Street Roots • April 8-14, 2016
E d it o r ia l
The storm is raging, but community is stronger
he e gun violence that occurred on the
so
streets
last week was a traffic affair. A
he
homeless
man was shot near a preschool
in Southeast Portland, presumably by another
person on the streets. The investigation is
ongoing.
More than a week later, that person
continues to fight for their
life in a local hospital.
Homelessness and gun
violence in America are
epidemics that stretch well
beyond the streets of
S
■
RIRECTWS
M SB
By Israel Bayer
Israel Bayer is thé
executive director o f
Street Roots. You can
reach him at
israel@streetrodts.org
or follow him on
Twitter @israelbayer.
In Multnomah County,
more than 50 people
experiencing homelessness
die every year on the streets. Thousands
nationally. In the U.S., thousands more people
die of gun violence every year.
Both of these epidemics are direct results of
both greed and the lack of support from the
federal government on both issues, costing tens
of thousands of Americans their lives.
The tragic incident was another reminder of
how much work we have to do as a community.
It is also an opportunity for people already
frustrated with a visible homeless population in
their city to air their distaste for how local
government has responded to the housing
crisis by allowing people to sleep in tents in
Portland.
I don’t believe for one moment that anyone
on the streets, advocates or government
officials - including the mayor’s office - aren’t
doing what they believe in their hearts is the
best for people on the streets given the dire
circumstances of the housing crisis. It’s easy to
point fingers and to be upset about a social
issue that we know can’t be resolved overnight.
Everyone wants a five-minute plan for the
homeless. That’s not a reality.
I was reminded of this myself after I sat with
a homeless man this week, someone I’ve known
for a long time, a friend. With tears rolling
down his eyes, he screamed at me and begged
me to help him. I stood beside him holding
back tears of my own with no logical answers to
offer him.
His mental health had left him cast out into
an unforgiving storm — a storm that is leading
him in and out jail each week, 86’d from every
homeless provider downtown, left behind by a
mental health system that refuses to provide
emergency response to anyone that’s not
activity engaged in taking their own life. He has
been displaced by a housing market that
doesn’t have any housing to offer, a
neighborhood that doesn’t have the tolerance
for his sickness, a city that doesn’t have enough
resources to hold back the flood waters that are
the thousands of people struggling tonight on
the streets. All this within a country that left
him behind long ago.
Homelessness and the results of gun
violence are hell on human beings. They rip
apart people’s lives. They create havoc in the
community.
Human suffering, specifically homelessness,
isn’t pretty, especially when it’s on display for
the entire world to critique and pick apart.
Saying that, it’s time we stopped pointing our
fingers at one another and work together to
provide people with safe places to call home
and to curb gun violence in our community.
One homeless person engaged in a horrific
act of violence doesn’t mean all homeless
people are violent. It does mean we as a
community have a long way to go to provide
opportunities for people to have a better life. It
will take a village.
The storm of poverty that is consuming so
many people’s lives-is raging. It is relentless
and tiring. If you listen close enough you can
hear the cries of individuals and families caught
out in its fierce winds. They lie suffering on
sidewalks, under bridges and public parks for
the entire world to see. They are not innocents.
They are battered and bruised and beat up.
Their unfortunate realities and circumstances
appear in all kinds of ways, with kindness and
triumph and yes, sometimes death and
violence. Their suffering lay in stark contrast to
our beautiful city on a hill, with growing
neighborhoods and greenways, bike lanes and
shiny new buildings. Unfortunately, it is our
story to tell. How the story ends is up to us.
Page 3
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j
,
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~ —
Opérations Director Sarah Seecroft • *
Development Director Sarah Cloud
Program Assistant Scott Jackson, Jesuit
Volunteer
Development Assistant Ann-Derrick
Gaillot
Reporters Emily Green, Suzanne Zalokar,
Ann-Derrick Gaillot, Sarah Hansell, Leonora
Ko, Jared Paben, Amanda Waldroupe
Photographers Diego Diaz, Joe Glode,
Ben Brink
Editorial Assistant Monica Kwasnik
Canvasser Desmond Hardison ■ ■
Board o f Directors
Chairman Brad Taylor
LETTERS
Vice-Chairman Rachel Langford
Treasurer Heather Stadick
Measure 11 story sheds light on terrifying tactic
^ T ^ h a n k s Emily Green and Street
Roots for a well-researched
JL cover story about Measure 11
and its terrible impact on kids of
color.
Measure 11 gives the prosecution
a claw hammer with which to
bludgeon young defendants, by
charging them with a more serious
crime than was committed, then
using the threat of mandatory
sentencing to scare the daylights out
of them should they even thinking of
relying on their constitutional right
to trial.
The plea bargaining tactic in itself
has become so commonplace that
only 3 percent of federal cases, 6
percent of state, even go to trial in
this country. Taken together with
Oregon’s Measure 11, it becomes a
lethal one-two punch. And juveniles,
of course, are particularly easy to
terrify.
Since its passage in 1994, we have
built three new state prisons, at
Umatilla, then Lakeview, then
Madras. It is time we repeal
Measure 11 and take back this
terrible power we’ve handed to the
prosecution.
Too many people are in prison!
And we middle class white folks
need to do more than read The New
Jim Crow in our book groups.
- MARTHA GIES
Portland
Secretary Amber Bielman
Directors Bruce Anderson, Rich Rodgers,
Michael Anderson, Leo Rhodes, Nora Coon,
Marcus Swift
Volunteers
Jan Bayer, John Barker, Stacey Heath, Stephanie
Holum, Anjali Rathore, Zoe Klingmann, Haven
Herrin, Dan Jones, Rob Shyrock, Dennis Hogan,
Tom Wright, Eileen Deerdock, Vince Waldman,
Judy Taylor, Karen Allen, Monica McKune,
Susan Wolfe, Lucas Hawthorne, Thomas Buell
Jr., Jeanie Lunsford, Yasmin Amirsoleymani,
Jason Cohen, Tom Ray, Doug Spangle,
Susannah Kamala, Jon Raymond, Hilary Smith,
Diana Richardson, Cherie Manning
If you are interested in volunteering with Street
Roots, please submit a volunteer application at
streetroots.org/volunteer. Or call our
volunteer coordinator for more information
at 503-228-5657.