Street Roots • Jan. 19-25, 2018
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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
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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?
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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.