PERSPECTIVES 1
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Speak Up Magazine
gives a voice to the streets—it is written by and about those who have experienced homelessness. It is sold by vulnerablyhoused street vendors who become microbusiness owners, develop a passion for inspired entrepreneurship and get back on their feet financially.
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Matt Shaw Editor In Chief Maria Valdivieso Art Director Haley McCord Illustrator Photographers Deb Shaw, Peggi Knowe Editorial Team Hayley Pierpont, Leah Burnett, Peggi Knowe, Nate Casey Speak Up Magazine 501 Hawthorne Ln, Charlotte, NC 28204 Ph: 704-980-9885 For additional information about the production of this magazine, including design notes, printing details, photo and illustrations credits, visit us online at speakupmag.org/perspective We’d love to hear your feedback: magazine@speakupmag.org Speak Up Magazine is a 501(c)3 non-profit and is supported by donations of readers such as yourself. Donate at speakupmag.org.
Street Writer = Has experienced homelessness
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MY DAY TO DAY SW
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Day four after being released from federal
custody. I am under a bridge next to the Miami River on a walkway that borders it. Many other homeless call this home. It seems rightfully unfair that I am risking having my probation violated by being homeless. According to their own rules, they are supposed to have placed me into a halfway house to allow me time to get on my feet. Alas, this is not the case. They feebly attempted to place me into the Miami homeless shelter system which is beyond overwhelmed and has a waiting list that is months and months long. As per the conditions of my probation and keeping them, finding employment while being on the streets is a serious challenge. Just how will I maintain this versus the looming threat of an even longer incarceration? I am very stressed that the rigors of an “on the streets� kind of homelessness, combined with the inability to follow my probation conditions, is weighing so heavily upon my shoulders. I do not wish to return to prison. Who in their right mind would? I pray for some kind of miracle. That some door or window of opportunity will avail itself unto me. I have applied for employment through the computers at the library. Yet this in itself is not enough. The job search is made
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by Mark Gansert
even more difficult by the fact that I currently own one pair of prison-issue blue jeans with a broken zipper, a stained white cotton polostyle shirt, and a now dirty black t-shirt which is wildly inappropriate for my job search. Being homeless is not an easy thing. Being homeless with federal probation on top of it is unbearable. 2. That unsettling feeling has struck again. The feeling of abject loneliness as I lie once again under the drawbridge abutment. I think back to just a mere ten months ago. I was comfortable and safe in my apartment. I had a job, a dog, a car, a sweet loving girlfriend, and everything was normal. I felt like I could hold my head high again, unashamed of the taint of homelessness. Now look at me...lying on a cheap, green sleeping bag with a blue plastic tarp under it. Back to eating in the soup kitchens and the Miami Rescue Mission. Lining up to take a shower at a homeless shelter. Arguing with frustrated fellow homeless people, now in charge of doling out donated clothes over a pair of khaki cargo shorts that are missing the button to fasten the waist. Listening to former homeless pastors preach unto deaf ears; telling horror stories about their special crack-addicted Christianity. No one on our side
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of the fence is impressed with a crack addict turned preacher. I avoid everyone. I talk to no one at length. I’ve learned that nine times out of ten, that guy sitting next to me in the soup line is a douchebag. I’d like to give some of them the benefit of the doubt; yet in another bout of homelessness, my overwhelming urge is to use my fellow man as cannon fodder to better my own place in the concrete jungle of which I was rudely thrown. It is sheer survival of the fittest. Am I so wrong with these thoughts? Even with these thoughts in the soup line, I bandaged a man’s foot with my own limited medical supplies. I can’t let them suffer even if I despise most of them. Now as the sun begins to set, a chill begins to settle into me. The wind whips through the abutment. Another night under the drawbridge. I hope the things I’ve been doing to alleviate my current situation pan out. It’s really my only hope that I alone will pull myself out of this situation. I’ve never met a former homeless person who’s said, “Yeah, someone said to me ‘let me get you off the street.’” It’s always someone who is willing to end the cycle themselves. “Gee I hope a house falls out the sky from the homeless fairy,” said no sane person ever. I don’t want to sound bitter, even though I feel bitter. I can’t hide my feelings through my words. Resentment filters into me like a burning hatred which I cannot seem to rid myself of. 6
Whether I am lonely, frightened, angry, embittered, or just tired, you can find me under this drawbridge. You can find me however you want. You won’t find me hopeless. 3. Sometimes it’s hard to see the beauty around you when you’re living on the streets. Miami for all it’s ugliness is quite a beautiful city. It is a homeless Mecca. The year-round mild weather lends itself to the throngs of homeless. I’ve met people on the streets of Miami from Michigan, Alaska, Maine, and other points south. As I write this, I look out unto Biscayne Bay with the high-rise condominiums of Miami Beach two miles in the distance. It is a bright, sunny day with only puffy cotton ball clouds dotting the otherwise blue sky. I sit upon a concrete picnic table and watch the people walk their dogs. It make me feel sad as I had to give up my dog ten months ago. I also see my fellow homeless, some sleeping off the nights drunk or on drugs, others sunning themselves. All of them in this particular park await the evening meal from the Miami Rescue Mission which is five blocks away. I had to move away from the drawbridge. Early one morning, I was attacked by a couple of young thugs. They were trying to relieve me of my backpack. After a brief struggle and a particularly violent Aikido throw to one of my attackers, they retreated to lick their new wounds. My stress levels reached new heights
after this unprovoked attack. Soon I’d began noticing black eyes and other hallmarks of street fights upon other homeless white males. It turns out that with a little indirect questioning, it seems that these individuals have been targeting based on race. What makes it worse is that I see these cowards everyday in the line for the shower. They now cut a wide swath around me, all while giving me the evil eye. I moved from the drawbridge to the on-ramp of the MacArthur Causeway. A long concrete wall stretches the length of the Museum Park Metromover Station. A few other homeless sleep here. It is very loud as the hipster kids ride their crotch rocket motorcycles which all seem to be lacking mufflers. The Lamborghinis and Ferraris also blast onto the causeway toward the trendy nightclubs and swanky beach condos three miles away. I’d slept here two nights until I was attacked again. This time, it was a mentally-ill male with a weighted club. His feet shuffling near me awoke me with a jolt. I swung my feet out at his legs. I caught him in the shin. He cried out while swinging the club at me wildly. I launched up unto my feet catching the wrongly-wielded club. A strike to the mound of his forearm made him drop the club with a shriek of pain. I went animalistic, screaming primally, chasing him down the sidewalk with the club in my hands. The other homeless awoke watching
me chase the man for blocks. He ran into an abandoned building site and picked up two large hunks of concrete. Coming to my senses, I ran to the nearby transit station and dialed the police. When my attacker saw the groups of people all dialing 911 because he had started chucking the hunks of concrete wildly at me and the other people in the station, he ran away again. I told the 911 operator that I wasn’t waiting for the police and to let the people in the station tell them what happened. Another night’s sleep ruined. Now my stress level was at the red line. I wandered up unto the Metromover Station sidewalk saw an empty bench and laid down again. Not sleeping, but fuming. The next day, the other men who sleep under the Metromover platform (with the security guards’ tacit approval), Sam, the giant Virgin Islander and Carlos, the deaf Honduran, invited me with open arms to sleep under the platform. It was an offer that I couldn’t refuse. We have to vacate the area at or before 5 a.m. It is well lit and comes with security cameras. 4. We joke that it is our homeless condo. We hope for the best. Carlos is getting an implant for his hearing, and Sam is getting his knee rebuilt soon. I hope they get off these streets. They are the few shining lights in this city of beautiful ugliness.
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TRAVELING LIGHTER by Hayley Pierpont
The first thing that you notice about Velda
Harper is her voice. It’s smooth, clear, and before you know it, you have taken comfort in its tone. That same voice had called earlier in the afternoon and declared over the receiver that it had a story to tell. Velda’s voice – and story - speaks volumes in more way than one. In 2005, Velda was informed by her physician that, due to complications with her weight, her hip cartilage had deteriorated rapidly. “I was morbidly obese back then – nearly 400 pounds,” she explains. Her physician
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suggested gastric bypass surgery. He handed Velda the paperwork about the procedure, paperwork which she intended to discard as soon as she left the hospital. But she didn’t throw the paperwork away. Several years later, Velda underwent the recommended gastric bypass surgery, an operation that seemed to be successful until an intestinal blockage complicated her recovery. “It was like a downward spiral from then,” Velda recalls. Not long afterward, Velda’s trial with her health
Photos by Peggi Knowe
began to present issues at work and she was dismissed. Velda, who had bought a condo earlier that year, was also experiencing water leakages in her home and, as a consequence, her funds as well. After the Home Owner’s Association seized her condo, Velda soon found herself going from friend’s house to friend’s house to live. “I think the moment that I truly realized I was homeless was after I had just gotten out of the hospital after another complication, and realized, suddenly, I had no place to go – I
had no place that was my own. I had always lived my life in the role of ‘giver.’ To be in the reverse role was something that I found very difficult.” Many times, Velda grappled with the confusion and instability that came with her circumstances. Her faith, she says, helped her to endure in the times when she did not feel as if she could manage any longer. “So many people take the negative in their lives and wear it like a stone until it sinks them to the bottom. I just tried to keep my head above
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the water, and prayed for God to guide me through,” she says. Velda tried to reclaim the condo that she had previously owned, but discovered through a neighbor that parts of it had been gutted due to severe water damage. Velda tried to strike a deal with the Home Owner’s Association in order to correct this mistake, but was declined; and Velda refused to reclaim the property based on the fact that the property was severely altered from the way she originally purchased it. With the hope of reclaiming her former home dashed, Velda found fortune in the acquaintanceship of Ava Roseboro, the founder of Expected End Ministries. Having been introduced through a mutual friend, the two women enjoyed an afternoon of conversation during a fundraising benefit and exchanged information. “When I first met Ava,” Velda recalls, “I didn’t think anything would really come of our encounter. But she called me not long after and insisted that she felt we were connected in some way. No one truly knew the severity of my situation back then, and I was hesitant to share my story with her. It’s difficult sometimes to tell finally say out loud to someone what has happened to you; and for most of us, I think we carry with us these feelings of shame.” But Ava kept calling. Finally, Velda diverged some of the details of her situation, which eventually led to Ava offering Velda a home at the program’s Christian-based transitional house. This serendipitous act of kindness gave Velda the stability she had lacked for so long, and she soon found herself thriving in her new living environment.
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Velda is now the spiritual leader at the transitional house, which she shares with four other women, and takes pleasure in feeling that she has a supportive role in the house. “I’ve realized over the years that my calling from God is to be of help to people, to love people, and now I just want to do that in a way that honors God.” Before her health issues had resurfaced, Velda was a registered group therapy leader and had created her own program for those who were living with the struggles that sometimes arise from gastric bypass surgery. Now with her situation more secure, Velda is working to revamp the program into “Get Real from the Inside Out,” one that offers exercises in healthy living and tips on how to better achieve the balanced diet that many gastric bypass recipients are encouraged to maintain. She explains, “Being able to feed people is a great joy for me, and it’s something in life that I’ve always done. I love to cook and I’m pretty good at it, too. Having gone through the process of having to cope with the side effects of the surgery myself, I’m hoping to take my skills and apply them in a way that is beneficial to those who are going through that same process. I’m hoping to turn this into my life’s work.” Some days, Velda still struggles with the effects of her surgery and has difficulty moving due to the lack of cartilage in her hip, but she is optimistic about the future. “Its been a long journey, but I can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel, you know? I have gained a profound awareness of what it is like to not have a place to call home. I was fortunate in the fact that I’ve never had to sleep in the streets, but I know very well now
about the kind of life that comes out of being homeless, and I feel everyone should gain an understanding of this as well.” Velda’s story shows that the face of homelessness is not just the faces one sees under bridges or in shelters, but in our everyday lives...the person behind you in the grocery store, or beside you in traffic. Sadly, this is a reality all across the country, be it a
hard one to look squarely in the eye. But more than that, Velda’s story and person radiates the kind of resilience and humility that deepens identity and forges new paths. “So much of the bad that happened to me has brought me closer to God, and I think I am better for it.” Velda’s new direction in life is moving her toward her God, to a permanent home, and to a new reality.
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KIND AND WONDERFUL” by Bill Shaw
“I am not me. Put me in the sea and I will answer all your letters spontaneously.” Journal entry by Chuck Engle Photos by Deb Shaw
Chuck Engle passed away. Chuck was our first Speak Up magazine vendor in Traverse City, a wonderfully kind person. I remember being at the radio station with 12
him on WTCM. He had this slow, resonant radio voice and said all the right things. Thirty minutes after we were off the air, he received a job offer from a local bakery. Chuck loved Speak Up. It was, as his sister Judy
says, his “Briar Patch,” his home. He loved people, loved talking to them and loved writing. It gave him a feeling of self-worth and belonging.
Six months ago, Chuck showed up pretty intoxicated to a Speak Up meeting. He had been picked up for drinking and it was his third parole violation which meant five years in prison. But the judge let him off. “Chuck, what am I going to do with you? I have eighty more just like you. I’m not going to lock you up. Get out of here.” It was a huge relief for Chuck. He had never stopped drinking while on probation. Now he could drink openly again. The Judge’s decision seemed sensible at the time, and it may have been for some, but not for Chuck. He died less than six months later. Freedom to drink wasn’t freedom...it was his bondage. He drank himself to death, kind and wonderful to the end. He called me a few months ago. He said he was moving north to work with his brother in a log cabin business near Petoskey. He was going to quit drinking up north and, in preparation, he drank more than ever.
to die.” He responded, “I am not going to die! Don’t worry!” And I can hear him saying it with the forcefulness he used when he truly believed something or, more likely, that he wanted to believe. “Ok,” she said and believed him too. We had some good laughs together. Chuck told some great stories. His life was full of strange tales, but I suppose all lives different from our own seem strange. And his was different. His father was a decorated Air Force fighter pilot, a Commander; a red phone was always in their house with a direct line to the Pentagon. The family was never in one place long. Chuck was a high school football star. His older brother played for Clemson, but Chuck was just as good and smarter, says his sister. He was a draft reject that kept him out of Vietnam. When he was nineteen, he did a oneyear sentence on a chain gang for marijuana possession—didn’t take much in Florida in the 60’s. A psychiatrist told Chuck’s mom that Chuck would never recover physiologically from that year.
Chuck was able to spend his last days with his sister, Judy. Four days before he died, she told him he was killing himself. “You’re going 13
Alcohol was part of the Engle Family. When Chuck’s dad returned from Vietnam, he drank. He drank like Chuck drank before he died, as if he wanted to wash everything away. The family joined Al Anon. They prayed for him for months. They showered him with their love and their prayers. It was like a revival. And one day, Chuck’s dad quit. He just stopped. He found peace. He bought golf clubs for the boys; and the boys, Chuck was 27 at the time, quit the drugs and drinking too. It was a time of spiritual renewal for the Engle family. When their dad died, everyone drifted back into their old ways.
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Chuck worked in the Merchant Marine. Started drinking there, he said. Lost his wife, lost his home. Ended up on the streets of one of the most beautiful cities in America, Traverse City, Michigan. Slept in a tent for a couple of years, bounced in and out of shelters, wore a bandana, was always clean, always neat, always hopeful. Chuck bought a copy Speak Up from one of our active vendors just a day before he died. They shared some laughs, but I am sure Chuck was wishing he was the one selling. I wish he was too.
The Other Side by Bill McIlmail
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On the other side of town, where stones cry out from the blisters they have caused. Not uptown, but the other side, where they fly the signs, night and day. Not downtown, no, the other side, where houses made of cards have all fallen down. The underside of town where “good” folks drive right by Jesus standing on the side. The darker side where demons dance under dim streetlights, and in people’s minds. The other side, the side where no one chooses to sleep upon the cold, hard ground.
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by Matt Shaw Illustrations by Haley McCord
Sometimes, one American cent goes further than a $100 bill. It is that way for Julia who calls the coins that she finds “pennies from God.”
Julia lives in an industrial warehouse storage room owned by an old friend. Her storage room—a big closet, really—has a door that locks; and over the years, she has retreated there often to escape domestic abuse, eviction and living on the streets. She is there now and has been for a year. She has tried to turn her closet into a home. Sometimes she calls it that, home, but then catches herself and says, “It isn’t a home; it’s just a little room.” In it, she has a dry place to sleep at night and a sense of safety. There is a small heater, a mini-fridge, and microwave and a mattress on the floor. Most nights of the week when she’s safely ensconced in her room, one of the older warehouse workers lets himself into the
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building to harass her. Frankie knocks on her door, tap, tap, tap, like a psycho from a slasher movie, tap, tap, tap. Frankie wants to come in, or he wants her to come out. She doesn’t open the door for him, because by this time he’s had a dozen beers. He’s punched her before, and she’s terrified of him. She won’t report the abuse because she doesn’t want to jeopardize her place. The heavy metal door keeps him out. Even with the door locked, she isn’t safe from his words. “You’re an ugly old hag,” he calls through the door, tapping on it relentlessly, “Open up! No one loves you anyway, you old hag.” When she talks about this later, her body is wracked with deep sobs, and she says, “It’s true, I am old and ugly. No one wants to be around me.” (Actually, she is charismatic and beautiful. On the verge of sixty and with a careworn face, her
blonde hair, deep brown eyes and prominent cheekbones reveal a timeless beauty that hardship will never extinguish.) She’s been abused, in every way, since girlhood. The nightly raging from beyond the door is normal to Julia.
makes her “feel like a real person.” Everything she needs for the day goes into a ratty, floral-print rolling backpack. It is ripped and scuffed, but it will work until she can get a new one. From morning to evening, it carries her essentials – money, medication, extra clothes,
From the far side of the room, she huddles on her mattress looking past her piled suitcases and stuffed animals. As dark clouds move across her mind, she clenches her fists with rage and fear. “Am I ever going to get away from this?” she wonders. There is a gallon-size plastic zipper bag in the corner of the room. It is full of pennies— brown and worn, coppery gold, new and crisp, jagged and worn. For now, Frankie’s pounding on the door is muted, and her ears re-tune to a divine music. “My pennies from God,” she says. “I have found hundreds through the years.” copies of Speak Up magazine that she sells – her rolling closet, medicine chest and resupply store. She has her eye on new one, a good one, that costs $150. And as she’s trundling along, dragging her old bag, wondering if she’ll get a new one, there she sees it—glinting up from the edge of the sidewalk, a shiny copper penny — a promise to her unsaid prayer. Yes, she will get that bag she’s been dreaming about.
In the morning, she wakes up and takes the bus to the YMCA for her daily shower which
She sells Speak Up Magazine to earn money for herself, but she is constantly looking for a job with a more regular rhythm of income. Selling the magazine is fine, but it also
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leaves her unprotected from harassment. In the process of selling the magazine every weekday, she’s been cursed at, insulted and threatened. “If you don’t leave this spot, we’re going to beat you to a pulp,” a trio of crack addicts told her a few months ago. So she moved a few blocks away, head and spirits sagging just wanting some peace, praying for things to get better. Then she saw it. Wedged in the sidewalk crack: a penny. She picked it up, knowing something good was going to happen now. Later that day, the addicts came back and told her they were sorry. Now they watch out for her. Just last week, she was trying to convince one of them to quit drugs and come sell magazines and get his life back together. “Julia, that sounds like something I can do. I can do that. I am going to do that. I can do that.” He kept repeating it, trying to persuade himself.
The men in her life have mostly been bad. Her husbands, there were more than one, were alcoholics or abusers. When she was married 18
to the fireman, he would beat and hit her until the neighbors called the police. When they showed up, the fireman would stand on the porch with his buddies and they’d laugh and joke together for awhile. Julia would cower inside. Finally one day she ran away – ran out of the house into the park across the street and never went back. For the last couple years, she’s been finding the pennies. During the day, she puts them in her pocketbook. At night, she empties them out into the bag in the storage room. “If I see my pennies, I know the Lord is with me because when I am afraid that’s how he says, ‘Yes, Julia, here I am.’” She says. During one of Julia’s hardest winters, when her son was younger, her siblings turned on her viciously. She cries as she remembers when her teenage son was invited to her sister’s house for holidays but she was not. Even after he was already there, they called and asked her to come by, and met her on the porch. She could see the holiday party happening behind them through the open door—the decorated tree, Christmas sweaters, the rich smell of the honey ham. “We wanted to tell you face-to-face that your son can stay here as long as he wants, but you aren’t welcome in this house. You’re a worthless drunk.” That was twenty years ago. Huge tears pour down her face as she talks about it today. “Why did they say that to me? How could they?” She pauses and closes her eyes and takes a breath, her penny pocketbook clutched in her hands. “But I know I need to forgive them. I did forgive them. God forgives me so now I forgive them.” But then she’s alone, waiting alone for a bus,
bouncing her backpack down an alley, and the darkness sweeps back in. She hears the curses and insults, she relives the abuse, it all swells together and threatens to overwhelm her. There was the sister Julia took in, the one who had an affair with Julia’s husband and conspired to put Julia out onto streets. She ended up homeless while the sister and husband stayed together. The sister died years ago, and Julia can’t ask her why, can’t cry out her pain, can’t demand an apology, can’t even give forgiveness.
from the Divine, her assurance of redemption. She stops to pick it up, battered and alone. As she does, that quiet little voice within, a truer voice than all the others, the truest voice ever known, grows louder and assures her— and she knows it with absolute certainty, as if her life depends on it, because it does—that everything will get better. She will know peace. The best is yet to come. All that was lost will be restored, promises will be fulfilled, forgiveness will prevail, and her true family awaits in heavenly courts, where the penny-dotted alleys give way to streets paved in gold.
Those are the worst moments, when everything is black and hope is hard to see. She just wants to scream, to cuss, and make someone care. The homelessness, the broken backpack, the hundreds of inconveniences of being on the streets, the decades of abuse and rejection all conspire to steal her hope and undermine her will to move forward and kill the desire to take another step—to take another breath. And when all is lost, in that moment of accumulated agony and invisible desperation, she sees it. One more penny. There upon the sidewalk, a little copper promise, an invitation to forgiveness, a whisper
PENNIES ON THE GROUND by Julia
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To all that drop their pennies on the ground, There is someone who will find them all around. It is a faith, a feeling, so free, To find a pile of dirty brown, beat up, pitiful pennies just for me. I ask the Lord to help me see them every day, And there they are all along my way. It is a wonderful feeling to know, through those pennies, God’s love He does show. 19
by Chef Matt Warren
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HOPE WITHOUT A HOME
What is hope from a homeless person’s
perspective? 1. I hope I get some money. 2. I hope I get some food. 3. I hope I get some clothes. 4. I hope some one talks to me. 5. I hope someone sees past the outer me and sees that I’m not much different than them. The stereotype is that the homeless only want drugs and alcohol; but just like those who have homes and jobs, they also hope for a brighter tomorrow. We overlook the fact that “homeless people” are people first. My hope is that one day we will not see people living on the street. I was a pastor to homeless people, and now I am homeless myself. In the beginning it was choice to help me relate to them, but four years later, I’m just another homeless guy. When people out here say they can’t move up in the world...I believe them. It’s not as easy for a homeless man or woman to just up and get a job. We’ve heard the stories of people overcoming the odds,
but reading about their struggles to overcome and living the struggle are two different things. It’s tough on the street. Especially if your mental capacity is shot to hell (literally). My body has taken a lot of abuse over the years, and I haven’t learned to rest well or take good care of my body. I am trying to change that now. I live in Chicago, but I came back to Charlotte just in case I had to have hernia surgery and so I could stay with family. My goals are to get healthy, rest a bit, and then go back up north. I’m a little scared if you want the truth. I don’t know what taking care of myself looks like. I’m not sure I know what rest is. I hope I can make it. You will never know the world the homeless live in unless you go there. You will never see them as people unless you listen to them. You may walk by them thinking they’re a hopeless cause. Most of the men and women on the streets are some of the most hopeful people I’ve ever met. Why? Because hope is all they have.
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OCCUPATIONS This puzzle consists of general occupations and the names of specific people from history, literature and the Bible. Proper names have been indicated with an asterisk [*].
by Iris Shaw
1 2
3
4
Across
5
6 7 8
9
10 11
12
13
Down
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15 16 17 18 19 20
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4) tax collector* 5) public transporta tion provider 8) car repairman 11) spinach-loving fictional sailor* 12) tent maker* 13) one who does wiring 14) one who digs ore 15) meat cutter 17) cloth maker 20) fictional detective* 21) person who gives lessons
1) crop grower 2) a “number cruncher� 3) shepherd* 6) man who planted apple trees* 7) fictional lumberjack* 8) bricklayer 9) teacher of the deaf* 10) semi driver 12) one who enforces law 15) hair cutter 16) letter carrier 18) bread maker 19) carpenter*
SPEAK UP NEWS INSP AWARDS
SUBSCRIPTIONS ALPHA Speak Up is now available by subscription. Sign up for a monthly subscription, starting at just $5, and the magazine will show up in your mailbox every month. The best part: Speak Up’s hardworking street entrepreneurs still benefit from every sale. Sign up at speakupmag.org/subscribe.
Speak Up is a member of the International Network of Street Papers, a global collaborative of over 100 street publications. Speak Up was selected as a finalist in in the annual awards competition the in following categories:
STUDENT OF THE YEAR
“Best Design” — Credit for this goes to art director Maria (see “Student of the Year”). We believe that rich images, liberal use of white space, and welcoming typefaces creates an inviting and personal reading experience. “Best Vendor Essay” — Dustin LaPres, who writes for Speak Up from Traverse City, MI. His authentic and illuminating essay “Requiem for a Lost Generation,” is a heart wrenching remembrance of friends who have passed on. He writes of “...the brutality I have experienced, or the multiple incarcerations, the periods of gnawing hunger and near frostbitten extremities, the day-today filthiness...” Read the complete essay at speakupmag.org/requiem.
Congratulations to Maria Valdivieso from Central Piedmont Community College. For her internship work with Speak Up, she was selected at CPCC’s workplace learning Student of the Year. (That’s out of 500+ students who participate in the program!) Her incredible work as our Art Director and designer has made this publication possible. Amazing job, Maria!
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“People are like books, unknown until they are opened.� - Richard Paul Evans
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