News
A target of hate: Jonathan Weisman on being Jewish today
“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” According to authorities, these are the words Robert Bowers – a 46-year-old white man with a history of racist, anti-Semitic online comments – posted on the message board site Gab before he entered Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue armed…
Birthdays behind bars: An essay by an inmate
Enrique Bautista is an incarcerated person at Snake River Correctional Institution in Eastern Oregon. He is a periodic contributor to Street Roots. Dec. 22. It is the day after my birthday. I am now 35 years old. I am a 35-year-old man. Wow! It feels like only yesterday I was just another 18-year-old kid with…
Sen. Ron Wyden aims to end fossil fuel favoritism
Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, says he intends to use his position as the ranking Democrat of the Senate’s finance and energy committees to push forward the agenda of the so-called Green New Deal. Speaking in Street Roots’ offices on Saturday, Feb. 16, Wyden said he intends to replace the dozens of subsidies for…
The misdemeanor trap: Time to pay attention, says Alexandra Natapoff
People need to start paying attention to how low-level criminal cases are handled in the United States, acclaimed legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff says. Her new book, “Punishment Without Crime: How our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal,” is the first to examine the massive scale of low-level criminal charges and…
Environment
Sen. Ron Wyden aims to end fossil fuel favoritism
Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, says he intends to use his position as the ranking Democrat of the Senate’s finance and energy committees to push forward the agenda of the so-called Green New Deal. Speaking in Street Roots’ offices on Saturday, Feb. 16, Wyden said he intends to replace the dozens of subsidies for…
Culture
Filmmaker gives a voice to vulnerable young refugees
Nadine Labaki loves watching kids on screen. “They make the most sense sometimes,” said the award-winning Lebanese director. “They haven’t been altered by hypocrisy, society’s codes and politics. It’s nurturing, in a way.” She should know. She’s spent the past few years working with disenfranchised children in her country to craft her evocative third feature,…
Vendor Profiles
Street Roots vendor profile: Books are the key to his heart
Michael Lane’s eyes beam with warmth and hope. You can tell he is an old soul. “I was raised by my grandmother,” he said. “She was a very good lady. She became handicapped when I was 6. She did the best with what she could. When I was 10, I got a book about crafts…
Opinion
The human face of the Portland housing emergency
Rich taped a valentine to the brick wall in the vendor office. He made it during a recent vendor office valentine-making party and addressed it this way: “To Whom it May Concern.” He was grinning when he showed me, and I laughed. That valentine stays affixed next to the vendor coffee station. I look at it…
