Commonspace

Join us this Friday, May 22nd at the Portland Peer Center for a Peer-Led variety showcase from 4:30–6:30 PM!

Come share your talents or cheer on others in the community during this open mic-style event featuring music, poetry, comedy, art, and more! Whether you want to perform or just enjoy the atmosphere, you're welcome here. Light refreshments will be provided.

Commonspace is a place of hope. Our central philosophical position is a belief in each other, in ourselves, and in our community. This purposeful outlook of optimism and hopeful expectation, tempered but not deterred by the experience of supporting our peers through the wreckage of harmful policies and broken support systems, derives from the hundreds of examples of recovery and transformation we have witnessed and supported over many decades.

We are a place of hope, even in times of severe darkness. Today, it is dark in Maine, and it is dark in this country. Our unhoused peers face immense challenges in trying to find housing due to policy-setting and decision-making that has reduced affordable housing units and subsidies. Historic percentages of us are impacted by mental health and substance use challenges at a time when funding for treatment and recovery resources are being cut, and stigmatizing language and practices of the dark past have begun to re-emerge. Our immigrant peers are being targeted for harassment and kidnapping by lawless federal agents, following orders from a federal government that has our country on the precipice of authoritarianism.

Commonspace is not a political entity in any sense, and none of the above statements are political. They are factual assessments of a community and a country in crisis, and an honest acknowledgement that we are living through an era that feels like one long, dark winter.

But our candles are lit in this place of hope. There will be a sunrise, and we will be there to greet it.

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