Who We Really Are

I became a notary public in Multnomah County in 2019. Most notaries work in banks or at title companies, certifying titles, deeds, and bills of sale. I became a notary to help people replace their ID documents. Three or more times a month, I show up to do this work at resource centers, libraries, shelters, soup kitchens, and other programs serving primarily unhoused/homeless folks. I call this small mutual aid project PDX ID Assistance. I am its founder and only volunteer. Caseworkers and community members spread the word about my events, so there’s usually a small crowd of people seeking my help at each one. I take care to say that I’m not a case manager or an employee of the organizations that host me, and I make a point of helping whoever shows up with whatever identity documentation they’re seeking. This includes ID cards, driver’s licenses, and birth certificates. To pay for these documents, I write personal checks directly to government offices—such as the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Office of Vital Records and Statistics.

I began this project after spending several years managing homeless shelters. I saw countless individuals strive to obtain housing only to be stymied by a lack of ID. You also need an ID to access or apply for employment, health care, education, family reunification, legal services, veteran’s benefits, travel, and much more. In Portland, most service providers can issue fee waivers allowing a person to replace their ID at the DMV with a “Declaration of Homelessness,” but the waiver doesn’t help if a person’s identity can’t be corroborated by other ID documents: a health insurance card, a voter registration card, law enforcement or medical paperwork, or a passport. Waivers are also limited to two uses, after which a person needs to wait eight years before they can access one again, regardless of how many times they are swept by city contractors, robbed, or lose everything to fire, flood, or some other calamity. 

When a person lacks corroborating documents, they need to obtain their birth certificate before they can replace their ID. (Some property managers even ask to see both a valid ID and a birth certificate before renting an apartment.) Each state has different requirements and fees for birth certificates: An Oregon birth certificate costs $25 by mail, or $28 in person. Minnesota charges $26, and requires a notary only if you don’t have an ID already. Washington charges $25, and insists on ID or corroborating documents. New York City charges $15, and requires both a notary and corroborating ID. New York state, meanwhile, charges $30. Mississippi charges $17. Each county in California has a different fee, ranging between $29 and $34, but all require a notarization. Few service providers budget for replacing birth certificates.

Most of the people I see come to me after being denied services at the DMV or elsewhere. Few know where or how to begin the process of obtaining their birth certificate. The notarization requirement makes it nearly impossible for service providers to meet this need for the many people born in a state other than Oregon—the places where notaries are typically employed aren’t known for being welcoming to poor people. 

Faced with this absurdly complex problem, many of my shelter guests chose to focus on other, easier questions in their day-to-day lives, like where to camp after their shelter stay expired, or where to collect cans for the bottle deposit refund. It’s easy to see why. Imagine the challenge of proving your legitimacy in our society without the benefit of a home where you can securely store documents. Imagine being subject to encampment sweeps that lose people’s essential property as a matter of routine. Imagine facing this challenge without the benefit of ready money or credit cards, without family and loved ones you can call upon for help, without friends or colleagues to vouch for you. Imagine that this process is just the first of many complex and shaming challenges you’ll face before people will treat you like a human being again.

Seeing people struggle with a lack of ID made me angry, so I chose to address the problem directly. After leaving my position as a shelter manager, I saved a small sum in a separate checking account and launched PDX ID Assistance. I keep no records of the people who seek my help. From time to time, friends and strangers support this work by writing personal checks or making Venmo payments directly to me. I have not started a nonprofit organization because I refuse to be limited by arbitrary bureaucratic requirements limiting whom I can help, or where, and because I see how starved for resources and how politically vulnerable most existing nonprofits are. I have no desire to add to the noise of fundraising appeals and donor drives we are all inundated with every giving season.

One afternoon in May, I’m at a resource center in Gresham. I arrive half an hour early, and there are already four people waiting for me. In the next three hours, I see more than thirty people. The resource center staff cuts off the waiting list as we approach their scheduled closing time. 

The last three women waiting for me are mothers to several small children. They take turns watching the children while they see me one at a time. Altogether, they ask for my help obtaining eleven birth certificates from three states, for themselves and for each of their young ones. They describe the contradictory directives they’ve received, closed offices they’ve encountered, hours-long waits in phone queues, and denials of service for petty deficits in their paperwork. 

The longer I do this work, the more callous I become. I’m no longer moved by the miserable circumstances and shocking traumas of a person’s life story. I notice myself looking away and folding my hands, quietly impatient for Mom to finish telling me her story so that I can move on to the details needed to finish her application, write her a check, and see the next person in line. I don’t have the time or capacity to give each person their due regard. I know many doctors and case managers who would call this callousness “professionalism.” 

I write the three moms the checks they need and advise them on the documents they’ll need to bring or mail to the different states where their children were born. I tell them they are amazing moms for doing what they’re doing for their kids. They hear my words with a bashfulness that moves me and makes me ashamed of my formerly callous demeanor. 

The only way I’ll learn if any of this is successful is if the checks are cashed by the respective state offices.

On another day, at another resource center, a group of ten Chinese immigrants crowds into the conference room I’m using as a temporary office. I usually see people one or two at a time to protect the confidentiality of their personal information, but these ten insist on being seen as a group. I’m grateful that they insisted, as this makes things much easier for translation purposes. The ten are all members of the same extended family and neighbors in the same Portland apartment building. All of them are legal immigrants to the United States, with Permanent Resident ID cards as well as valid regular Oregon IDs. And they are all nervous about Real ID.

Real ID is an enhancement that requires stricter scrutiny of an individual’s ID documents and costs an additional $30 on top of whatever other fees you may pay for renewing or replacing an ID. As of 2025, a Real ID enhancement is required to access nuclear facilities and government buildings or to board domestic flights without a passport. The REAL ID Act of 2005 stipulates that an ID complying with the law be referred to as a “REAL ID,” but the name is not an acronym. The capital letters are meaningless, another nonsensical feature of a profoundly nonsensical system. 

Usually, when people seek my help with Real ID, I explain that the only situation in which they are likely to need such an ID is when boarding a domestic flight. I tell them that you need to have a passport, a birth certificate, and two pieces of mail from a government or utility sent to your residential address before the DMV will issue you a Real ID. You can board a plane with a passport alone, so if you have that, you don’t really need the enhancement. If, after I explain all this, a person still requests my help with Real ID, I offer to pay a portion of the fee to them directly, using a personal check made out to them by name. (The DMV will not accept my check for Real IDs, for reasons unknown.)

To replace a valid regular ID costs $40 in Oregon. To replace a valid driver’s license costs $30. To renew an expired ID costs $43, and to renew an expired driver’s license costs $54. To issue an original ID costs $47, and to issue an original driver’s license costs $64, plus test fees.

If you find these fees and acronyms as confusing and frustrating as I do, please know that this is intentional. Leaders and policymakers create systems designed to confuse, exhaust, and demoralize anybody trying to pay attention and scrutinize the details. Most of us absorb only what we absolutely need to know and discard the rest of the noise. There’s so much noise, so much injustice, so much cruelty, so much carelessness in the world. We have to pick our battles.

The ten Chinese neighbors don’t want my help obtaining Real IDs because they plan to fly domestically. They’re concerned that the services and protections they currently enjoy with their regular IDs and Permanent Resident Cards (popularly known as green cards) will soon be withdrawn, and the lack of an Oregon-issued Real ID will be used to justify imprisonment or deportation. I have no idea if this will happen, but as the son of immigrants myself, I share their anxiety about things we were told were certainties that are now variables. I write each of them a check for $70—the full cost of replacing a regular ID card in Oregon, plus the fee for a Real ID enhancement. 

One by one, the elders bow and clasp my hands in gratitude. I think of my late mother, who was ethnic Chinese, of similar stature and manner as these birdlike matriarchs, with their meticulously kept documents and their sensible shoes. I don’t have words for the feelings I feel.

Several of the White people that I’ve helped have complained to me about immigrants, about trans people seeking attention, and about people of color preventing them from enjoying the careers and homes that they believe are rightfully theirs. They say these things seemingly without seeing my obvious ethnicity, or my clenching jaw and wincing face. It’s not my place to say anything. I help whoever shows up.

This ID project is my attempt to ingratiate myself within this deeply compromised state, where no one truly feels they belong. See, my actions say, I’ve helped so many of your own elders, your family members, the people from your own neighborhoods that you’ve abandoned because of sexuality or gender or politics or addiction or criminal record. I must not be a threat to you, because I’m caring for the people that you’re clearly leaving behind.

On June 2 of this year, a transgender refugee fleeing sexual violence in Mexico was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at her scheduled asylum hearing at a federal building in downtown Portland. This person, known to us only as O-J-M, was taken to a detention facility, where she was held for over a month before being released on a judge’s order on July 15.

When I heard this news, I thought of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution: “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” These rights, broadly known as the right against self-incrimination and the right to due process, emerged after centuries of profound struggle, fought over by kings, popes, ministers, and pioneers. Testimony, evidence, oaths, and the rest of the panoply of the judicial process rely on the integrity articulated in these principles: It is not a crime to exist, and due process must be respected. The Fifth Amendment does not limit these rights only to “citizens” or “White people.” It says “no person,” with a clarity and simplicity that is astonishing for its time, even if that breathtaking expansiveness wasn’t intended by the Founding Fathers. 

When I read the Fifth Amendment, I think of the IDs I’ve helped so many people obtain. I think of the masks that ICE agents wear to disguise themselves, and the facial recognition software on our devices, and the REAL ID Act–compliant star in the corner of my recently renewed license. O-J-M has been treated like a criminal for simply existing. Her physical self has been used as evidence that she does not belong here. She has incriminated herself simply by being. And she was disappeared from view almost as quickly as these historic guarantees.

At another PDX ID Assistance event, Mike—not the name he uses, but the one I’ll use here—signs up for my help. He explains to me that he just got off of probation. He’s been in a sober-living program for three weeks, and he’s getting amazing support from his sponsor and his AA group. Before he finished with probation, he’d been in the process of changing his identification documents so that his true name and gender identity would be recognized by the state and federal government, and by health care and financial institutions. Because he was still on probation, a judge had denied his request for an ID that reflects his actual identity—something most of us take for granted.

Mike tells me he’s given up on getting his name and gender-identity change documents for the time being, that he just needs to replace his ID with his deadname so he can get a job. Reluctantly, he shows me his Social Security card with the deadname. I use this to certify and notarize an application to another state to replace his birth certificate.

As I write the check and complete the paperwork, I tell him I agree with him, that it’s best to replace his original deadname documents first. And I promise him that once he’s obtained them, I will work to finish his name- and gender-correction applications, and that PDX ID Assistance will pay for all fees involved. I warn him that this will all take time and persistence. I thank him for the effort and persistence he’s displayed thus far. I tell him, “You’re incredibly brave. You’re not alone. Thank you for asking for my help. It’s my privilege and my honor to help you in this, no matter what it takes, as long as it takes.” 

Mike’s eyes widen and then well up, and he turns away and gruffly says, “Thanks.” He leaves as soon as he politely can. But before he does, he takes my business card and promises to email me as soon as he gets his deadname birth certificate in the mail. 

This is my biggest victory to date. 

A notary commission is literally a rubber stamp. Notaries emerged before literacy was common. The technology of notarization relies on the administration of an oath or solemn affirmation. When the right against self-incrimination first emerged in English common law in the sixteenth century, one had to be a cleric, a courtier, or appointed to an office of state in order to administer such legally critical oaths. Today, any citizen residing in a county in the state of Oregon can apply to become a notary of that county. All you have to do is complete a three-hour online training course, pass an online exam, and pay a $40 fee, plus an additional fee to a vendor for your own rubber stamp. I dream of a time when every library, neighborhood, and faith community in this state has its own ID activists regularly offering to help their neighbors replace lost IDs. 

I see this work as subversive, malicious compliance with bureaucratic requirements. I do this work because I want people to move beyond the petty labyrinth of unnecessary and lethal exclusion. It’s my way of protesting the sweeps, paid for by the City of Portland, that cause countless neighbors to lose their ID documents.

The scale of the housing crisis in this state is bigger than any single policy initiative or strategy can address in the short term. We have neglected mental and behavioral health resources, community supports, housing, health care, and education for generations. The latest Oregon state budget all but eliminates the existing inadequate eviction prevention programs, ensuring that these problems will persist for years to come. 

This crisis is so intractable because our political culture relies on simplistic cause-and-effect stories peppered with dehumanizing statistics and animated by a meritocratic morality that presumes a person’s misfortunes are the result of their moral failings. This creates an inescapable moral prison for us all. When any of us experience misfortune that we think we don’t deserve, hatefulness and racism offer clear and direct ways to place the blame for our suffering on others. I encounter this displaced racist animus almost every day in this city, and I have to remind myself not to allow my own self-righteous anger to become the very hatefulness I so abhor. The way I remind myself is by continuing to practice this ID project. 

Since 2022, I have written seven hundred checks to help individuals replace their ID documents. The number is deceptive: These are people, with names and stories that are too complex and sensitive to relay here. But I know for certain that if every individual in this state could find a way to learn all seven hundred of those names, along with their stories of connection and struggle and achievement and sacrifice, in the way that each of us knows our own stories and the stories of our own families and loved ones, then there would be no debate. It might be difficult, but it would be widely accepted that we need to do everything we can to take better care of one another.

Paul Susi is a writer, a theater artist, a social services professional, an educator, and an activist, born and raised in Portland. He is the peer resource navigator for Portland Street Medicine, a conversation project facilitator for Oregon Humanities, and the vendor program director for Street Roots. You can learn more about his work at www.paulsusi.wordpress.com.

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