Spare Change News

Category: Opinion

  • Looking for a Good Job? Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

    Michelle Chen In These Times If you think your job stinks, you’re not alone. And if you’re still looking for a decent job, don’t expect to find one anytime soon, or ever. A new analysis of job quality, assessing various measures of benefits and wages, confirms what many of us already suspected: Good jobs are…

  • An Underdog’s Approach

    James Shearer Spare Change News The other day a student who was doing a project on Spare Change asked me why I do what I do? Meaning helping the homeless, and why I’m so dedicated to it? And what led me to sticking with Spare Change? Even though I was vocal about how it wouldn’t…

  • Why the Wealthy Should Worry About Inequality

    Mike Reilly International Network of Street Papers The work of Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York and former Chief Economist for the World Bank, is recognized worldwide. He has written a long string of books, numerous papers and a wide variety of essays and articles, many focusing on equilibrium in the…

  • Howard Zinn at 90 — Lessons from the People's Historian

    Bill Bigelow Common Dreams This Friday — August 24 — would have been the 90th birthday of the great historian and activist Howard Zinn, who died in 2010. Zinn did not merely record history, he made it: as a professor at Spelman College in the 1950s and early 1960s, where he was ultimately fired for…

  • Mass. Unemployment Up 6.1%

    By Matt Murphy STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, AUG. 16, 2012….Massachusetts employers added 1,600 jobs in July, but the state’s unemployment rate ticked up slightly for the first time in three years to 6.1 percent, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released by the Patrick administration Thursday morning. A previously reported 2,600…

  • Just Don’t Go

    James Shearer Spare Change News Not that anybody asked me … but all this noise about the Chick-Fil-A controversy is, in a word, just noise. The owner of this fast food chain, one Mr. Dan Cathy, made some remarks several weeks ago that his company is all about “family values” and that he himself is…

  • Congressman Capuano and the Campaign for Our Communities

    Beatrice Bell Spare Change News On July 30th and July 31st, Congressman Michael Capuano and Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson came to Rosie’s Place to answer some questions and have a discussion with the ladies. Tito let us ladies know a very interesting characteristic of Capuano’s — he’s among the most accessible members of Congress,…

  • The Spiritual Life: An Alternative Way of Healing Mind, Body, Spirit (Part III)

    Jacques Fleury Spare Change News Read Part I Read Part II The right road disappears beneath our feet. – Alice Walker So far, I have discussed how I came to Reiki, my initial skepticism and nagging curiosity about the practice, and the disputed founder Dr. Mikao Usui’s Reiki principles of “do not worry, do not…

  • Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz Discusses The Price of Inequality

    Mike Reilly INSP The work of Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York and former Chief Economist for the World Bank, is recognized worldwide. He has written a long string of books, numerous papers and a wide variety of essays and articles, many focusing on equilibrium in the world. In 2001, he…

  • Letter: It's Time To Strengthen Gun Laws

    To the Editor: The time is long overdue for gun control, as is practiced in England and other progressive peace loving countries. To quote Cheryl Wheeler in her song responding to the Jonesboro Schoolyard Shooting incident: …”but I know one thing. If it were up to me, I’d take away the guns.” In 1920, Britain…