FWD to HPN!/San Francisco Street Sheet's Take on The Big Issue
Andrew Rose (arose@macromedia.com)
Fri, 23 Jan 1998 23:18:32 -0800 (PST)
From: Bathrobespierre <norse@netcom.com>
Subject: San Francisco Street Sheet's Take on The Big Issue
The following article will be coming out in the February issue of the San
Francisco Street Sheet. Anyone who wants to reprint it has permission to
do so, according to author, San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness
worker Paul Boden.
THE BRITISH ARE COMING!
Yet another aspect of homelesness has gone corporate. Street
newspapers.
The Big Issue, a slick, glossy paper started in England and sold
by homeless people has olanded on the shores of Los Angeles. Having
already spread throughout Europe, South Africa, and Australia they have
turned their greedy little eyeson here.
The paper calls itself The Big Issue leaving people (especially
advertisers) with the impression that the big issue is homelessness. Yet
homeless issues by their own admission is only aboutg 20% of the paper's
content and homeless people are an even smaller percentage of the paper's
multi-national staff.
The vendors, who are charged per issue to sell this product,
don't reap any of the economic benefits of the millions that are brought
in annually through the vendor charges, advertising sales, and foundation
support. Instead, the Big Issue has established their own foundation so
as to dole out grants and gifts in communities (countries) where they
plan to set up shop. If they have this kind of money, why can't they pay
the salespeople (vendors) a living wage with benefits, etc.? You can
bet their advertising staff are paid and paid well.
The Big Issue is about big bucks pure and simple. Dishing out a
few nickles and dimes to some homeless people doesn't change that and
doesn't make them any less of a "Poverty Pimp". They are exploiting
homelessness to sell their advertising and homeless people as a cheap
(charged) labor source to sell their product.
For The Big Issue to claim, as they do, that they lift people out
of poverty through the sales of their paper is nothing short of
bullshit. No street newspaper can claim the vendors leave poverty with
the money they get from selling the paper. That kind of life is right up
there with "the wealthy panhandler" and "the Cadillac-driving AFDC
recipient".
The inevitable consequence of this corporate move is the
licensing of the sale of homeless street papers and thus less opportunity
for homeless people to vend them.
Street papers in their simplicity benefit everyone involved. The
organization that publishes them gets to present to the general public
homeless and poverty issues froma perspective/depth that will never be in
the mainstream press or even the alternative press. Homeless and poor
people have an opportunity to positively express themselves through
writing, artwork and poetry and to see their works and feeling out int he
community, while at the same time others are able to panhandle with their
dignity intact.
The general public gets the best benefit of all: They get to
learn about an issue that people seem to universally agree is tearing
this country apart. And they get to learn about it without the barrage
of commercialism and sensationalizing so common in the mainstream media
today.
"The Big Issue" corporate approach to this important social
contract severely threatens to kill it. Please don't buy one and please
write them at:
The Big Issue, Fleet House, 57-61 Clarkenwell Road, Farringdon, London
EC1 M5NP or e-mail them at london@bigissue.co.uk and tell them that
their exploitation of poor people will never sell here.
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