DIRECTOR’S DESK | As we confront this pandemic, we continue to look toward our best future
There’s nothing incremental about this moment.
At Street Roots, we’ve developed a theory of action: When we solve for one problem, we also solve for something else. In the midst of illness, we must move toward a healthier society. This is a time of transformation — harrowing and hopeful.
In early March, we predicted that as the virus would spread, vendors would be able to sell newspapers less and less, so we needed to create new forms of income. Street Roots vendors formed an action team, taking supplies to camps while another group began to organize donations at Street Roots. We created a stipend program to pay the action team, and in two weeks, the team reached 1,261 people in camps.
While we keep offering essential services — including getting mail to hundreds of unhoused people who use Street Roots as an address — Street Roots vendors have stepped up into new roles, packing hygiene kits, answering questions, providing hospitality, organizing donations. We pay stipends for these roles.
Today would be new-paper Friday, but now it’s the day we hand out assistance money to vendors who diligently stand in line at 6-feet increments marked by duct tape. We launched this assistance fund last Friday, March 20, so this is our second week of getting money to our 280 vendors, thanks to the generosity of all of you.
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Max takes coffee down the line to help keep up morale. Eddie sanitizes spaces. Mari prepares the receipts ahead of time. Everyone helps. And we can create more work this way.
We urge this theory of action on a wider scale: Solve for more than one thing at the same time, always with an eye on a more just society, to guide the larger decisions. Emergency funds can go toward housing and food, while also supporting suffering industries. As Jupiter Hotel opens to unhoused people, so could more hotels. Restaurants could be paid to provide for those who lack food.
During this pandemic, shortages of soap, flour, masks and toilet paper highlight how focused our economy is on luxury and disposable surplus. It’s glaringly obvious now, but this condition always has been true. Let us carry a new understanding forward of how the basic needs of all should be prioritzed ahead of the wasteful habits of the few.
We hold grace as a value at Street Roots. We regard each other not by our worst moments but our best future. And this we can extrapolate out from individual lives to society as a whole. We are a newspaper, and it is through honesty and truth that we excavate hope, because if we confront what we are dealing with, we can make our best decisions. Together let us confront this terrible pandemic with an eye always on our collective best future.
Director's Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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