
night while worrying, or while sharing
shelter space with dozens of other people.
In February, the Oregon Legislature will
convene for a short, one-month session.
This makes us anxious for yet another
reason, holding our breath nervously in
anticipation of what might occur in
February. It is almost certain that we’ll hear
more grim news about the budget, and
we’re worried that the Legislature will act to
do even more damage to our community’s
system of support for people facing hard
times. During the last legislative session,
there were cuts to emergency housing
assistance and other housing programs,
severe cuts to child care and work support
programs, and more. There’s nowhere left
to cut, and many of these cuts have already
gone too far.
We do need to be optimistic, positive and
proactive, in spite of these hard times. So,
while we take comfort in talking about all
the reasons we have to be optimistic,
including the shift in the political dialogue
about income inequality that the Occupy
movement began, it’s also important to
focus in on what we can do to be proactive
— particularly as it relates to the
Legislature.
The representatives and senators who
will come together to face these issues in
T
"Meteorologists
ought to have
to list their
phone numbers
and addresses
on the news
when
forecasting the
weather."
— Jason Breedlove
Let me accompany you each day next year on your Android device.
Breedlove Calendar Quotes is available for 99 cents on the Android
Market; a calendar widget that syncs with your Google Calendar. Every
day for a year you’ll see entries cleverly written by me. Thank you and
happy New Year!
The Housing Alliance brings together advocates,
local governments, housing authorities,
community development corporations,
environmentalists, service providers, business
interests and all others dedicated to increasing
the resources available to meet our housing needs
to support a common statewide legislative and
Policy agenda. Alison McIntosh is a Policy
Manager with Neighborhood Partnerships.
February are our elected representatives,
sent to Salem by us to manage our public
resources and systems to keep our
communities safe and intact. As they go to
do this hard work, it’s our job to step up and
remind them what our priorities are as
Oregonians, and stand beside them as they
fight to do what’s right.
Looking around us, we know that the
public structures and systems that make up
■our safety net are not meeting the needs of
far too many Oregonians today. We also feel
in our hearts and know in our heads that we
can make different choices. We can choose,
as Oregonians, to help all of our neighbors
get their basic needs met, and in the
process, make our communities stronger
and healthier for everyone.
Our state has tremendous resources at
our disposal — hard working people,
ingenuity and financial resources which can
be brought to bear in order to build a better
quality of life for everyone in our state. The
state budget decisions we will make in
February will reflect our commitment to
making that future a reality.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt once
said, “In our personal ambitions we are
individualists. But in our seeking for
economic and political progress as a nation,
we all go up, or else we all go down, as one
people.”
Some of us seem to have forgotten that it
is important how well we do together as a
state and a nation. Our state budget benefits
high-income taxpayers and businesses while
leaving many more Oregonians homeless or
on the brink of homelessness than ever
before. Let’s act together to make different
choices - let’s choose to protect those
programs which help people stay in or find
a place to call home, to stay warm, dry and
fed, to have a chance at opportunity and a
pathway out of poverty.
We obviously can’t do this alone. We
need our elected officials to make choices
about the budget that reflect these
priorities, that act on the certainty that we
rise and fall as one. We need the
Legislature to protect basic services and to
seek every opportunity to raise additional
revenue.
A few weeks ago, City Council candidate
Steve Novick was quoted as saying that
“The Occupy movement is helping some of
us unlearn our learned helplessness.” We —
Portlanders, Oregonians, and people across
the U.S. — have been helpless for far too
long in the face of budget cuts and other
crises such as homelessness and poverty.
It’s time to ask for more from our elected
officials and our state budget. And, it’s time
to ask more of ourselves in this process.
If you’re interested in taking action but
don’t quite know where to. start, you can
always email me (amcintosh@
neighborhoodpartnerships.org) and learn
more about the Housing Alliance.
At the Warming Shelter
By Katherine Benson
You hear about the restraining order that’s been violated for the
third time that week
How the government doesn’t give a shit about us folks at the
bottom, but it’s keeping track of us through our cell phones and
GPS
You hear about her baby’s daddy losing the child support at Seven
Feathers last m onth
- Now, that’s messed up.
How for two ninety-five you can get a decent breakfast at the Good
Sam cafeteria; she’s talking real scrambled eggs, now, and high-
class organic coffee
- For real?
And, hell, for two bucks why not ride a warm, dry streetcar the
whole day
- Sure, just don’t fall asleep, or they’ll kick your ass off
You’re joking, right?
- It’s the God’s honest truth; she’s seen it happen
How for a so-called warming shelter it sure is drafty in here
You hear about the neighbors who got her thrown out of the
building for complaining about the white supremacist down the hall
How, no matter what, a girl shouldn’t let herself go (like that sorry
looking thing in the corner)
- It’s like Shania Twain said, you got to keep a routine
You hear about the grandson in rehab at the VA whose job was to
pick up the pieces of his dead comrades in Iraq
And how her faith in Jesus Christ has seen her through worse
times than this
You hear about the brother on parole, the sister in recovery, and
vice versa
You hear how her blood pressure meds are going to run out a
month before her benefits kick in
How people “out there” pretend they don’t hear you when all
you’re asking for is the freakin’ time
- Screw ‘em
And how all you really need is a damn job
- Amen to that!
WWW.OCCUPYPOBTIAND.ORG
Because once you got yourself a steady paycheck all the pieces of
your life fall neatly into place.