Little Bear, genocide & gratitude: A Thanksgiving meditation
Around Thanksgiving, notions of both gratitude and genocide hit me hard.
Gratitude, because giving thanks is power, because it’s something Americans do infrequently, and because I’ve got a lot to be thankful for — starting with the sources I write about, like Little Bear, and the editors who mentor me.
Genocide, because Thanksgiving is a day of Pilgrims, Teepees and turkeys — as Al-Jazeera puts it, “that mythologised, gastronomic encounter of 1621 between Pilgrims and Native Americans that now serves as a cornerstone of the fairytale version of US history.”
I write about poverty, in America — hence the title of this blog, “Poor for a Minute.” Hardly anyone, the myth of the American Dream has it, is poor for long in this land of plenty, where we all eventually pull ourselves up by the bootstraps as those Pilgrims once did.
But as Thanksgiving reminds some of us, this is a land not just of plenty but also poverty, and the millions of northern European transplants that followed those Pilgrims committed genocide against Native American tribes from the methodical Rio Grande to turbulent Lake Superior, from the District of Columbia swamplands to the hungry mouth of the Columbia River.
Nowadays, along with slavery, crimes against Native peoples stand as perhaps the single worst mark on the face of the Great American nation. Today, as I have written about in Portland, Native Americans face disproportionate struggles with poverty and homelessness and other social barriers.
But why focus on the bad stuff, when you can focus on the good?
For me, these seemingly opposite extremes can be intricately interwoven. Two decades’ work in homeless shelters and special ed classes, child protective services and housing programs taught me about silver linings, nights that are darkest before dawns, making some serious lemonade and a whole bunch of other cliches and sayings — some unprintable.
Doing that stuff while also practicing journalism taught me that the stories of poor people are rarely included in media.
A year and a half ago I risked everything and left a steady job and secure income in social services to became a freelance journalist.
Who decided to write about poor people.
As a way to give something back, but also — perhaps naively, time will tell — as a way to feed and house and clothe two small children.
My success has been modest, especially economically, as my wife reminds me. Nonetheless, considering my chosen subject or “beat” —including stories about the struggles of poor people is often a low priority for media—it’s been considerable.
For this, I am most grateful to the sources I’ve written about, even though I may never see many of them again. Who are those sources?
There are dozens and dozens in the stories on this blog.
They are people living on the street, in doorsteps, tents or homeless camps. People at risk of eviction, or who don’t have enough to eat. They’re sick, on disability payments, “dual diagnosis,” “tri-morbid,” addicts and mentally ill.
They’re also children, parents and grandparents. They’re Native, and every other race, culture, gender and life path. They’re Little Bear.
They are all of us.
I ran into Little Bear this week while reporting on the homeless camps for the Portland Mercury. He told me he found out June 28 that he has a terminal disease, something related to his spinal cord.
“I really don’t care any more,” Little Bear told me. He told me I had to tell his story. Maybe someday I’ll be able to go back and do that; for now, the best I can do is to put a little piece of it in a story about an issue.
The people I’ve interviewed on the street level, in a kind of infinitely-expanding loop of what Doug Hissom, my first editor at the Milwaukee weekly Shepherd Express, described to me as “man on the street” reporting, are not throwaway.
They’re struggling, sometimes to the point of dying, but often intelligent, lucid, and kind. Many are great storytellers. All are as human as the wealthier strata of society that far more frequently find their tales told in ink and bright lights, next to advertisements.
Despite the gargantuan struggles many newspapers and websites face to bring in revenue, some editors yet understand this, and they are both the fertile soil of a passing, changing, dying era of journalism and the ones who are finding ways to reinvent and turn the corner.
Tell me, what websites are putting up good journalism about poverty and paying freelance journalists actual food-purchasing wages? There are some, but not a lot, and please share if you know a good one.
Portland has more than its share, I think.
While the protagonists of most of the stories on this blog as well as those yet to come are people experiencing poverty and front-line workers who serve them, editors have made the difference in the stories I’ve written.
I haven’t met my goals in writing and journalism yet, not by a long shot, and I don’t want to seem as if I think I’ve somehow made it. But if it’s good to be thankful, I’m thankful to these editors as well as the hundreds of people who have trusted me with a helping of their words.
I used to think, not so very long ago, that stories were written by writers. Now I know they’re team efforts. I’m grateful that these editors have taught and are teaching me, slowly but surely, how to write a little better.
So I’m grateful to Allan Classen, a bulldog of a journalist who is editor and publisher of a mighty community newspaper, the NW Examiner. Classen and his wife Jolene Jensen-Classen have made a difference for years to the greater NW Portland community, and broken many stories of importance not just to the diverse neighborhoods in that quadrant but all of Portland and beyond.
Classen’s work reflects a connection to grassroots politics and the legendary, albeit troubled, neighborhood association system in Portland. He is often “digging deep, shining a light,” as the paper’s motto has it, and is a true Portland journalist.
Steve Padilla, Assistant National and Enterprise Editor of the Los Angeles Times is a musician like myself. To my astonishment, in an industry infamous for not answering phone calls in order to skim emails, Padilla actually talks by phone with reporters — even humble freelancers — and even picks up the phone sometimes.
“Focus is the number one issue I deal with, no matter the experience level of the reporter,” Padilla once told me.
Words to put on a Post-It note over your desk, if you’re as prone to distraction or in love with tangents and obtuse thoughts as I. (The melodicism of a violin, viola and mandolin player who never went to “J” school? Or sheer laziness?) He showed me, and is still showing me, how to write for a national-level audience. His podcasts are worth a listen, and I would never have thought to borrow an E.B. White book of essays from the Multnomah County Library without his astute observations.
Willamette Week News Editor Aaron Mesh took a chance on me when he let me write a summerlong series, “Down and Out in Portland, Oregon,” about various facets of the houseless population here. “I love this idea,” he told me when I first proposed it, to my shock. Perhaps seeing the look on my face, he reiterated: “No, really.”
Mesh took time out of his busy schedule to break down elements of writing and reporting, such as the use of a “pan and zoom” cinematic technique. His edits are economical and precise. He got me thinking more about framing, which seems like a neverending learning curve.
News Editor Dirk VanderHart of the Portland Mercury is no-nonsense editor who has done some of the most hard-hitting reporting, and editing, on activism, social justice and poverty, in this neck of the woods. He has an uncanny feel for urbane power politics but also values issues such as diversity, inclusivity and equity, and his work reflects that.
Like me, he’s always hustling, but not a hustler. He is fair, and easy to work with.
Last but not least, Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at Street Roots, a newspaper focused on houselessness and social justice, has helped me to see how writing about social justice and houselessness can be intertwined with a unique nonprofit business model that centralizes inclusivity and empowerment.
She’s canny and cagey and has a remarkably broad and experienced bird’s eye view of this crazy-quilt Big-Small city we call Portland.
If you’re not familiar with Street Roots, it’s part newspaper, part social justice organization. It helps to put money in the pockets of houseless people by giving them papers to hawk on the streets. It’s a “hand up, not a hand out,” as the paper’s website puts it. It also publishes hard-hitting stories that feed the activist community and provide hope, help and solace to those who need it most.
The fairytale histories of Pilgrims and Redskins are persistent, and actually never really go away. Not in Trump’s America.
They parallel the constant drumbeat, the ubiquitous narrative that if you’re poor, it’s your fault. If you’re rich, it’s your reward.
If you listen hard to Barack Obama, the first black President of the United States — an occasionally courageous and always thoughtful man — you’ll hear talk of things like “ladders of opportunity.”
Obama has spoken little about poverty, and often only when prompted to do so by a journalist. Even then, for Obama, it’s mostly “complicated.”
Our current President Donald Trump and his oligarchs, by comparison, are so inured to and obsessed with opulence and success, they hardly even let such matters pollute their gilded minds.
I think we need to think about poverty, and genocide. At least sometimes.
I’m grateful that those who are sleeping rough and stalking streets tell me about it, so I can give that to readers.
I’m grateful that at least a few good editors teach me how to do it.
