PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS - SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2019 Commencement Address Israel Bayer, Honorary Degree ISRAEL BAYER is the director of the International Network of Street Papers — North America, a bureau representing street papers in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. He is the former executive director of Street Roots, an award-winning weekly street paper in Portland, Oregon. Bayer grew up in poverty and was raised by a single mother in industrial southern Illinois outside of St. Louis. He dropped out of high-school in the 11th grade to travel the country, and throughout his 20s among other jobs, worked graveyard shifts at convenience stores in Denver and Portland where he read magazines and newspapers to pass the time. “I started out reading Mad Magazine and ending up at the New Yorker,” Bayer says. “It dawned on me that my purpose in life was to be a storyteller, and to help others tell their stories.” Bayer eventually began working at homeless shelters in Portland at both Janus Youth Program, and at Transition Projects, and would later say that “Working graveyard shifts at convenient stores was my first introduction into social work.” Eventually Bayer took a job at Real Change in Seattle, Washington in 2004 absorbing and learning everything he could about street papers, and in 2006, returned to Street Roots in Portland to take the executive director’s position. “For well over a decade Israel could be found sitting on a street corner comforting someone who had lost a dear friend on the streets and an hour later be sitting in meetings with the Mayor, Commissioners and business leaders,” says PSU Associate Professor of Practice, Lisa Hawash. “There are very few people who can straddle these systems—-both the political and business—and carry the credibility that Israel Bayer holds in this community.” He was a leader in the 2016 Yes for Affordable Homes campaign that created a $258 million dollar housing bond and works tirelessly at the macro/ systemic change level as well as the micro level in a humane and dignified way. Israel has worked with street papers for nearly 20-years and will be publishing a book in the fall of 2020 about homelessness in America. 19
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