An elderly man pumped his fists to “Back in Black” by AC/DC, his wheelchair pivoting beneath his animated body.
Others strummed air guitars, beat air drums and pounded their feet. It was catharsis in the form of a memorial, a love for Dennis Chavez, who died in late December, a movement of bodies not necessarily in defiance of death, as in insistence of life and that, in this moment, we are alive together.
Too many people die early in the Street Roots community, not only on the streets but in housing, too, because poverty takes its toll. In this maybe-twilight of the pandemic, Street Roots still requires masks in the office — people grab masks from a ledge as they walk through the door — an act of care for the health of many people in our community who are immunocompromised. We’ve had a strong focus on preventing the spread of COVID-19, and I’m oh-so-grateful that thus far, we have not suffered the COVID-losses I feared early in 2020. But we have lost people through overdoses, heat exposure, hearts that give out, cancer and crumbling mental health.
As we gingerly edge toward gathering again, memorials are at the fore. We held one in November 2022 for the many people who did die in the Street Roots community over the last several years, and last Friday, we held our first individual memorial, for Dennis Chavez.
Dennis’ memorial concluded with his favorite song (you guessed it: “Back in Black”) and Coco Donuts. We honor the dead to carry them forward. Whether or not any one of us knew that particular person, they join our collective lore, the strength of our roots.
It was because of the efforts of vendors and community members that I can gather fragments of Dennis’ story — an oral history that fellow vendor Kim Trano wrote down to publish in our 2017 holiday zine, interviews by artist Mikki Jordan to create the cabaret performance, “From These Streets I Rise,” a vendor profile by Leonora Ko, a video that Outside the Frame made for Portland Art Museum in 2018. One of the young videographers, Velma Carter, is now a Street Roots vendor.
Details well up into a story’s shape: Dennis was born in Pasadena, California, in 1963. He hauled hay as a young man in Idaho, joined the army to become a helicopter pilot, earned his college degree in political science on the GI Bill at Washington State. He fathered a daughter, moved to Portland, became a Street Roots vendor in 2016 and soon after, secured housing.
He was forthcoming with some of the hard stuff — he helicoptered corpses out of Nicaragua while the U.S. military secretly supported the Contras in the 1980s and saw too much, experienced too much and carried that trauma forward. He lost a job in Portland when a company relocated and he ended up homeless for years. His way off the streets sprung from more sorrow: he had a heart attack that landed him in a Veterans Affairs hospital, and it was its workers who got him into housing.
But, as with other human lives, there is so much I don’t know. I don’t know all the interactions many of you had as Dennis’ customers in front of the Art Museum, all the stories that spin out from there. I didn’t know Dennis’ family and am grateful to begin to know them after his death. As people fall on hard times, they sometimes lose their family connections, and so it is not uncommon at Street Roots for us to come to know relatives after people die.
We have a value at Street Roots we talk about quite a bit — grace — and this is how we express it: We regard people not by their worst moment but by their best future.
In describing some of those worst moments, Dennis described that while on the streets, he felt overlooked, while feeling profiled by police. He, of course, experienced different ways of being perceived, such as when he was in the military or as a college student, or for the last six years of his life when he was in housing.
Too many people on the streets report feeling invisible, overlooked and disdained, so Street Roots memorials are also about reminding the living that they will be remembered. They will have a legacy, and the legacy is beyond a person’s worst, most trying moments.
Sometimes I read harrowingly objectifying descriptions on social media of people in their worst moments or hear it from those running for office. People are described as less than human, as objects of ridicule, disgust. Grace is lacking by the perceiver.
The Street Roots notion of grace is, ultimately, a political one. Too often, the “worst moment” is about systemic injustices, and it is by confronting these that we strive for a collective best future. A right to housing. A right to health care. We have to love each other so damn much and honor our dead in this work, too.
This is what I imagine this political grace looks like: we are each dancing however we may but punching our fists in the air to the same strong song.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. 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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