Dan Newth was holding up a bundle of the holiday zines, but I didn’t expect him to also be managing the leash of an extremely cute dog.
He explained to me that he was watching the dog, named Dendi, for his customers while they shopped in New Seasons, something he commonly does. Consider it full-service.
The dog’s family soon came out, and I learned this isn’t the family’s first dog that Dan has watched while they shop.
“They’re my community,” Dan told me. They agreed.
Dan, who both edited and wrote for the zine, has sold about 200 copies of the zine to his community in only the first few days since it hit the streets. Street Roots vendors are all over town selling the zine.
The package deal is this: for five dollars, buy the zine ($4) and the newspaper. Vendors accept tips, too, and you can pay now through Venmo.
The holiday zine is something special at Street Roots. Poetry has been a part of Street Roots since day one, and the zine project was launched in 2015 by Cole Merkel while he served as a Jesuit Volunteer at Street Roots. This year, the current Jesuit Volunteer, Kodee Zarnke, managed the project with aplomb while Kanani Cortez, Street Roots editorial producer, designed the zine.
Street Roots vendor Phoenix Oaks created the cover — a snowy scene of conifers and lean-to cabins bedecked in holiday lights, and people warming themselves by a fire near their tarped tents capped with snow — as he has for the past four years.
Last summer, Dan Newth put up a poster in the vendor office soliciting ideas for this year’s zine from other vendors. Vendors jotted up ideas and voted. “A New Day” won.
It’s edited and created by Street Roots vendors who are paid for their labor.
This year’s committee — Dan Newth, Tru Stark, Bronwyn Carver, George McCarthy — pored over the pages, offering feedback.
“Those first meetings with the editorial team with Brownyn and George and Dan and Tru were so energizing because you had all these creative and insightful minds working together,” said Kodee.
When I received the proofs, I read the zine from front to back. And I had a lot of emotions as I did. Last year’s zine, eight months into the pandemic, was titled “Survival.” Pandemic or not, survival is often a big feat. This week’s theme seemed to nudge the writing into optimism:
“It’s the start of a new day/ A bright new day/ Indeed,” writes Daniel Cox. There’s hope throughout: housing after years on the streets, euphoria in the rain, cats to come home to.
But even that optimism is undercut. Bronwyn’s short story captures the struggles a woman has with her addiction, and the effort to stay sober, until she can’t. But still, as she relapses, she reminds herself that “A New Day begins tomorrow.”
And in George McCarthy’s writing, a new day is out of reach — or at least the words: “Calve these words & seek new ones where you find them, but even then there is a bigger trap, for the witchery of words can create glowing worlds of the mind that please the heart with order & beauty but are made of mirage & bow & leave the stage with hollow dust in your hands.”
Any time George writes, I’m an eager reader, because I know he will take me somewhere I’ve never been.
It’s a zine and it’s more than a zine. It’s the creativity that we value at Street Roots as both the resourcefulness that aids survival, and the imagination that expresses dreams, and expresses the hard realities too.
Read the zine as a way to know Street Roots vendors a little better. As Stephen Holladay writes,
“This is from me to all that is you
Till next time I touch pen to pad.”
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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