DIRECTOR'S DESK | We can build a better future, even though we don’t yet know what that is
A wedding during a pandemic. Unhoused people running an office. A rainbow in a stormy sky.
During these undeniably hard times many of us grapple with new experiences of powerlessness. A virus has constrained our everyday options. It has the power to kill us.
Unhoused people deal with powerlessness as a daily occurrence. In shelters, people manage their comings and going — when they go to bed, when they wake up. Sleeping outside, people are subjected to struggles with the law. Possessions “grow legs,” people in the streets say, alternatingly frustrated and resigned. They are subjected to disdain and violence. At Street Roots, because people die decades earlier on the streets, we are accustomed to holding memorials.
So it took us all by delight that in the middle of this upheaval, we held a wedding.
A STREET ROOTS WEDDING: Vendors Max and Deanna tied the knot while guests watched from a distance
And there are quite a few moments like that here at Street Roots right now.
With our daily operations disrupted, vendors have stepped up to run our office. This means people are coming in from sleeping in tents on the sides of freeways and doorways to shuttered stores to work each day. They bring exceptional care to our 1800 square feet. The office has never been cleaner.
People reveal skills — one man, for example, is exceptionally good at inventorying donations. A woman who struggles to find a new place to sleep every night — bus, doorway, camp — makes the computer hum with her administrative skills. People who are clear with direction manage our lines to maintain social distancing. People who are nurturing deliver coffee to people as they wait.
Patience and nonjudgmental dispositions serve people well who are guiding people on computers to access their economic impact payments. That effort alone has meant that more than $100,000 will reach the pockets of unhoused people — and we’re just getting started. Supporting our vendor income fund means getting money into unhoused people’s pockets — and multiplying it.
It took a pandemic to recognize some of the capacity and skills people on the streets possess that translate to providing essential labor.
But this also makes sense. Street Roots is well disposed to adapting within constraints.
I come to this work as a poet, which on the surface might seem like odd preparation. But poetry itself confronts how one can exceed limits: constrained to fourteen lines one creates a sonnet. We don’t know what is possible until we see it through, and this demands one makes peace with uncertainty.
We can build a better future, even though we don’t yet know what it is. There is an impatient patience about confronting seemingly intractable problems.
Israel Bayer, who preceded me as executive director and now directs the North American Bureau of International Network Street Papers, also came to this work as a poet. There are poets galore among Street Roots vendors. In fact, creativity is one of our core values. We celebrate resourcefulness and imagination.
Rachel Langford, who served as our board chair last year, recently posted on instagram a photo of a rainbow in a stormy sky. I was struck by how precious that rainbow looked in such a roiling, rough sky.
That’s where we are, folks. We’ve got to love those rainbows and know we are in a really rough storm.
So we hosted a wedding. We knew that our vendors Max McEntire and Deanne Handley wanted to get married. Given the despair around us, given social distancing, given the fact that the bride and groom live on the streets — one in a wheelchair and the other walking with a cane — given that the wedding planners were all on the streets, how do we celebrate love?
On April 16, Street Roots vendors came into the office to decorate the office. They used what was available. Coffee filters turned into cups for wedding favors. They filled a table with gifts, festooned streamers from the pipes, and built a halo for an angel with a spoon. Donning masks and standing six feet apart, the crowd of unhoused friends sang and cheered — and we live-streamed it for all of you.
A rainbow in a stormy sky.
There’s so much uncertainty ahead. There’s grief. And there are creative responses and there’s love. Unhoused people are extraordinary leaders in such a moment.
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.
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