The annual Real Change Vendor Week kicked off Feb. 2 with an in-person event for the first time in three years. On that partly sunny day, Real Change vendors, staff, volunteers and community members gathered at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle to spread awareness of the paper.
Vendors paired up with local Seattle celebrities including Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard, comedian Emmett Montgomery, artist Kimya Dawson, author Nancy Pearl, community organizer Renaissance and Seattle City Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Tammy Morales, as well as social housing champion and mascot Housey.
Unlike the previous two years, when the week was held only online, celebrities got to try their hands at selling on the streets.
All proceeds made from Vendor Week go directly to participating vendors. The celebrities get to join a friendly competition to see how much they can raise for their vendor.
Celebrities employed various tactics to try to sell: Pearl, who was paired with Vendor Debbie Johnson (badge 14694), gave a personalized book recommendation to every customer. On the other side of the park, Gossard signed his autograph on every copy of Real Change that he sold. One customer even came with an electric guitar, which Gossard also signed.
Within half an hour, Vendor Debbie O’Neal (badge 14327) and Gossard had sold about 30 papers. Meanwhile, Lewis and Vendor Donald Duncan (badge 14564) sold just about five copies throughout the two-hour event. However, Duncan and Lewis said that they had a lot of meaningful discussions with customers and the community about the city, and they also received a lot of tips.
According to Real Change development manager Samira Khadar, Vendor Week is a special opportunity for community members to uplift and highlight the important role vendors play in Seattle.
“Vendor Week is about increasing the visibility of Real Change vendors across the city by partnering them up with some local figures with a big online presence in order to leverage their social media to increase vendor sales,” Khadar said. “It's also an opportunity for these folks to be in the shoes of a vendor and understand it’s not easy to stand on a corner and put yourself out there and sell a newspaper to people. I think it can be really humbling and rewarding to see the kind of reflection that celebs have in that situation.”
Vendor Angie (badge 12131) said that the Vendor Week event was very enjoyable.
“We all appreciate everyone’s support for Real Change and its vendors,” Angie said. “We appreciate every one of them.”
Housey, who sold alongside Angie, said that they had a good experience vending on the street.
“It’s been fun to just be here with Angie and just wave to people as they stare at me because they're wondering, ‘What is this house doing on the street?’” Housey said. “I’m just here to support Real Change, which is really one of the papers that I most admire.”
Housey added that multiple people expressed support for social housing Initiative 135, which is sponsored by Real Change political committee House Our Neighbors!. They were even able to convince an undecided voter to support the effort. Seattle voters must turn in their ballot by 8 p.m. on Feb. 14 for their vote to be counted.
Renaissance said that he was glad to try selling the paper after being a loyal reader for 20 years.
“I’ve spent time on the street. Been out here with all of that. It just made sense. But even with all the time of reading it, and the time that I spent in the shelters and on the streets, this is the first time I’ve ever sold a paper,” he said. “Real Change does a lot of really good work in the community. I’m a community organizer, and our paths are crossing a lot.”
As a University of Washington alum, Renaissance was also happy to see Real Change’s original reporting on some of the activism happening on campus.
“I'm very happy that activism is coming back to UW, because the pandemic sort of quieted everything down,” he said.
For Gossard, Vendor Week was a great way to use his platform to support Real Change.
“I think Real Change is a really impactful way of connecting people in the community and bringing economic opportunity and pride. I love it, and I loved it for a long time,” he said. “This seems like a really easy way of just trying to raise awareness and bring some social media attention that we can bring to this organization and a chance to come down and hang out with Debbie. And also for me to sign a bunch of autographs for folks that have that money go to a great cause.”
One customer said that they were new to the city and hadn’t heard of Real Change before. They were a big fan of Pearl Jam, though, so Vendor Week helped them learn about the paper for the first time.
The Vendor Week event also offered local politicians an opportunity to cultivate some goodwill in the community and talk to potential voters. In addition to Lewis and Morales, who recently announced their reelection bids, at least one other candidate for Seattle City Council District 1 showed up as well.
Duncan, who was paired with Lewis, said that being a Real Change vendor has helped him create a social safety net.
“Being a vendor, sometimes it’s alright,” Duncan said. “You get to meet different people, have different conversations, which is a good thing. It also helps with your situation, like instead of being completely homeless, you actually have something — a cushion to fall back on. You can actually walk into the store and say, ‘Hey I want this,’ and have money to pay for it.”
Duncan added that sometimes community members who see his badge and yellow vest buy him food or other gifts because they support Real Change.
Lewis said that he enjoyed getting to know Duncan and selling alongside him.
“It’s been great to be able to ask Donald questions about, just generally, things the city can do to improve how we’re dealing with the policy space,” Lewis said. “It’s good to get more opportunities to directly just talk to Donald and have candid discussions about how things are going, how he perceives things: which benefits get to him, what benefits don’t. Real Change is one of the only organizations that helps provide those opportunities.”
Vendor Week participants also shared why they decided to support Real Change.
Dawson said that Real Change was one of the first places she saw and wanted to support when she moved to the Seattle and Olympia area in 1996. As someone who has struggled with addiction, she said it was important to challenge conventional narratives that demonize unhoused folks.
“When I see people who are dealing with houselessness or addiction or whatever — not that those two things are synonymous, but they can be — and people are lacking compassion towards them, I just want them to know that that was me,” Dawson said. “And it could have killed me, I could have ended up on the street. Nobody is beyond help, and nobody is beyond hope. ... They’re worthy of support and help. I just want for people to understand that it can happen to them too, and to just have some humanity and recognize other people’s humanity and not be such snobby assholes.”
At the end of the event, Khadar reflected on how Vendor Week really showed the powerful network of interdependence and support that Real Change has built throughout the city.
“We’ve had several Real Change vendors who aren’t a part of Vendor Week stop by,” Khadar said. “We even had somebody who used to be a vendor for a long time, but who’s working somewhere else — they were so excited to see everybody. I think it was just a reminder that, regardless of if you’re a vendor now, or you’ve ever been a vendor, when you’re a part of this community, you’re always a part of this community. And that includes everybody in Seattle who reads or buys the paper, whether that’s online or in person. We are more than just a small group of people; we are a collective across the city.”
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the Feb. 8-14, 2023 issue.