News
Candlelight vigil to remember sex workers who died
A candlelight vigil Thursday, Dec. 17, will remember those who died from violence while working in the sex trade. The annual event, hosted by Sex Workers Outreach Coalition (SWOC) and Sex Workers Outreach Project Portland, will begin at 4:30 p.m. on the south side of the Park Blocks in downtown Portland. The vigil is one…
Entrepreneurs on the inside: Inmates learn ‘the power of choice’
Joshua Wright has a plan to help people, specifically young adults. His business plan is to create a mixed martial arts program for at-risk youths. The model would teach young adults the principles of discipline, honor and respect through a medium that appeals to their naturally adventurous side. Wright is young, 26, but he doesn’t…
Seattle may get nation’s first safe injection site
The first supervised injection site in the United States will open within six to 18 months in Seattle, Shilo Murphy said. His nonprofit, the Seattle-based People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, doesn’t receive any government funding, which allows it to experiment with controversial programs that tax-funded syringe exchanges aren’t as free to pursue. For example, for five…
Opinion
Advocacy by and for people with mental illness: The DIY Guide
When we are out and about, meeting and tweeting, connecting with people in their first years of recovery from mental illness, invariably they want to do something. Something big! Something political and artistic and very important. They want to make the change so no one else will have to endure the same degradation, the same…
Working to turn barriers into bridges to a better future
My journey to the United States began at the age of 18 months. Unlike many of the harrowing stories of illegal crossings full of danger and death, my crossing was aboard a jet plane from Mexico City bound for Chicago. My mother and I came here to meet my father, who had come here to continue…
Hope & heartbreak: Syrian refugee crisis through eyes of a volunteer
I was driving my small rental car, full of fellow volunteers and supplies, during a beach patrol shift when we got the call about a nearby boat in trouble. The engine of the small wooden boat that 5-year-old “Sara” and her family were on had given out while crossing the 4-mile stretch of the Aegean…
Director’s Desk: America’s homeless emergency is mandmade. It can be solved.
Homelessness is hell, especially during the winter months. This past week, during one of the downpours, I witnessed a homeless woman so soaked to the bone that she simply sat down in the middle of the sidewalk, took off all her clothes and said, “I give up. God, please take me.” It was a sad…
Vendor Profiles
Street Roots vendor profile: Brent B. Lusted
Some of Brent B. Lusted’s most cherished memories come from when he was 12 years old and living in England. “I was born and raised in Salem,” Brent said. “(My dad) was a doctor, and he moved our whole family to England for a year. We saw all these castles, old cathedrals and the coast.”…
