New Initiative Targets Homelessness Among Veterans Noelle Swan At 60 years old, Art Griffin is about to graduate from UMass Boston with a bachelor’s degree in social psychology. His eyes brighten when he talks about his post-graduation plans. “I want to work with veterans,” he says. The slight tremor in his hands briefly calms as…
Let’s Re-Imagine America
By Marc D. Goldfinger If Barack Obama stood up this election year and said, “I will not take any Wall Street money,” he could possibly win the election by a landslide. That’s just a conjecture. One of the wonderful elements about the Occupy Movement is that everyone is a leader. Right now, close to 50…
Look Under the Hood, and Kick Some Tires
AARON JAMES Spare Change News What do you want in your president? Put political ideologies and terminology aside. Put the names of current candidates in the back of your mind. Start backward with an independent frame of mind. It is a tough question that should require some thought. I can narrow down my answer to…
IS THERE AN OPTION THREE, MBTA?
James Shearer Spare Change News In my last column I spoke of the fare increases on the MBTA, which take effect in July. Even though I wrote that the increases and service cuts were unfair, I thought to myself later that if I’m wrong about all of this and it’s not that bad, I would…
Making Cambridge Safer for Walkers
Robert Sondak Spare Change News US News & World Report included the city of Cambridge in a 2009 story, “15 Cities for People Who Hate Driving and Long Commutes.” Cambridge scored high with an average commute time of 24 minutes and a 58 percent rate of non-car commuters. According to the article, “Cambridge combines all…
T Riders Union Speaks at Rosie’s Place
Beatrice Bell Spare Change News On Jan. 18 at Rosie’s Place, Lee Matsueda of the T Riders Union came to talk about MBTA proposed fare hikes. The MBTA wants to reduce service to most bus routes, increase the RIDE base fares, increase the CharlieCard fixed route base price, and institute a $5 premium fare for…
Editorial: Cut!
Massachusetts is preparing another grim budget for the next fiscal year that is expected to include modest “revenue enhancers” — that is, tax and/or fee hikes on the general public — and yet another round of cuts to social services. Given those two eventualities, the state’s dubious film tax credit program belongs on top of…
The Origin of the Kennedy Curse
The Origin of the Kennedy Curse (EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is reprinted from Ireland’s Big Issue, one of our sister papers within the International Network of Street Papers. We thought the story is a natural for a Boston audience). By Tom Prendeville Ireland’s Big Issue We’ve all heard of the “Kennedy curse”. Is there an…
How Haiti Earned Its Place in Black History
The first independent nation in Latin America and the first Black-led republic in the world shaped the African-American identity Jacques Fleury Spare Change News “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” -Martin Luther King Jr. In the two years since the earthquake that devastated Haiti, a country already marred by political depravity and economic…