News
Walled In podcast | After prison, ‘I had to relearn how to touch people’
Walled In is a podcast co-produced by Street Roots and The Exiled Voice. In each episode, co-hosts Emily Green and Joshua Wright explore a different, lesser-known aspect of what it means to be incarcerated in America. Audio editing and music by Bryan Miller. This episode of the "Walled In" podcast explores how the lack of positive physical contact affects…
COVID-19’s toll on Oregon’s tribal elders imperils preservation of Native languages
“We don’t say they died. We say that they returned home,” said Jermayne Tuckta of his tribe’s elders lost to COVID-19. “And now that they’re returning home,” he added, “some of our next generation may not know the extent of how important that language connection is.” Tuckta, an archivist at the Museum at Warm Springs,…
The science behind human touch — and what happens when prisoners go without
As people worldwide isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic, many got a taste of how going without human touch for extended periods of time can alter the body and mind. The impacts are harmful and wide-ranging — and American prisoners have long endured them. Beyond the human connection that accompanies touch, a host of physiological reactions…
Opinion
Opinion | The boy who loved the father in his dream
Ga lo Vann is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Eastern Oklahoma and a prisoner at Oregon State Correctional State Institution in Salem. Popular Indigenous references and imagery in the American consciousness are largely antiquated. Bare chested, buckskin-clad, stone-faced brown bodies mounted atop painted horses cantering to or from tipi circles are cast…
Opinion | What the reception to Seattle’s grittiest film can tell us about the city’s homelessness crisis
Andrew Hedden is the associate director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Washington. June marks the debut on DVD of a 37-year-old treasure of Seattle film history: Martin Bell, Mary Ellen Mark and Cheryl McCall’s 1984 documentary “Streetwise.” An incredibly moving portrait of…
Opinion | Guaranteed income can solve U.S. poverty
We could eradicate poverty and raise the incomes of U.S. families in the bottom half of the income distribution by providing a guaranteed income through the tax system, according to a proposal from a team lead by Naomi Zewde and Darrick Hamilton. The impact would be enormous, dramatically reducing homelessness, hunger, killer stress and despair,…
Kaia Sand | Where, exactly, can unhoused people camp under Portland’s new policy?
Portland City Council last week unanimously passed an ordinance on homelessness put forward by Commissioner Dan Ryan. While the ordinance instructs the city to create six Safe Rest Villages, the majority of the ordinance is focused on how the city conducts sweeps. These are my takeaways: • The most important audience for these refined guidelines is…
Culture
Opinion | What the reception to Seattle’s grittiest film can tell us about the city’s homelessness crisis
Andrew Hedden is the associate director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Washington. June marks the debut on DVD of a 37-year-old treasure of Seattle film history: Martin Bell, Mary Ellen Mark and Cheryl McCall’s 1984 documentary “Streetwise.” An incredibly moving portrait of…
Housing
Kaia Sand | Where, exactly, can unhoused people camp under Portland’s new policy?
Portland City Council last week unanimously passed an ordinance on homelessness put forward by Commissioner Dan Ryan. While the ordinance instructs the city to create six Safe Rest Villages, the majority of the ordinance is focused on how the city conducts sweeps. These are my takeaways: • The most important audience for these refined guidelines is…
