Street roots., March 13, 2015, Page 7, Image 7

Street Roots • March 13-19, 2015
News
Page 7
Powero/
Creativity
Street Roots vendors
espouse respect,
community through
Write Around Portland
ince Feb. 12, a group of nearly 20
Street Roots vendors has been
attending a creative writing workshop
hosted by Write Around Portland, a
nonprofit that has brought the healing
power of writing to Portland’s most
vulnerable for 15 years. Write Around’s
philosophy of respect, writing and
community h a s -been ta u g h t to m o re
S
4 ,4 0 0 p a rtic ip a n ts a c ro ss 6 0 0 u n iq u e
workshops.
“It’s awesome! You get to learn a lot, and
everybody helps each other,” says Willie
Bradford, Street Roots vendor and
workshop participant.
“Lara, our instructor, is awesome to help
us out,” vendor and participant Paul Ortiz
says. “She helps me write what I want to ,
write, and she does a lot. I really like the
workshop on Thursdays. I get to m eet
different people. The piece I wrote went
into the paper, so that was pretty cool too!”
The Write Around Portland workshop
will be hosted April 16. Each participant
will have a chance to be published in an
anthology, and vendor participants will be
invited to read a selection of their work at
Write Around Portland’s anthology release
party after the workshop has ended.
DIRECTOR'S DESK, from page 3
I would have a hard time finding a house in
an in n e r city neighborhood. Portland still
doesn’t know what it’s going to be when it
grows up. Housing is a big part of that i t
I.B.: Oftentimes we have very green
reporters coming to us asking fairly elementary
questions around these very complex issues.
With the changing media environment, I don’t
think that’s changing anytime soon. What’s
your advice or thoughts on how the media
covers homelessness?
A.G.: I think the challenge is that usually
we’re covering homelessness, and I include
Street Roots vendor Paul Ortiz dictates a poem to Write Around volunteer Tom Shi. Above, vendor Nick Sullivan concentrates on his work.
myself in this, we’re covering it from an
institutional sampling. We’re covering
Multnomah County or the city of Portland
or the Legislature, and it crosses so many
institutions. This is part of the problem,
right? You have so many institutions, so
many governing agencies that are
responsible for various forms of poverty.
The most valuable reporting for me, on this
topic specifically involves actually going out
and talking to people who are experiencing
homelessness.
I.B.: What can government and private
sector do?
A,G.: I think in the last of the series we
laid it o u t What it’s going to take. I think of
breaking the problem down into multiple
parts: You’ve got the short term. We need
places for people to go tonight. Everybody
involved in the 10-year plan acknowledges
the pendulum swung so far away from the
emergency shelter system, for some good
reasons, but that the reality is that until we
have a larger housing stock, which is going
to take a while, we need more shelter beds
and alternatives tonight
Saying that, everybody I talk to says, “We
need an investment in housing.” I’m curious
to know how you sell that politically. I think
that’s a hard political sell, especially in a
place where, I mean, I’m a taxpayer and I
feel like I’m a little dazed every time I look
at my bill and see everything I’m paying for.
It’s not a sexy issue. It is a black hole for
some elected officials. You don’t have a core
constituency that you know is going to go
vote for you with the homeless issue. You
have a visceral reaction among a lot of the
people who do vote that says, “I just don’t
want to think about that problem. I don’t
want to look at those people.” And you have,
especially in Portland, a downtown business
community that has a very vested interest in
just getting (the homeless) people out of
sight That’s a difficult combination for a
politician and government.
You can read the eight-part series and much
more about the topic of homelessness here:
www. oregonlive. com/portland-homeless/