Street Roots • Dec. 28, 2018-Jan 3, 2019
Page 3
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Street Roots
vendors pose
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Submissions I*; •
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you’ve written published in our pages,
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P H O T O BY COLE M ER K EL
A new year and so many possibilities ahead!
Hi
appy New Year! 2019 marks 20 years of Street
Roots. Twenty years of championing free speech
and exchanging independent news on public
sidewalks. Twenty years of creating income
opportunities for people struggling with homelessness
and poverty. Twenty years of facing challenges as a
strong community.
We are closing out 2018 with gusto. Vendors sold the
past issue at a record rate - thank you Street Root
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
customers! The vendor-created
zine sold quickly, too, and the
vendors performed poetry and
exhibited artwork at Portland
Institute for Contemporary Art
alongside artist Abigail DeVille’s
installation, “The American
Future” (with a foundation built
of old issues of Street Roots),
which runs until Jan. 12. Members of Business for a
Better Portland gathered gifts for Street Roots vendors.
Women Walk Wednesdays pitched in, too, as did many
others. Gather: Make: Shelter brought in food and
music on Christmas day. There’s been great warmth
shown toward Street Roots vendors this holiday season.
Thank you!
Preparing for our 20th anniversary, we’ve organized
our archives. Now shelves of boxes line our basement -
Burnside Cadillac of the 1990s and then Street Roots
from 1999 to our present issue - a trove of local history
where marginalized voices are at the center. Watch for
an exhibit this spring at the downtown branch of
Multnomah County Library, thanks to the ongoing work
of Portland State University Public History students.
That’s an apt location because many vendors frequent it
as patrons, and librarians support Street Roots,
collecting our issues, setting up a pop-up library in our
office, and hosting vendor readings. Just as we
champion the exchange of news on public sidewalks,
the library creates a commons for readers, making it
the perfect place to celebrate our history of deploying
the written word in the work of justice.
This summer, watch for a Street Roots anniversary
party — open to everyone — so we can celebrate not only
our history, but a future full of possibility.
The ideas and leadership of Street Roots vendors are
key to this visionary future. Every month I look forward
to vendor listening sessions over bagels and coffee, a
tradition began in March with Sandra Hahn, 2018
vendor of the year and board member. It’s an open
house where ideas fly. Helen Hill — the artist behind our
legendary office chalkboard art - jots colorful notes on
big paper for all of us to follow along. Vendors dream up
new marketing ideas - from creating a vendor-designed
messenger bag that perfectly suits their needs and
Portland weather (some day!), to staging a customer
appreciation tea in our office (we launched our first one
in October) to growing our social media following
(they’ve begun thinking up an Instagram contest). It’s
important to vendors that we communicate what a
quality newspaper we produce, and it’s important, too,
that the public understands that vendors buy the paper
for a quarter and sell it for the dollar, working as micro
entrepreneurs.
Vendors give each other sales tips (“It takes a while
to make a sales post your own, building relationships,”
some vendors counsel) and discuss how to interact with
tourists less familiar with Street Roots (during the Rose
Festival, one vendor carries a map, doubling as a
tourism ambassador). They came up with the idea of a
vendor-curated chalkboard in the office to thank small
businesses for support so they could all know about that
generosity.
And of course, vendors discuss policies and initiatives
around housing and homelessness - from concerns
about ideas that might warehouse the poor; to
discussions of wealth inequality; to needs around
accessing showers, laundry and storage.
People also talk about the struggles around - and
affection for - our small office space, which presses in
on people who have contended with too much trauma.
Since we went weekly four years ago, our vendor team
has more than doubled, while our office size has
remained the same.
Ideas from Street Roots vendors underpin our big
goals ahead, which includes expanding our office space
so that our newsroom can grow and our vendors have
more room to thrive, but still maintaining its warmth.
We will pursue initiatives to support vendor sales,
professional development and newspaper distribution.
Join us in building our future! The number one way
we support our nonprofit is through individual
donations, and the winter fund drive is the biggest
portion of that. We are sustained by it all - from change
that a small child saves up to a the $10 donation, to
$1,000 and more. And we are buoyed by notes that
people send with donations - praise for a vendor and
kudos for our independent journalism.
Our goal for the winter fund drive is $150,000, and
we have $30,000 left to raise by Dec. 31. Please help us
get there. Donate online at giveguide.org/#streetroots
(through Dec. 31) or mail a check to Street Roots, 211
NW Davis, Portland, OR 97209.
And thank you, thank you, thank you!
Advertising
Interested in advertising in Street Roots? Email
Andrew Hogan at andrew@stree&oots.org
Staff
Executive Director Kaia Sand
kaia@streetroots.org
Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl
joanne@streetroots.org
Vender Program Director Cole Merkel
coie@streetroots.org
Development Director Andrew Hogan
andrew@ streetro0ts.0r9
Emty Green
emily@streetroots.org
Vendor Coordinator DeVon Pouncey
Administrative Assistant Kayla Jones
Volunteer Coordinator Meghan Murphy,
Jesuit Volunteer
Vendor Assistant Alex Gillow-Wiies
Development Assistant Nina Lee
Editorial Producer Monica Kwasnik
Reporters Sarah Hansell, Leonora Ko, Emiily
Prado, Eliena. Rosenthal, Amanda Waldroupe,
Helen Hill, Jason Cohen, Stephen Quirke,
Libby Dowsett
Photographers Diego Diaz, Arkady Brown,
Celeste Noche
Canvasser Desmond Hardison
Senior Staff Reporter
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
Helen Hilt, Stacey Heath, Anjali Rathore, Dennis
Hogan, Susan Maloy, Pat Zimmer, Kathleen
Deumling, Mary Anne Joyce, Josha Moss, Rob
Shyrock, Brooke Anderson, Kaitlyn Dey, Robin
Havenick, Jason Karam, Sharon Koenig, Tom Mattox,
Curtis Moore, Amicia Nametka, Karen Nicoletti,
Jason Cohen, Doug Spangle, Susannah Kamala, Jon
Raymond, Diana Richardson, Paul and Madeline
Gefroh, Mark Oldanl, Bianca Butler, Camber Hansen-
Karr, Miranda Woods, Henry Brannan, Helen Hill,
Mary Emerson, Kathleen McFall, Robb Hengerer,
Faye Powell, Julia Smith, Isabel Zacharias 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
call for more information at 503-228-5657.