Arts and Culture
Street Spirit Newspaper Secures New Partner, Seeks Community Support
There are few media outlets that exist purely to support and raise the voices of the homeless community.
“Street Spirit,” a newspaper serving the Bay Area’s homeless, breaks mainstream media trends by reporting on the issues most pertinent to homeless people, while also providing a source of income for nearly 100 people who live on the streets.
Since March of 1995, the newspaper has been published through funding provided by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that promotes peace with justice.
That changed this July, however, when AFSC informed Street Spirit editor Terry Messman that the organization would cease its funding as of Dec. 31, 2016.
“It was devastating to hear the news. It was completely unexpected and out of the blue,” said Messman, who began his work with AFSC in 1986 as the director of the origination’s Homeless Organizing Project.
According to Eisha Mason, AFSC’s associate regional director of the West Region, the decision to cut ties with Street Sprit wasn’t an easy one. But due to a reduction in funding, she said, AFSC must now put three of its programs to rest: a farm worker program in Stockton, an American Indian program in Seattle, and Project HOPE, which publishes Street Spirit.
“The decision to end a program is always very painful for us, since the communities we work with experience extreme injustice, and this is certainly true of Street Spirit,” Mason said. “We did our best to be responsible by setting a date for ending the program that was six months out, with the hope that the local community would be able to support the newspaper.”
Now, it appears AFSC’s timeline may have worked out as they had hoped. On Sept. 22, Youth Spirit Artworks (YSA), a Berkeley-based art jobs training program, announced its decision to take the newspaper under its wings.
“This is so exciting in terms of injecting energy into the newspaper. At the same time, we are absolutely committed to keeping the paper as it is, fulfilling its mission and vision,” said Sally Hindman, executive director at YSA.
Under the new partnership, YSA will be involved with six dimensions of the newspaper’s publication. This includes working on the Street Spirit Advisory Board, establishing a weekly youth writing group with homeless and underserved youth, working with Messman, and advertising art for sale and YSA events.
In addition, youth involved with YSA will sell the paper along with the silkscreened shirts and tote bags that they make and sell. They will also write in the paper about their own community organizing campaigns.
“This is something we relate to. It’s a paper that tells us about what’s going on in the streets and our lives,” said artist and YSA participant Michaela Duphay.
Messman said he is equally pleased with the partnership. “(YSA) is committed just as we are to giving a voice to homeless people and showcasing their humanity and artwork. It’s a perfect match of organizations.”
Since AFCS announced it would no longer fund the newspaper, Street Spirit has already received thousands of dollars in donations, which have helped guarantee that the paper will continue for the next 12 months.
But Street Spirit advocates and Hindman, who in 1995 first suggested that Messman create the paper, say community support is still needed.
“We are thinking of doing a crowd-funding campaign, or reaching out to major funders in the city to say ‘look, if we want to keep the poor alive in this age of gentrification, this is the place to go,” said Amir Soltani, a human rights advocate and co-director of the film “Dogtown Redemption,” which exposed injustices against the homeless community following the closure of a West Oakland recycling center.
Soltani and others are now urging the community to donate and rally together to keep the newspaper running. In the meantime, Messman said the future of Street Spirit looks bright.
“In the last 20 years, we haven’t asked for public funding, but now we have to,” Messman said. “It’s been a rollercoaster ride since that near despair I felt in July to the true hope I feel now.”
Visit youthspiritartworks.org and thestreetspirit.org for more information on how to help.
Activism
New Oakland Moving Forward
This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

By Post Staff
Since the African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the City of Oakland’s share of the Alameda County Coliseum Complex, we have been documenting the positive outcomes that are starting to occur here in Oakland.
Some of the articles in the past have touched on actor Blair Underwood’s mission to breathe new energy into the social fabric of Oakland. He has joined the past efforts of Steph and Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Green Day, Too Short, and the Oakland Ballers.
This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-Elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.
These visits represent a healthy exchange of ideas and plans to resuscitate Oakland’s image. All parties felt that the potential to impact Oakland is right in front of us. Most recently, on the back side of these visits, the Oakland Ballers and Blair Underwood committed to a 10-year lease agreement to support community programs and a community build-out.
So, upward and onward with the movement of New Oakland.
Arts and Culture
BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy
When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages
Take care.
Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.
It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’
Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.
Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.
She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”
When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.
First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”
After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.
“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.
“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”
Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.
Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.
But don’t. Not quite yet.
In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.
This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.
Activism
Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’
“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

By Barbara Fluhrer
I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.
“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.
I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.
Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.
Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”
Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.
-
#NNPA BlackPress4 weeks ago
MLK Bust Quietly Removed from Oval Office Under Trump
-
Activism4 weeks ago
Oakland Post: Week of April 30 – May 6, 2025
-
Activism3 weeks ago
Oakland Post: Week of May 7 – 13, 2025
-
Activism2 weeks ago
After Two Decades, Oakland Unified Will Finally Regain Local Control
-
Activism2 weeks ago
New Oakland Moving Forward
-
Activism2 weeks ago
Oakland Post: Week of May 14 – 20, 2025
-
Alameda County2 weeks ago
Oakland Begins Month-Long Closure on Largest Homeless Encampment
-
#NNPA BlackPress3 weeks ago
Trump Abruptly Fires First Carla Hayden: The First Black Woman to Serve as Librarian of Congress