Category: Voices from the Streets
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Detox Blues, Part Three
At the beginning of this chapter, my wife, Sascha, is in detox. I can’t get in to a detox center for two days, so I’m in the process of cashing a prescription because I’m dope-sick.) I can’t describe the feeling when you walk out of the drugstore with the stuff in your hand. It’s like…
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RIP Boston Phoenix
When this issue of SCN hits the streets, it will also be the same week for the last issue of the Phoenix. I think I nearly lost my breath when I found out that after 47 years, one of my favorite papers would be closing its doors. I started reading the Phoenix when I first…
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Spring Funding Appeal
The recent demise of the Boston Phoenix has left many Bostonians wondering what will be the fate of progressive independent journalism in the Greater Boston area. Spare Change News is here to stay. The Homeless Empowerment Project has been publishing Spare Change News, the country’s longest continuously running street paper, for 21 years with the…
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Detox Blues, Part Two
(I was dope-sick, trying to cop from a doctor; my wife was in detox.) I really wanted to smoke a cigarette to calm down, but I didn’t want to walk in there stinking of tobacco. So, I just took some deep breaths and listened to the phlegm in my chest rattle. It sounded great. When…
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Youth Homelessness
I’ll be the first to give credit, when and where it is due. We are fortunate to live in a state that considers and integrates equality and diversity in many of our policies and services. It’s a walk through Boston’s Downtown Crossing or one visit to an organization like Bridge Over Troubled Waters, however, that…
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Enough Already
As I sat here writing this column on a cold, snowy Sunday morning, I was channel surfing. I landed on one of the Sunday morning shows. Usually, I hardly ever watch these shows; I don’t have much time for them. This morning, I watched, and ten minutes into it I remembered why I usually don’t—the…
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Detox Blues, Part I
I kept drinking the wine so the withdrawal from the Klonopin wouldn’t hit me. I didn’t want to have a seizure out here in the country. My wife, Sascha, had already gone into detox at a place called Canterbury Farm. Serenity House said that they had an opening for me, but not until Monday. It…
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One Cold Day In Paradise
On my way to talk to a group of students about homelessness, the wind chill on this day made what was already a bone chilling 5 degrees. Even though I was dressed for the occasion, I still couldn’t feel my face. As I walked through the Commons I saw something shocking. There is a homeless…
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Nothing but a Man: A Review
Nothing but a Man directed by Michael Roemer (Studio V, $26.95) Nothing but a Man was released in 1964, directed and written by Michael Roemer, a Jewish man who fled Germany after the “night of broken glass”, which took place in 1938 and was called Kristallnacht, just as the Jews were getting set up…
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The Student Lending Crisis
On September 17th, 2011, people took to the streets in lower Manhattan as Occupiers to denounce the financial and banking institutions that, as they saw it, caused suffering, economic disaster, and uneccessary harm during and after the financial crisis of 2008. Many of the protesters, Occupiers, asserted — and with solid arguments — that the…