Friday, November 30, 2007

Help us keep grassroots media alive, all while helping build community!

You can help us keep grassroots media alive, all while helping an individual experiencing homelessness and poverty build self-worth and gain a supplimental income.

Please help us raise 25K for our winter fund drive!

In 2008, we hope to lower the cost of the newspaper for vendors to 25 cents, giving vendors a 75% profit from each paper sold. That’s up to $100 dollars a month for individuals selling the newspaper, and nearly $1,200 more a year that vendors will have to improve their lives.

Not to mention the countless relationships that are developed and built with your local neighborhood vendor. Part of what makes Street Roots special is the relationships built between people across class lines. The self-confidence and self-worth established through those relationships are immeasurable.

Last year, Street Roots received more individual donations from people like you than ever before. Your donations went to help Street Roots empower more than 15 individuals to gain stable housing. With your help we also updated our archaic technology, created an advisory panel and editorial committee, while offering vendors additional sales items. Those items included bumper stickers and the popular “Housing is a human right” post-cards and buttons. Those additional sales items gave vendors an opportunity to make money and build awareness about Street Roots and the human rights of poor people.

This year your donation will not only go towards lowering the cost of the newspaper for vendors, but will also go toward developing a new sales training video for vendors, providing additional sales items, providing freshwater, hot coffee, and a warm place to congregate in the office. All while providing the dignity people deserve.

Vendors can’t be successful without a quality newspaper to sell. Your donation will also help the newspaper maintain four additional pages of local, national, and international news and a new vendor page exploring the unique stories of the people who sell the newspaper. Street Roots will also be doing a redesign in the summer of 2008 and looking toward a weekly publication in 2009.

We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without your generous support. We thank you for the consideration and for your dedication to the organization. From all of us at Street Roots, we thank you for your support.

Thank you for your support!

  • Donate today!
  • Thursday, November 29, 2007

    Novick and Merkley square off in new Street Roots

    The new edition of Street Roots hits the streets tomorrow. This issue is jammed packed with great stories, including an in-depth interview with Democratic Senate candidates Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley. Street Roots along with the ACLU of Oregon, Affordable Housing Now!, Jobs With Justice, Oregon Action and the Rural Organizing Project ask important questions on homelessness, affordable housing, labor, immigrant rights, and civil liberties.

    Other features include an interview with Cathy Wilkerson who recently wrote a memoir called Flying Close to the Sun: My life and times as a Weatherman. The book is a memoir of a white middle-class girl from the suburbs who became what today many would call a terrorist — a bomb-making member of the Weather Underground — who then came to learn the lessons of the 1960s that other radicals of all stripes seem not to have learned.

    Cathy Wilkerson was active in the civil rights movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weather Underground. In 1970, she, along with Kathy Boudin, survived an explosion in the basement of her parents' townhouse that killed three Weathermen, forcing the two underground. For the past twenty years she has worked as an educator teaching teachers in the New York City schools.

    Other features include a look at the FCC consolidation, the rising tides of women in prison, and why Berkeley ditched sidewalk-sitting prohibitions.

    Most of all this issue includes some great stories and poetry from the streets, including the story of Street Roots vendor Brian Letiecq, a story written by two recently housed vendors, and much more.

    You can find all of this and more in the next edition of Street Roots. Don't be a scrooge, buy a copy today, you might be surprised by what you find!

    Don't forget! Street Roots has set a goal to raise 25K in our annual Winter Fund Drive. Your donation will go to lowering the costs of the newspaper for vendors from 30 cents to 25 cents, giving people on the streets a 75% profit on each paper sold! It will also go to provide fresh water, coffee and a safe place to gather each and every morning. We can't do it without you!

  • Donate today!
  • Tuesday, November 20, 2007

    Community Development Network reports...

    The Community Development Network (CDN), an association of nonprofit community development organizations in Multnomah County, reports that on November 14, the House of Representatives passed the FY08 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) conference report by a vote of 270-147. The vote was short of the two-thirds majority of those present needed to override a presidential veto.

    The same day, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on the bill, again threatening a veto because the bill exceeds the president’s spending requests by $3 billion, does not cut what the president has deemed ineffective programs and includes nearly 2,000 earmarks. The HUD portion of the bill contains $183.5 million in Economic Development Initiative earmarks, down from $307 million in such pork spending in FY06. The FY07 HUD spending bill did not include Economic Development Initiative earmarks.

    Read more...
  • HUD money threatened with veto


  • Read more about the National Housing Trust Fund Campaign, the Housing America peitition asking for people to shine a light on the lack of affordable housing, and much more at CDN's website.

  • CDN website


  • P.S. For all of you policy wonks, journalists, activists, concerned citizens, and people on the beat, concerned with affordable housing, this newsletter is a must! Sign up!

    Police, business community continue to scare away tourists

    OPB news brings us more great news about how drug dealers and addicts are getting what they deserve. Prison!

  • Portland police crack down on drugs downtown


  • The article doesn't quote anyone at the ground level beyond the police, nor does it mention anything about the two-million people in our prison system, most of whom are non-violent drug offenders. Doesn't say a thing about reform or the fact that a multi-billion dollar drug war has been failing for well over two decades now.

    Maybe if we keep arresting people and treating homeless people like trash - the drugs will go away.

    For it's worth, the police have been very up front and kept in great communication with organizations in downtown about the sweeps. While it may not seem like it, we aren't taking a shot at the police, just bad policy and bad PR!

    Be the first business on your block to kick a homeless person out of your doorway!

    Two Portland Patrol Inc. security guards just walked into Street Roots, and asked two of our vendors (one of whom slept in our doorway last night) and then me if we wanted to sign up for a trespass enforcement agreement with the Portland Police Bureau. They are going door-to-door in the neighborhood.

    The agreement would authorize the Portland Police Bureau to act as agents for the purpose of enforcing trespass laws on private property(s).

    It offers a place to sign your name (as the owner, manager, leasee), location and to describe your place of business.

    The agreement goes on to say individuals who are in or upon the above-described property without authorization may be arrested for Criminal Trespass II, or may be ejected from the property and excluded from entering or remaining in or upon the property described above indefinitely.

    The next paragraph offers the opportunity for business owners or organization to take part in the agreement to punish poor people. It says, “Myself, or a person whom I have appointed, will respond to any and all subpoenas and subsequent Court appearances as required to prosecute any individuals arrested by officers of the Portland Police Bureau.”

    Criminal Trespass II is a low-level misdemeanor under Oregon Law that comes with the possibility of a max fine of $1,250 dollars and a 30-day jail sentences. In reality, a person cited will most likely go to community court and is looking at doing community service. If you don’t appear in court you get a warrant for your arrest and the potential for a more serious misdemeanor charge for failure to appear. If you appear in court, but don’t do your community service, you’ll get a warrant and go straight to jail.

    What does this mean? It means that the Portland Patrol funded by the Portland Business Alliance and the Portland Police Bureau continue to offer a stick without a carrot. They walk a big talk, and offer money for direct service in the guise of caring about homeless people. Where’s the carrots, folks?

    Street Roots and others have kicked, screamed, reported and advocated over the years in a myriad of different ways, offering why criminalization is costly, ineffective, a form of torture and does nothing to solve the problem of homelessness.

    Still, the reality is year after year after year, the police and now private security sweep, ticket, exclude and harass poor people, while bureaucrats continue to set on the sidelines, and offer the 10-year plan to end homelessness as step in the right direction.

    We call bullshit, once again.

    Help us raise $25,000 this year!

    Help us raise $25,000 to lower costs of the paper for vendors!

    How will your donation go toward bettering the lives of people experiencing homelessness and poverty? Currently, vendors pay 30 cents for the newspaper, and sell it in the community for $1 dollar. That’s a 70% profit from each newspaper sold.

    In 2008, we hope to lower the cost of the newspaper for vendors to 25 cents, giving vendors a 75% profit from each paper sold. That’s up to $100 dollars a month for individuals selling the newspaper, and nearly $1,200 more a year that vendors will have to improve their lives.

    Not to mention the countless relationships that are developed and built with your local neighborhood vendor. Part of what makes Street Roots special is the relationships built between people across class lines. The self-confidence and self-worth established through those relationships are immeasurable.

    In 2007, Street Roots celebrated putting more than $1 million dollars into the hands of people experiencing homelessness and poverty since our inception in December 1998.

    Last year, Street Roots received more individual donations from people like you than ever before. Your donations went to help Street Roots empower more than 15 individuals to gain stable housing. With your help we also updated our archaic technology, created an advisory panel and editorial committee, while offering vendors additional sales items. Those items included bumper stickers and the popular “Housing is a human right” post-cards and buttons. Those additional sales items gave vendors an opportunity to make money and build awareness about Street Roots and the human rights of poor people.

    This year your donation will not only go towards lowering the cost of the newspaper for vendors, but will also go toward developing a new sales training video for vendors, providing additional sales items, providing freshwater, hot coffee, and a warm place to congregate in the office. All while providing the dignity people deserve.

    Your donation will also go towards helping Street Roots obtain a digital vendor data base to better track individual sales and help vendor store important personal records. We will also be working to develop on-line fundraising and advocacy programs that better serve readers and supporters.

    Vendors can’t be successful without a quality newspaper to sell. Your donation will also help the newspaper maintain four additional pages of local, national, and international news and a new vendor page exploring the unique stories of the people who sell the newspaper. Street Roots will also be doing a redesign in the summer of 2008 and looking toward a weekly publication in 2009.

    We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without your generous support. We thank you for the consideration and for your dedication to the organization. From all of us at Street Roots, we thank you for your support.

    Thank you for your support!

  • Donate now!
  • Monday, November 19, 2007

    The fight against homelessness from D.C. talking heads

    Street Sense in Washington D.C. talks to heads of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Catholic Charities, National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, National Coalition to End Homelessness and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless about what's working and what's not in the fight against homelessness.

  • What's working and what's not
  • Shouldn't we be talking drug reform?

    Real Change reports Ibogaine is the rumored “wonder drug” of addiction treatment. More effective than methadone at combating withdrawal symptoms, more potent than peyote. And very illegal.
  • Powerful psychedelic said to fight drug addiction


  • While Portlanders argue over street names, Seattlites are talking drug reform.
  • Spirited talk about drug reform

  • San Francisco ponders the first injection site for drug addicts in the U.S
  • Injection sites


  • Vancouver, B.C.'s health department already offers an injection site
  • Injection site Vancouver

  • Instead of locking addicts up in our county jails, advocating for failed drug-free zones and empowering police officers to work with addicts instead of health care providers in our neighborhoods - shouldn't we be talking drug reform in Portland?

    Food, poverty and social justice

    A new Street Roots Special Edition is on the streets. The new issue explores food, poverty and social justice.

    Feature articles include a look at the future of community gardens and rooftop agriculture, the challenges non-profits face providing healthy meals day in and day out, and a look at the world of gleaning.

    Other features include a Q & A with Brian Tokar, Program Director with the Vermont Institution of Social Ecology, and columns from Jay Thiemeyer and Daniel Denvir with the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee, and much more...

    Street Roots editorial: Time to get off the industrial food grid

    We are what we eat. We are dependent on an agricultural industry steered by politics and profit. We are processed through conditioning and ignorance to crave what is bad for us. We are the pesticide-riddled consumers of the globalized, multi-billion-dollar commerce of “foodstuff.” We are the corporations' cash cows.

    Of course, we don't have to be, and many of us with the means have gone retro toward escaping this government-induced sustenance stupor. Community gardens, organic options and local sources are the hallmarks of the new food movement, but until they become sustainable standards that are universally accessible to the poor, we'll have to think further outside the proverbial over-packaged box of artificial flavorings.

    Because of government subsidies and mass processing, the cheapest food is often the worst food. Sugar, high fructose corn syrup (subsidized) and hydrogenated fat (cheap and long-lasting) reign supreme on poor families' plates, creating the perceived irony of obesity among the most food-vulnerable in our community. But abundance of food isn't the problem in this town. It's the accessibility and affordability of the right food that is.

    To add real irony to the situation, the solution could be hatched from the same sustainable, empowering and mutually rewarding ideal people apply to ending poverty. Get a garden.

    The city of Portland is looking at ways of expanding its community garden program to include more low-income individuals and families. It should be a standard pairing with the efforts to create more affordable housing and green construction in Portland. Today, the city's largest concentration of people living in poverty and homelessness, those in the downtown core, remain confined to a concrete jungle.

    We are programmed to think the needs of the poor span the very short spectrum of food, clothing and shelter, when the most overlooked elements are that which we all treasure; to be able to take care of ourselves, to feel a part of a society. People working in the city's community garden programs report an increase in not only good food, but of hope and productivity, and even a reduction in juvenile crime. We're beyond talking just food here, we're talking about people restoring a basic need in their lives: control.

    Seattle is a model in our own backyard. The city to the north has made growing your own food a priority for all citizens, with a cooperative system of sharing abundance in knowledge and crops. P-patches are common, and garden plots can be purchased and donated to low-income families. Organic food collected is distributed to people in need who cannot grow their own.

    Portland is following the lead, but as it plans for higher density residential and commercial districts downtown, it needs to be pushing more garden options in the early stages of planning and development. As we continue to push for more green construction, with entire structures operating off the grid, we should be building in the infrastructure for people to live off the industrial food grid as well.

    Monday, November 12, 2007

    Help support Street Roots!

    Dear friends of Street Roots,

    Be a part of something special this year! You can help us raise $25,000 during the Winter Fund Drive!

    Your donation will go towards lowering the cost vendors pay for the paper from 30 cents to 25 cents, giving vendors 75 percent profit from each paper sold.

    Your donation will also go towards providing vendors with a sales training video this year, as well as providing fresh water, hot coffee, a warm place to congregate in the office 365 days a year, and a safe place for individuals on the streets to store artwork, poetry and journals.

    Your donation also goes towards helping the expansion of the newspaper. We have added four more pages of local, national and international grassroots news — plus a page devoted to the unique stories of the people who sell Street Roots. Read an example of the new content:
  • Ride of his life


  • So, c'mon. What are you waiting for? Take five minutes to donate today!
  • Donate now!


  • From all of us at Street Roots, we thank you for the support. We couldn't do it without you!

    Sunday, November 11, 2007

    Homeless vets


    A new report from the National Alliance to End Homelessnes says approximately 195,827 veterans were homeless on a given night—an increase of 0.8 percent from 194,254 in 2005. More veterans experience homeless over the course of the year. We estimate that 336,627 were homeless in 2006.

    The report says, 1.98% of veterans from Oregon in 2006 were homeless (5,891), while 2.9% of veterans (10,125) vets are experiencing severe housing cost burden. In Washington, 1.04% (6,800) of veterans are homeless, while 2.5% (15,713) are experiencing severe housing costs burdens.
  • Homeless vet report


  • The New York Times reports that more than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead.
  • Surge in homeless vets


  • Despite high rates of homelessness among U.S veterans, only one in four are receiving assistance from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a situation a national advocacy organization blames on lack of awareness of federal support, according to Street Sense in Washington D.C.
  • Street Sense article

  • The VA estimates that 45% of homeless veterans suffer from mental-health issues, while more than 70% suffer from substance abuse. The most common mental illness found in homeless veterans is PTSD, which often leads to other mental illnesses related to trauma, as well as alcohol and drug abuse. Despite this, only half of all VA centers offer treatment and assistance for PTSD and other mental illnesses.

    Help out!

    If Portlanders and Oregonians are looking for an organization to support this Veteran's Day, Street Roots recommends the Central Oregon Veterans Outreach. The organization is one example of veterans helping veterans who are experiencing homelessness throughout the state. They're the real deal.
  • COVO
  • Monday, November 5, 2007

    Numbers of women experiencing homelessness in Seattle on the rise

    From Real Change in Seattle:

    The numbers are still being crunched, but there are already several surprises in the first six months worth of data from Safe Harbors, a new countywide database that tracks the homeless.

    One of them is that nearly 1,400 of the single adults who stayed in a publicly funded shelter in King County between January and June were women — or 25 percent of the 4,363 single adults who were sheltered. Add to that another 350 women that Seattle human services staff believe haven’t been identified and the countywide total of homeless women is 1,791, a number that’s “a lot higher than we would have anticipated,” Safe Harbors manager John Hoskins said in an Oct. 24 report to the board of King County’s Committee to End Homelessness.

    Continue reading
  • Homeless women
  • Thursday, November 1, 2007

    Cops vs. private eyes

    The new edition of SRs is on the streets. The cover story is a feature on videotaping alteracations between police and the public. Activists say it's the road to accountability, while law enforcement says it has concerns over privacy and creating inaccurate public perceptions.


    Other features include a Q & A with Community Alliance of Tenants Ian Slingerland, a profile on artist/activist Dan Shea, and stories on what's happening on the ground in Chile and Indonesia from the Street News Service.

    A ride of his life features the amazing story of vendor John Thompson who recently wrode to San Francisco on a bike donated from the Community Cycling Center. Did we mention John only has one arm and had no money.

    Our editorial looks at the hype around Old Town/Chinatown, and what people on the streets are going through living on both sides of the gun.

    All of this and much more in this issue of Street Roots. Go buy it from your local vendor! Now!