The street vendor stands at the corner holding out a newspaper to you, the reader.

Street Roots’ model is about jobs and journalism. It also serves as a visual cue that journalism should be in public spaces, both physically and in terms of our imaginations. Democracy requires an informed public.

Vendors have sold Street Roots this way for 25 years, as they sold the Burnside Cadillac in the 1990s. Other street papers cropped up slightly earlier, including Street Sheet in San Francisco, the Big Issue in London and the now-defunct Street News in New York City.

Street Roots describes people who sell its newspaper as ‘vendors.’ Vending is a trade worldwide, not just for newspapers, of course. Oftentimes there’s a jostle for space, particularly when events come to town and the official plans conflict with informal economies.

I came to know a street vendor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when we collaborated on a textile poetry project 10 years ago. She crocheted swimsuits and sold kitchenware from a stand. Soon after we worked together, the Olympics rolled into town. City officials forced her out of the church-side plaza where she sold, as were other vendors in the informal economy.

In the United States, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and press, and thus, the ability to sell newspapers in public spaces.

There’s the precedent of the “town crier” — the person who makes public announcements in the streets. It’s a way of voicing the news. The town crier in Britain is often an elaborately dressed, bell-ringing fellow, but it’s been a trade worldwide. People announced fishing seasons, bread sales, stories of hunts, laws, edicts and many other subjects of public news. Some people in Europe called out the time, like a human alarm clock.

There are contemporary town criers, including members of a guild in Ottawa. Daniel Richer dit La Flêche, an Abenaki tribe member, has served as a bilingual town crier for almost four decades in Ottawa.

I thought a lot about the town crier as one who distributes news when Street Roots needed to pivot quickly at the beginning of the pandemic. Vendors no longer had customers because people had to shelter in place.

Street Roots was invited to a meeting at the Joint Office of Homeless Services over the concern about how to respond to the pandemic for people experiencing homelessness. Street Roots staff advocated for the need to deliver news of the pandemic (and later, the vaccine) to people who were homeless and not in shelters.

Street Roots vendors fanned out and delivered news of a global pandemic to people in hard-to-reach spots — people living in vans and in the woods, off trails and urban brush, in the caves under McLoughlin Boulevard. Everyone needed to know that a pandemic arrived. Raven Drake, then a Street Roots vendor already responding to the pandemic with a medivac tent on the side of the freeway for unhoused people should they be stricken, led this work.

That was one of many adaptations we made during the early pandemic, and the hustle and bustle of trial and error created the groundwork for where Street Roots is today. During the years since the pandemic, we’ve renovated a building to give strong support to what is often precarious work. Now we are able to build on the innovation of recent years with shape and clarity.

The newspaper and the vendor

At the center of Street Roots are its vendors holding space for journalism in public spaces throughout the city. These are low-barrier jobs. People walk in off the streets, go through orientation, and start selling.

Street Roots vendors are not employees of Street Roots. They operate micro-businesses, buying the paper for a quarter and selling it for a dollar (plus tips). They keep all the money you pay. There are also barter opportunities at Street Roots.

K. Rambo, Street Roots editor in chief, leads production of the weekly newspaper. Jeremiah Hayden is a full-time reporter, and Kanani Cortez, digital producer, makes sure the newspaper’s print journalism is digitally accessible. Cortez doesn’t immediately move stories from print to digital form, creating an additional incentive for readers to support vendors. However, readers can eventually access all Street Roots stories free of charge online.

Etta O’Donnell-King designs and illustrates the newspaper. After just three months on the job in 2023, their cover illustrations won second place for graphics and illustrations in the small newsroom division of the regional Society of Professional Journalists contest covering Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. This summer, Kimberly Cortez joins the newspaper as a reporting intern from the University of Oregon-administered Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism. Street Roots also pays a number of freelance reporters to work on stories.

Street Roots archives issues in-house and is currently working with the University of Oregon to digitally archive every Street Roots issue ever printed — even going back to the 1990s when it was Burnside Cadillac. Too often, history is told by the powerful, so we recognize the importance of having this collection archived for researchers and readers.

Vendors at the center | Street Roots Community Media

For most of Street Roots’ history, Street Roots published vendors’ poetry and columns in the newspaper. After then-Street Roots vendor Gary Barker created the Mobile Journalism program, or MoJo, to teach vendors about journalism, Rambo taught classes. Street Roots vendors and staff also collaborated with Open Signal.

Street Roots will now have a classroom and multimedia equipment on its rooftop, with DeVon Pouncey directing the new Community Media program.

Pouncey previously directed Street Roots’ vendor program, and has a media career outside Street Roots, working as the TV analyst for the Rip City Remix and Portland State University’s men’s basketball team, in addition to hosting his long-running sports podcast, Wake Up and Win. He’ll support Street Roots vendors in their writing and widen the scope of Street Roots media to audiovisual formats.

A voice in democracy | Street Roots Civic Engagement and Education

The town-crier style early pandemic work solidified into the “ambassador program.” Ambassadors continue paid outreach, delivering vital supplies to unhoused people and conducting surveys. Max Jimenez, also an outreach worker for Janus Youth’s Yellow Brick Road program, leads the ambassadors.

Thijs Kleinpaste, Civic Engagement and Education Coordinator, builds out town halls, civic circles and surveys to prioritize access to public policy and other elements of democracy for people experiencing homelessness and poverty. He develops other educational portions, including classes, training and certifications for Street Roots vendors — as well as sessions taught by Street Roots vendors. Watch for more on this in the coming months.

What’s there, what’s not, what’s simply confusing | Rose City Resource & Systems Navigation

Street Roots has produced a service guide for people experiencing homelessness and poverty in the region for over 25 years — the Rose City Resource Guide. Street Roots is broadening this resources and systems navigation work, including the twice-yearly print guide and its digital counterpart, but also more learning about, communicating and critiquing resources and systems — always centering people who need these resources and systems. That effort includes digital equity, making sure people have access to the digital tools necessary to access many resources. Street Roots is working with AfroVillage PDX to install free wifi on Street Roots’ building (and we need more buildings in Old Town and beyond to widen its reach by installing access points).

Hopefully, you’ve seen our Security Signs-designed Street Roots sign in the style of Old Town in the early 20th century. The lights are on, but we’re not yet operating. We’re busy getting ready.

Street Roots vendors are sanding library chairs, painting walls, modge-podging Street Roots newspapers onto reclaimed furniture and more. Artists Alice Price and Cole Reed are building a mural incorporating a global map with displays of street papers. Newspapers are part of Street Roots’ design — they’re the heart of what Street Roots is — as are depictions of maps and globes to remind Street Roots vendors they are part of something bigger.

Yes, we’re busy getting ready, stronger than ever in our insistence that people experiencing homelessness are important voices in democracy.

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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.

© 2024 Street Roots. All rights reserved.  | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 40