DIRECTOR’S DESK | Your generosity keeps Street Roots going, from your purchase of a newspaper and zine from a vendor to your #GivingTuesday donation
It’s 7:30 a.m. Vendors are lined up at the Street Roots door. Many rise early to vacate shelters and door stoops and sidewalks. As soon as we unlock the office door, the small crowd moves rapidly for the coffee machine. If the coffee is still brewing, people wait, insistent that the pot fills first. Then one by one, they fill their cups, turning to fill the cups of others waiting.
People warm their cold hands around the cups. They sip the hot, rich coffee. It’s pleasure all around, a good reason to wake up.
“I want some sugar in my bowl,” sings Nina Simone. “I want some steam on my clothes.” That’s what it’s like: A small pleasure to starts the day off well. A little extra goodness.
All day long, everyone collectively stewards the coffee. When the pot runs dry, whoever first notices starts the next pot brewing, pouring water from a plastic pitcher marked in measurements with a Sharpie. While the coffee brews, people gather again as a steady stream fills the pot, the heat building.
I drink plenty of coffee because I enjoy chatting with vendors (and, well, because I really like coffee).There’s optimism around the coffee pot. Ritual chit-chat that gives the day its shape. Light teasing.
On a recent morning, a vendor, Johnny Belknap, spent part of his morning scrubbing off the grime and then polishing the stainless steel on the machine, like a priest polishing a chalice with a cloth. No one asked him to do this; he just saw what needed to be done. That’s what the coffee pot means to everyone at Street Roots. It’s cherished. And thanks to Stumptown, who donates beans, we always have coffee. Coffee is hospitality. It is generosity.
Generosity, certainly, because for many people who sell Street Roots, there’s a lot of scarcity. Life’s necessities are doled out in small portions. A few TriMet tickets. Waitlists for shelter. Waitlists – years-long waitlists – for housing vouchers. An impossibly difficult system of Social Security and disability benefits.
We work mostly in a scarcity culture in a city of abundance. As the Rev. William J. Barber II tweeted after talking to Street Roots vendors: “They go home tonight and live in the woods, because America that is rich in empty houses and empty buildings refuses to open them to members of the human family.” There are so many limitations on the lives of poor people, and so much lost agency. Other people serve as gatekeepers for the most basic things.
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That is why coffee is not just coffee at Street Roots. It’s about abundance. I never want the pot to run out. Sugar in the bowl, steam on the clothes, coffee in the cup.
Despite the scarcity all around us, generosity is not hard to find at Street Roots. Generosity comes in the form of the vendor who recently came in to tell us he had a new job and would no longer be selling Street Roots, but he wanted to donate $5 toward the next person who would walk through the door without money. Generosity is the vendor who only recently got off the streets – after overcoming a life-threatening illness – and found the wherewithal to mail a box of hats and gloves for other vendors. Generosity is the vendor who set a get-well-soon card on the counter because another vendor who lives in his building broke their ribs.
Generosity is all of you. That’s what makes Street Roots what we are – it takes all of us. Beginning today, vendors will be selling a holiday zine that they edited. It’s moving, beautiful, chock-full of poetry and art that explores the theme of transformation. Please buy copies and share them. Each zine is $4.
Please keep vendors in your cares these cold days of winter when holidays can stir pain for some. Please support them with their livelihood – purchase extra newspapers and zines to pass onto friends. Tip them.
And we make this whole enterprise happen because of the generosity of all of you. Street Roots is a nonprofit, and individual donors make up the single largest portion of our budget.
On #GivingTuesday, Dec. 3, your contributions can go further. All donations to us through giveguide.org/#streetroots will be matched up to $3,500. And if you run your own Facebook fundraising campaign for Street Roots, Facebook is matching the first $7 million raised for all nonprofits. The matches start at 5 a.m. PST Dec. 3.
Thank you! Cup by cup, dollar by dollar – it takes all of us.
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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