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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 29, 2014)
Street roots 14 iiJJllE Aug. 29, 2014 .» 1 Answering the big question: Why I’m here BY A N D Y KO C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T T" "T Then the dust Settles following any l / l / significant change in my life - a CBS <=» as «z> oes MJ SSE ««c ▼ ▼ new job, a new home, a birth, a death — my mind starts asking me questions. I blame my father for this. They are mostly his questions. My mind sometimes even poses them with his slight Korean accent. “How did you get here?” “Why are you here?” “What are you going to do?” “How are you going to do it?” “What then?” He was one of those people who believed that we are the sum of our experiences and that those experiences, are determined by the choices we make. He could be a real pain in the butt. More than 20 years after his death, l am still asking his questions. | I left Manhattan six weeks ago, with my wife and daughter, to live in Oregon and become executive director of Partnership for Safety and Justice? For me, returning to ’ the Pacific Northwest and joining PSJ feels like a homecoming. After law school, I spent eight years representing homeless families in NYC. Some of these families * were together — parents, children, sometimes grandparents — seeking shelter and spending days, or even weeks, sleeping oh blankets and flattened cardboard boxes in a 24 hour city welfare office. Other families had already lost children to the foster care system. They were trapped between city bureaucracies: one agency demanding that they have housing to get their children back, the other requiring them to already have their children back to get into a shelter. SAFETY and ■JUSTICE ~ A ndy Ko is the Executive Director o f Partnership fo r Safety an d fustice. PSJ is a statewide, non-profit advocacy - organization . dedicated to m aking Oregon’s approach to crime and public safety more effective an d just. From these hundreds of families I learned that there is a “system.” It affects how each of us goes through life by defining our range of choices. Those choices — and? what happens when we make the wrong choice — widen or narrow based on where‘ we. were bom, who our parents were, the color of our skin, the language we speak, whether we were lucky or not at some key point in our lives and who is deciding whether to reward, punish or ignore us. Some families were fleeing violence. Others had suffered a catastrophic illness, mental health crisis or addiction of a family member that had thrown them deeper into poverty. Sbme had lost a breadwinner to' prison — usually for committing an illegal act to put food on the table and pay rent. The system had squeezed them until homelessness was the only choice left — and then the system treated them as if they had chosen to be homeless. The system intentionally made what one homeless » services official called a “bed of nails” for these families to force them off their blankets and cardboard mats, back into the street. No one wanted this, not even the agency that created the bed of nails. But the system demanded it. I continued to see the system at work while representing low- income clients in Seattle and later doing drug policy work at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Society Foundation. It is sustained by fear and our collective unwillingness to confront suffering and work toward a solution in which we all share responsibility. I believe that NYC homeless services workers chose to implement policies that treated homeless clients horribly, in part, because they knew they were themselves just a paycheck away from homelessness. Homeowners and local businesses demanded the arrest of_______ neighborhood drug users and sellers because they saw no other way to protect their investments. Fear created the system; fear maintains it. , / That is one reason - t h e main reason ® why my decision to return to the Pacific ’ Northwest was easy. Partnership for Safety and Justice is a remarkable organization. It is confronting the system by seeking solutions that ensure public safety through shared responsibility. PSJ recognizes that accountability necessitates addressing the needs of crime survivors, resolving the causes of crime and restoring people who commit crimes to Our goal is I® demand real . eolattonsr not more ®l the'. ' full social, economic ' and political same p o litica lly saotwatei participation. Our geMongli responses that fa il crime survivor fam ilies and damage program raises the communities^ ■ . voices of crimevictims to demand that public resources be used for more than filling prison cells. Our engagement with youth,; people of color, and local communities organizes the people most heavily impacted both by crime and the criminal justice system, Our goal is to demand real| solutions, not more of the same politically motivated get-tough responses that fail families and damage communities. So, at this point, I can answer one of the questions: “Why are yeti here?” By coming here and joining with PSJ’s staff and allies, I will contribute to change that transforms. the bed of nails criminal justice system that we have created over the past four decades and help to establish a public safety system that makes us stronger and provides solutions that are both effective and fair. I am grateful for the opportunity and look forward to the experience. 9th Annual Saint André Bessette First Thursday Art Show Thursday, September 4th, 5:00-7:30pm join friends and neighbors at Saint André Bessette Cath olic Church for Genesis Redux an evening in celebration o f the many by Dharma Bum creative gifts of our community Our . The first man ? Urban and wild The hum of traffic The music of the city Rivers of asphalt / Canyons of concrete This is the jungle This is Eden Under skies of wonder We stand at the crossroads With Infinity below our feet As we wiggle our toes in a dream. Order e-books and print copies a t iamnotapoetorg or streetroots.org/iamnotapoet 9th Annual First Thursday Art Show will showcase work created by guests, volunteers,,and visitors in our Morn ing Hospitality Art Program - a safe and supportive space for people to express creatively through drawing, painting writing, and other mixed medium forms. Stop in to view our 2014 collection, enjoy some light re freshments, and o f course, partake in the warm fellowship o f our welcom ing community. Please visit- www.saintandrechurch.org/ FirsfThursday for more information. We look forward to seeing youl
