Nettie Johnson opens up about her experiences with addiction, discrimination and hope
When I first encountered Street Roots, I was living on the streets in downtown Portland. It was 2003. The building and logo haven’t changed much. I received a badge and a few papers to help me earn income.
I was too chemically addicted to heroin and cocaine to fully comprehend what the paper and organization stood for, other than it was a place for homeless people to go and not be judged during struggling times.
I vaguely remember holding the papers. When I got to Third Avenue, I said, “This is not for me.” I think I threw the papers away. I continued using until 2004 when I was arrested and sent to jail behind a $5 piece of crack.
Fifteen years later, and clean for 15 years, I came upon Street Roots again. I had lost several jobs and was severely injured at my last one, still trying to find a way to make myself feel valuable and stay clean and sober. With a clear mind now, I realized just how Street Roots is focused on real life challenges that need to be changed and also social justice disparities.
I have been a vendor now for over two years, the longest job in my life. I sell the paper at the Woodstock New Seasons. When I first was assigned the location, I was happy and thriving. I even felt like my own business owner, a dream my Momma instilled in all 11 of her children.
People in Woodstock must love Street Roots. I became recognized as not your average vendor after two articles were published that I was involved in, the first one about my life experience as a homeless addict, and the second about my interview with DeRay Mckesson of Black Lives Matter. With so much lived-through trauma, “Black Lives Matter” used to rub me the wrong way, but that is another story.
I knew there was a racial situation brewing all over America. I have since educated myself in school at Portland Community College, where I am getting a degree in alcohol and drug addiction counseling.
For many years, the main population in prison for drug addiction has been blacks, including me. I was not able to enjoy the luxuries of treatment or housing for addicts. My home for a period of over 18 years was jail or prison. Now, in 2019, drug addiction is considered a mental illness and “treatment comes first.” I continue to work out my prejudices for the greater common solution.
Street Roots has been and will continue to be a part of my foundation for a more hopeful, enlightening future, although I frequently face racial slurs out at my sales location. I am challenged to prove up my coping skills and am often viewed as a loser or a beggar, and recently I was called a drug addict by a panhandler who was begging for money with her children, all under age 5.
That type of harassment hurts deeply.
I have had to call in the Portland police for protection on several occasions as a Street Roots vendor. Mostly, I was questioned like I was the perpetrator, not the one who called in the harassment.
With America divided on racial problems, I am not sure what my role is, but I do believe in social change and that my experience can help curb homelessness, discrimination and racism. When I look at the despair on the streets of Portland, I want to give everyone a copy of Street Roots so they can be informed on what is taking place in America.
I am not a pushover personality, so I stand a much better chance of surviving this turmoil because I understand what it’s like to be out of control mentally, and I know what it means to give up, due to hostility, discrimination, criminal attacks and dealing with ignorance and racial judgments. I will not drop the ball! Hopefully not to the point where I lose my newfound connection to my main source of support: Street Roots.
My main quote today is: “Know what you are looking at,” by the late B.J. Finley-Branch.
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