Bill of Rights for Unhoused People

A great day! I met with the Core Committee for the Homeless Bill of Rights being crafted for Oregon. This is Art Rios, a member of the committee, an organizer and advocate for unhoused people. His job is outreach, and he and his team have conducted over five hundred interviews with unhoused people in Portland, documenting their struggles, their hopes, and their needs. I offered to take pictures and collect stories to help change the public perception of unhoused people, and I'm in!

There is already a terrific project through Sisters of the Road, supporting unhoused people in telling their stories. It's called Empowered Voices Media, and there are about forty videos, some of which are available on Youtube, telling individual people's stories. A good example, a three-minute video incorporating photographs and narrative, is here. What I have in mind is much simpler--still photographs and stories, in a format not unlike that I've been using on Blip, and it looks like we can work together. I'm very excited about the possibilities.

Then tonight I went to meet a stray cat a friend has been caring for. She's a beautiful little long-haired dilute calico somebody declawed and spayed and then abandoned. My friend hadn't realized till I got there that he and the little cat are seriously bonded. He has been feeding her for nearly a year now, and she clung to him and wanted nothing to do with me. He has never owned a cat and was surprised to discover that he really didn't want to part with her. I think I persuaded him to keep her and move her from the porch into his apartment. I'll keep looking.