Spare Change News

Category: Personal Essays

  • Occupy Sandy

    Sand is still being swept out of open doors down the narrow church hallway when we arrive. I walk in a narrow file with six other medical volunteers, carefully balancing the box of glucometers and other supplies on my shoulder. “Where do you want us to put the clinic?” one of us asks the wiry…

  • thanksgiving overload: food & family make a full community

    Starting on November 20, I endured three Thanksgiving parties and four Thanksgiving dinners. The first party I went to was at the TD Boston Garden on November 20th, from 1 – 4 pm. They had their 17th annual Thanksgiving party for homeless people and low-income individuals and families. While hundreds of people were being served…

  • Protecting Our Right to the Right Medicine

    President Obama’s healthcare reform is about to severely restrict drug treatment options for millions of America’s most vulnerable patients. This certainly wasn’t the president’s intention. But a new, preliminary regulatory ruling from the Department of Health and Human Services required by the 2010 healthcare reform law applies a one-size-fits-all approach to prescription medicines. And the…

  • Upward Spiral

    My mother had always shown me what the streets looked like from a distance. Taking me to Pine Street Inn, and having me help out was her scared straight program for me. We would hang out in Harvard square to watch the performers, but the other colorful characters were much more intriguing to me. The…

  • Trash Tossing

    Ah, this place called Earth. Stop for a minute. Look around you. Try to see your earthly surroundings as if through the eyes of a fascinated child. Bask in the majesty of the Great Smoky Mountains or stimulate and overwhelm your senses with the geologic colors and magnitude of the Grand Canyon; the lush splendor…

  • The Liberal Lion

    “I am working to reduce crime.” In a spare, direct, and intelligent speech, Congressman Barney Frank emphasized, to the rapt Freedom Rally crowd on Boston Common September 15th, how “politicians are continually pressed for ways to lower crime…” and that his efforts to stop prosecution of marijuana usage would do exactly that. The Congressman is…

  • Strike Up the Chorus

    “Who wants to read a poem?” Saul Williams asked the audience. The crowd gathered at the Brighton Music Hall in Allston, Mass., was small, just a couple hundred people, but it appeared to be made up of devout fans. Many people clutched dog-eared copies of Williams’ books of poetry to their chests. The audience froze…

  • Hip Hop Activism

    There is a fire burning in Roxbury, just up Washington Street from Dudley Square. At 2181, just after you see the Payless, you can find Project HIP HOP. Project HIP HOP, the acronym means ‘Highways Into the Past – History, Organizing, and Power’, is a youth-led, peer-to-peer organization that utilizes the Hip Hop aesthetic to…

  • American Manhood

    James Baldwin has taught me a lot about being a man. More specifically he taught me how to be a man who is whole. This has not come without great pain, sacrifice and loss. Along the way to wholeness the stupefying effects of my attempt to live into the American idea of masculinity, which by…

  • "F" Poverty

    The Rich and the Rest of Us, by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West (Smiley Books). These two bright minds, with articulate diction of intellect and the loud volume of intense passion, place the political “F-word” at the center of the socio-political discourse – and that disconcerting word is poverty. For many, it remains an icky…