www.The Green

Collar eConomy

Van Jones’ new book sets the tone for an economic revolution

Page 5

Nov. 14, 2008

.org

Rest in peace, and dignity

By Mara GruNBauMContributing Writer

Charity Lamb, Oregon’s first ax murderess, was buried at Lone Fir Cemetery in 1879. Around 1930, her grave was layered over

with asphalt. In 1955, a building was erected atop the pavement, and Charity Lamb – along with more than 100 other patients of the long-since demolished Oregon Insane Hospital – was nearly forgotten.

Researchers believe that up to 132 people who died in Portland’s first private mental hospital are buried at Lone Fir Cemetery’s southwest corner, where a Multnomah County office building stood until 2005. After persistent agitation by mental-health advocates, Metro regional government, which now controls the property, is planning an onsite memorial for the asylum patients – and

trying to include people who have experienced mental illness in the design process.

Grace Heckenberg has worked for years to cast light on the patients of Dr. James Hawthorne, the pioneer psychiatrist who built the Oregon Insane Hospital in what was then the city of East Portland.

In 1969, when Heckenberg was 17, she spent a year as a psychiatric patient at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem. Now 56, Heckenberg visits Lone Fir often. She says she feels solidarity with those who lived in the Portland asylum.

Years ago, Heckenberg and others began to comb through historical documents and realized there could be patients buried under the cemetery parking lot. She asked the county about an official commemoration, but at the time, she says, no one was interested.

“At a certain point I just became extremely discouraged and decided that they were never going to be recognized,” Heckenberg said. “Maybe the memorial's just in my own heart. I know they’re down there.”

Lone Fir, in Southeast Portland’s Buckman neighborhood, was a private burial site for pioneer families that became an official cemetery in 1855. Historical maps show that in the late 1800s, the corner property, or “Block 14,” was designated for the burial of Chinese immigrant railroad workers, who were not allowed elsewhere in the cemetery. Many of their bodies were disinterred and returned to China before

Mental-health advocates memorialize asylum residents buried and forgotten in Lone Fir CemeteryInsIde

Read about singer Storm Large’s rendition of Charity’s story for a new CD benefiting Lone Fir Cemetery: Page 10

Please see rest iN Peace, page 8

Photo by Leah nash

Grace Heckenberg stands in Lone Fir Cemetery. Nearby, more than 100 residents of Oregon’s landmark Hawthorne Asylum lie buried in unmarked graves.

By aMaNda WaldrouPeContributing Writer

Del Monte. James Chasse. Accusations of racism during the Cesar Chavez debate. A homeless protest in front of City Hall.

“No Section 8.” What’s missing from the list?A place where individuals can bring their

grievances and charges of discrimination, bigotry, hate crimes and injustice to find redress.

That changed on Nov. 5, when the Human Rights Commission, charged with advocating for the human rights of Portland’s citizens, held its first meeting since being reassembled by Portland’s City Council in January.

“You folks have an important job in front of you,” Mayor Tom Potter said at the beginning of the meeting.

The commission is composed of 11 to 15 volunteer community members appointed by the City Council. It is managed by a new city bureau, the Office of Human Relations, and is responsible for tackling issues of discrimination, bigotry, racism and other human rights abuses in Portland and ensuring, Potter says, “that people with the smallest voice can be heard.”

Portland has had an Office of Human Relations in the past. Founded in 1948, the office was a city bureau until 1997 when it became incorporated into the Office of Neighborhood Involvement. In 2003, it was cut entirely from the city’s budget.

“That was a kind of blow to the community,” says Dan Handelman, a volunteer with Portland Copwatch. The very existence, Handelman says, of an agency that publicly addressed issues

regarding police accountability, transgender rights, and human rights offenses was important.

“They took up several issues that weren’t really being considered by City Council,” Handelman says.

Portland lagged behind many cities in Oregon and the Northwest that had similar human rights offices until Mayor Tom Potter made it a priority of his administration to recreate the office.

“I was frankly very excited that the city is doing this again,” says Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen, who is serving as the interim chair of the commission.

However, the commission may already have one hand tied behind its back, because it lacks something many think is crucial in order for it to

Human rights group returns to City Hall after 11-year absenceNew commission has the daunting task of protecting and advocating for the human rights of all Portlanders.

Please see huMaN riGhts page 10

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street roots Nov. 14, 2008 3

newsbriefsReport: Children face health care fallout of economic downturn

More than one out of nine children in Oregon lacks health care coverage, according to a new national report, most of them belonging to families with at least one working parent.

The report by Families USA, a national nonprofit that advocates for health care consumers, estimates that 107,000 Oregon children lack health insurance, a figure that is expected to grow as the economic decline penetrates Oregon.

Janet Bauer, policy analyst with the Oregon Center for Public Policy, who reviewed the report, said that there are a combinations of issues in play: some people have health coverage from employers but make too little to buy health insurance for themselves and their children. Others are offered coverage by their employers but cannot afford the premiums that would insure their children, she said.

Oregon ranked 18th among states in the nation for the percentage of children in the state without health insurance, according the report “Left Behind: Oregon's Uninsured Children.”

Between January and September this year, Oregon lost 20,000 jobs, Bauer said, which has dropped people from health care coverage. Bauer said the economic downturn may pressure some employers to cut costs by reducing health benefits or to shift more of the costs to workers. The share of Oregon children who get their health insurance through their parents' employer fell 7.8 percent from 2000-01 to 2006-07.

Hole In The Bucket attempts to expand listeners' awareness of what

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By aMaNda WaldrouPeContributing Writer

The troubling results of the Portland Vulnerability Index survey on the health and likelihood of death

among Portland’s homeless has spurred the city and housing bureau to act quickly as cold weather sets in.

On Wednesday, Nov. 19 the Portland City Council is expected to vote to provide $200,000 in funding to create two new “warming centers” that will allow 150 to 200 homeless individuals and families to escape the nighttime cold between November and March.

The proposal comes from City Commissioner Nick Fish and the Bureau of Housing and Community Development, which has already secured $100,000 from Multnomah County for a family-focused warming center. The council is also being asked to provide $42,000 to cover the shortfall in funding for already approved winter shelters for men and women.

In the past six months, Portland providers have reported a 50 to 60 percent increase in the number of families seeking shelter, showing that the national recession is having local repercussions, necessitating an increased safety net in times of scant resources.

“These aren’t numbers, they’re people,” says Dennis Lundberg, an outreach worker with Janus Youth, an agency serving homeless youths, “and they are sick.”

However, the numbers could be leveraged into more funding to meet the demand.

“I hope (the Vulnerability Index) leverages more resources,” says City Commission Nick Fish, who oversees the city’s efforts to end homelessness. Fish notes that while the city and county are in the “teeth” of a recession, “the moral case is clear.”

“The bottom line is, with the results of the Vulnerability Index survey, we’re going to do a few things differently,” Fish says.

That includes targeting the most medically vulnerable individuals and “expeditiously” moving them into supportive housing.

To that end, the Bureau of Housing and Community Development will begin working to place 50 of the most medically

vulnerable individuals into emergency winter housing.

Additionally, 10 of the most severely medically vulnerable will be placed into housing that provides health care.

The Vulnerability Index found that of the 646 people surveyed, nearly half (47 percent) face an increased risk of death if they remain homeless without medical treatment. That far exceeds the national average of 40-41 percent. (See “Measuring our Vulnerability,” Street Roots, Oct. 31, 2008)

One warming center is planned for downtown Portland; the second in East County. Both will be low-barrier, and priority will be given to families with children, youth under the age of 21, pregnant women and medically vulnerable adults.

The warming centers replace the city’s past program for severe weather, which provided additional emergency shelter on nights when the temperature dipped below freezing. Those services, by the housing bureau’s own assessment, were subjective, complicated, and rarely met the need for a warm place for everyone who needed them. This was especially true for families, pregnant women, youth and those with health concerns and other conditions that made them feel vulnerable. However, the warming centers will not offer any services beyond a blanket, mat on the floor or cot, and warm food.

The warming centers — essentially more shelters — would appear to be a backward step for a city emphasizing placing homeless individuals directly into permanent housing above all in its plan to end homelessness.

The dilemma between the belief that shelters waste money and resources because they do not solve homelessness, and the moral imperative many feel to provide homeless individuals an escape from the winter cold has, in the past, sparked tension.

“We’ve broken through that log jam,” Fish says.

What exists now, according to Fish, is not an “either or” model, but an understanding that shelters and other means of providing a safety net can co-exist with the city’s goal to end homelessness.

The results of the Vulnerability Index survey also increase the urgency of furthering the city’s long-term housing goals, including building the Resource Access Center (the new name for what had been called the homeless day access center) and more units of permanent supportive housing.

“I think warming centers are a good idea but they should be seen for what they are: Band-aid solutions to people dying on the streets of Portland during our coldest and wettest seasons,” Lundberg says.

Given the Vulnerability Index’s statistics, effective long-term solutions may involve increasing funding for “effective mental health resources, viable and affordable health coverage, and a broad array of addiction treatment options,” Lundberg says.

While capacity for providing health care has never seemed more necessary, Rachel Solotaroff, the medical director for the Old Town Clinic, says the Clinic’s capacity to provide health care to uninsured and low-income individuals is already “totally maxed out.”

“Not having the health care capacity is a huge issue,” Solotaroff says.

At the same time, Solotaroff says that some of the Vulnerability Index’s statistics show that the population of vulnerable adults is “not being reached.”

“You have to look not just at the funding, but (whether) we are meeting people where they are,” Solotaroff says.

“If we can get these people in supportive housing environments, then coupled closely with the health care providers in the city, then I think we can really see some results.”

Warming centers replace ‘severe weather’ alerts for getting the sick and homeless off Portland’s wet streets

City concedes need for more shelters

“The bottom line is with the results of the Vulnerability index survey, we’re going to do a few things differently.”

— Nick FishCity Commissioner

former u.s. Customs House offered for homeless assistance

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, is putting the U.S. Customs House up for possible homeless assistance.

The building at 220 NW 8th Ave. in Portland s on the National Register of historical properties. It was most recently used as office space.

Under the Federal Surplus Property Program, the will be available exclusively for homeless use for a period of 60 days from the date of the notice posted Nov. 7.

activists push governor to stop aggressive logging plan

Activists with the Cascadia Rising Tide began a tree sit on Nov. 11 in view of the Capitol building in Salem to protest the federal government’s logging plan.

With a banner that said "Don’t Clear Cut Our Future," Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky plans to sit in the tree to call attention to Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s ability to stop the federal government from clear-cutting Oregon’s native forests.

The event was organized by the group Cascadia Rising Tide to provide education about the Western Oregon Plan Revisions, or WOPR, that would increase logging in Oregon by more than 400 percent, including substantial tracks of clear cutting. The organization says WOPR threatens 1 million acres of public lands, including 100,000 acres of old-growth forests.

The protest in Salem is leading up to a permitted rally on the Capitol steps on Nov. 14.

Support Street Roots this year through the Willamette Week’s Give!Guide. Get great prizes for giving and supporting your

favorite organization. S e e back page, Page 16, for

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4 street roots Nov. 14, 2008

newsbrief

By elizaBeth schWartzContributing Writer

Around noon on a sunny fall day, two mounted police stop and talk to a man sitting on the sidewalk on the

west side of SW 5th and Oak. The man stands and the officers move south. “Sit-lie-law” Barry Mattern, a Street Roots vendor, explains. “They come around noon when the cantinas get busy.”

Barry knows what happens around his corner. He has been selling Street Roots to the lunch crowd by the cantinas for several months. Mornings he sells around the corner in front of Starbucks. He loves the contact with people. “It’s not about selling newspapers,” he says, “It’s about my customers.” A woman stops briefly and Barry hands her the newest version of the Rose City Resource. She thanks him and leaves.

“She’s a social worker,” Barry says. The little orange booklet, published by Street Roots, contains lists of about 300 resources for items such as housing, clothing, and food. “Everyone should have one,” he says. He talks about giving one to a parolee. The man had approached Barry asking how to find a job. Parole officers

are high on Barry’s list of people who should own one of the booklets.

Barry sells most of his newpapers the first week of the two-week cycle. The second week tends to be slow unless the front page arouses interest in the general public and new customers purchase it. When asked what kind of feature article would make the paper sell rapidly right now, Barry does not hesitate. “Something about the economy... It helps if the article is about a well-known person.”

Like other vendors, Barry has regular customers — friends — who purchase an issue from him each time it comes out. “I haven’t seen some of my regulars.” Barry seems concerned about them. “Maybe they are on vacation or something. “They usually buy a paper the first week it is out.” Barry doesn’t think that his reduced sales over the past 10 days are related to the economy.

When asked what his newspaper readers are like, he says “well-educated for the most part, and interested in the kinds of news Street Roots prints.” They seem to like the fact that the newspaper reports on issues normally ignored by local media, he says. It gives a different

perspective of life in Portland.Barry begins talking about various

public officials working in the areas of finance, homelessness and detox. He is animated and knowledgeable about public affairs, but before he can say much, an elderly man using a bright blue walker approaches.

“Hey, this is my friend.” Barry smiles at the man and stands up, getting off his own blue walker. As the men chat, a pedestrian hands Barry a dollar bill in exchange for a paper. Most of the lunch crowd ignore him, but a few smile or wave as they walk by. People seem to be preoccupied and in a hurry. The crowd mills around the cantinas. Customers wait in line for food without much socializing. They hurry off, carrying packets of food. A few sit at tables to eat lunch.

A woman approaches this writer, begging for money. “I’m saving up so I can spend the night in a hostel.” I had no money on me. “Can you go get some?” She left before I could refer her to Barry for a resource book.

New Sisters' donors in November and December will be matched 1 to 1 by The Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust and The Collins Foundation, AND matched 50 cents on each dollar through the generosity of a group of individuals and businesses. So a new donor's gift of $100 will become $250!

All returning Sisters donors will be matched 50 cents for every dollar donated; a $100 donation by a returning donor will become $150!

To receive the new donor match, Sisters must receive at least $30,000 in gifts from

new donors by midnight on December 31. So please consider giving a gift today! Thank you.

Donate online at www.sistersoftheroad.org; by calling 503-222-5694 ext. 12; or mail checks with "Matching Challenge" in the subject line to 133 NW 6th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209.

All donations to Sisters Of The Road will be matched!

The 100+-page booklet lets individuals be independent in their search for services that fit their needs.

For more information call Eddy Barbosa at 503.228.5657 or e-mail us at pdxrosecityresource@hotmail.com. Puede dejar un mensaje en español al numero 503-227-8709 y le regresaremos la llamada por la tarde o durante

el transcurso de la mañana siguiente.

Photo by eLizabeth sChWartz

Barry keeps cart customers stocked with papers, resources

The Rose City Resources are now available in Spanish!

Vancouver — With Vancouver’s shelters full last summer, about 80 homeless people moved into Oppenheimer Park in downtown Vancouver and set up tents. The makeshift tent city caused a great deal of international embarrassment for the provincial government and forced it to go into the park one day last August and give housing to about 50 of the campers.

Two weeks ago, a B.C. judge ruled that Victoria’s bylaws violate a person’s right to "life, liberty and security," as guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman called the ruling "ridiculous," while major dailies across the country lamented the oncoming tent cities that would spring up in the city. The housing ministry created 95 new shelter beds and mats for Victoria’s homeless a week after the ruling BC Housing’s own statistics show that there were more than 36,000 turnaways at shelters across Greater Vancouver during a nine-month period from April 2007 to January 2008. Pivot Legal Society has now put forward a challenge in the BC Supreme Court that argues Vancouver’s anti-camping bylaws are also unconstitutional.

British Columbia wrestles with camping laws

Concert to benefit Potluck in the Park sunday meal efforts.

Potluck in the Park, the all volunteer Portland nonprofit that feeds 400-600 hungry people every Sunday, 52 weeks per year, holds its annual fundraiser Dec. 7 with the Winter Warm Concert.

This year’s event features Tom Grant, with internationally known blues harmonica player, vocalist and Grammy winner Curtis Salgado.

More information on the performers, including tickets sales, is available online at www.potluckinthepark.org. The $45 ticket price include an hors d'oeuvre buffet and complementary beverages. The $100 VIP tickets include a private pre-concert reception with the artists and special concert seating. The reception starts at 4 p.m. and the show starts at 5 p.m. at the Acadian Ballroom, 1829 NE Alberta St.

Tickets Also Available at Music Millenium- East 3158 E Burnside, 503-231-8926:, and Music Millenium- Northwest 801 NW 23rd, 503-248-0163.

5street roots Nov. 14, 2008

By trevor GriFFeystreet neWs serviCe

Barack Obama, just like his opponents, will be unable to provide any quick fix to the economic and

environmental crises threatening our society. No matter which political party controls the White House or Congress, we will still be tasked with creating and deepening new political coalitions to meet these challenges head-on.

In his new book, “The Green Collar Economy,” Van Jones, co-founder of Green For All and a former community organizer with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, Calif., offers a simple but radical new program. He calls for a new, multi-class, multi-racial, and multi-generational coalition of people to organize around the creation of a "green New Deal."

Trevor Giffey: “The Green Collar Economy” seems to be reviving a call for full employment that we haven’t seen in the American political landscape for some time.

Van Jones: The dominant economic model of the past 30 years has utterly failed not only the world’s poor but now, apparently, the world’s rich. And we’ve created a world economy that is driven by U.S. consumption, not U.S. production. By U.S. debt, not by the smart savings and thrift of our grandparents’ era. And finally,

based on environmental destruction, not environmental restoration. So that is the big fundamental fact. We rolled the dice for not only the U.S. economy, but the world economy, on that strategy which by definition is

unsustainable. We’re going to have to make a big

u-turn, and everything should be on the table. We can’t have a situation where rich elites privatize all the gains and then socialize all the pain and then ask us to go around the loop with them again. And that’s what happened with this big bailout. If all that stuff had paid off and made a lot of money, they wouldn’t have been trying to offer it to us. They only offered us the toxic waste but not the cream.

So we’re not having this conversation, in other words, with the normal backdrop. Before, if you were going to talk about full employment, putting the country back to work, meeting tough challenges, it was going to be laughed out of the public square. Crises tend to raise a really fundamental issue. That’s the preamble.

One reason to call for full employment is that there’s more than enough work to do. We’re going to have to retrofit, reboot, re-power the whole U.S. economy so that we don’t destroy the planet. Now, that can be led by the private sector. That’s as close to a full employment program as you’re

ever going to hear about. You’re talking about millions of jobs.

What kind of jobs? You’ve got a wingspan like you can’t imagine on these jobs. Everything from what I call the Ph.D’s in their green lab coats to the "Ph.Dudes" with the green hardhats on: creating breakthroughs in solar technology and installing the solar panels, creating breakthroughs in wind technology and manufacturing the wind turbines. So, it’s not like there’s not a lot of work to do. The work of weatherizing millions of buildings: that’s not Buck Rogers stuff, that’s caulk guns and hand drills. There’s plenty of work to do, and this is the most important work in the history of human civilization. Because if we don’t do this work, we won’t be here.

And we have all these people who need work, and frankly who needed work before the severe recession that we’re in now. I say, let’s connect the people who most need work with the work that most needs to be done, cut pollution and poverty at the same time, beat global warming and a global recession at the same time, and put America back to work. I’m just a simple guy here. That’s my prescription.

T.G.: How have people responded to your making the case for linking these two issues as you’ve traveled around the country so far?

V.J.: The book is endorsed by everyone from (former Vice President) Al Gore to (Speaker of the U.S. House) Nancy Pelosi to (journalist) Tavis Smiley. So these ideas are not wild and crazy things. We’re in extraordinary times, so we need to think hard and rethink frankly a lot of our assumptions about what is on and off the table.

T.G.: Can you explain the connection between poverty and race and the environmental crisis we’re facing?

V.J.: We have built into the economic system this idea of disposability. So we act as if we have a disposable planet and a disposable people. The U.S. is 4 percent of the world’s population. We produce 25 percent of the greenhouse gases, probably more. We also have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Mostly poor people, mostly black and brown, mostly locked up for the same non-violent drug offenses that people do in the country clubs everyday. So there’s a deep connection between the ecological crisis and the socioeconomic crisis.

Now, as a practical matter, low-income people and people of color get hit first and worst with everything negative in the environmental crisis and in the economic

crisis. In fact, Majora Carter, who got the McArthur genius award for her greening of the South Bronx, says, "If it were as easy to put sources of pollution and poison in rich white neighborhoods as it was to put them in poor black neighborhoods, we would have had a green economy a long time ago."

The only reason we’ve been able to get to this point where we’ve built up so many toxins and so much pollution is because the race and class divisions in our society let U.S. society dump the worst downside elements of the industrial society on poor neighborhoods and poor nations. And so you wouldn’t

have this level of environmental crisis if the polluters were not able to exploit the race and class divisions.

And so for that we say we want equal protection for all people from the worst of global warming. We want equal protection from all environmental poisons and toxic pollutants. We also want equal protection from the economic downside of trying to make a transition to a clean energy future. We don’t want to be stuck with higher energy and food prices without any help. So it’s an equal protection argument being made there.

But there’s also a third thing, which is the upside. If we’re going to survive, if we’re going to have a clean and green economy — which I hope that we’re going to — that’s millions of jobs, thousands of contracts, billions of dollars of investments. That’s enough money to lift people out of poverty. That’s enough money to restore and repair a lot of communities. That’s a lot of money to give people pathways from poverty to prosperity. It’s a big transition.

T.G.: And that’s what you mean by "a green New Deal"?

V.J.: That’s what I mean by a green New Deal: An inclusive, green economy strong enough to lift millions of people out of poverty and put this country back to work.

T.G.: One of the things that struck me about your book is when you talk about economic justice, you’re not just talking about urban poverty. You are also talking about rural poverty and the poverty that veterans face. Could you talk about how that fits into your vision of a green New Deal?

V.J.: Most poor people in America are white people. We don’t like to point that out, but it’s true. And there’s a huge need

in rural America and in the so-called exurbs for new hope, new opportunity, and new investments. And they’re not going to get it from "Drill, Baby, Drill." There aren’t enough jobs on the oil rigs, or in the coal mines, to make a dent in white poverty.

But there are going to be enough jobs manufacturing wind turbines, fabricating solar panels, retrofitting millions of buildings, installing those solar panels, building those wind farms, revolutionizing agriculture so we can bring food closer to the plate, moving in the direction of smart biofuels, not good crop biofuels. There are a lot of jobs on the green and clean side. Not a lot of jobs on the dirty polluting side.

T.G.: In the Pacific Northwest where we are, the same goes for logging as well.

V.J.: Well, there are always ways for people to fight each other and misunderstand each other. The only problem is that now we’re on the Titanic. And the only way to save the ship is for everybody to work on it. Our diversity is either going to be our saving grace or it’s going to be our Achilles’ heel, and that’s in the hands of each and every American to make that call. I think that the state of working and poor white folks is intricately bound up now with the state of all working folks in the United States. And in the future there will either be more work, more wealth, more health because we’ve made a turn to green industry, or this year will look like the good old days.

T.G.: In your book, which is mainly positive, you also invoked the specter of "eco-apartheid" if we don’t pursue a green New Deal. What did you mean by that?

V.J.: Eco-apartheid is a situation where we have ecological haves and ecological have-nots. It’s pretty straightforward. The affluent lifestyle greens jumpstart a lot of these main industries and products, which is very important. The fundamentals of the green economy require people to be able to buy in by paying a green premium, a niche in the economy which is going to be 5 percent or 15 percent (of the economy). But whatever good it does will always be overtaken and erased by the other 85 percent of the economy. So the key is to make sure the green economy is not just a place for affluent people to spend money, but a place for ordinary people to earn money, and hopefully for poor people to make some money. And that’s got to be the fundamental goal.

Reprinted from Real Change News, Seattle © Street News Service: www.street-papers.org

Gearing up for a green-collar economy

“The key is to make sure the green economy is not just a place for affluent people to spend money, but a place for ordinary people to earn money, and hopefully for poor people to make some money.”

If Barack Obama is looking for a new agenda for energy, employment and equality, author and activist Van Jones has a few suggestions

Purchase this or any other book through the Powell’s link at www.streetroots.org, and Powell’s will donate a portion of the sale price to Street Roots.

Photo Courtesy of reaL Change neWs

Van Jones

HOrOsCOPeBy souP caN saMstaff

PsyChiC

street rootsNov. 14, 20086

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Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) Did you know

Atlanta of all places is 6 and 0 so far in the

NBA? Who says the South won’t rise again?

Sagittarius (Nov. 23-Dec. 22) Don’t push the

limits. If citizens are the law in America,

we’re all our own worst enemies.

Capricorn (Dec. 23-Jan. 19) Congratulations!

Even if Soup Can doesn’t envy your position,

someone else might.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) The wind was

strong last night, and should be today, too.

Keep what’s close to you closer, unless you

want to be like Soup Can, chasing your

possessions all over the great outdoors.

Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20) Getting lost in

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All I used to dream about was eating donuts

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Aries (March 21-April 19) Talking sometimes

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supported the campaign of hope. Don’t let it

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direction, but the roads are still unpaved.

Cancer (June 23-July 23) How many times

does Soup Can have to say it: Be yourself.

Don’t change your path out of fear of other

opinions. Do what you know is right.

Leo (July 24-Aug. 23) Life’s been pretty good

lately. Enjoy it while it lasts. You’ll get there.

Virgo (Aug. 24-Sept. 23) Last week Soup Can

had an epiphany: not every task can be

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Libra (Sept. 24-Oct. 23) Acceptance is really

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I had no idea where I had landed. None. It was total blackout. Nothing to register for a point in space.

A place to begin. That I was awake was a question. How I sensed it I couldn't say. Wherever I was, there was no light. No sounds. No buzzing flies or shouts or traffic noises. No windows to let in sounds or smells of the streets. Only the merest suggestion of antisepsis gave me the notion I had waked in a jail cell. That nuance of a smell I recognized from innumerable times in this same situation. In the jailhouse, trying to get my bearings. I simply assumed it was a jailhouse I had wound up in. A lightless security cell. Isolation.

If, that is, that was the reality I'd fallen into. Another drunk tank. If I were in a tank, there was likely as not something terribly awry, something I'd done had got me here and this was the worst place to find myself. Such as it was. Because I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't, in fact, bring myself to move.

As I say, it was only on the slimmest of evidence, some body sense I couldn't define, that I believed I had woken up. That I was lying on a jail cot. Maybe it was the recognized sense of a jail cot, the feel of a blanket on a pallet on a steel cot. If I could have moved maybe there would be a squeak from the rubberized canvas but I couldn't bring myself to move. I couldn't sense my breathing. Only a kind of buzzing or humming that represented my existence — wherever I was.

At the time, I had no pinnings. No snoring or rustling of other bodies in this unrelieved blackness. No smells of other bodies. I was totally alone here.

That I was still intensely drunk was the one sure thing. The booze had deprived my senses. I was suspended in a numb tank. Solitary.

What had I done? I didn't care. I knew whatever it was I'd done, I would be fully

acquainted with it soon enough. I just didn't care about anything.

I was so completely numbed I didn't have a desire to move or determine where I was. I felt I was floating and didn't care to change that place, didn't want to risk losing it. I didn't even feel like anything was holding me up. No more than any sort of pressing down. It was neither positive nor negative. Not good or bad, or up or down. I had no sense of dimension. I didn't at the time but later could imagine being jettisoned into deep space and left like a mote of dust to float and disintegrate out there with air of no density. I was without

myself, without sensibility. And for the longest time, I was OK with feeling nothing because one of the first sensations I had was that things were going to get worse. I would return to Earth.

I slowly, very slowly and painlessly acknowledged I was somewhere. That I was awake was a truth I had trouble absorbing. It seemed too unlikely at first. I was neither inside nor out. I mean, “I” was neither here nor there. It wasn't at all a bad place to be in itself except for the emerging question of where exactly was this place I couldn't sense in the least? Was I dreaming? Where was I in this dream?

It took an infinite time to realize I was awake. If I have ever had a sense of being in infinity, a kind of nothingness, this

moment, these hours, whatever it was, was it.

I felt nothing but a buzz. Throughout. My body and my thinking were this buzz, without any more elaboration than that. I felt when finally I felt something, the deepest sense of defeat. And of utter loneliness. I felt like I was dying. And I was ready to die. It didn't matter. I was so tired. I couldn't move. It was all right that there was nowhere to go. Not a thing to do. I was like an object suspended in a jar.

I accepted that I was in solitary and that I must have done something outstanding to be here. And I was completely

powerless to do anything about it or find out what was going on. I heard nothing. It was completely black. No window to give away a door and the hall beyond and some idea of the size of the room. There was nothing.

I tried listening for my breathing. I heard nothing. I listened to see if I could hear my heart. Nothing. I tried to feel the tips of my fingers and felt nothing. I lay there forever without the least inclination to move, completely indifferent, until at last the door lock exploded and the light flooded in and this body filled the doorway and shouted, “Court!”

That was all. Missoula, Montana. Monday morning court. And the burly figure with the keys ringing. I had been right. My senses hadn't betrayed me. I was

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7street rootsNov. 14, 2008

Wedding Day In Afghanistan, TexasBy Jay thieMeyer

Wech Baghtu, a town of little color or future, in Shah Wali Kot district north of Kandahar- as poor a place as the forces that made us can configure- has met the Americans in an instant of aerial bombardment.

the count of the dead varied depending on the source. Was it 90 who were atomized- as villagers say? or was it 5 to 7- as US military said after global pressure forced their concession- the villagers were people too- pressure from the same world whose hope has been renewed by Obama? The same day as his victory, noted by a world finally exhaling after eight long years, of incompetence, greed, and indifference to human suffering, promulgation of suffering, here and abroad, another wedding party is annihilated, "reduced to nothing" like the gathering of family on August 22nd, convention season in America- home of the brave, the free, the indulged and manipulated- when 'change' and 'hope' were finally in the air. Terror, an elusive state of mind will be fed, as well as,defense reconstruction oil finance industries and another Afghan wedding party blown sky high by indiscriminate aerial bombing, in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, whose ghost has terrified us from our freedom,because we were shown only whatGeorge Walker Bush's people chose for us.media campaign experts debt-traders downsizingbarons of the boardrooms industries choosing for us what our lives are!The American war machine will not be denied. Only people we can't see will be denied. Including us. We're losing what's leftof us!Who will change that? Only us, not some media messiah.

wedding rubble, dream and reality, hope or fear, the wedding of equals in Grant Park, the wedding, of victory with change,the wedding of questions. Was that merely a lingering campaign provision for our need to believe, that war could be displaced by the pursuit of happiness here, as there, and everywhere the same, a Human Right? To fight for Peace? For what we need to live in peace?Water, food, health, a home, a place secure ... with a roof and silenceto think..

A family in Wech Baghtu. Its members in dust across the thousands of miles might have been better off some day, a day, they've been denied. dust hanging like headlines unwritten seated in the back pews of the church. the service today is about victory an election of hope in the air, surrounded by cold reality.

names fall off lips uttered in terror in a country where hope and future are rare, it seems, holy, and not to be taken lightly. Most often what's seen: no hope or dreams, myths of endless suffering an ocean of obscure bones ground to dust, become the earth. Afghanistan is just one country, like our own what is the logic? some get light, some get darkness? Aren't we all caught by the expanding darkness? who finally gains from aerial bombardment? and the flash of a bomb in barren Afghanistan the pink cloud hanging in dry air til the wind comes upand blows it away.How many wedded to irradiated dust?Today, our 'choosing day'?

The party had stopped to rest in a narrow strait when the smart bomb found them. There was no cover, no protection. they were laid out like hors d'ouevres on a silver tray

Til Death Do Us Part! the world is just beginning and today is no more than the rest of existence.

Jenna B. was wed in mid-summer Blackhawk helicopters protected wedding guests against the flies, caroming around the hors d'ouevres at the wedding in Crawford, Texas, another hot dry place on the planet. No townspeople invited.the townspeople cleaned up, were leftwith relics to sell.

American fly boys in search of Taliban in brides' skirts. They blew out the lights.

The trays full of good eats small and tasty for the guests of privilege, the crust of privilege that crumbles to the touch.

Don't trust in God, there is none for a fly boy on speed. Though they will protest they are fighting for us, their country, secure in the bosom of the Lord. HE, the one with the beard, the image they carry from their childrens' books, the bearded vision they hold in their hearts as they punch in 'death'- a vivid light- for those below in the deserted barrens where the wedding strolled their god, walks with them-

"as god is my co-pilot-" they bombed them coolly, nothing close like a wedding kiss what they saw they could barely imagine the remoteness of what they do. they know what they do as the wind picks up and blows the pink mist away And all but two of the party below were women and children. Including the disavowed bride.

the flies ate the small eats with crust like a rind of dried blood off the silver trays etched with inherited authority in Texas, left by indifferent guests late for the last plane out

Jenna- isn't she the one who was a school teacher? Wasn't her mother the one who was a librarian? Once upon a time. Does our money pay for such peaceful things as that anymore?What will Jenna and her mother do now?Will a damn thing be changed for them?

Did they even read the news? Do they read the news? Or are they like their father who hasn't time for politics. They skip that section, go immediately to leisure and society to see how the clubs are doing according to the Sunday Times. Only news of the old club merits a gaze

I didn't read of any comment from the First Family. Of their extraordinary good fortune: to be born the way they were and not like others. One wonders what their awareness of life and death must be, by now. Have they ever connected to reality, its smell. (was that ever covered in the childrens' books approved for them?) Maybe they will live forever as they have, in a bubble with their own kind (not a poor one among them, they know no poor) behind gates of willful bliss- soullessly antiseptically kind to one another and ignorant of others, the poor, the lost 'less fortunate than themselves' whom they will righteously biblically pity. They will bring a cardboard box of canned goods and a sack of Safeway apples, as close as they might get to the less-fortunate, a basket for Thanksgiving. Voluntarism is the answer. Whether the poor, the glorious poor, want it or not, the church agrees: our 'givers' need it (for what the church chooses to call their souls)

in the smallest sense of that word, PITY in the arbitrary, self-recusing sense. 'How sad for them' Maybe if they hadn't... They must have done something to deserve it; nothing we could have done would matter

Here! Have a can of Safeway's candied yams!

flies rest on the poor who seek permission from the rich and die in a whisper. But only if the poor are born with a chance at hope and a future. We are lucky. Holding the criminals accountable, is freedom of choice. In spite of our long tolerance of criminality and petty cruelty and those without soul at the top. Leading us! into the bunghole dearie: WEcan choose NOW! to make them pay and pay dearly, dearie. what would you do, do you suppose? Would you imagine something never tried before, new and good? What it is up there we conspire toward; what is finally just human: would you be human like that?Do you remember? When will we gain the powerto reject a new messiah? to ask ourselves our role to play?Is there a reason for anything we see, that will stand up in the wedding rubble?

I hear a murmur O BA MA...where should we go; what can we do- now that we've won? who shall we bomb now?if we so choose...

street rootsNov. 14, 20088

Multnomah County began to build on the land in the 1930s.

But in 2004, as the county prepared to sell the property to housing developers, ground-penetrating sonar revealed anomalies in the earth below the building. An excavation turned up shards of Chinese pottery, two coffins and human remains. The county scrapped its real estate plans, demolished the office building and turned the site over to Metro, which began working with Portland’s Chinese community to plan a memorial for the buried laborers.

Though no archaeological relics identify the asylum patients, other evidence places them beneath the access road on the edge of the Chinese sector.

Between 1864 and 1879, the Oregon Insane Hospital contracted with Lone Fir for burial of asylum residents. Hospital records list the names of deceased patients transported to the cemetery, but most of them are nowhere to be found among Lone Fir’s tombstones. An 1887 article in The Oregonian describes dense rows of asylum burials just to the east of the Chinese section, where the parking lot is now.

“The people who had money were buried in other places,” said cemetery historian Stanley Clarke. Those who were too poor to make other arrangements landed in Block 14, where the state paid a standard $5 grave-digging fee to have them buried en masse.

Wooden markers may have identified the graves, but those likely rotted or burned over time. “My feeling is that they were very simple burials – might not have even had so much as a pine box,” Clarke said. “Evidence would just disintegrate. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Jason Renaud, an advocate with the Mental Health Association of Portland, had all but given up on a memorial for Hawthorne’s patients when Metro contacted him last summer to ask for help designing an asylum remembrance. Most of the gravel pit on Block 14 was dedicated to the Chinese memorial, he was told, but the easternmost end was reserved for Hawthorne’s patients.

Renaud stressed the importance of design input from “people who would likely have been Dr. Hawthorne’s

patients,” he said. In October, Metro held meetings at Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, LifeWorks treatment center in Gresham, and Central City Concern in Old Town.

Janet Bebb, the Metro staffer in charge of the memorial, attended the meetings and tabulated results of an online survey. A third of respondents identified themselves as people with mental illness. One theme of the feedback, Bebb said, was that any display should honor the lives of individual patients in addition to telling Dr. Hawthorne’s story.

Other interpretive decisions are less straightforward. There are those who see Hawthorne’s asylum as a dark place — some patients were shackled, and a bell rang to warn neighbors when someone escaped. Contemporary reports gave the hospital positive marks, but “there are some people that say maybe that’s eyewash,” Bebb explained.

Heckenberg, on the other hand, thinks fondly of the asylum. She considers Dr. Hawthorne’s philosophy of “moral care,” which prioritized social interaction and outdoor exercise, a more holistic alternative to today’s medicinal psychiatry.

“People think it's just onwards and upwards, (or that) everything in the past was just the bad old days and now we're enlightened,” Heckenberg said. “I don't think that's true. People need to see that

there are other models that have been used, that we've let slip away.”

A preliminary design for the memorial, drafted by Jane Hansen of Lango Hansen Landscape Architects, will evolve as the discussion continues.

“There’s a lot of push-pulls on this topic, and we’re trying to listen to people and find the right balance,” Bebb said. “Many people feel some element of both of those truths needs to be there.”

So far, Metro has put $80,000 toward the joint memorial project, which Bebb says will take about $1 million to complete.

In 2005, City Commissioner Randy Leonard secured $150,000 of city money to help with memorial planning and cemetery-wide improvements. A former firefighter, Leonard first took interest in a section of Lone Fir where 19th-century firemen were buried. When he heard about the paved-over Chinese graves, he committed to fundraising, and he later learned of the

“it's discrimination. This was the place where people who were not allowed to be buried anywhere else were buried. Their stories are very different, but they were both kind of shunned.”

— JaNet BeBBmetro

At left, census records from 1870 show dozens of residents of the Hawthorne Asylum, listed as either “insane” or “idiotic.” The residents came from all over the world, including Scotland, Germany and Peru. Below, an historical shot of the Lone Fir Cemetery.

“That portion of the cemetery set apart for the burial of Chinamen is the southwestern part and in that corner a great many celestials "sleep the sleep which knows no waking." Near that part of the grounds the patients who died at the asylum were for many years buried. Rows upon rows of graves are to be found in close proximity, close to the south side, a short distance east of where the dead celestials are buried. Most of those graves are marked with the names of the departed, but there is a sense of stranger-like and friendless exclusion about these mounds and it strikes one as being an act of charity to place them so close together. Even in death the suggestion of association and companionship affords a gleam of consolation.”

— The Oregonian, 1887

rest iN Peace, from page 1

Please see rest iN Peace, page 9

9street rootsNov. 14, 2008

asylum patients as well.In the next budget cycle, Leonard hopes

to dredge up $250,000 more for construction. Though it will be “pretty rough” to find the cash in a withered budget, he said, “This is one of those investments in the city that will exist probably for hundreds of years to come. I think it’s important for us to come up with the money to help them.”

Many see more than an incidental connection between the two groups of people buried in Block 14.

“It's discrimination,” Bebb said. “This was the place where people who were not allowed to be buried anywhere else were buried. Their stories are very different, but they were both kind of shunned.”

Even though the cemetery lot was empty when she visited on Nov. 9, Heckenberg parallel parked on the street instead of driving over the hidden graves.

She often walks the grounds with her

friend Kevin Fittz, 43, whose own psychotic breakdowns and “hellish” hospital stays as a young man led him to work for psychiatric patients’ rights. In the 1990s he sat on a federal mental health advisory panel, and at one time, he says, he knew “more mentally ill people in the state of Oregon than anyone else.”

Lone Fir has distinctly personal significance for Fittz. “I’ve spent an awful lot of time in Lone Fir in the middle of storms or emotionally trying days,” he told the group at an Oct. 28 memorial meeting. He said he hopes to see “something to identify each human being, each soul, who was buried there.”

Fittz worries that Metro’s interest in the opinions of people with mental illness is superficial at best. In his 20 years of advocacy, he says, significant patient involvement in bureaucracy has been sparse.

Renaud is more optimistic about the ground-up approach to designing the memorial. Mental health patients “have been included in some mental health policy discussions in the past, but

reluctantly and out of tokenism,” Renaud said. “Unless Kevin (Fittz) or I pounded on the door, that door remained closed... This is the first time people with mental illness have been incorporated into a public policy discussion in Portland because of their strengths — an interest in the welfare of persons with mental illness and an ongoing interest in telling their own history.”

Like everyone else, Renaud feels a connection to the departed asylum residents. “You start thinking about all the memories of people who are there, and they start talking to you,” he said. “It’s a spooky experience, but not an unpleasant one. The dead want to be remembered.”

rest iN Peace, from page 8

By Mara GruNBauMContributing Writer

Dr. James Hawthorne, 19th-century pioneer and founder of the Oregon Insane Hospital, is considered

Oregon’s first psychiatrist. Born in Pennsylvania, Hawthorne

traveled to the west along the Oregon Trail in 1850. Seven years later, he left a successful general medicine practice in California to move to Portland, where he assumed care of the Multnomah County hospital’s indigent and mentally ill.

In 1861, Hawthorne and a partner built their own private asylum on 75 acres of forested land near what is now the Ladd’s Addition neighborhood. Asylum Road – renamed in 1888 to Hawthorne Boulevard – ran along the hospital’s south side.

Hawthorne was contracted to "keep all the indigent, insane and idiotic of the State," as an 1867 Oregon Herald article described them. The state paid the hospital $6 per patient per week. By the late 1860s, when the patient population hit about 200 a year, more than half the state’s annual budget was funneled to Hawthorne’s asylum.

While some patients were ordered to the asylum, others checked in voluntarily. The mentally ill were not Hawthorne’s only patients: Some were convicted criminals, some were blind, deaf or paralyzed, and some suffered from diseases like syphilis, epilepsy or tuberculosis. Most hospital stays were brief.

An 1880 census noted patients as young

as 15 and as old as 68, as well as several black and Chinese workers.

Before the 1800s, psychiatric patients were subject to beatings, forcible restraint or treatments like bloodletting and chemical blistering of the skin. In the early days of the Oregon Territories, treatment was similarly harsh.

Hawthorne’s practice, in contrast, was billed as "moral care" with an emphasis on humane, compassionate conduct. Dorothea Dix, an early crusader for psychiatric treatment reform, visited Hawthorne’s asylum in 1869 and judged it one of the best she had seen.

The contemporary Oregon Herald account noted that patients "have an abundance of pure air, pure water, wholesome food, clean and pleasant

sleeping arrangements, out-door exercise and amusements calculated to impart a healthy tone... No first class hotel is kept with more perfect neatness in all its departments... The intercourse between the patients, the managing physicians and attendants always appears to be of the most friendly and confidential character. We have never seen the same number of insane together who appeared so cheerful and contented."

Hawthorne died in 1881 and was buried in Lone Fir Cemetery. When Oregon State Hospital opened in Salem in 1883, the asylum was closed and its patients transferred there.

Sources: Dr. David Cutler, OHSU Psychiatry department, and Stanley Clarke, cemetery historian.

‘No first class hotel is kept with more perfect neatness ...’

“This is the first time people with mental illness have been incorporated into a public policy discussion in Portland because of their strengths — an interest in the welfare of persons with mental illness and an ongoing interest in telling their own history.”

— JasoN reNaud

To get involved with the memorial planning process, contact Janet Bebb at Metro: (503) 797-1876 or janet.bebb@oregonmetro.gov

Oregon’s first psychiatrist commanded half of the state’s annual budget for the care of the mentally ill

Photo by Leah nash

Grace Heckenberg stands behind the fence in the area of Lone Fir where Hawthorne Asylum residents are buried without recognition.

street rootsNov. 14, 200810

By Mara GruNBauMContributing Writer

“Dearly Departed: True Lies in Song Unearthed from Lone Fir” is a musical compilation produced by public radio’s Kate Sokoloff to benefit Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery. Portland artists wrote and performed 15 songs that tell the stories of the cemetery’s interred.

Storm Large, impertinent local rocker and reality television star, contributed “Asylum Road,” an airy ballad about murderess and asylum inmate Charity Lamb.

“I picked her first and foremost when I saw her name,” Large said. “I was like, Oh, that's the coolest name ever. I wonder if she was a stripper... Then I read her story and got even more intrigued, and so of course I had to write about my girl Charity.”

Large discovered that Lamb’s husband, Nathaniel, had been a violent drunk who once beat her severely with a hammer. In 1854, Nathaniel learned that Charity had been unfaithful to him, and he threatened her life. Shortly after, as the whole family sat at dinner, Lamb dealt her husband two fatal ax blows to the head. She was sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor at the Oregon State Penitentiary, but transferred to Hawthorne’s asylum in 1862. She is one

of 132 asylum patients most likely buried under the Lone Fir Cemetery parking lot.

“I have way more rights now, but back in the day, if you wanted to live, you had to put up with (abuse),” Large said. “I'm proud to have given voice to her and her struggle.”

As the singer tells it, “Asylum Road” had an uncanny origin. Anxious for

inspiration as her deadline approached, Large pedaled her bike past the cemetery. “Just kind of whimsically, I say, ‘Hey, Charity, why don’t you help me out? What kind of song do you want?’”

Almost immediately, Large said, “This really

lyrical, pretty, almost lullaby song came to my head, and it was pretty weird. I wasn’t scared, but the song pretty much wrote itself in my head that night... I think I had a little bit of a spiritual intervention by Mrs. Lamb.”

Large has obscenely high expectations for the album: “I hope they make a shitload of money, and they can build an awesome memorial,” she said. “I've been on a lot of compilations in my life, but this one I actually enjoy listening to — and I hate everybody, so that's saying something.”

For more information: www.friendsoflonefircemetery.org

storm large lends her grit to a gritty woman’s story

“i have way more rights now, but back in the day, if you wanted to live, you had to put up with (abuse). i'm proud to have given voice to her and her struggle.”

— storM larGePortLand singer

Photo by Laura domeLa WWW.domeLa.Com

Storm Large

be successful: an enforcement mechanism.Elliott Bronstein, public information

coordinator for Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights, says that an effective enforcement mechanism has proven important for Seattle.

According to Bronstein, Seattle’s enforcement division allows the office to process a complaint of an individual who feels they have been discriminated against, investigate the legal merit of that complaint, then negotiate some sort of settlement between the individual and the offending party.

“An effective way for (an individual) to seek redress or a solution is through an enforcement mechanism,” Bronstein says.

The director of the new Office of Human Relations is Maria Lisa Johnson, the former executive director of the Portland-based advocacy organization, the Latino Network. Johnson was not available for comment, but according to the commission’s Web site, the commission will not pursue enforcement because “we found that criminal and civil avenues for formal complaints, investigations and litigation already exist.”

That means if people want to pursue enforcement of laws they feel have been violated, people can call the police or file a civil suit.

Rather than making enforcement a priority, the commission will focus on advocacy and intervention. It is a potential weakness for the commission to have such a limitation, and may relegate the commission to being an office of hot-air more than effective action.

“Without an enforcement mechanism, you can cajole (and) you can try to persuade,” Bronstein says.

Jason Renaud, a volunteer with the Mental Health Association of Portland, thinks giving a bureaucratic entity enforcement powers would be unnecessary and useless.

“The notion of getting satisfaction for

real harm outside of an independent agency, like a court, is naïve,” Renaud says.

Handelman hopes that the commission focuses on human rights “of any kind,” including immigration rights, gender and sexual orientation equality. Calling Portland’s sidewalk obstruction ordinance (known commonly as the sit-lie ordinance) “one of the worst offenses of human rights” towards homeless individuals, Handelman hopes the commission will prevent the city from passing similarly “unfair” or “discriminatory” ordinances.

“That would be ideal,” he says.Cogen would not be specific about the

range of local issues the commission may tackle, but said that any discrimination issue would be a focus of the commission. He did say that one of the biggest mistakes the commission can make would be focusing on issues not local to Portland, such as the genocide in Darfur.

“What they could do of value is formulate an opinion about something, like the City Club occasionally does, and publish that opinion,” Renaud says.

Others, however, think that whether the commission should have some sort of enforcement capability should be a part of future discussions regarding the nature of the commission.

“Maybe once this gets going, (and) if they discover they’re falling on deaf ears… maybe changes could be made,” Handelman says.

“We hope it has the authority to do substantive work,” says Brian Willoughby, communications director for ACLU of Oregon, and not, he says, “be an image of what it should be, and not have the teeth to do it.”

huMaN riGhts, from page 1

“we hope it has the authority to do substantive work, (not) be an image of what it should be, and not have the teeth to do it.”

— BriaN WillouGhByaCLu of oregon

Glorious livingBy Corwin McAllister

Neck sore from cringing before rain-ladenWinds, hands stiff from clutching the insides ofMy pockets, seeking desperately that last dryPatch I know must still be there somewhereLost in the damp folds of fabric, of memoryAbove me the tattered, swollen underbelly ofHeaven races north, the color of this concreteBridge I'm crossing, and of the river belowMarred by dirty brown smears oozing out ofSewer pipes like stains on dirty underwearBelow the bridge would be home were it notWrapped in Cyclone fencing, sort of like oldEast Berlin, or the estates of the affluent andLess-than, those who would pull the rock outFrom underneath Jacob's weary head, smilingBut there's no true rest to be found when one'sBedroll is spread out beneath the dragon's neckAnd encircled by ravenous wolves, nor can oneStave off night's chill, despite all calculationAnd effort, even the kindnesses of strangers

11street roots . Nov. 14, 2008

By keviN hollettstreet neWs serviCe

When news broke of David Foster Wallace’s unexpected and untimely death on Sept. 12, the

literary community was stunned into collective mourning. Admirers of the writer were saddened by the loss of one.

Wallace left behind a literary legacy unique to practitioners of his craft and a body of work that includes: award-winning short fiction; a post-modern opus that defined a generation in “Infinite Jest;” and clinics in essay writing and gonzo-style journalism.

Perhaps one of Wallace’s signature forays into journalism was his account of John McCain’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Originally published by Rolling Stone magazine in April 2000 (and re-printed as “Up, Simba” for his essay collection “Consider the Lobster”), the article has taken on an even greater significance given McCain’s successful primary campaign eight years later. With the presidential election looming, Little, Brown and Company re-published the article in its expanded format this past summer.

“McCain’s Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope” (June 2008) reminds us why Wallace was such a great writer and journalist. He had a singular ability to fall on all sides of an issue and a willingness to mine his subjects for the grander themes he thought challenged society – namely, the longing for an earnest, un-self-conscious experience in a media-saturated culture that obscures and distorts truth and sincerity.

Readers will learn as much about Wallace, the writer, as they will about McCain, the politician, in this book. It’s

fascinating to see how Wallace always put himself in the context of what he was writing about, immersing himself totally in his subject. He wanted desperately to be understood, which explains his constant footnotes, annotations and parenthetical asides.

This is especially evident in “McCain’s Promise.” He wasn’t an expert on his subject and he takes great pains to make that clear to the reader. In fact, ‘Not a Political Journalist” is written right there in boldface. Instead, Wallace simply wrote, “the truth as this person saw it.” And what he saw was a candidate and a campaign that was complex, complicated and nuanced.

Wallace waded through the media obfuscation to ask the essential questions of not just McCain’s campaign, but of 21st century politics. He conveys a genuine disillusionment with the whole arrangement: the posturing, the spin, the news reporting and the wagging the dog.

In McCain, however, he finds a man and a candidate who appeals to the voters’ desire for two elements seemingly at odds with each other: truth and the cult of personality. McCain’s magnetism is undeniable, in part because his military

past precluded any doubts about his authenticity.

It should be noted that the John McCain of 2008 is remarkably different from the man and the candidate that Wallace wrote about in 2000. One wonders what Wallace would make of the self-stylized maverick’s recent about-face from Republican nemesis to the man seen in photo-ops glad -handing it with his former political opponent, George W. Bush. Not to mention his plunge into negative advertising, a strategy that took on great significance during the week that Wallace rode along on the Straight Talk Express.

At its heart, the article’s not so much about the campaign of one man but, as Wallace writes, "rather what McCain’s candidacy and the brief weird excitement it generated might reveal about how millennial politics and all its packaging and marketing and strategy and spin and general sepsis actually makes US voters feel, inside, and whether anyone running for anything can even be ‘real’ anymore."

It is required reading for any voter.

Reprinted from Megaphone, Vancouver, B.C. © Street News Service: www.street-papers.org

Fear and loathingDavid Foster Wallace’s battle with 21st century politics

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By seaN coNdoNstreet neWs serviCe

During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of men rode the rails across North America

looking for work. The image of weathered men criss-crossing the country on top of trains was a stark symbol for the misery and desperation of a generation.

Nearly a century later, such epidemic poverty is supposed to have vanished. But Vanoc, the Vancouver, B.C., Olympic committee, and the provincial government’s recent announcement to turn 320 modular housing units from the Olympic Village in Whistler into 156 units of affordable housing and ship them to six different communities has reignited the image of a lost generation. Is Vanoc going to let homeless people ride along with their new homes? Maybe give them a can of beans and a harmonica for the trip?

Perhaps it’s the global economic meltdown that’s got me thinking about hobos, but it’s also Vancouver and the province’s growing homeless numbers that show we’re moving backward in time as we move forward. Since 2002, the number of people sleeping in shelters or on the street in Metro Vancouver more than doubled from 1,000 to 2,600. Across the province, there are at least 10,000 homeless people. Both figures are considered gross undercounts.

The Olympics were supposed to help solve the city’s homeless problem — or at least not make it any worse. As part of the

bid to host the Winter Games, the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation and various levels of government signed the 2010 Winter

Games Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement, which promised to protect rental housing stock, ensure people do not become homeless as a result of the Games and provide an affordable housing legacy.

But since Vancouver was awarded the Games in 2003, real estate values have soared, mass evictions have occurred in the Downtown Eastside and the number of homeless people has only grown.

So what has Vanoc done to address this glaring failure? Earlier this year, the province and Vanoc announced $5 million in funding for 32 youth transitional housing beds at the Covenant House on Pender Street. Vanoc contributed a whopping $250,000 to the project. And then there was last week’s "modular housing" announcement.

Vanoc is contributing $9.4 million towards the $18.2 million that will be spent to build the units for the athletes. The province is then kicking in $20 million to turn the 320 units into 156 and relocate them to Chetwynd, Sannich, Sechelt, Surrey, Chilliwack and Enderby. The new housing will have kitchen areas and a

bathroom for each unit and will be approximately 355 square feet.

In all fairness, the units sound like a good deal. They’re bigger than most Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel units in the Downtown Eastside, and having your own bathroom and kitchen is important for stability and security. But the announcement raises some troubling concerns.

In the press release, Vanoc and Premier Gordon Campbell brag that this project was "almost two years in the making." It took two years for Vanoc and the province to figure out it could turn a bunch of makeshift homes for athletes into affordable housing? How long will it take them to figure out it can put homeless people in shipping containers and ship them out of town?

In 2006, Vanoc was part of a committee of government, business and community-based organizations called the Inner-City Inclusivity (ICI) Housing Table. This committee recommended that 3,200 new units of affordable housing be built before 2010. Two years later, all Vanoc has been able to muster are some youth shelter beds and 156 units of modular housing.

The fact that Whistler’s modular housing units have to be shipped out to such far-flung areas as Chetwynd and Enderby as part of the Olympics’ affordable housing legacy shows how widespread the homeless problem has become in the province. Don’t be surprised when the sight of men riding on top of trains becomes another part of our Olympic legacy.

Reprinted from Megaphone, Vancouver, B.C. © Street News Service: www.street-papers.org

Hobo Homes: Vancouver fails Olympic housing commitment

Photo Courtesy of megaPhone

Hobos traveled the rails across North America looking for work during the Great Depression.

The Olympics were supposed to help solve the city’s homeless problem — or at least not make it any worse... but since Vancouver was awarded the Games in 2003, real estate values have soared, mass evictions have occurred in the Downtown eastside and the number of homeless people has only grown.

street rootsNov. 14, 2008 13

When it comes to your civil liberties, you should hear what you’re missing.

Hosted by alejandro queral and Joanne Zuhl

Tune in to “We the People,”

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In California 120,000 prisoners are released each year. That’s 60 percent of the prison population. But soon they

are back in prison because they didn’t get the education, training or job skills to succeed in society while incarcerated. Nor do the supervision and parole programs

provide adequate rehabilitation treatment for addiction or training for life on the outside.

Proposition 5, or the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, would have required the state of California to expand and increase funding and oversight for individualized

treatment and rehabilitation programs for nonviolent drug offenders and parolees and reduce criminal consequence of nonviolent drug offenses.

Dan Abrahamson and Dan Fratello co-authored Proposition 5. Abrahamson serves as director of legal affairs and directs the Office of Legal Affairs in Berkeley that he founded in 1996. Folks in the prison reform movement know him well as litigator in state and federal courts, teacher at Yale, Fisk, Hastings College of the Law and Berkeley.

Fratello has managed 18 state ballot initiative campaigns related to drug policy reforms, limiting police powers to confiscate property without a conviction and requiring drug treatment instead of incarceration. He is a political consultant based in Santa Monica. As co-author of Proposition 36, California’s groundbreaking drug treatment initiative, Fratello helped divert 140,000 people from incarceration to treatment within five years.

Overcrowding of prisons in California is a national problem in desperate need of a solution. Proposition 5 would start by funding counseling and treatment for young people struggling on drugs. Right

now California offers virtually no help for young people with substance abuse programs. Proposition 5 is a crime prevention program which includes the much needed help for young people struggling with drug problems instead of the present trend to just get tougher by imposing longer sentences in maximum security prisons. In the United States, we have only 5 percent of the population of the world, but 25 percent of the incarcerated folks.

Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (the leading organization in the U.S. promoting alternatives to the war on drugs) and California Attorney General and former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown who opposes Proposition 5, have both alluded to the cost of not passing this initiative. In a debate on the issue on Democracy Now, Each claimed that $1 billion (or more) annually would be involved in the choice of either expanding treatment and rehabilitation programs that would decrease prison population, or perpetuating the present system which would result in the need to build more prisons. The cost factor is a focus that cannot be ignored.

Nadelmann made the point that "the prison guards union put millions of dollars into the system to buy the politicians who opposed Propositions 36 and 5." Brown’s response claimed that the "real agenda is to legalize drugs". (Other opponents include former Governor Gray Davis, former Governor Pete Wilson, the Judges Association, and the Prison Guards Union.)

When the votes were counted, Proposition 5 was disapproved by California voters — 59 percent voted against it, and 40 percent voted in favor. The largest mass of "yes" votes was in the San Francisco area.

This week I visited some prisoners at Columbia River Correctional Institution and Oregon State Prison in Salem. Quite a few of the men I spoke to felt encouraged that the nation has voted for change when

selecting a president and other legislators, but were more interested in the results of Oregon’s tougher sentencing laws 57 and 61, and California’s Prop. 5.

These prisoners are enduring a system that seems more interested in punishment than rehabilitation to them. Those who are ready to find the best in themselves recognize their need for education, skills and training if they hope to avoid becoming another recidvism statistic. That is exactly why they are part of the transitional group meetings that I attend.

Partnerships for Safety and Justice celebrated their victory in getting Oregon to accept Measure 57. However, it is still far from the solutions, such as to facilitate rehab programs and crime prevention instead of building more prisons.

It is very frustrating to me, personally, when I hear about a model like Proposition 5 go down, that seems to clearly understand what needs to be done. California, Texas, Pennsylvania and several southern states continue the tough-on-crime policies and to accept and encourage the growth of the prison industry.

When efforts (and funding) are directed at tougher sentencing, and more technology for crime fighting (such as Tasers and stun guns), we often see the support of those who profit from the prison business and politicians who win votes with safer city policies. On the other hand, research and test programs have shown that if we work earlier to prevent crime by attacking poverty and drug addiction issues we can decrease the prison population and reduce community costs, while developing community safety. Once incarcerated, it is not too late to educate, develop skills and support “clean and dry” efforts for men and women who will be released to become a part of society.

As citizens who really want safer cities, we need to understand that it is not just a money issue. It is our opportunity to prepare a community of socially conscious, humanitarian principals.

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A new president - but nothing new in California

Ruth Kovacs is a Portland activist and former teacher and host of Prison Pipeline on KBOO. She writes regularly about the issues surrounding the millions of individuals and families affected by the U.S. prison system.

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street rootsNov. 14, 200814

www.streetroots.wordpress.com

3035 S.E. Division Portland, OR 97202503.234.7499

Direction Action Casework Campaign The Portland Coalition Against Poverty will help you fight for:

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Call today if you have been wronged!

I’ve heard it said countless times by folks, that they have their own little corner of the world. Well, I in fact have

my own corner of the world. I sell Street Roots at Whole Foods, at the corner of 12th and Couch, NW. In the year and a half that I have stood on my little corner of the world, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many people, and to make some great friends.

In getting to know my customers, they eventually become more then just a dollar sale. They stop and talk to me about things in their life that’s important to them. I’m always happy to be able to learn what’s going on in their lives, and sometimes they ask my opinion, or advice. When I decided to write this column, it is with my customers in mind that I address some of the topics that we chat about on my corner.

With that in mind, I’m going to talk about work, life, romance, money, families, etc. These are the subjects that we talk about the most. I will try to give you my thoughts and maybe some sage advice at the same time. So, here we go.

Let’s talk about money, a great concern to most folks. We are in a recession; I don’t care what the politicians say. All indicators are that we are in some financial crisis and if you read the local daily, or catch the evening news, they will tell you all of the gloom and doom scenarios. My customers talk to me quite a bit about it and I try to reassure them that as bad as it seems, this too shall pass.

Why do I think this? Easy, our economy has been going up and down since the beginning of our country. The money markets go in cycles, usually in a 10-year period. Within that period, the markets,

credit, etc. will swing up and down. However, this time our morass was created by the subprime housing fiasco. Imagine the banks and mortgage companies being so greedy that they decide to fulfill the American dream of every family owning their own house.

Great concept, except they gave a ton of mortgages to families that are middle- to low-income. They made it so easy to get a mortgage. No down payment. No closing costs and not even a check to verify their income. So, billions of dollars are written on these sham mortgages. The families that bought into the American dream either did not realize that they couldn’t afford to pay half their monthly income for a mortgage payment, or all of the other things that you need to pay for home ownership.

Then the chickens came home to roost. After a year or two, the defaults started and the foreclosures abounded. All of these subprime mortgages came crashing down, leaving Freddie Mac and a whole host of lenders in tons of red ink.

The impact on the poor families that lost their homes is devastating. The American dream was gone in an instant. The real culprits, greedy banks and

mortgage originators, now find that their grand scheme failed big-time. So the federal government has to step in and take 700 billion of your tax dollars to bail them out. Just think, now we taxpayers are in the mortgage business. With another bailout of AIG, we are also in the insurance business. To add insult to injury, the new bailout of banks, to the tune of 300 billion or so, will make us in the banking business.

The end result is that although we are in a recession, and thousands of jobs have been lost, and we are in debt up to our necks, we will recover. I say this because it has always happened in the past. We will get through this down cycle and will recover. It will take time, and patience. This mess took time to create and will take time to recover from. My advice is to not make a run on your bank to grab your money and hide it under the mattress. Don’t cash out your 401k, or retirement accounts. Don’t sell off your stock portfolio. If you wait it out, the stock market will rebound and the economy will go back to a profit center. The real losers in all of this mess are the low-income folks that lost their houses and the American dream.

I really hope that Congress will take a look at how this was allowed to happen and actually try to make sure that it won’t happen again. To the thousands of Americans that lost the American dream, I am hopeful that they will recover and try again, if their financial circumstances allow.

In conjunction with the previous topic, I want to remind you that if you are in serious credit debt, and feel like you’re being buried under a sea of harassing

phone calls and letters, there is hope. I was a credit counselor with Consumer Credit Counseling Service for three years. If you want to set up an appointment to meet with me, please feel free to call the office and leave me a message. A counseling session usually involves one to two hours of your time, usually in the evening around your kitchen table. I will help you create a budget, and show you ways to get rid of your debt. It is not easy. It will be a very challenging time for you and your family. However, if you really want to get out of debt, I can show you the way.

Like anything that’s worth doing, the first step is up to you. You have to really want to get out of debt. This will mean sacrifice and living within your means. The credit cards will be gone. You’ll be living on cash. Your lifestyle is going to be downsized dramatically. But if you really want to be debt-free, make an appointment and we’ll get you started on the road to financial independence. This is a free service. I do not charge for my time or advice.

If you have any questions or concerns about these topics, or a different point of view, please feel free to write to me. You can contact me by calling Street Roots, or by email at: mignonne_thompson_john@yahoo.com

Next up, we’ll talk about relationships. Don’t forget, if you are in the Pearl District, down on 12th and Couch, NW. Stop by and visit with me. I’m there usually seven days a week from 8 a.m. until noon or so. I would love to meet you, and chat with you.

My COrnerJohn Thompson

The chickens are home to roost: Time to make scrambled eggs

John Thompson sells Street Roots at the corner of 12th and Couch in Northwest Portland. He also volunteers at Julia West House, and enjoys helping folks with financial questions.

Street Roots asks that you buy the paper from badged vendors only.To find out more about our vendor program and our amazing vendors, visit www.streetroots.org

Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist said, “A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral

growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”

On street corners in neighborhoods in cities and towns, in state after state, people find themselves reflecting and observing on possibly one of the greatest moments in American history. Still, as a people who believe that in fact, yes we can turn a battered world around, we find ourselves restless, weary and ready for the change that has been envisioned by millions of

individuals across the planet.

Where does that leave us? We have been moved as a people to believe in common good. To be optimistic in the face of a changing climate that will radically alter the world we inhabit — one entangled in a world war from the hills of India to the shores of the Mediterranean and down the Horn of Africa. Despite

a global economic crisis that’s been brewing since the Cold War ended, and the United States being the sole economic engine in globalization through faulty trade agreements, we find ourselves saying, yes, in fact, we can turn things around.

Coming down from the mountain, we soberly find millions of people sleeping in doorways in the United States, families being thrown to the streets, and federally mandated programs that offer little room for local communities to tackle the issues of poverty. The tidal wave created by the earthquake on Wall Street has yet to fully slam onto our shores.

Today, we reflect, observe. Tomorrow we must move forward. Local leaders, community organizers, average folks, should use this time to galvanize people to tackle goals that otherwise might seem unachievable. We have a window of opportunity to set the stage for the future. It’s time to push and push hard.

The American economy and how we have dealt with poverty during the past 25 years has been a disaster. Instead of building the social infrastructure to support Americans, we’ve created 10-year plans to end homelessness, shelter systems, and criminalization strategies that do little to end poverty itself: A revolving door of bureaucratic ideologies implemented by organizations with little to no resources to break the back of poverty.

Of course, we are all responsible to develop, maintain and support efforts that will truly change the world. Naturally, poverty tends to be Street Roots’ bag because the streets are where we live and breathe. But we are not naïve to think that the leadership shown by newly elected Mayor Sam Adams doesn’t connect with the education of a foster kid walking the streets. Or that a manufacturing plant closing doesn’t touch policy on the Hill, or that green jobs won’t affect homelessness. Everything we do is connected.

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” said Douglass. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” So, without hesitation, now is the time to turn over the earth, to plant our seeds and work toward systematically building a better tomorrow.

street rootsNov. 14, 2008 15

Joanne Zuhl

Ruth KovacsArt Garcia

stReet Roots’ edItoRIal BoaRd

The views expressed in the editorials in Street Roots are the consensus of members of the editorial board and contributing volunteers.

eDiTOriaL

Building a better tomorrow

Today, we reflect, observe. Tomorrow we must move forward. Local leaders, community organizers, average folks, should use this time to galvanize people to tackle goals that otherwise might seem unachievable.

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States has many layers of meaning for someone

like me, a man of color, as they say. But it does come down to this: I have a kind of hope, for this nation, that I never thought I could feel. The sort of bitterness, its razor edge, has been, sheathed.

I stood in line, and I was not alone in my feeling, many of us, without a job, even without a real place to live. But I was there. It was worth it. People were laughing, people were breathing in a way that one breathes after being underwater too long. I had my coffee, sipping, feeling everyone.

Yes, I had my own bitter, bitter heartaches, and often, I felt, why do I bother with anything? On top of everything else, not a real place of of my own? Why do I even stand in line to vote? What the hell do I matter? Shouldn't I just really freak out, and dive into believing that the aliens from outer space have taken over everything?

Somehow, the warm coffee felt soothing in line, and, the people around me, felt soothing. I needed their smiles and really nasty jokes--Obama....

Alright, I know. He isn't perfect. Yes, he is talking to everyone, even the really bad people, those bad people, that some of us leftists like to sing, “Corporation, oh, corporation, how do you love me? “I have read a lot of the stuff about Obama, that Internet stuff — yes, even the stuff that says aliens in Area 51 have planned this all out with the Skull and Bones, Obama, is a front man... a front man of color...

I used to live in Chicago. I remember when Obama was doing hardcore organizing in the southside, I even saw him from a distance a few times, even heard him. At the time, I thought, he knows the streets, he knows the strategies. I remember how people would listen to him; I remember, this cat is brilliant. I remember thinking, I would work with him anytime, anywhere. I respected him deeply then.

Again, much heartache, but, I managed to find a television, and watch him. I watched Obama at Chicago's Grant Park. Memories, again: I often walked there, took my breaks there after my classes at Northwestern University. I always made sure to catch the Blues and Jazz concerts at the park.

Hey, Chicago, my heaven of the blues! And now, this man of color, this bi-racial man, almost the President of the racist United States.

I was periodically checking in with myself, smiling, "Eduardo, hey, where's this pride coming from?" What the hell?

Then, kept getting these, goosebumps — and, what the hell, my eyes salty — what the hell? And he got it. Damn it all, he got it--then, yes, liquid salt, stringing down this brown skin, stringing down, just little beads.

At the age of 53, jobless, homeless, splintered heart of mine. Obama brings me all the way around now. Things have come around, the circle of hope....

I deeply respect Obama deeply — still.

Eduardo Delanderos-Tierre is a Portland resident

COMMenTary

CirclesBy eduardo delaNderos-tierre

WoodbLoCk by gato, Courtesy of the Western regionaL advoCaCy ProjeCt, WWW.WraPhome.org

Support Street roots through the Give!Guide 2008!

Street Roots has been selected by Willamette Week for inclusion in the 2008 Give!Guide. The fifth annual Give!Guide is a holiday season fund raiser that serves as a unique vehicle for generating donations for a collection of Portland area non-profit organizations. With a donation this fall, you will:

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Donors can make contributions online to Street Roots via the Give!Guide Web site. Donations are accepted from the date of the Give!Guide publication (Wednesday, Nov. 12) through midnight Dec. 31.

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But wait! There’s more! For donors under the age of 36, there’ll be a raffle for 10 pairs of Keen footwear, a basket of Snook’s doggie treats, a check for $1,000, and a year’s ZipCar membership — including a free weekend with the ZipCar of your choice.

To donate to Street Roots go to www.wweek.com/giveguide. All donations are tax deductible. Donors who wish to avoid giving online may download and print out a copy of the Give!Guide donation form (available at www.wweek.com/giveguide) and mail it to a local post office box address on the form.

Thanks for your consideration!

street rootsNov. 14, 200816

By Israel Bayer

DireCTOr’sDesk

street roots211 NW Davis St.Portland, OR 97209

Mail to:

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youR donatIon MatteRsStreet Roots is a 501(c)3, nonprofit organization. All donations are greatly appreciated and may be tax deductible. I would like to contribute: $10 $20 $50 $100 $250 $_________Send your check to:

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Street Roots is excited to be working in partnership with the Willamette Week’s holiday Give!Guide. The goal

of the guide is to provide publicity and exposure to a variety of local nonprofits, attract new donors and volunteers to these causes and to encourage people ages 18 to 35 to get involved in philanthropy. Please check out a letter from Street Roots on this page for more information. Thank you for your support and consideration.

The Spanish version of the Rose City Resource Guide is on the streets. For more information, see Page 4 in this issue of the paper.

Street Roots also is working with the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) to hire an executive director. Funding from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation in Oklahoma is working with NASNA to fulfill a three-year strategic plan to hire staff and begin building a more efficient technical assistance and fundraising program to support newspapers, including start-ups, throughout the continent. A new office will be opened in Washington, D.C., in the beginning of January.

Currently, Street Roots plays a leading role in the street newspaper movement around the globe. The North American organization has been a regional model for networks internationally. The Street News Service, a street newspaper wire that allows papers to share content, has been a valuable source of news and commentary for street newspapers and their readers. In this issue we have a piece on the late author David Foster Wallace from Megaphone in Vancouver, B.C., and an interview on a green economy under Barack Obama from Real Change in Seattle.

At the same time, Street Roots writers are being published in newspapers around the world. For example, the hard-hitting and controversial series Addict’s Almanac, a firsthand look at addiction and life on the streets, was picked up by street papers in Ireland and Cincinnati. Our movement is young and growing. Dozens of papers working with thousands of individuals living in poverty are hitting their stride. We are proud to be a part of such an exciting movement.

It’s with your support that we are able to do this and to be a leader in a grassroots global movement for social change. As a network, we now have street papers in 37 countries in 17 languages. Vendors around the world have built relationships on street corners with folks just like you. We thank you for your support. We couldn’t do it without you.