Category: Voices from the Streets
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VOICES FROM THE STREETS: Oh hell yeah
On a rare morning last week when I had nothing to do I hastily caught a press conference by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Let’s cut to the chase. “If committing to signing the (host city) agreement is what’s required to move forward, then Boston is no longer pursuing the 2024 Olympics and Paralympic games,” Walsh…
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VOICES FROM THE STREETS: Changes In Life
I sit at my desk looking around my office and I have to feel gratitude. It’s 2015 and just 21 years ago I was strung out on heroin and didn’t know where I was going to lay my head at night. In the last issue of Spare Change News was an article about me as…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: A plan, a census and a fall guy
A couple of weeks ago, the 35th annual Boston homeless census was released. Those of you who know me know how I feel about the census. I have never hidden the fact that I believe it to be inaccurate in every way. And while I hoped that every effort would be made to get this…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: A story about opium
To show how long the opiate wars have been going on, we’d have to go back to the mid 1800s when the East India Company sponsored by the British was forcing ships full to the brim with opium cakes on China. Every year ships would arrive at China’s shores and dispense the opium to the…
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VOICES FROM THE STREETS: Two dogs and a kitten (conclusion)
A man comes back from prison and finds chaos at his home. At breakfast he accidentally killed their kitten by pushing it off the table. He’s struggling to stay clean but the stress is getting to him. Click here for Parts One, Two, Three, Four. The children were crying. I was torn with sorrow as…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: Two Dogs and a Kitten (Part Four)
A man gets out of prison and comes home to the mother of his children and is blown away by the chaos they live in. He’s struggling to stay drug-free but doesn’t have a program. He just got stoned with a friend who had a place to bathe his kids. (Click here for Part One,…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: Thinking of you, Willa
It’s maddening as a writer when you’re working on your column and you’re way past deadline. Then something pops up. It makes you stop the presses and restart as I’m doing now. I don’t like it but if I don’t get this out it would be lost. By now everyone on the planet has seen…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: Voices of the homeless
A few years ago, as I was about to become president of the board at the Homeless Empowerment Project, I found myself walking through Boston’s Back Bay to clear my head and think about the huge responsibility I was about to take on. I was making my way through the T station there when I…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: Two dogs and a kitten (part two)
(Part one can be read here. A man comes back from prison and finds chaos at his home. He’s taking his children out to do the laundry after going out for breakfast.) Jeannie wanted to help me put the dirty clothes in the washing machine. Donald wanted to play with one of the kids at…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: A certain sadness
I, along with millions of others, watched the events that unfolded in Baltimore last week. Like so many others, I was also angered and saddened by what went down. It’s a scene that has become all too familiar over the last year. A young black man was killed by the police, seemingly without provocation. Freddie…