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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 2018)
Street Roots • Oct. 5-11, 2018 O p in io n Debates on fairness must include everyone r. Christine Blasey Ford captured As we grapple with the ongoing #MeToo the attention of people across the conversation, I continue to think about all nation with her strength as she the people on the streets who contend with educated the country about trauma and sexual violence at higher rates than housed memory and courage. Like so many of you people, and who, with a lack of housing - gathered around security, continue to be unsafe. Justice is televisions in hair often fleeting because cases are more salons and living difficult to pursue when people don’t have rooms and day addresses for follow-up. shelters - many Their experiences must be connected to DESK memories have this national conversation. By Kaia Sand resurfaced for me. Part of the calculation that people have Despite the to contend with as part of their daily wholeness of each of decisions around survival is - which places us as human beings - are safe? Which shelter must they avoid? our ambitions, our experiences - there How do they survive the street? Is it worth have been too many times when women enduring an abusive partner if it shields were simply there for the pleasure or anger them from another abuse? or violence of some men who felt entitled A number of our active vendors are to our sexuality - that abhorrent women. There are ways they take care of “uproarious laughter” that Ford described each other. Recently, one woman did not of assailants “having fun at feel safe in the shelter where my expense,” Ford said of she was staying, and she did Brett Kavanaugh and his It Is difficult as a not feel safe outside - which friend Mark Judge. passerby to read the had been her only option that One memory that week. So another woman circumstances sin-prised me, because I found her a tent in her camp. around the small hadn’t remembered it in so From their descriptions, it is encampments that long, was a time in high a self-governed, off-the-grid school when a boy made a crop up around the space, strong with rules; cartoon of me that the maintained with security city, but It Is school newspaper Important to realize from its participants. I published. Perhaps this recently visited one such that sometimes memory resurfaced emergent camp, and the people organize because I now work at a unhoused folks showed me * with what tools they how they patched the fence newspaper, and certainly it is because I scoured the to protect each other from have to take care predators, winnowing access yearbook entries of of each other. to one opening, which they Kavanaugh and read all the shared the responsibility of coded references that patrolling 24 hours a day. degraded women - It is difficult as a passerby to read the references cast in. the prose equivalent of circumstances around the small that uproarious laughter. encampments that crop up around the city, I remember how I did not speak up to but it is important to realize that sometimes say how much I despised that cartoon of people organize with what tools they have me - a sexualized depiction, with a caption to take care of each other. In some that read something like “boys, don’t touch encampments, this is what is happening. this” - because I would be seen as uptight, These Kavanaugh hearings open up a without a sense of humor. These were the big, national conversation, and so many of same years when, on the other side of that us feel rage and emotion - itself a form of objectifying coin, my dear friend’s name knowledge. What do we do with this kind of was transformed by hissing classmates into knowledge? We watch all of this play out in one that involved the word “slu t” This was the nation’s capital, and fight for the the late 1980s, a few years later than integrity of th e justice system at its highest Kavanaugh’s high school years, and it was levels. all the air we breathed. The threat that decisions around fairness It is the air we continue to breathe. are, in fact, nothing about fairness is deeply What an extraordinary national destabilizing. As we move this conversation conversation we are immersed in, and what forward, it’s important for all of us to love and compassion we need to extend to remember that for people in our society each other - to all of us. who are at the extreme end of poverty, Our streets are filled with unhoused women, men, non-binary folks - people who many of whom who have suffered sexual violence, it just never has been fair. have experienced sexual trauma, and who have sexual violence perpetrated on them. D K a ia S a n d is the executive director o f Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @ m kaiasand Page 3 Write in Ifyou would like / to have / something 3^. 'x 'X . \ L.——\ that you’ve ^X . written published x * ^ \ in our pages, or woufd \ A _ > / like to get involved as a member of our reporting staff, contact Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at 503-228-5657, joanne@streetroots.org. We ask that all submissions include the author’s name and contact Information, if available. Street Roots 211 NW Davis St. Portland, OR 97209 503-228-5657 Fax: 503-227-3117 www.streetroots.org www.news.streetroots.org Hours: 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 7:30 a.m.-2p.m. Sat and 7:30-1 p.m. Sun. Advertising Interested in advertising in Street Roots? Email Andrew Hogan at andrew@streetroot5.org Staff Executive Director Kaia Sand kaia@streetroots.org Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl . joanne@streetroots.org Vendor Program Director Cole Merkel coleistreetroots.org Development Director Andrew Hogan andrew@streetroots.org Senior S ta ff Reporter Emily Green Vender Coordinator: DeVon Founcey Administrative Assistant: Kayla Jones Program Assistant Meghan Murphey, Jesuit Volunteer Vendor Assistant Alex Gillow-Wiies Development Assistant Rosemary Wilson Editorial Producer Monica Kwasnik Reporters Sarah Hansell, Leonora Ko, Emilly Prado, Ellena Rosenthal, Amanda Waldroupe,, Helen Hill, Jason Cohen. 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 Horen, 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, Danny Moran, Susan Maloy and Megan Pickerel-Winer. If you're interested in volunteering with Street Roots, please submit a volunteer application at streetroots.org/volunteer. Oryou can call for more information at 503-228-5657.
