By Brian Davis
Michael Stoops loved street newspapers. He was the community organizer for the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), the founder of the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA), and helped to foster the development of many papers, including the paper I edit in Cleveland, Ohio.
For a guy who organized homeless people for a living, the street newspaper is the ultimate expression of success for those struggling with poverty. Just as the pamphleteers did at the founding of our country, the better street papers amplify the voice of those who have a hard time finding housing, while also putting some money in their pockets. Michael believed there is no better tool than one that can provide income and be a venue for progressive causes.
I know that Michael was so proud of the paper in D.C. that he helped get started. When the National Coalition for the Homeless was on the brink during the economic downturn and Michael was the acting Executive Director, he always found time for Street Sense. He made sure that the office was available for the vendors to buy papers, even on the weekend. He would attend meetings with the vendors, because the paper was so important to his work.
I believe that Street Sense is the finest street newspaper in the country and a wonderful tribute to Michael Stoops. D.C. has a big pedestrian population that can support many more vendors than we can do in a market like Cleveland, which is facing population decline, or Phoenix, where no one walks, or Los Angeles, where even the few pedestrians are too snooty to talk to poor people. Street Sense has committed to keeping the content focused on poverty and not sold out by presenting only happy news like some others.
I helped Michael with starting NASNA back in the 1990s in an attempt to spread this wonderful concept throughout the U.S. and Canada. Cleveland advocates had begun publishing a street newspaper in 1993 as one of the few papers in America behind San Francisco, New York, Boston and Chicago. Michael was always willing to comment on stories that we were writing to give our volunteer writers a national spin.
We held summer conferences that I helped organize to bring together editors and vendors from around the country in order to exchange information and learn from each other. We met in Chicago, Boston, Edmonton, Montreal, Seattle, San Francisco — and Cleveland hosted the third conference in 1999. Michael had to deal with the headaches at the Canadian border for the conferences when our vendors with criminal backgrounds were hassled through the process of obtaining an extra temporary permit ($350 each) to that said they would not be welcome in Canada for more than five days. Michael always made sure that homeless people were a part of the street newspaper movement and the conferences. He paid for their airfare, even when they dressed up as a cow on the plane to San Francisco in order to win the vending competition that we always had as part of the conference. And he made sure that they were represented on the executive committee of NASNA.
At our conference in Cleveland, Michael taught advocates about civil rights struggles across the country, including the lawsuit we fought against the City of Cleveland to allow our vendors to be able to sell on the streets without getting a city-issued license ($200 each) before they could start selling the paper.
Stoops was always working to give a hand to homeless people. He wanted the people who were drafting laws to to hear from those who have to live with these laws. Stoops wanted those living in poverty to be at the forefront in deciding how to govern themselves. This is why he loved NCH, which has always had current or formerly homeless people on the board and had at least three executive directors with previous experience of homelessness. He liked partnering with self-governing groups like the Community for Creative Non-Violence shelter, the vendors at Street Sense and Food Not Bombs.
Michael voraciously read everything he could about homelessness, including every street newspaper he could find. The street newspaper movement that Stoops fostered had the added benefit of being able to end someone’s homelessness. A vendor can earn money to pay rent or pay off a utility bill and educate the public about eliminating poverty. He will be missed and the loss of his voice on the national stage will leave a huge hole to fill.
Our White House
By Sean Cononie
Michael Stoops was a great man, a legend. He was The Head of State to all of us who are homeless and those of us who serve the homeless. He worked like I did: 24-hours a day and taking naps at his desk. He took a stroke about two years ago and never was able to regain the life he had in the past. This man devoted every waking hour to the United States of America, to the people who suffer from poverty and mental illness, to the veterans, to the chronically homeless and to every single child who was homeless.
This man got all us advocates on the same page and never hushed those of us who thought outside of the box. He kept us able to keep up the good fight. He was my mentor.
We love you and we thank you Michael, for all of the work you did, for I guess four decades or longer. You kept your office close to the White House and when I called you, it was like calling our White House. You never took credit for the work you did, but this is the time we give you credit for helping to save mankind.
Your work started so many new agencies and you most likely are the best community organizer in our history. Goodbye my friend and thank you for everything.
