My housemates and I have a shared 424-song playlist, but somehow the same five songs always come on. Lately, Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” has been in frequent circulation. Chapman’s discography as a whole, though, explores a range of themes centered around a critique of society’s injustices.
Her 1992 release “Dreaming on a World” describes what it means to believe in the possibility of a just world — not as a passive dream, but as a choice to abandon socially constructed constrictions for the sake of daring to imagine what could be built. Examined alongside her song “Why,” an interrogation into ‘why’ current injustices are so prominent, these songs capture the two key elements in growing hope for the future: dreaming and questioning.
I’ve spent the past nine months with a program called Tivnu: Building Justice. I’ve built tangible structures at Portland Safe Rest Villages, community in learning and living with other participants and relationships through my internship at Street Roots. At Tivnu, building justice is grounded in the uncertainty of difficult questions and the capability to imagine a future in which dignity and understanding prevail.
During one of Tivnu’s “Educational Explorations,” we learned about a museum exhibit presenting a glimpse into a possible future while simultaneously encouraging viewers to question the implications.
Displayed in Detroit in 2021, Lauren Williams’ exhibit, “Making Room For Abolition,” inspired an optimism centered around liberation. Taking the form of a living room Williams describes as a “microcosm of our wider world,” the exhibit stood as a still frame infused with artifacts serving as clues and prompting questions for what the imaginary resident’s life might look like, what kind of food they eat, what they read, how they earn money, etc.
This type of speculation is radical. Ordinary people imagining a future better than the present reality is radical because, as Williams argues, once people who are not experts in mathematical or economic projections get to engage in a discourse about the future, the status quo is challenged.
Arjun Appadurai wrote in his 2013 book, “The Future as Cultural Fact,” that “To most ordinary people — and certainly to those who lead lives in conditions of poverty, exclusion, displacement, violence, and repression — the future often presents itself as a luxury, a nightmare, a doubt, or a shrinking possibility.” The power of change is in the hands of the dreamers and by encouraging hope, everyday people can get to be dreamers and thus world changers.
Though this provocative exhibit was in Detroit, Portland has its very own hub of questioning systems of power and actively dreaming of a more just world. This Old Town building is cluttered with proof of radical community support, thirst for systemic change and the artifacts of a balancing act between grief and hope.
If the Street Roots office was a tableau — frozen as it is and put on display — it too could be dissected and determined to be an interrogation of the systemic shortcomings and a possibility to dream toward.
Instead of the exhibit’s universal basic income check or a graphic novel rethinking traditional comic tropes, the Street Roots office windows are stacked high with pocket-sized resource guides and zines full of vendor artwork and poetry. Instead of a Conflict Resolution Court Summons, a basket of “Support Portland Street Response” pins sit on the desk. Instead of a bag of locally processed chips, donated Stumptown Coffee grounds keep the coffee station running. Instead of study materials for a water steward exam, a whiteboard lists offerings of weekly creative writing workshops and health clinics.
In many ways, Street Roots is a glimpse into a future, compassionate society. But instead of being a still frame, it is an incredibly dynamic and loving community making the physical space it inhabits a home.
Like the exhibit, Street Roots doesn’t pretend to be utopian. Instead, it holds the brokenness of structures in this country and illuminates the scraps of hope that nestle in its cracks. There is hope and joy at Street Roots: palpable in elaborate jokes at the coffee station, in reciting a beautiful newly published poem and in a pocket that jingles with a key.
The dawning of Street Roots’ new home on Burnside has been built upon dreams — from the late Jennifer Bradford’s vision of the elevator to the “classroom in the sky” and the basement equipped with showers and laundry.
I continue to re-realize the extent of love the greater community has for Street Roots and that Street Roots shares in return. That love forms a collective optimism — a resilient fight for a better tomorrow.
This past April, I visited my family in Washington, D.C., for Passover, a Jewish holiday grappling with the concept of liberation. The day before the holiday began, the Supreme Court gathered for oral arguments in Grants Pass v. Johnson. The case that will determine how jurisdictions treat people sleeping outside with nowhere else to go.
The stakes of this case are high, and that was not lost on anyone as the Street Roots community marveled at the significance of Street Roots reporter, Jeremiah Hayden, covering the arguments from inside the Court. Outside of the court, though, I participated in the rally organized by Housing Not Handcuffs, a campaign run by the National Homelessness Law Center advocating for the decriminalization of homelessness and protections for housing as a human right.
Like the exhibit, the rally itself envisioned a future in which housing was the clear solution to ending homelessness. There was an energized optimism at the rally — a feeling that if all of these people from across the country showed up, believing in housing as a basic human right, perhaps there’s hope for that to be the case.
Together, critical questioning and out-of-the-box dreaming are essential to building a future that respects every individual’s inherent value and dignity. Street Roots admirably embodies this spirit — constantly evolving and striving to proactively meet community needs. To quote Chapman’s “Why,” “Amidst all these questions and contradictions, there’re some who seek the truth,” and it’s been an honor to work with a group of truth seekers dedicated to dreaming on a world.
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This article appears in May 22, 2024.