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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (May 8, 2015)
Street Roots • May 8-14, 2015 News Page 10 KAY REID A neighbor and a storyteller BY JON ROSS ■ C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R tones From O u r Village” reads the banner on the fro n t o f the 4 3 page booklet. Inside, speakers nam ed Pacheco and Gazai, Chavez and McIntosh, Ananouko, Prokhorov, and M itchell tell first-person stories from the diverse Is X North Portland community that is New Columbia. . f , Som e tell of coming from the other side ?, of the world: was expecting life in the -United States .A would be much easier. I was shocked when I saw a lot o f extremely poor people, without a house, without money, on the street. In Russia we did not have people on the street.; O thers tell of losing everything: After the strokes, before coming to Columbia Villa, I reached a point when I had to decide: feed my family or pay rent. I chose I T j | BF^ to feed my family, and we K t got an eviction notice. NOTHING makes m e BBUIjS M U HOPEFUL than discovering another hum an being to admire. -----------— A LICE W A LK ER —--------- Of fighting for a future: In Tillamook, at 1 4 ,1 * [ was taken out o f my home and placed in foster care and juvenile lockups: I was probably the only 16 year old that ever faked her ID so she could get a job. And witnessing history: Because o f the political situation in Sudan, my husband was working in the United Arab Emirates., and from there we came to the States and applied for asylum. We were in New York September 1 1 and saw the towers fall. After that, we had to go to Michigan by train. We boarded, but five officers ordered us off, took our passports, and brought a big dog that sniffed our luggage. They held us six hours and we missed the train. T hese are the voices of a handful of th e 2,500 residents of New Columbia, a mixed- income housing developm ent in North Portland. T he person who brought these voices together, in person and on the page, is 'Kay Reid, though on th e phone, she’s quick to correct me — “OK, the idea — and it w as the idea, it wasn’t just my idea — was that we should engage som e kids, som e teenagers, to teach them how to interview.” I’d been warned K ay would take every opportunity to share or shift credit for her good works -^ and indeed, it is h e r desire See REID, page 11 PHO TO : W W W .N E W C O L U M B IA A P T S .iG Q M Top: Columbia Villa was a barracks-style housing project originally constructed for Kaiser shipyard workers during World War II. Above: New Columbia was built on the site between 2003 and 2005 with emphasis on access to common space and community. The NOTHING M ORE H O PE FU L series originates from a workshop taught by Martha Gies. “Last fall, as I tired o f hearing the IS IL Hour, interrupted only occasionally by a warning about Ebola's im m inent arrival in Europe or the U S ., it occurred to me that the media was d eaf to good news,” Gies says. “I remembered my frien d Sr. Rosarii Metzgar once telling me she believed a ll the terrible news with which we are daily battered must surely be offset by sm all and unseen acts o f good. ” Gies resolved to enlist some writers who would h u n t down and write those stories.
