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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 10, 2018)
Street Roots • Aug. 10-16, 2018 O p in io n Page 3 Vendor losses force the question of ‘livability’ K a ia S an d is the executive director o f Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots. org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand T T T e have 80 manY candles these last few l / l / weeks in our Street Roots office. In recent V V weeks, four Street Roots vendors or former vendors have died. Andy Howard, Dallas Boyd, Dani Wyatt and David Testawich. It is powerful to see the Street Roots community come together to cherish each person, and fitting that the memorials are everywhere - graveside, in our office, at sales posts, and on parade by bike. The causes of death are various - heart failure, stroke, drug overdose, murder - and on average, they died decades before the general population would. Life is so hard for people suffering homelessness and deep poverty — more Violent, more taxing on health. This is why in 2011 former Street Roots executive director Israel Bayer urged Multnomah County to begin reporting the deaths of people on thé streets, a joint effort that we’ve continued every year. In 2016, the most recent year we have data, 80 people died on the streets. The average age was 49. We will soon be releasing a new report. These losses reverberate through many other lives. Over these weeks, phone calls have come in from Street Roots customers and family members. Word of mouth passes through the office. Our office'walls are ; ; filled w ith fly ers for is the sense of community of the people you’re with,” Katie said to me. “You are genuinely connecting to people.” It is that connection that I want to shine a light on. Street Roots vendor McKenzie Nelson creates his own memorials, and that is what he did for former Street Roots vendor Dallas Boyd on July 27. McKenzie posted flyers around the office for the bike memorial he created. With blue and pink balloons trailing from his bike - Dallas’s favorite colors, McKenzie said - he biked throughout downtown. He then set up a memorial at Salmon Street fountain, a photo of Dallas surrounded by candles and hydrangea flowers because they, too, were blue and pink. He’s created many of these memorials for friends on the street. “It helps the family cope and helps me cope,” McKenzie told me. We only just learned on Aug. 8 that we lost long time Street Roots vendor David Testawich, and already, there is a memorial at his sales post at Trader Joe’s at 2122 NW Glisan S t I biked up to visit the memorial just as a Trader Joe’s customer walked up, noticed the memorial, and began to cry. “He was always there,” she said softly, looking at the table of photos, cards, flowers and two of David’s Street Roots badges. When so many people on the streets are reeling from loss, we must acknowledge this: This city is literally not livable for the our deeply poor neighbors. The term “livability” is a cruel word choice when it is ! focused on campsite removals. Instead, what makes this city • “livable” should be memorials and funerals. And as we public health, have done for all 20 housing and years of our compassion! existence, we will Some Street Roots make sure their lives vendors have wept are remembered in and wept about these our newspaper. In recent deaths, but this edition we have. ¿Iso, countless other an obituary losses. I am grateful co-authored with Real for all the ways they Change newspaper in can come together to Seattle for Dani grieve, laugh, The memorial outside Trader Joe’s on Glisan Street fo r David Wyatt, who was a remember and hold Testawich, a Street Roots vendor who passed away this week. vendor for both space for each other. Street Roots and Real PleasejDontinue to Change. cherish your Street Roots vendor. Cherish the people On Aug. 8, we held a office memorial for Dani, in campsites with walkers leaning against tents. guided by some of her family and friends who are Cherish the woman who wanders barefoot and current Street Roots vendors. In particular, they hollering her deep suffering. We are together in this wanted “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks city, gloriously human, responsible for each other. piped through the office. She loved that song, they As I biked to Street Roots this morning, I was said. People shared donuts and traded stories of her dazzled by the sun, almost pink in its strange light. I antics, her laugh, her blue wig. love the early morning hours of Portland, the birdsong - A number of our vendors and staff attended Andy and morning routines of people trying to hold their Howard’s graveside memorial on July 24 with his lives together in the glare of the public eye. The sun is family, childhood friends and neighbors, along with the lamplight for people sleeping on the streets, many co-workers from his job at Willoughby Hearing Center. of whom try to pack up before passersby and Then we held an office memorial on July 31. Swells of vendors and Andy’s family gathered, listening to commuters are plentiful. “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, which Andy “Let a candle be added to the sun” wrote my used to play on the guitar. Andy’s sister, Bev, favorite poet, Cesar Vallejo. I thought of all the delighted Andy’s Street Roots friends by describing candles we lit in our office this last month, and all the how Andy once fixed a man’s hearing aid on the candles lit these last 20 years Street Roots has insisted streets using a bike spoke he sterilized with a lighter. that lives of deeply poor residents of Portland are Andy’s 23-year-old daughter, Katie, said that her essential to the civic fabric of our city. very favorite days were those she spent visiting her Many of these lives bum early and bright. See that father on the streets. She loved seeing how much bright sun? It might be hard to notice, but I do believe other people trusted her father’s kindness. our beautiful vendors are lighting it up. “When you are on the streets like that, all you have Write in If y a y w ou ld like to h a v e / \ s o m eth in g \ y \ Z ~ -—— \ _ V th a t yo u ’v e $ ' w ritten p ublished \ in o u r pages, o r w ou ld ? / like to g e t involved a s a ' m e m be r o f o u r re po rtin g staff, c o n ta c t E xe cu tive E d ito r Jo a n n e 7 u h t at 503-228~5 6 5 7 J o a n n e @ s tre e tro o ts .o rg . W e a sk th a t all su bm ission s include t h e ' auth or’s nam e a n d conta ct Inform ation, If a vailable. Street Roots 211 N W D avis St. P ortland, O R 972 0 9 5 0 3 -2 2 8-5 6 5 7 F a x :5 0 3 -2 2 7 -3 1 1 7 w w w .s tree tro o ts.org w w w .n e w s.stre e tro ots.o rg H ou rs: 7 :3 0 a .m .-3 p.m . M on.-Fri., 7 :3 0 & m .- 2 p ,m . S a t a n d 7:30-1 p .m Sun. Advertising Interested in advertising in Street Roots? Email Andrew Hogan a t andrew@streetroots.org S taff Executive Director Kaia Sand kaia@streetroots.org Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl joanne@streetroots.org Vendor Program Director Cole Merkel cole@streetroots.org Development Director Andrew Hogan andrew@streetroots.org Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green Program Assistant Caelin Miltko, Jesuit Volunteer Vendor Assistant Scott Jackson, Alex Gillow-Wiles Development Assistant Rosemary Wilson Editorial Producer Monica Kwasnik . Reporters Sarah Hansell, Leonora Ko, Emilly Prado, Ellena Rosenthal, Amanda Waldroupe, DeVon Pouncey, Helen Hill Photographers Diego Diaz, Arkady Brown, Celeste Noche Canvasser Desmond Hardison Board of Directors Chair Rachel Langford Vice-Chair Dan Jones Treasurer Heather Stadick Secretary Alison Hallett Directors Michael Anderson, Sandra Hahn, John Brown, Nels Johnson Volunteers John Barker, Stacey Heath, Anjali Rathore, Dennis Hogan, 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 Floren, Mark Oldani, Bianca Butler, Camber Hansen- Karr, Miranda Woods, Henry Brannan, Helen Hill, Mary Emerson, Brooke Anderson, Kathleen McFall, Robb Hengerer, Maile Yeats-Rowe, Erin Parsons, Faye Powell! Jon Raymond, Danny Moran and Megan Pickerel-Wiher. 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.
