Past Issues :: 2007 March 1:: Contents
Cover Story
The art of healing
Ever since he was a child, Dennis was conscious of the energy within him. When he was homeless, from age 19 to 21, it was his strength that helped him survive the streets. It kept him positive in a very negative place. Still, he never really knew how to use it, he says, until he met Gregorio Acuna and the traditional healing organization Fuego.
“Everybody has their negative energy going on,” Dennis says, speaking from Fuego’s new Phoenix Rising Healing Center. “And when I come in here with negative energy, I definitely leave without it."
Act Now
Demand that Oregon lawmakers reject the federal Real ID Act
Editorial
Homeless figures paint only part of the picture
Horoscope
Astro logic
Street Poetry
Poems
Columns
Director’s Desk
Street Roots bumperstickers are selling fast. Ask your neighborhood vendor for the stickers and show your support by putting one on your car, school folder, filing cabinet, bike, co-workers’ desk, or all of the above!
Viewpoint: Lyons
Hundreds of homeless people go from shelter to shelter looking for a bed for the night. Some of these shelters close during the warmer months. It seems like a good idea, then, when well-intentioned people express a desire to have shelters remain open year round.
Street Culture
Handy
It was a man who I guessed would be in his 50s, with a hairy face and dirty long locks. He smiled an open-mouth smile, that revealed his lack of four or five front teeth. And the ones that remained looked like broken windows hanging from a burned out house…
To a Distant Friend
Talk to me when you have had a period of weariness, and sadness, and apathy, and frustration (not only within yourself, but for the outside), and anger and resentment and seething; the slow boil that comes from not only everything you've ever felt — but everything you haven't — and want to.
Diary of Homelessness, Part IV
I was on a healthy diet earlier this year in Florida, eating raw almonds & carrots, only skinless chicken breasts sauteed in olive oil or canola oil … but now I have no choice what I eat since I'm dependent on the food kitchens. I stay hungry all the time, even though I eat regularly.
White Train, Part III
My new companion talked for a while … then he went his way, disappeared from my life, heading back on the road, presumably, getting his head together, sorting things out. And I went my way. To the liquor store. It was still early afternoon.
Street News Service
The torturer's apprentice: Bioethicist Dr. Steven H. Miles on torture, medical complicity and the war on terrorism
Some U.S. military medical professionals have been implicated in the neglect and abuse of prisoners in the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. They are accused of betraying their oath as healers by failing to provide adequate medical care, altering documents to cover up torture and homicide, force-feeding prisoners, designing and monitoring coercive interrogation — and remaining silent rather than reporting these abuses, these crimes of war.
Anti-Bush group takes new tack on impeachment effort
“Not By Might, Nor By Power,” read the sign, quoting a Bible verse, “But By My Spirit, Says The Lord.” Next to the sign hung a huge banner that announced the day’s intent. It read: “Drive Out the Bush Regime!”
Kenyan activists give voice to the poor with new street paper
Standing in front of a stall of straw bags, is Japheth. He is 24 but looks younger. He is one of the 45 vendors of The Big Issue Kenya. It is the first-ever street paper in Kenya, and the fourth in Africa.
