One of my first mentors on the streets was the great Genny
Nelson, co-founder of Sisters Of The Road. Genny has mentored dozens of
organizers, agitators, policy makers, writers and artists over the years. Her
life’s work has a footprint on both Portland politics and how we work with
people experiencing homelessness.
Genny once told me,
“Israel, offering compassion without judgment is one of the most
challenging things you’ll ever do when working with the poor. Keeping at it day
after day, week after week, and maintaining that compassion will be the
hardest. The only way to find the space to carry on is to practice non-violence
and to believe in love.”
At the time, I was an angry young man. I had grown up in
industrial middle-America where violence was often times a way of life. The
idea of accepting non-violence was new to me. Offering unconditional love to
complete strangers was challenging.
Street Roots is built on the premise of meeting people
experiencing poverty where they are at. It’s not easy. Poverty is cruel and
inhumane, it’s violent and irrational. Regardless of people’s circumstances or
experiences — individuals and families can find a home at places like Street
Roots and Sisters Of The Road.
Saying that, it’s not just Street Roots. There are a lot of
social service agencies in Portland that believe in these basic premises and
were influenced by Genny Nelson and Sisters
— Saint Adre Bessette, JOIN, Right 2 Dream Too, Dignity Village, to name
a few.
Thousands of people experiencing poverty and those who have
dedicated their lives to the work carry out these philosophies and are tied to
a larger historical movement, regardless if they know it or not. The idea of
offering hospitality in the form of compassion and love, regardless of the
situation is something that runs very deep in the experiences we have and of
those that came before us.
These ideas and philosophies were born out the Catholic
Worker movement and the work of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the 1930s and
40s. They were influenced by the work of those before them dating back to the
Civil War and before.
The great agitator and organizer Utah Phillips once said,
“The long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of
that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts
and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we’re going, but where we
want to go.”
Together, we are a part of something bigger and working
towards a better tomorrow. That includes you, that includes me, that includes
all of us embracing something more. Something that gives people that
opportunity to be successful, regardless of their circumstance. That means
offering hospitality and compassion without judgement. It means accepting
non-violence as a way of life. It means embracing love.
This article appears in 2014-10-24.