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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 2018)
Street Roots • Jan. 19-25, 2018 O p in io n Page OW H I I I ! ■ Write in If you would like “ to Have - - something - . . that you’ve written published ' J i i ourpageSj or would - like td get involved as a - - member of bur reporting staff, contact Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at , 503-228-5657, joanhe@streetroots.org. ; We ask that all submissions jnclucfe the ' author’s name and contact information, ■ if available. ■.......... Street Roots PUBLIC D O M A IN P H O T O Martin Luther King Jr. Mémorial in Washington, D.C. 211 NW Davis St. . Portland/OR 972Q9 503-228-5857 ; Fax:503-227-3117 www.streetroots.org www.news.streetroots.org Hours: 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. MorvFn., 7:30 a.m?2 p.m. Sat. and 7:30-1 p.m. Sun, Advertising Let’s all reject the cruelties of the status quo n the morning light in Old Town, an elderly woman trudged down a rain-shiny sidewalk on Sixth Avenue, her backpack full and sagging low. It was unclear how much her appearance of advanced age was from lived years and how much was from a hard I Those who have thé physical health for employment may face age discrimination, and if they are able to secure a minimum-wage job, those wages do not add up to enough to pay for an apartment in this city. This is clearly a situation to which, as Dr. King said, we should n^yer adjust. > Efet ü&' tio t a d ju s t tePfefre fà c t th a t m a n y ’ 'a ia S a n d is the xecutive director o f •treet Roots. You can each her a t ¡a ia@ streetroots.org. follow her on ^witter @ m kaiasand was that each movement was an effort - her body in pain. By Kaia Sand Here in Portland, elders live in cars and doorways, in shelters and in tents. Sometimes it takes an effort to notice how wrong this is. “We all want to live a well-adjusted life,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a crowd at Western Michigan University in 1963, but “there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted.” He went on to list many injustices to which he refused to adjust: racial segregation and discrimination, religious bigotry, militarism, violence. “I never intend to adjust myself to | economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few,” Dr. King went on to say, “and leave millions of God’s children smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. It was those lines that echoed for me as I witnessed this elder walk slowly and with great effort. Extreme poverty is “an airtight cage” at any age, but as a person ages and weakens, vulnerabilities compound. Seniors suffering poverty are on average more disabled than the more wealthy elderly population. Catastrophes descend suddenly: heath crises, foreclosures, deaths. People age with no savings. Forced to choose between food, medicine and rent, their difficulties compound. Some people may have .hoped to earn wages into old age, but their bodies failed to keep up. people in Portland cannot afford housing. Historical injustices compounded by present- day injustices mean that, on average, Native American and African American-led households make less than half that of households led by white Portlanders and, as a result, those households cannot afford apartment rents in our city. Connected to this fact, Native American Portlanders are more than four times more likely to be homeless than white Portlanders; African American Portlanders are more than twice as likely. Let us refuse to adjust to the fact that if people cannot afford housing, they may end up on the streets. Isn’t it bizarre that luxury dwellings targeted to wealthy people should be built before èvéry single person is housed? Let me repeat Dr. King here to underline this point: “I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few/ g Shouldn’t we refuse the cruelties of market- rate housing that privileges the second, fourth, tenth dwelling for a wealthy person over the first dwelling for any person? 1 am not advocating for shoddy construction. The poorest among us deserve well-built, beautifully designed, sustainable, smart dwellings. Dr. King went on in his speech to call for an “ international Association for the Advancement pf Creative Maladjustment This, he asserted, would be peopled by those who refuse to accept the cruelties of the status quo but instead strive for justice. In the courageous light cast by Dr. King’s thinking, to be creatively maladjusted would be to imagine a Portland where housing was not simply real estate. Housing would be a right. ' • Interested in advertising in Street Roots? Contact Israel Bayer at israefêsîreetroots.org Staff Executive Director Kaia Sand Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl joanne@streetroots.org Vendor Program D irector Cole Merkel eole@streetroots.org Development D irector Andrew Hogan Senior Staff Reporter M y Green Operations Director Sarah Beeeroff Program Assistant Caelin Miitko, Jesuit Volunteer Vendor Assistant Scott Jackson, Alex Gillow-Wiles Development Assistant Rosemary Wilson Editorial Producer Monica Kwasnik Reporters Sarah Hansell, Leonora Ko, Emilly Prado, Jared Paben, Amanda Waldroupe, Stephen Quirks, Helen Hili Photographers Diego Diaz, Arkady Brown Canvasser Desmond Hardison Board of Directors Chairman Brad Taylor Vice-Chairman Rachel Langford Treasurer Heather Stadick Secretary Dan Jones Directors Michael Anderson, Sandra Hahn, John Brown, Nets Johnson and Alison Hallett Volunteers Jan Bayer, John Barker, Stacey Heath, Anjali Rathore, Zoe Klingmann, Dan Jones, Dennis Hogan, Monica McKune, Susan Wolfe, Lucas Hawthorne, Thomas Buell Jr., Jason Cohen, Doug Spangle, Susannah Kamala, Jon Raymond, Diana Richardson, Paul and Madeline Gefroh, Mary Anne Joyce, Brooke Anderson, Gillian Fioren, Mark Oldani, Bianca Butler, Alex Cherin, Jenny Farres, Evan Firsick, Camber Hansen-Karr, Miranda Woods, Henry Brannan, Megan Smith, Helen Hill, Mary Emerson, Brooke Anderson, Kathleen McFall, Robb Hengerer, Bronwyn Miles, Maile Yeats-Rowe, Erin Parsons, Bridget Brown, Faye Powell, Jon Raymond and Megan Pickerel-Winer. If you're interested in volunteering w ith Street Roots, please submit a volunteer application at streetroots.org/volunteer. Or you can " r a ti f o r m n r p information at 503-228-5657.
