Author: David J. Jefferson
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Spare Change News 18th Anniversary Silent Auction Gala
Come join Spare Change vendors, staff, and Homeless Empowerment Project board members at our 18th anniversary celebration, which will culminate on Saturday, May 8th with a silent auction gala. The event will be held at the Inn at Harvard from 6-9pm and will feature over 40 items on which to bid. The donations that we’ve…
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Thinking Inside of the Box
David J. Jefferson In my last column, (from the 4/8/10 issue) I discussed a recent interfaith meeting of local religious and community leaders who convened to dialogue about homelessness as a solvable problem. The idea of Housing First featured prominently in the forum, which is an initiative that has been outlined previously in this publication…
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Narratives of the Concrete: Review of Homeless Souls
Although Homeless Souls by Jake Anderson is bound, with a glossy image on its cover, has pages through which to leaf, and is stamped with a barcode and an ISBN number, it is really much more than a book. Instead of resorting to platitudes or the pity-provoking rhetoric invoked by some ethnographic writers whose subjects…
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Local Leaders Agree: Problem of Homelessness is Solvable
The message would seem patent—the first step towards solving homelessness is to get those without housing a home. Yet this obvious notion has been imbued with renewed meaning since the introduction of federal “Housing First” and “Rapid Transition to Housing” initiatives, to be implemented under the recently passed 2009 HEARTH Act. According to the parameters…
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The Argument for Prevention
Amid competing cries of triumph and consternation—along with some grunts of cynicism—health care reform in America will become reality. Scholars, journalists and politicians have together acknowledged the significance of the Health Care Bill, passed through the U.S. House of Representatives on March 21st as the Reconciliation Act of 2010. The package represents the culmination of…
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Spare Change's Most Insidious Myths
It’s not often that one newspaper will give a plug to another, especially within its own pages. Yet this rarity occurred in a recent (February 23, 2010) issue of The Beacon Hill Times, in which a letter to the editor by Jake Kritzer lauded Spare Change News and the work that we do. Jake, if…
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In Fear of Poverty
“The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.” When William James, ostensible father of American Psychology, penned this line over a century ago, he had embedded the idea in a discussion on religious experience, in which he also extolled the virtues of voluntary poverty.…
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Fair Foods Two Dollar-A-Bag Program
Spare Change vendor and writer Rober Sondak has written much about nutrition, including a recent article about the Boston-based nonprofit Fair Foods (http://sparechangenews.net/news/fair-foods-fights-nutritional-insecurity). Fair Foods is a great resource for obtaining fresh produce without spend a lot of money, and it’s likely that one of their $2 bag programs is in operation in your neighborhood.…
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Spare Change Honors the Legacy of Howard Zinn
“Spare Change to me is an extraordinary illustration of what homeless people can do, because they can reach out to the public and say ‘Here we are,’ and we’re intelligent and sensitive people. We’re poets; we’re writers; we’re not crazy. We’ll tell you what caused our situation and we’ll ask you to do something about…
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Video Clip of the Night(mare) Center
Night Center Video from Spare Change News on Vimeo. -Video by Norman Watne This video is the multimedia accompaniment to a story by Norman Watne published in the 1/28/10 issue of Spare Change News. It depicts the interior of the Night Center, a “drop-in center” at 31 Bowker St. in Boston that serves as a…