Tomorrow, Dec. 23, is the last day the Corvallis Really Really Free Market’s (RRFM) Free Store, located in room M252 of the Benton Hall Plaza on 408 SW Monroe Ave., will be open for the remainder of 2022. The RRFM has received an abundance of donations over the past several weeks, and recently updated the layout of the Free Store to make more room for them. Folks can drop by the store and take clothes (including warm weather/winter clothes such as coats, scarves, warm hats/beanies, etc.), shoes, food, kitchenware, hygiene items, menstrual care items, magazines, books, school supplies, COVID test kits, Narcan, zines, and more.
And as with every Friday, the RRFM will also have an outdoor market available at Central Park from noon to 4 p.m. – the location where the RRFM first sprung up in the summer of 2021, when it was only an end-of-the-month event.
“We’d like to extend our gratitude to the magnolia at Central Park that has sheltered us from our conception,” wrote an organizer on the RRFM’s Instagram story. “We appreciate the grounds we’re on to make this work happen. Had someone say today, ‘This is the future of how we’re gonna live,’ and we couldn’t agree more. We don’t just give clothes away… we exist with each other to change how we value material goods and caretaking.”
RRFM organizers aim to continue into the new year striving to encourage and empower more people to start their own free markets in Corvallis to help spread the distribution of free, locally needed resources and direct aid.
“Thank you again to all of our wonderful radical organizers,” reads the text, “This physically and emotionally cannot happen without y’all’s help.”
The Free Store will be open from 2 – 6 p.m. today and tomorrow. For more updates and information on how to support the group’s efforts and/or get involved as an organizer, follow their Instagram page.
Liberation at Therapist Next Door: Silvana Espinoza Lau, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) working in Corvallis whose practice mainly focuses on supporting individuals with marginalized identities, appeared as a guest on the latest episode of Therapists Next Door, a podcast series hosted by Licensed Professional Counselors Sarah Bryski-Hamrick and Johanna Dwinells that aims to demystify therapy and destigmatize mental health.
The two-part episode, titled “Dirndls, Decolonizing Mental Health and Guest Silvana Espinoza Lau”, discusses taking decolonized, anti-oppressive, and liberatory approaches to therapy, as well as some examples of what they might look like in practice. The two co-hosts began by defining two key terms: “decolonize” and “liberation psychology”, which Espinoza practices and embodies in her own work.
“Liberation psychology, or liberation social psychology, is an approach to psychology that aims to actively understand the psychology of oppressed and impoverished communities by conceptually and practically addressing the oppressive socio-political culture in which they exist,” said Bryski-Hamrick. “Through transgressive and reconciliatory approaches, liberation psychology strives to mend the fractures in relationships, experiences, and society caused by oppression. Liberation psychology aims to include what or who has been marginalized, both psychologically and socially.”
One of the questions Espinoza was asked during the interview was about what kinds of colonial models/structures she has observed in American private practices that people could benefit from having dismantled.
“I think it was within the last five years that I realized my training has been very Eurocentric, the way I have received therapy has been Eurocentric, the way that I have offered therapy has been so Eurocentric… and that’s not who I am, and that’s not the people I work with,” said Espinoza. “When I worked in California, I worked mainly with the Latinx population, but that was not just it; I have worked with houseless folks, I have worked with people from the LGBTQ+ community. But there are so many other identities that have not been centered, that have not been the norm, that remain in the margins, and for whom therapy has not been made. I can continue talking and talking about so many ways in which therapy has not been made for individuals with all of these systemically marginalized identities, so if I come to therapy, how do I know that this space is going to be safe, or how do I know that you’re really going to understand me?”
To listen to the full episode, click here. Espinoza also offers online clinical consultation to other licensed clinicians who work with BIPOC, multiracial, and/or Latinx/e clients from a systemic, social justice-oriented lens.
“I hold several privileged and marginalized identities that inform the way I support people. Experiencing an oppressive system, that at times told me I did not belong, has given me enough empathy to support people who have felt othered, unseen, underserved, and underrepresented,” Espinoza writes on her website. “Even though I believe in anti-oppression, decolonization, and liberation, my hope is to move towards dismantling and recreating therapy as centering the people who have been forced to exist at the margins due to our current oppressive systems.”
Espinoza’s practice focuses on people who have endured the impacts of intergenerational and racial trauma, systems of oppression, acculturation, etc.
If you and/or someone you know is a mental health clinician, you can also subscribe to Espinoza’s newsletter to receive more information about how to decolonize your practice, trainings and webinars focused on anti-oppression, social justice book recommendations, and questions from Espinoza about how she can best support you in this work.
Cleanliness, Dignity, and Safety: Stop the Sweeps Corvallis, a mutual aid network of local housed and unhoused community members committed to providing care, support, and advocacy for folks who are impacted and displaced by camp sweeps, recently shared on their social media a post unpacking the beliefs and rhetoric often heard by housed folks that the appearance or cleanliness of camps justifies the complaints and mistreatment of people experiencing houselessness.
The post, which was created by Hygiene 4 All (H4A), a Portland-based hygiene hub led by and for unhoused residents that promotes community health and safety and mutual aid, starts with a thought exercise for housed individuals.
“How clean is your bedroom right now? Your desk? Your garage? Your backyard? The trunk of your car? Be honest,” the post reads. “Now, imagine that all of those places must exist in one small tent. Imagine that you have no garbage service, and it is illegal to use your neighbors’ garbage cans. Imagine that you have no laundry access and no running water. How clean do you think your home would be?”
The post also asks housed individuals to consider if, in these situations, they would have time to clean their camps if they had to spend hours waiting in line for clothing, meals, and other resources needed for survival.
“The cleanliness of someone’s living space should not determine whether or not they have the right to dignity, respect, and safety.”
Stop the Sweeps Corvallis organizers have also touched on this in a zine that serves as a guide for people who are new to sweep support in Corvallis, noting how the city often justifies carrying out sweeps under the guise of “cleaning up” and “beautifying” areas where unhoused neighbors have been staying.
“If the issue were truly about cleaning up, cities would focus on ways to prevent homelessness, or at the very least providing accessible ways for people to clean up after themselves,in the first place,” reads the zine. “They would offer no-barrier places to stay that don’t dehumanize unhoused people, and address the systemic poverty that leads people to be housed in the first place. They would offer garbage services and sanitization stations to people living in parks… In all of the parks where people have lived is trash buried and clogging waterways primarily because people are not provided accessible garbage services, but also because once people are kicked out, the agencies conducting sweeps that claim to be doing so for environmental reasons no longer care to ‘clean things up’.”
By Emilie Ratcliff
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