In Issue #167, published on October 1, 2007, the Street Corner newspaper’s mission statement was “to build livelihoods for socially excluded citizens and to break down stereotypes by empowering individuals and informing community.” As a newspaper dedicated to helping homeless people gain profit by selling said newspapers, their goal of changing the structure of society and breaking down hierarchy is a noble one.
Whether they fulfill that goal or not is a completely different question.
From the very beginning, Street Corner recognizes homeless people as “socially excluded”, acknowledging that there is a social gap between the homeless and presumably the non-homeless. This exclusion is an act of marginalization.
In his article “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence”, Rodney Carter says that “archival silences… have a potentially disastrous impact on the marginalized groups.” Whether Street Corner has read Carter’s article or not, they acknowledge the potential archival gap due to marginalization, and they attempt to fill the gap.
However, I am arguing that they are going about it the wrong way. Carter borrows some words from Harris’ “The Archival Sliver” and says that “archivists must not further marginalize the marginalized, [they] must resist the urge to speak for others… and [they] must attempt to avoid reinforcing the marginalization by naming it.” With their mission statement, Street Corner clearly reinforces the marginalization by labeling the homeless as “socially excluded citizens”. In addition, they speak for the homeless in many articles.
As we were in the Rare Books and Special Collections of UBC these past two weeks, I got the chance to peruse through several 2007 issues of Street Corner. Many of the feature articles I read were not written by any homeless people; they were articles by photographers or interviewers who shared their perspective on these “socially excluded citizens”. In the article “Close Up From the Outside”, a feature story about photographer Lung Liu, there are zero quotes by homeless people, only pictures. How do we know if they wanted their story to be told in the way that it was? How do we know if the way that Street Corner interpreted it was correct?
The truth is that we will never know. We must be especially cautious when archivists are intentionally trying to fill in gaps, because they can often take devious means to gain the end.
I didn’t get the chance to look at the Street Corner closely during our time in the archives, but I’m surprised by the content of the newspapers. I’m not 100% certain if Sarah Romkey mentioned this during her presentation, but I was under the impression that the Street Corner was created to represent the homeless. Thinking on a broader scale, the RBSC could also be contributing to the marginalization of the homeless people? Preserving the Street News in the archives, and having people like me, who aren’t too familiar with the papers but still think of the Street Corner as a newspaper that represents the marginalized, can be harmful to those who’s voices aren’t been included/heard. They can be further excluded from public memory, and we wouldn’t be aware of this unless we look at the documents more carefully like you have, so thanks for that!
Angela, thanks for being so interested in Street Corner! You’re definitely right; I think RBSC is contributing to the marginalization of the homeless people on a larger scale. In a way, I feel bad saying it, because I know that their intention isn’t to further the marginalization, but at the same time, it is what is happening. I would be pretty interested in seeing how Street Corner (now under the name Megaphone) is doing today, to see if their newspapers better represent the homeless people of Vancouver.