If you live in Portland, you’ve surely passed folks on the street selling the weekly newspaper called Street Roots. Recently I attended a poetry reading featuring some of these vendors and was impressed by their immense talent, honesty and courage. I asked if I could get involved with the organization by making photographs of the poets and other interested vendors and was eventually given the green light to set up a makeshift portrait studio in the paper’s office.
Founded in 1999, Street Roots is a nonprofit that publishes a weekly social justice newspaper sold by people experiencing homelessness and poverty so they can earn an income. Each week, about 200 Street Roots vendors purchase copies of the newspaper for 25 cents each, then sell them on the streets of Portland for $1, keeping the profits and tips.
The organization strives to make income accessible to the poorest people in our society through work that is low barrier and, at its best, empowering. It advocates for better conditions for people experiencing homelessness, as well as systemic change that lessens poverty and increases access to housing. The newspaper it produces is committed to issues dealing with social justice.
One of the first people I photographed was Bronwyn. The poems she read at the event I’d attended were heartfelt and powerful. I admired her right away. When she showed up at the Street Roots office last Monday morning (my first day of shooting) she was there to attend a weekly writing workshop. She had no idea I was going to be there, but when she walked through the door, it looked as she’d spent all morning fussing over what she was going to wear for her portrait.
Here is an excerpt from a profile of Bronwyn that was written last year. I can’t wait to give her the print of the portrait we made, then meet more vendors and make more photos.
Street Roots vendor, writer and poet Bronwyn Carver and Street Roots are a great match for one another. She started with Street Roots four years ago, and since then, she has fully embraced all that Street Roots has to offer, including as a program participant for Street Root’s School of Mobile Journalism and Communication program.
‘Writing for me is like breathing,’ Bronwyn said. ‘It helps me focus and get rid of some of what builds up in my head.’
A longtime poetry contributor to Street Roots, Bronwyn has lived in Portland since 1999. The mother of three grown daughters, Bronwyn hopes to strengthen her relationship with them through her continued recovery and the steps she is taking in her life.
‘They are incredible human beings, and I love them so much,’ she said. ‘I think about them every day. They don’t understand why I live outside. But I’m applying for Social Security and I hope that leads to housing.’
Bronwyn avoids shelters because she has three cats who she relies on for comfort and companionship. Recently widowed, she is now back in therapy and is doing a lot of writing about her loss.
‘I remain outside for my cats,’ Bronwyn said. ‘They keep me alive — I can’t leave them — I can’t go to a shelter. I miss my husband terribly.’
But she said Street Roots gives her many positives to focus on and she is so grateful for the opportunities it provides.
‘Street Roots saves your life,’ Bronwyn said. ‘It gives people a reason to wake up and be purposeful. It gives opportunities you can't even imagine without it. Without them, I can’t imagine where I’d be.’
These two poems by Bronwyn were published in Orion Magazine:
The Rain It Pours
The rain, it pours from sky
Painted dark by clouds of watercolor grays
The sound, a steady thrumming on my tent
Monotonous are the drips and drops
The rain makes all damp
I’m damp
the tent is damp
my bedding is damp
my clothes are damp
my cats are damp, look at me like I
ordered this weather
But it’s the socks that demand attention
Wet socks, wet shoes miserable I tell you
Dry socks are treated like commodities
Openly exchanged on some fictitious
Homeless network
“I’ll take 3 shares of dry socks!”
Though there are no closing bells at this exchange
Every tent you visit, every visitor to yours all ask the same query
“Do you have any dry socks?”
Another winter in Oregon and the
Malaise has begun to creep in
Keeping me from work that needs doing
There’s so many to-do’s
And it is just me and I am broken
In need of a hip
A lower back with cartilage-free disks
A left knee who feels left out
But it is only me
And I can stand in 15-minute increments then I have to sit down
It’s maddening trying to get any work done
I feel like I’m taking two steps forward
Then being pushed back
Into mud disguised as soil
Cannot Sweep Nature
On a path of freshly turned dirt
from the last sweep that came through
mounds of debris and whatnots
hide within trip-traps
Of muddy earth
Yet even though souls
From this place
have been scattered
North south east west
Upside down
One lone daffodil appeared
pushed up through the mud
that is the soil
Bright golden yellow with its almost
Orange trumpet center
proclaiming a hearkening
hearkening for hope
Bronwyn sells Street Roots most afternoons at the Interstate 405 exit near Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. She also sells Street Roots at the Beaverton Farmers Market on Saturdays.
