Fw: More info on The Big Issue's Invasion of L.A.
H. C. Covington (ach1@sprynet.com)
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 00:59:12 -0600
H. C. Sonny Covington +AEA- I CAN+ACE- America
427 St. John Street - Lafayette, LA 70501
(318) 235-7005 Fax 318-234-0953
-----Original Message-----
From: Bathrobespierre +ADw-norse+AEA-netcom.com+AD4-
To: HOMELESS DISCUSSION LIST +ADw-homeless+AEA-csf.colorado.edu+AD4-
Date: Monday, January 26, 1998 9:38 PM
Subject: More info on The Big Issue's Invasion of L.A.
Dear NASNA (North American Street Newspaper Association) members:
Here's some more updates on the plans of the London-based +ACI-sold
by homeless, homeless on our cover, please by from our homeless
vendors--but we're not a homeless+ACI- paper. If I am snowing you with too
much information, let me know.
>From Jennafer Waggoner, editor of Making Change--the newspaper
currently operating in the market area The Big Issue intends to enter:
Please find the enclosed update on the Big Issue's plan
for publication in Los Angeles. Today is my first day on the internet so
pardon any mistakes that may come across. I hope that I will be more
accessible, thanks to the technology of a performa 460 lent to me by Real
Change Seattle+ACE- Thanks Tim+ACE-
I didn't think that the Big Issue was a big deal. Until I got about 15
calls from people who attended the meeting whose notes I am forwarding to
you. One of the reasons there were so many problems at the NASNA
conference this year, is because we as a group needed to discuss the pros
and cons of certain issues that would be passe at the next conference,
that we had no time for at the last. One: the National Homeless
Newswire Service and Two: The Commercialization Issue for Street
Newspapers. Lo and behold the need for both has come.
The Executive Committee of NASNA has discussed skeletal issues and has
made resolutions and improvements for the conference to come in Canada
this year. Until the conference in 1998, it would be a great thing if we
could all talk either BBS style or via e-mail about an issue we all face.
Making Change faces the question now, you will face it too, really soon.
If you want the Big issue in your community, here is your chance to
invite them. If you wish to get involved in the discussion, I invite you
to do so. We all make NASNA, all our voices are +ACI-shaking the tree+ACI- in
north america. I have had widespread success locally for publishing
national articles from papers across the country, and the national
networking is working out to be of great advantage.
Internationally we to can bring vital issues of poverty, hunger and
homelessness
comprehensible and make faceless issues individualistically human. I
need your help in discussing and bringing this issue- the detail and
thought that it deserves from a roundtable of grassroots opinion, rather
than from the streetnewspaper heavyweight championship finals.
There is a good deal more information that is on file with the Executive
Committee, if you would like the background information or the letter
from John Bird to Tim Harris and Tim's reply to John, please be sure to
e-mail your request to Tim, Chair of the Executive Committee
+AFs-rchange+AEA-speakeasy.org+AF0-
--Jennafer Waggoner
REPORT ON SATURDAY NIGHT ALTERNATIVE MEDIA NETWORK MEETING
On Saturday night, January 24th the Big Issue attended the
Alternative Media Network Beyond Baroque in Venice meeting where Cara
Solomon
and Art Kunkin, a paid consultant to TBI, made an informal presentation
of the
Big Issues plans for publishing their magazine in Los Angeles.
In their thumbnail sketch of the major social issues that the Big
Issue will highlight in a news section that will be as liberal as they
can be will avoid the complex social structure that their vendors face
such as Welfare Reform, poverty,
hunger and the criminalisation of the poor. John Bird, they said, is
supposed
to come and help put out the first two issues which are coming soon.
Ellen Sanders, publisher of GLUE, a local weekly magazine on
labor issues asked about how TBI was planning to work with the street
papers run by the homeless themselves. The BI reps immediately went into
a rap on the history of Hard
Times stating that the paper fell apart and is no longer publishing. The
publisher used to put out the paper out of his social security check.
They were going to be publishing independently of homeless papers
because, again, the Big Issue is not a homeless newspaper. It was also
the cumulative opinion of those present that the Big Issue reps stated
that it was too difficult to negotiate with Making Change and basically
dismissed the paper as insignificant.
Ernest Savage recounted that someone else in the audience asked,
what about Making Change, the paper that has filled the gaps left by Hard
Times? Spectators
stated that Art Kunkin said, Oh, well, they are just ultra leftist
newspaper,
we just cant consult with everybody.
He really did try to dismiss Making Change, as an insignificant
radical paper, said Richard Cohen who attended the AMN meeting. Richard
Cohen is the director of Taylors Campaign, a documentary of Ron Taylor, a
homeless man who ran for Santa Monica City Council. I would have thought
that we would be talking about how heroic it is for homeless people to
be addressing vital social issues like homelessness, hunger and poverty
and making the street papers happen.+ACI-
JENNAFER WAGGONER'S COMMENTS ON THE MEDIA NETWORK INTERACTION
This commentary from Art Kunkin is bizarre coming from the former
producer of LA Free Press who at one time used to be the most radical
lefty paper in Los Angeles. I guess you won't find any lefities at
Beyond Baroque, the Venice Art Mecca that takes graffiti artists and
gives them a voice. They called us ultra left, at a Alternative Media
Network meeting, were they trying to provoke a riot? Depending on his
employer youll see his differing perspectives on free press. I dont
think he has even seen our paper, from what I hear.
The Big Issue Reps passed out free editions of the Big Issues latest
publication, Coming Up From the Streets, The Big Issue, you know the
one with Elvis Costello on the cover but theyre not a street
publication, right? It seems that they only use the words streetand
homeless when it benefits their sales.
Neither Art, nor Cara mentioned the fact that Hard Times raised a
considerable amount of money to publish the paper, but the costs of
publishing the paper were never paid and we (Ron Taylor and myself) had
to dissolve it. No one asks Len Doucette where that money went. But
the Big Issue feels that by buying Len they have bought off the homeless
paper.
Within two issues I have reinvented the paper, expanded its publication
to Los Angeles and have opened an office in downtown Los Angeles for our
vendors to make the paper themselves. Sure we are not big league, but I
think we have the potential to offer everything that the Big Issue
offers, and more. We just need time to develop. The Big Issue coming
into Los Angeles in this way, is destroying community spirit, dividing
people, taking cream of the crop homeless and giving them a marketing
job has far less long term impact or benefits than what Making Change
offers. They get support in Los Angeles from people who want to be paid
by them. And notice that all of their support is bankrolled by the Big
Issue.
When I spoke to Ruth who represented the Big Issue at the North American
Street Newspaper Association in Seattle, I stated that two papers like
Making Change and the Big Issue could coexist if they were working
together to end poverty. The Big Issue has not even offered to
negotiate or meet with us, our existence not even mentioned by Big Issue
staff, until people in the audience bring us up. It makes me wonder who
the Big Issue is trying to help by hiding from the homeless newspaper?
As left as we may be portrayed, the homeless writers and vendors of
Making Change, we dont use the problems of homelessness to make our
money without offering a few solutions. We make every effort to build
community, we stand solid and true in our business dealings, we stay
true to our word and we stand by our vendors by making it OUR paper. We
are not a band-aid, street papers run by the homeless are the solution
to the root causes of and the deep scars left by homelessness. How can
we not see this as a hostile takeover by the Big Issue, Im trying to
figure out what they done to prove otherwise?
--JW