Street Roots • Feb. 16-22, 2018
Page 3
O p in io n
Sweeps exact a heavy toll, yesterday and today
I
can only carry so many backpacks on my
back at the same time with my precious
items,” Barbara told me. She was tired,
upset, exhausted. Standing alongside her
possessions on the shoulder of Airport Way,
Barbara was among the campers displaced
by the police and park rangers earlier this
month at the Village
of Hope, an
unsanctioned camp
DIRECTOS’’
along the Columbia
DESK
Slough.
Her comment
By Kaia Sand
startled me because
■ m h h m m
of the words she
chose: In 1942,
K aia Sand is the
Japanese Americans
executive director o f
Street Roots. You can
up and down the West Coast were ordered
reach her at
to bring only “that which could be carried”
kaia @streetroots. org.
when they were incarcerated by the federal
Follow her on
government.
Twitter @mkaiasand
This week marks 76 years since Franklin
D. Roosevelt issued the racist Executive
Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, making way
for the World War II incarceration of
Japanese Americans, including Portlanders
who were first imprisoned in the Expo
Center, about 10 miles northwest on the
Columbia Slough from where Barbara stood
earlier this month with her possessions.
Japanese Americans were forced from
their homes all around Portland in 1942, but
in particular, in the Old Town neighborhood
where Street Roots now operates our office.
This neighborhood was then known as
Nihonmachi - or Japantown. Because first-
g e n e ra tio n Japanese A m erican s were barred
from owning property, some folks managed
hotels in Nihonmachi as a means to also
house their families. Walking around the
neighborhood now, I sometimes imagine
children running from hotel to hotel, visiting
friends and racing together down to the
Willamette River to play among lumber
stacked on the muddy riverbank. One of
those hotels was the Foster Hotel, which
operated above what is now our Street Roots
office.
Likely our office was Chitose Laundry,
which may have included a bath, too, and
across the street from the Street Roots
office would have been Oshu Nippo News -
a daily newspaper typeset with Kanji type,
which was shut-down when U.S. Navy seized
its printing equipment during World War II.
These historical displacements form a
strong current under the sidewalks of Old
Town. People were rendered homeless and
incarcerated by order of the federal
government. Their family structures toppled,
their possessions reduced to suitcases.
Now, in that same neighborhood, people
lug their bags and their sorrows, no home to
go to.
All across our city, Portlanders suffering
from homelessness are forced to move along
by the city, the state and the contractors
brought in to do this work. They face the
exhaustion of seeking yet another patch of
earth on which to bed down. Often in the
process, they lose what possessions they
have, sometimes because their possessions
are mistaken for garbage, sometimes
because possessions are taken to a storage
facility that’s hard to reach and hard to find.
“Walking out with no clothes, no hygiene
projects, I don’t like having to do that again
and again,” Barbara told me. “I can’t carry it
all out myself. I have downsized so many
times.”
Let that sink in. Those who have the least
in our city are forced to lose even those
possessions - gifts from beloved people,
family photos, identification cards, medicine.
This month, while the Oregon Legislature
considers who should conduct sweeps - the
Portland city government or the Oregon
Department of Transportation - it is worth
you w o u ld like
cole@streetroots.org
Development Director Andrew Kogan
an drew @ streetroots.org
Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green
Operations Director Sarah Beecroft
re m e m b e rin g th e toll th a t sw eep s tak e on
the poorest among us.
Yes, it is important that at the very least,
folks have better notification, the sweeps are
conducted with greater transparency, and
people are not displaced during severe
weather-all amendments successfully added
to House Bill 4054 this week by the House
Committee on Transportation Policy.
But fundamental to any discussion around
sweeps must be the fact that there are not
enough shelter beds in our city, and
certainly not enough affordable places for
people to live. And left with few to no
options, people are forced to contend with
the trauma of repeated displacements.
Program Assistant Caelin Miltko, Jesuit
Volunteer
Board of Directors
Chairman Brad Taylor
Vice-Chairman Rachel Langford
Treasurer Heather Stadick
Secretary Dan Jones
Directors Michael Anderson, Sandra Kahn,
John Brown, Nels Johnson and Alison Hallett
Volunteers
Jan Bayer, John Barker, Stacey Heath, Anjail Rathore,
Dennis Hogan, Lucas Hawthorne, Thomas Buell Jr.,
Jason Cohen, Doug Spangle, Susannah Kamaia, Jon
Raymond, Diana Richardson, Paul and Madeline
Gefroh, Mary Anne Joyce, Brooke Anderson, Gillian
Floren, Mark Oldani, Bianca Butler, Camber Hansen-
Karr, Miranda Woods, Henry Brannan, Helen Hill,
Japanese
Americans are
loaded onto
trains in
Portland, 1942.
P H O TO CO URTESY
OF THE O R EG O N
N IK K E I L E G A C Y
CEN TER
Mary Emerson, Brooke Anderson, Kathleen McFall,
Robb Hengerer, Maile Yeats-Rowe, Erin Parsons, Faye
Powell, Jon Raymond and Megan Pickerel-Winer. If •
you're interested in volunteering with Street Roots,
please submit a volunteer application at streetroots.
org/volunteer. Or you can call for more information
at 503-228-5657.