London Calling

Here’s the story from Portland Oregon’s Street Roots, the best little street paper on the US’ Left Coast.

Aug 2 cover feature

London calling
Dignity Village co-founder fires up the tent city movement overseas

By Joanne Zuhl
Contributing Writer

It has been nearly six years since a group of eight homeless people, including Rasta poet and activist Jack Tafari, rallied from under Portland’s bridges and launched what was to become Dignity Village, a tent city cum eco-village where people on the streets could create a better life and regain their independence.

This winter, Tafari was back sleeping under a bridge — this time in London, where he and the other ‘rough sleepers’ decided to follow Portland’s lead. Tafari went there for health care, not homelessness, but that’s another story. What happened was a little bit of deja vu.