The "Phoenix Effect"

By Gretchen Crowe

It’s close to 9am on any typical weekday morning, and a group of volunteers and staff are hustling to make sure we’ve gotten everything done for the paper’s distribution from  9 A.M.  to 11 A.M. at our Park Avenue and Champa storefront. We unlock the doors as the room fills with the smell of coffee, and our morning begins with talking, training and distributing papers. The room swirls with the chaos of personal stories and needs, advice, and the celebrations of successful days vending the paper. Regardless of socio-economic distinctions, everyone at the distribution center is connected by a newspaper, one that creates community around its very existence.

Overall, the vendor program truly is a thriving community, and has a true heartbeat of its own that can’t quite be seen in the individual vendor on the 16th Street Mall or in the quality of the words we print. Our home office tethers us all to the program, and vendors have a rich and deep connection to their vendor community, to us and to the mission of the paper.

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