(Photo: Brett Boston) Days after the devastating fire that destroyed several houses along Berkshire Street in Cambridge and displaced almost 150 people, the city’s vice mayor Marc McGovern talked to Spare Change News about what he and his colleagues were doing to help those in need. Q: How are you guys helping people who lost…
SCN Exclusive: Carl Bernstein on Trump, voters, and the media
In 1992, legendary journalist Carl Bernstein blasted the media for its obsession with celebrity, manufactured controversy, gossip, and sensationalism in his article “The Idiot Culture” for the New Republic. At the time, the front pages of newspapers across the country were more focused on Donald and Ivana Trump’s divorce than they were on Nelson Mandela’s…
In Their Own Words: Trump and Clinton on Poverty
This year’s presidential campaign has been about a huge list of topics – but one that seemed to be largely missing from that list was poverty and homelessness. Here’s a last minute, pre-election primer on where the candidates have stood. – Trump says he’ll get Americans out of poverty by “creating incentives.” No, it’s not…
Q&A with Elizabeth Warren: the senator talks about the presidential race and Wells Fargo scandal
Senator Elizabeth Warren at the opening of Cambridge’s Y2Y youth shelter. Photo: Zengzheng Wang. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has been one of the most prominent critics of Wall Street and big banks since the 2008 recession began. Her tough interrogations of bankers and businessmen in the Senate Banking Committee launched many viral videos, the most…
Eric Alterman: Reviving the liberal label
For nearly a year and a half many journalists and media outlets have struggled to make sense on Donald Trump’s sexist, racist, xenophobic campaign for President. But not The Nation’s Eric Alterman. “I think Trump is in many ways a continuation of what we’ve gotten from the Republican Party for the past 20 years,” Alterman…
Michael Patrick MacDonald: Families of All Souls “Are all Dealing with Heroin”
(Photo: Bill Brett) When Michael Patrick MacDonald walks down ‘methadone mile’ he sees a familiar story among the addicts and panhandlers. “Most people down there come from places like I come from,” MacDonald said. Places of “poverty” and “trauma.” MacDonald grew up in the Old Colony housing projects during the height of the cocaine epidemic…
Prophets of Rage: “Elite Taskforce of Revolutionary Musicians” Take on Homelessness
By Ronald Dudley and Eric Falquero Courtesy of Street Sense / INSP.ngo. To say that Prophets of Rage is political doesn’t quite cover it. When reporters or pundits—from ABC to Bill Maher to Rolling Stone—call this combination of musicians from Cypress Hill, Rage Against the Machine and Public Enemy a “supergroup,” guitarist Tom Morello is…
Thousands of Boston students face homelessness as school approaches
As Boston Public Schools (BPS) students gear up for the excitement and pressures of another school year, over seven percent of the district’s youths are facing the additional stresses of homelessness. The approximately 4,000 homeless students in the public school system represent almost one fifth of the state’s homeless students—a staggering figure that has climbed…
Life on Skid Row
(Photo: Zengzheng Wang) 1890 was a good year for California oil baron Lyman Stewart. His company had merged with Sespe Oil and the Mission Transfer Company to form Union Oil, Paul Rood, adjunct professor of political science and history at Biola University, said. At the time it was the largest oil company in California, responsible…
InnerCity Weightlifting: Raising the bar for at-risk youth
Photo: Chris Cardoza / Doza Visuals When Jon Feinman worked for AmeriCorps in 2005 he had an idea: use weightlifting as way to engage Boston’s inner city youth. The idea worked, and soon he was getting the attention of some of the city’s most at risk kids. One in particular, Elexson Hercules, who was initiated…