Under the Washington-Jefferson Street Bridge in driving sleet, two men sit at a small folding table writing new articles for The Oregon Vagabond@@http://oregonvagabond.com/@@. For every article they write for the monthly periodical, they get three dollars. If a homeless individual wants to become a distributor, they can buy a stack of papers at close-to-print cost (25 cents) and keep all proceeds when they collect the suggested donation of $1.
“This is great. When we write for the paper and get a couple bucks, most of us get a day ahead,” said Leo Wells, one of the attendees of the writer’s workshop in session.
Set apart from the tables stands a slight older woman, face weathered by a hard five-year (or longer) stretch on the streets. Walking among her colleagues, she opens her coat to proudly display the Jimi Hendrix @@http://www.jimihendrix.com/us/home@@T-shirt she’s wearing. Her hands are gnarled and curved into an almost perpetual cup, crisscrossed with veins and dirt. Smiles and kind words circulate around the small gathering in praise of her garment.“I left an abusive marriage … choosing life on life’s terms,” reads one of the passages in her most recent article. Her given name is Deni, but she goes by her pen name “Ma.”
“Writing for the paper helped my vocabulary. I’ve gotten a lot of it back,” she said. “I live in my van. At night it gets so cold. They have the warming centers, but they don’t keep them open often enough. We need more advocates for us.”
After driving up from California with her brother, Deni worked for a short time at a concession stand in Myrtle Point@@http://myrtlepointchamber.org/@@. Then she found her way to Eugene and has been living in her van ever since.
“I love Eugene. I love the people in Eugene,” Ma said. “They’re all so nice. Courtesy goes a long way. I put a lot out, and I get a lot back.”
“She’s one of my best writers,” publisher and editor David Gerber @@http://oregonvagabond.com/about/@@said. “Role-model leadership is a piece of this. We’re here to show homeless folks that maybe you should take yourself a little more seriously.”
Gerber is a University alumnus of political science. Toward the end of graduate school, he wanted to go into some sort of political advocacy. Drawing on his own experience of living on the streets as a young person for 10 years, he noticed there was an absence of a street paper in Eugene, though they exist in many other major cities. He found a focus for his passion. Then he needed to discover if there was interest in it. So he started a weekly basketball league for the homeless.
“I started by just bringing a basketball and playing some games. As time went on, I began to bring tables and chairs, pens and paper,” Gerber said. “I saw that after a few writers’ workshops that there was some interest in a street paper. We took off from there. When you see people come to these writers’ workshops you can see people’s minds turn on again. It’s not quantifiable, but there’s something there.”
Gerber continued, “Essentially, it’s an alternative to panhandling. I wanted the downtown area to be more hospitable for everyone. The idea is that it helps people transition back into society. While doing so, they ‘supervise’ the corner they’re on. A sort of ‘meet-n-greet’ to anyone.”
Gerber hopes to add more sections in coming months, including a youth section and spreading circulation to other Willamette Valley locations such as Roseburg and Salem.
With a Cheshire grin, Gerber turns and begins to dribble the ball downcourt to make a layup as two homeless men try to block his advance. Laughs echo off the concrete ceiling as the ball hits the backboard and rolls away. His charisma is palpable.
Wearing a tattered plaid flannel button-down and standing around 5-foot-4, it’s easy to see why one of these men uses the pen name “Hobbit.” Like many other people who live on the street, their given name is not who they are; their identity is what they call themselves.
“I got in a motorcycle wreck and got put away ’cause a girl died on my Harley,” Hobbit said. “I got out and lost my marriage and my kids. I’ve been on the streets ever since — 22 years.”
When asked where he sleeps when the weather is bad, Hobbit motions over to the alcove of the bridge.
“I understand it’s their (the police) park, and I understand about your rules,” Hobbit said. “But if the warming center isn’t open, and the Mission doesn’t treat people like human beings, so you can’t stay there, and it’s raining, where am I going to sleep? Then they want to give me a ticket for trying to stay dry? I don’t even have money for tobacco.”
Now, we’re not the best people in the world, but we don’t do any harm to nobody. We just want somebody to hear our side of the story.”