Author: Joshua Eaton
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From the Editor
George Orwell famously quipped, “Journalism is printing what somebody else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” When most of us read that, we think of muckrakers uncovering bribes, criminality and corruption. Images of Woodward and Bernstein meeting with Deep Throat in dim alleyways spring instantly to mind. This is especially true after […]
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From the Editor
The paper you hold in your hands has a long, proud history. I am honored to be a part of it as interim editor-in-chief. Founded in 1992, SPARE CHANGE NEWS is the oldest continuously published street newspaper in the country. Over the past 21 years, it has never missed an issue. Most impressively, its model […]
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What’s Really Going on in Bahrain: An Interview with Activist Ala’a Shehabi
Ala’a Shehabi is not a woman to be trifled with. Born in the U.K., she earned a Ph.D. from Imperial College London and has worked for prestigious institutions like Rand Europe and the Bahrain Institute for Banking and Finance. At the same time, Shehabi has been active in Bahrain’s ongoing uprising. She was at Pearl […]
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Bahrain Shows Two Sides of Ambitious Economic Development
MANAMA, Bahrain—”The name ‘Bahrain’ means ‘two seas,’” our tour guide explained as we walked away from the old Portuguese fort on the outskirts of Manama. “There’s the saltwater sea that surrounds Bahrain. Then there’s the fresh water that bubbles up in the middle of the sea to our north.” The fort itself is breathtaking, set […]
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Keeping the Faith: Massachusetts Has Become a Center of the Climate Movement
The end of March and the beginning of April saw a toxic mix of unrefined oil and heavy industrial chemicals bleed over lakes, wetlands, residential streets, and front yards in four separate spills across the United States and Canada. The first major spill occurred on March 26, when a train derailed near Parkers Prairie, Minnesota. […]
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First-Time Documentarian Duo Embrace Nepal
A typical novice documentarian might start with a local issue for their first big film, but for Augusta Rose and Mary Frances White, it wasn’t enough. It was a story in eastern Nepal on the edges of Mount Everest that caught their eye. Rose and White, graduates of Fitchburg State University in 2012, spent the […]
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Terror, Torture, and Resistance
When I heard about the Boston Marathon bombings, I’d just finished reading Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s harrowing op-ed in the New York Times. Moqbel has been on hunger strike since February to protest his indefinite imprisonment, without trial, at the United States’ detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to the U.S. military, ninety-nine […]
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Minority Religions Absent at Obama’s Inaugural Prayer Service
The Presidential Inaugural Committee billed the National Prayer as a celebration of “the values and diversity that make us strong.” But if it was meant to celebrate diversity then it was difficult to see how. The service was held on Tuesday, January 22, the day after President Obama’s second inauguration, at the National Cathedral in […]
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Spare Change's Editor-in-Chief Discusses the Newtown Shooting at the Huffington Post
Spare Change News’s editor-in-chief, Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, has a new article up at the Huffington Post on the mass-shooting in Newtown, Connecticut: “An Elegy for Innocence.” Here’s an excerpt: This year alone in Chicago, Ill., more than 400 people have died from gun violence — many victims are children and teens. Yet there is […]