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
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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.