2010 2010-2012 Your donation directly benefits the vendors. Please buy only from badged$10 vendors INSIDE OLD How we got here –p. 2 Letting light in – p. 3 Street-paper conference – p.4 ICPJ promotes tolerance – p. 5 FAVORITES Rock steady, Jerry Mack – p. 6 Haiti nurses – p. 6 Underground economy – p. 7 COLLECTION By the Pound – p. 7 Dumpster diving – p. 8 Camp Take Notice eviction – p. 9 Lambchop’s street art – p. 12 Explaining to kids – p. B1 Cycling in Ann Arbor – p. B2 Nick Tobier creates – p. B2 Bills that bind – p. B3 Community forum – p. B4 D’s T~Time – p. B5 Professor’s past – p. B6 Drawn to disasters – p. B7 Rissa’s journey – p. B9 Teacher humor – B10 Poetry – B12 www.Groundcovernews.com 2 OPINION Welcome to Best of Groundcover Culling through past issues, I found Lounsbury, Lee Alexander and Andrew The support of our steady advertisers so many pieces I wanted to share with Nixon have been indispensable in gives us the financing we need to get you – way too many to include here. producing Groundcover each month the editing and layout services we need by Susan Beckett I encourage you to peruse old issues with limited resources. Regular office to produce a high-quality publication Publisher on our website by selecting News then volunteers Sandy Schmoker, David on a regular basis. I especially want to Archives from the main menu. Thank Helmbold, Marquise Williams, Corliss thank the People’s Food Co-op, By the you to all the people who contribute Irrer, Greg Hoffman, Erica (Blom) Pound, Kiwanis Thrift Store, Pizza Pino articles, poems, puzzles, cartoons and Morell, Lucy Miller, Lisa Sonnenberg, and First Baptist, First Presbyterian You are reading the first expansion of photographs to us, and thank you to Amber Keyes and Lee Alexander and Trinity Lutheran churches for their the Groundcover product line beyond those of you who took the time to vote have made it possible for vendors to long-term and significant advertising our regular monthly issues. This is but on the selections and help us decide restock their papers throughout the commitments to us. one aspect of growth since our first what to include in this anthology. day and have also provided coffee and edition hit the streets in July of 2010. companionship when vendors take The religious community has been Our monthly circulation has tripled The start-up funding and support of breaks. wonderful about allowing Groundcover since our first year and so has the 1Matters was critical to getting us off to be sold in and around their facilities, number of people selling Groundcover the ground. Office space provided by Our social work volunteers, Shoshana welcoming our vendors as valued each month. In addition to selling the Bethlehem United Church of Christ Mandel, Greg Pratt and Barbara Blom, members of the community. And of paper, many of our vendors now also provided the stability and foundation along with the U-M School of Social course, all of you – our readers – who write for the paper and sell advertising we needed for steady growth, as well Work interns they supervise and have become friends to some of those in it. Many have taken courses from us as a supportive community that we members of our Social Support team, who sell you Groundcover each month. and in college to improve their skills treasure. connect our vendors with needed Our relationship with you is what keeps and enhance their employability. Many resources in the community. Many us going. This is truly a community who used to sell Groundcover are now Countless hours of volunteer time more volunteers write grant requests, project. Thank you! employed elsewhere. from our main editorial staff, Laurie bake for special celebrations, design ads, and do outreach projects. Real Change, microcredit and Groundcover by Susan Beckett After a couple of years of lending “Real Change! Real Change!” exclaimed slums in Nairobi. By the end of 2007, money to the very poor so they could the man on the Seattle sidewalk as they had 170,000 savers and 60,000 GROUNDCOVER start their own small businesses, Jamii I passed through the supermarket borrowers. Bora experimented with offering MISSION: doors. I was confused. Did he think beggars small items like ribbons that I’d be giving him slugs? Upon learning Microcredit offers the poorest of they could sell instead of begging. It he was homeless and offering to sell the poor a chance at economic self- Groundcover News was immediately apparent that most me a newspaper, I eagerly traded my sufficiency. For many it is a path people preferred selling to begging exists to create opportunity dollar for his paper and had an aha of redemption; an opportunity to and many of them went on to become and a voice for low-income moment: this was a brilliant application overcome poor choices made or successful entrepreneurs. people while taking action of microenterprise here in the United circumstances thrust upon them earlier States! in their lives. They have a saying at to end homelessness and Joyce Wairimu eventually opened six Jamii Bora: “We have fast climbers out businesses and now employs many of poverty. Twenty years of working on solutions of poverty and we have slow climbers, her former colleagues. Wilson Maina, to global poverty familiarized me with but everyone is a climber.” That’s my Susan Beckett, Publisher once a thief, now owns four businesses. microcredit projects of many forms. wish for Groundcover – that it provides [email protected] He scours the streets for boys like him The Grameen bank became famous an economic toe-hold for our vendors and has convinced hundreds to get when it and Mohammed Yunus won to use in their climb, and the wisdom Lee Alexander, Editor started in a business instead of stealing. the Nobel Peace Prize, yet it was a and awareness we as a community need [email protected] Jamii Bora started in 1999 by making Kenyan micro-lender, Jamii Bora, that to nurture their efforts. loans to 50 beggars in one of the worst Andrew Nixon, Associate Editor sprang to my mind. Contributors Destiny Brown Martha Brunell Ethical Egoism – the curse we share La Shawn Courtwright by James Manning Our country is in an economic Shelley DeNeve Groundcover Vendor Ethical egoism is the idea that the depression. People are in dire need Rissa Haynes pursuit of wealth and power by any William Lopez of jobs, but rather than prioritizing Laurie Lounsbury Have you ever heard the saying money means necessary is justified. It is an the creation of jobs, our government Carolyn Lusch is the root of all evil? When you give it epithet for the dark side of humanity. opts to bail out multi-billion-dollar Danielle Mack some thought, you can’t help but come Throughout history, the impoverished James Manning corporations who for the most Shawn Story to the conclusion that it most certainly have been victimized by those with part go ahead and lay off workers Karen L. Totten is. The human species is not mature wealth and power. Every day we see anyway. There are times when I get to James Varani enough to handle currency and power, examples of hatred towards the poor Clayton Williams wondering, “Who is really running this evidenced by the abuses we witness and the glorification of the rich. If country?” and “Are things ever gonna Letters to the Editor: every day. We might think that we are you take one who is homeless and [email protected] improve while all this greed is around on the right track since technology compare them to a drug dealer in terms us?” Story or Photo Submissions: is rapidly evolving, but the sad truth of respect from common people, the [email protected] is that we are as savage as ever, and dealer receives better treatment, all Humanity has been on a downhill immoral acts are connected to money because of the money that he or she moral decline ever since the concept Advertising: in one way or another. Whenever we makes. Being a vendor for this paper, [email protected] of value spawned the accumulation of can’t explain our actions, we rationalize, I see this philosophy in practice every wealth. Clearly the world has to change. www.groundcovernews.com and today the excuses for the pursuit day in the actions of the people who I despair that will never happen. We facebook.com/groundcover of wealth and power have become the ignore and even laugh at the cause we don’t think about the world around 423 S. 4th Ave, Ann Arbor widely-practiced philosophy of “ethical stand for. If the tables turn, then it’s a 734-972-0926 egoism.” different story. see CURSE, page 3 www.groundcovernews.com RELIGION 3 It’s the cracks that let the light in Although the hacienda has been cracked adobe illuminated by the full for, sell, and pray over Groundcover. restored with love and care in recent moon as it set. The cracked abode and Cohen’s words ask us to reconsider how by Rev. Dr. years, it is still prone to cracks as the moonlight reminded me of a quote I we view our cracks. Do we attempt Martha Brunell desert land around it shifts. I have been tucked in my journal and brought with to hide them or mask them with our Pastor, Bethlehem there twice this year. Both weeks have me on retreat. These words are credited shame? Or do we remember the light United Church of featured a brilliant full moon.