Systemic Change: Sisters of the Road

By Orion Lumiere
Sisters Of The Road, Development Associate
February 8, 2009

Founded in 1979, Sisters Of The Road uses nonviolence to support community-driven solutions to the calamities of homelessness and poverty. Sisters' cafe is open to everyone, serving nutritious meals for $1.50 or in exchange for labor or food stamps. Sisters also provides job training, free U.S. mail, messaging and phone service, and support to children and families.

While Sisters’ cafe is well-known, less so is our Systemic Change Program, committed to identifying and implementing immediate and long-term solutions to problems faced by people experiencing homelessness both in Portland, Oregon and nationwide.

Sometimes Sisters’ supporters have a difficult time understanding why we focus on systemic change instead of just feeding people. It’s because, through listening to our customers over the past 30 years, we have learned that the pain of hunger and homelessness is often outstripped by the pain of ‘social exclusion’ -- a combination of marginalization and economic disadvantage that crushes people’s spirits, health, and dreams.

Sisters’ Research Project, which collected and coded 515, 2-hour long interviews with people who have experienced homelessness, found that people experiencing homelessness often suffer from a layered, tangled set of long-term problems including low incomes, substance abuse, low skills, high crime environments, unemployment and underemployment, a lack of social/interpersonal support and family support, and bad health and disabilities (this research is available for free at www.sistersoftheroad.org/voices).

Our research is mirrored by that done by academics who have found that people experiencing homelessness and social exclusion have been shown to suffer “worse or very much worse” health outcomes than the general population, including chronic and infectious illness, accidents and victimization, cold exposure, depression and anxiety, suicide and death. One study found that compared to housed people, people on the streets were 35 times more likely to commit suicide, 150 times more likely to be assaulted, and 25 times more likely to die.

Our customers can confirm that people are dying, literally laying down and dying, from economic injustice. This is why Sisters’ purpose has always been to build community; because combating social exclusion goes to the root of the multilayered problems of poverty and homelessness.

Our Systemic Change Program promotes social inclusion by demanding that the voices of people experiencing homelessness are at the table where policies that affect their lives are made, and by giving our community the skills and confidence they need to advocate for themselves.

For example, this year the Program’s objectives are: to tool up our Civic Action Group - a group made up entirely of homeless, or formerly homeless people - in peacekeeping, civil disobedience, giving public testimony, sitting on neighborhood and City committees, coordinating effectively with allies, and developing cross-class leadership skills such as meeting facilitation, communication and information sharing; to work toward ending the Anti-Camping and Sit-Lie laws in Portland, Oregon, both laws that criminalize our poorest community members merely for sleeping and existing in public space; to have our Research Project used by advocacy groups, service providers educational programs, and political leaders; and to participate in the Western Regional Advocacy Project’s (WRAP) Without Rights campaign to bring pressure to bear on local governments to stop and dismantle their discriminatory programs against people in poverty.

Sisters recognizes that our ability to affect change is stronger when we partner with other organizations, such as WRAP, PPEHRC, and WEAP. To advance our community organizing aims and get the voices of our community and research participants heard, we have built relationships with Portland State University, the University of Washington, City Commissioner Randy Leonard, Jobs with Justice, Oregon Action, among many others.

If you are a person who has experienced homelessness and are interested in participating in the Civic Action Group at Sisters Of The Road, please call Devin DiBernardo at (503) 222-5694 ext. 16, or email her at Devin@sistersoftheroad.org. The Civic Action Group meets every month on the second and fourth Saturdays between 12 noon and 3pm.