Harvard Square Business Association just announced the Empathy Project, a collaboration between Spare Change News, Homeless Empowerment Project, and our fellow Harvard Square Business Association member, the Community Charter School of Cambridge. The project is organized by SCN interns and CCSC seniors Yusef Ferhani and Christy Felix. On May 7th, the, National Day of Service, high…
Gloria Steinem: Clinton “has to be” president
By Antonia Charlesworth, courtesy of INSP.ngo / Big Issue North. Fresh from college in 1957, then aged 22, Gloria Steinem headed to India to avoid her engagement to a man she describes as good but wrong. En route, she found herself in England, waiting for her visa. “It was here I incidentally discovered I was…
The Project: About The Avoidable Crisis
Photo: StanleyFormanphotos.com, Pulitzer Prize 1977, “The Soiling of Old Glory” The Avoidable Crisis is a project conducted by the Emerson College Journalism Department. Three journalism students, one recent graduate and two faculty members researched Boston’s busing crisis during Summer 2014. Over a three month period, the team examined 5,000 documents, including articles, books and reports.…
Dear Albania: Eliza Dushku discusses Immigration, Bernie Sanders, and Homelessness
Photo Credit: Zengzheng Wang Watertown native and Buffy The Vampire Slayer actress Eliza Dushku didn’t have dreams of being an actress. She didn’t really have much interest in it at all, until she followed her brother to a casting call in Boston when they were kids. But even with her serendipitous trip to that casting…
President’s budget proposal ‘a first step’ in aiding homeless families
President Obama is looking to house more homeless families over the next 10 years by providing them with more housing vouchers and short-term assistance, if his budget is approved by Congress. His budget calls for $11 billion more in spending to support these programs, which Megan Hustings, interim director of the National Coalition for the…
Q&A with Michelle Wu
Photos: Alena Kuzub The waiting room outside the city council president’s office is full of visitors, staff and paperwork changing hands. Portraits line the walls, from paintings to black-and-white photos to more modern colorful pictures—the eyes of councilors past watching the goings-on in City Hall. It feels crowded, even claustrophobic, and Michelle Wu’s new office…
A New Point in Time: A more positive narrative surrounds Walsh’s second homeless census as mayor
Last year, Marty Walsh’s first homeless census as the mayor came months after he closed Long Island, an incident that displaced hundreds of homeless folks and recovering addicts in Boston and led to tough criticism of how he handled the event. To recap, the main access route to the island, a rusty 64 year old…
Hollywood filmmakers turn the spotlight on world’s homelessness crisis
Courtesy of INSP News Service www.INSP.ngo / The Big Issue By Adrian Lobb and Steven MacKenzie Richard Gere is one of the most famous faces in cinema but during the making of his latest film, “Time Out of Mind,” in which he plays George, a homeless man living on the streets of New York, he…
Family Reunions Through Miracle Messages
Miracle Messages, based in San Francisco, is an organization that assists homeless individuals reunite with their lost loved ones using short video messages. Kevin Adler, chief executive officer of the organization, started the organization in honor of his uncle Mark in December 2014. His uncle lived on and off the streets for 30 years and…
125 Names: Homeless Memorial Day in Boston
All photos: Alena Kuzub A flute solos while a list of names is read from a podium, a candle lit for each one, covering the small altar of Church on the Hill in light. The same names can be found on the packaged blankets piled beneath the altar and lined up along the pews. Names…