New Toledo tabloid aims to be voice for those without homes

Toledo Streets monthly has published four issues since its inception. THE BLADE/LORI KING Enlarge | Photo Reprints

Call it a new breed of publication, a so-called "street newspaper" in which authors show their affection for outdoor trash receptacles, a health-care program on wheels, housing shelters, faith, God, and all things inspirational and - oh, yes - Amish-style gardening in the inner city.

Toledo Streets is an upstart, monthly publication with an admitted bias toward social justice issues - fairness and equality for all, with extra sensitivity for those who live on the streets.

The tabloid-format newspaper, with a distribution run of 1,000 copies or less per issue so far, harks back to simpler times while also getting involved in modern high-tech wizardry.

Vendors hawk Toledo Streets on street corners like old-fashioned newsboys while also making it discreetly available in churches, coffee shops, supermarkets, retail stores, and other places where people congregate.

But, as much as is practical, Toledo Streets embraces newer forms of communication. It had 354 fans on its Facebook account as of yesterday. It has a Web site at toledostreets.org.

"It's a paper for people of the streets. As such, it should be a reflection of their hearts and minds," Amanda Faith Moore, the paper's founder and spokesman, said.

Though it is backed by the nonprofit 1Matters.org, Toledo Streets operates on a shoestring budget.

But it is one of the latest members of the North American Street Newspaper Association, which was established in 1996 and represents 23 street newspapers across the United States and eight in Canada.

"Street papers in the purest sense provide a voice to people who do not have a voice," said Andy Freeze, the Washington-based association's executive director.

Mr. Freeze said he gets as many as 20 calls a month from people interested in starting street papers.

Toledo Streets also is part of the International Network of Street Papers. The network represents 110 papers in 40 countries, many of them in the Third World.

There's also a network of stories by and about homeless people that may be more sophisticated than the public realizes.

Street publications today are served by an online news agency called Street News Service, with stories published in three languages. Founded in 2002 as the Homeless News Service, Street News Service got its current name in 2005.

It operates like a news co-op, with 30 to 40 articles a week contributed to it. Any are free for its member street newspapers to pick up, such as a Bob Dylan interview that Toledo Streets published in its January edition.

Reuters news service contributes two articles a week and 40 photographs a month, Mr. Freeze said.

Additional stories are provided by the Inter Press Service news agency.

Toledo Streets prides itself in having a wide-open, "eclectic" style, one in which writers may be just as apt to explain issues in poetry as they are in traditional news or feature stories, Ms. Moore said.

That literary freedom is not just for its niche audience. It's also for the gratification of the volunteer staff.

Ms. Moore said that although many are untrained journalists, they have a unique perspective by virtue of their life on the streets.

The paper has published four issues since its inception on the eve of Tent City, an annual October camp-out in downtown Toledo to bring more attention to area homeless.

One of the stories from the inaugural edition dealt with how Tent City founder Ken Leslie said God had inspired him to start calling homeless people the "unhoused."

The December issue had a feature about the Rev. Steve North and the LifeLine Toledo Mobile Health Education Unit he operates, a purple-and-gold bus that provides health screening and street-level ministry.

In the February edition, Dennis Doblinger wrote about the surprises he got sifting through trash receptacles.

Gary Bond, a University of Toledo graduate, onetime stage actor, and public broadcasting television assistant, has said he is a recovering crack addict and former homeless shelter resident.

He writes The Bonfiles, a continuing series with topics that have ranged from a streetwise perspective of the Veterans Glass City Skyway bridge to life inside the Cherry Street Mission.

The March edition, which was to be published last month, was not assembled because of scheduling conflicts and weather-related delays. The April edition will be out soon, Ms. Moore said.

For an offbeat dose of inspiration, one need not go further than a continuing series written by William James O'Fahey, a born-again Christian and product of Toledo's rough north side who said he embraced the Amish work ethic after leaving the Navy in 1992 after a four-year stint.

Mr. O'Fahey said he was dismayed to find little had changed at his old stomping grounds in the vicinity of Lagrange and Moore streets.

So he went to Holmes County, Ohio, to learn the Amish way of life and continues to do that today by visiting friends in Homer, Mich.

He is working with others to get kids away from gangs and into agriculture, even in the heart of the city.

"Urban gardening is the key to transforming the perceptions of the inner city," Mr. O'Fahey said.

He said he is making a difference with his Toledo Streets articles, because urban agriculture promotes responsibility, values, and respect for nature. It also can help families make ends meet without requiring much of an investment.

The paper's founder, Ms. Moore, 34, a jack-of-all-trades for Sunrise Windows Ltd., of Temperance, puts her marketing, sales, copy-editing, graphic-design, and other communications skills to work for Toledo Streets.

She said she took on the challenge of starting Toledo Streets, "as scary as the prospect was," because she believed it would help fill a niche while providing vendors with some pocket money.

The papers sell for $1.

Vendors must wear badges and follow a code of conduct. They are given 10 free papers with each issue. Every paper after that costs them 25 cents, Ms. Moore said.

"The main gist of it is simply giving people a chance to do something for themselves," she said. "The dignity they get is probably worth more than the money."

One female vendor, who asked to be called only "Marie," said she was inspired to work for Toledo Streets while in church at Tent City, hearing a 27-year-old vendor named James "Jimmy" Perrine talk about "what doesn't kill you in the end will make you stronger." He said he is a Detroiter who won two state titles in wrestling and was all-conference in football his sophomore and junior years until he tore up his shoulder.

"I was in really bad shape at the time," Marie said, explaining that she was scraping together whatever money she could to buy her son a Christmas gift.

Selling Toledo Streets "makes me feel like I'm doing something, not out committing crimes or begging," she said.

Eighteen-year-old Matt Iler of East Toledo is at an age when many of his peers are heading off for college or settling into a vocational job. But he's selling Toledo Streets, not sure what the future holds.

But he feels good about the paper.

"It's not about the dollar. It's that we're trying to reach out to the community and change things," he said. "We're trying to fix our community before we try to fix the rest of the world."

Contact Tom Henry at:

thenry@theblade.com

or 419-724-6079.