They just keep at it.
The day the Proud Boys attempted to disrupt the city, the Street Roots Action Team was undeterred and focused, out on the trails and sidewalks registering people to vote. Democracy in action.
Then there was the day after that presidential debate — my head still ringing from Trump’s haranguing. The Street Roots Action Team was a study in contrast — intentional and steady. One vendor, Matt, headed out to Hazelnut Grove, a sanctioned camp on city land in North Portland. Raven, Jennifer and Pops set up a voter registration center outside our Old Town office, surrounded by a white picket fence.
It was also new paper Wednesday, so vendors lined up to buy the new issue, stopped to register or chat politics. When I walked by, Vern was analyzing the debate.
They will continue their efforts through Oct. 13, the last day for people to register to vote in Oregon.
The Street Roots Action Team was formed as a response to the coronavirus — both to make sure that unhoused people were front and center in the public health response, and to create additional ways for vendors to earn income while we halted printing for five months.
Now we are printing the newspaper again, and vendors are selling again. But the Action Team has become a new way for vendors to develop their skills, passions and aptitudes for employment. Raven Drake helped found the Action Team in early March while she was a Street Roots vendor. She went on to serve as the health coordinator for the city-run C3PO camps for people experiencing homelessness through September. And now we are pleased she joined the Street Roots staff Oct. 1 to develop the next phase of the Action Team.
This voter registration drive extends civic engagement enacted by the Action Team. They have been making sure unhoused people are counted in the census through the #WeCountOregon campaign, running a census assistance center out of Street Roots’ office as well as setting up a pop-up center at the C3PO camps. Many of the same Street Roots vendors who helped with the census are now working as the voter registration team.
Voting is not trivial at Street Roots. At every level of government, decisions are made that can radically determine people’s fate — and too often, the people making those decisions have little input from the people affected by those decisions.
A democracy without full participation of the poor is a sick democracy. We have our sights on this at Street Roots. We’re focused on working out ways that voices of unhoused people can enter public policy.
One method we’ve developed is through conducting surveys that can inform advocacy and decision-making. Over the last 15 months, we’ve worked on two surveys in collaboration with the Portland State University Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative. The first informed the creation of Portland Street Response, and the second gathered preferences for COVID-19 responses. This month, the Action Team will conduct a survey about services to inform the Joint Office of Homeless Services.
Survey teams themselves are led by people experiencing — or who have experienced — homelessness. Their lived expertise matters; they are especially qualified to conduct homeless outreach.
There are plenty of barriers to civic engagement, that’s for sure. Just entering City Hall to testify is daunting, since carrying one’s possessions everywhere means surely there’s an item that will set the metal detector off. Since COVID-19, when more civic meetings have gone digital, we’ve at times been able to open up Street Roots for people to participate online, and sometimes people with phones have been able to join meetings from camps.
But unhoused people remain at a disadvantage when it comes to participation, lacking the political influence of people with means. And yet, so much is decided that matters to their daily lives.
This is a dream I have for Street Roots. We aspire to expand our space — triple it — in the next several years. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a space for civic gatherings where unhoused people feel comfortable — like they belong — and housed people come to them for the meetings?
Meanwhile, we will work to make sure that regional knowledge includes the perspectives and interests of the poor — through our reporting and other efforts like those our Action Team are undertaking.
Next week, we will release our election issue. We’ll comb through some of the state and local issues and let you know our endorsements. We’ll feature responses to our questions from candidates in the Portland mayoral race as well as the competitive City Council race. So find your vendor, grab your issue and vote!