Rupal Ramesh Shah People experiencing homelessness often have difficulty accessing basic medical services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed several guidelines to ensure the unhoused are prioritized during vaccine implementation. One of them is to work with Continuum of Care Programs, which promote community-wide efforts to end homelessness and address…
Spare Change News
On Thanksgiving 2021, dozens of people gathered near the intersection of Baoston’s “Mass and Cass” in the area often referred to as “Methadone Mile.” They carried with them 230 bags packed with socks, gloves, and other supplies to be distributed to the area’s unhoused people — on the street, local shelters, and the New England…
ANOTHER UNENVIABLE ANNUAL RECORD FOR GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
by Alison Kentish Inter Press Service As the international community gathers for COP26 widely considered the most important climate conference since the 2015 gathering which resulted in the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is reporting that despite global hits in trade and travel by the COVID-19 pandemic, the concentration of greenhouse gases in…
Should the Boston School Committee be elected?
The night of Dec. 11 was cold and biting, but didn’t keep Boston’s residents from making their way to City Hall to attend a nearly three hour hearing, where people spoke of accountability, racial and class discrimination, and freedom when debating the governance structure of the Boston School Committee. Two panels spoke in stark opposition…
Ending Youth Homelessness: An Interview With the Associate Director of the Massachusetts Homeless Coalition
Kelly Turley (second from right), Associate Director of the Massachusetts Homeless Coalition, talks to Spare Change News about the challenge of ending youth homelessness in the Commonwealth. On any given night in Massachusetts, hundreds of unaccompanied young adults and youth are homeless for a variety of reasons. According to the 2017 Massachusetts Youth Count conducted by…
Bill Murray chats about his late-career dive into music
Bill Murray and Jan Vogler Bill Murray is on the road. Calling from Charlotte, North Carolina, where it’s well after midnight, he and classical cellist Jan Vogler are winding down after a performance on their unusual tour, which sees the famously quirky movie star singing – yes, singing – and reciting literature with a chamber…
Did ‘Old School Justice’ Catch Up to Whitey Bulger?
When I heard the news about James “Whitey” Bulger being savagely killed in his new prison in West Virginia, it came as no surprise. For years he ratted on the New England Mafia to increase his own crime organization’s control of the Boston area. I grew up in New Jersey and started using cough syrup…
Stagnant Wages and Rising Rents Squeeze the Middle Class Out of Boston
Boston, and Massachusetts overall, have been outpacing the country on low unemployment numbers and providing housing for the poor, but a new report suggests that this growth is largely limited to the wealthy, and that upward mobility is on the decline. A new poverty report from the Boston Foundation’s research center titled “Boston’s Booming…But for…
Parting Ways at the Crossroads
There has been a sadness around me lately. As many of you know, we lost a family member, our long time vendor Fred Boykin. And as I sit here writing this column I’m thinking of his positive spirit despite all the obstacles in his way. I wish I could be more like he was, now…
Protests against Kavanaugh bookend the week in Boston
The week leading up to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States started and ended with rallies protesting his appointment. On Monday, Oct. 1, hundreds of people gathered on City Hall Plaza next to a Forbes 30 Under 30 event where Senator Jeff Flake was scheduled to speak. Flake had called…