Acronym

The man was eyeing me patiently as he stood by the Metro escalator with his stack of newspapers in hand, waiting for me to get close enough for a word. “Paper?” he asked politely. I was about to shake my head. I’d seen the newspaper, Street Sense, being sold for $1 apiece on corners throughout Washington, DC, and had bought one only once before. I couldn’t remember any impression, so I thought I’d save the buck.

Then I glimpsed the tagline: “Where the Washington area’s poor and homeless earn and give their two cents.” The man didn’t push; he simply stood at a careful distance, showing me the cover page: “No Vet Left Behind: Many Homeless Vets Unaware of Aid.” “Dalai Lama Reaches Out to Women’s Shelter.” He smiled tentatively, and I traded him dollar for paper.

On the inside cover were the most interesting stories of all—how Street Sense came to be and the “code of conduct” (which I had just seen in partial action) under which its vendors and organization operate. Written and produced primarily by volunteers and the homeless themselves, the paper contains news, poetry, artwork and powerful stories of a side of society familiar to too many but recognized by too few.

Originally, several local volunteers asked the National Coalition for the Homeless to launch a street newspaper to raise awareness of community poverty and provide a worthwhile product that the homeless could sell with dignity for income and career training. In 2003, the organization finally did, spinning it off into its own nonprofit corporation in March 2005. Its vendor base grew, too, and it now offers 50 homeless men and women a chance to earn money and self-respect by selling the biweekly publication and even subscriptions.

Twenty-five other cities—among them Boston, Chicago, Montreal and Nashville--offer street newspapers, many of them high quality enough to be recognized by politicians, major corporations and celebrities. Often run seemingly on spare change and advocating “radical transparency,” these publications actually are “innovative social businesses and grassroot projects” whose Web sites use the latest in social media—gritty blogs, wikis, virtual literary workshops accessed through public library computers--to further spread their messages about the plight of the homeless and what people can do to help.

One example is a YouTube video (halting, unfortunately) created by documentary filmmaker Amy Sedgwick about the Seattle-based street paper, Real Change. It embodies what its executive director, Tim Harris, describes as “what's transformational about Real Change.”

According to the North American Street Newspaper Association and Scotland-based International Network of Street Papers, which jointly run the Street News Service, “Street papers … provide editorial voices missing from mainstream media by including consistent reporting on poverty, as well as the writing and visual arts of economically disenfranchised people.”

As the association community begins moving from conversation to action in determining its collective and individual roles in social responsibility, tapping into the non-traditional knowledge sources of the disenfranchised—indeed, opening our minds and re-examining our likely biases toward these information sources—is more relevant and necessary than ever.