Mickey Z

Cool Observer

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Monday, January 30, 2006

There's no place like home

John “Indio” Washington, 67, is editor-in-chief of Street News (SN), a longtime New York City publication that focuses on issues of homelessness...primarily written and sold by homeless New Yorkers. This wasn’t always the case. In the late 1980s, Indio was homeless. “In December 1989,” he recalls, “I was riding on the #3 train ‘n I saw this Black sister selling SN. I asked her if I could help sell the paper ‘n she could hit me with whatever she wanted to give me for helping her. She instead took me downtown to SN headquarters ‘n they gave me 5 or 10 free papers to sell. I never looked back.”

http://nystreetnews.tripod.com

I have been writing for Street News for well over a decade and am fortunate to call Indio a friend. I asked him a few questions via e-mail. Sample:

MZ: The Coalition for the Homeless just released a report that found the number of homeless in NYC to have risen. Is this a surprise to you?

Indio: Hard to tell if it’s true or not because reports can be padded to go in the direction told to take it. I do not respect “reports” ‘n other negative stuff. You have to be on the streets to know the real deal! They think about getting more funds ‘n generally go by their work load. Same think goes for the places that feed us ‘n give out food ‘n so on. Plus there’s a lot of reports ‘n books that say it’s hard to get an accurate account of homeless in the streets. I think they call it, “Unexpected difficulties.”