Spare Change News

Category: Voices from the Streets

  • Obama, Climate, History

      It was worth staying up until 2 a.m. on election night to hear Barack Obama’s victory speech. The brother sure can bring it when he is inspired. Now it’s time for the climate and progressive movements to do our job as citizens and demand that he do the same on climate. It’s time, long…

  • Guns, Guns, Guns

    As promised, the President presented his proposals for gun control, through the panel led by the Vice-President, a month after the shootings at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut. Most of the new proposals are really nothing new: tougher background checks, assault weapons ban, and limiting magazine rounds. Requiring background checks for all gun…

  • Joe Finn: Executive Director, Massachusetts Homeless Shelter Alliance

    “I have always fundamentally believed that the issue of homelessness needs to be addressed. And all of my life’s work has been focused on what we can do to end it and meet these people’s needs.”—Joe Finn For Joe Finn, devoting his life’s work to helping the needy has always made sense. Coming from a…

  • Bob Hurlbut: Executive Director, Cambridge Community Foundation

    Age: 76 Location: Cambridge How Marin Luther King Jr. Inspired You: Before I did the foundation for twenty years, I was the headmaster of Parks School in Brookline. And before that, teacher at Newton High School. During those early years as a teacher and school head, I was very involved in civil rights activities, including…

  • Resolve to End Homelessness in 2013

    It’s the beginning of the year, and resolutions are fresh. Exercise more. Lose weight. Spend less. Reduce stress. Gym memberships jump in January, and so do hopes that weight-loss programs and yoga classes will reshape our bodies and minds. But New Year’s resolutions don’t come cheap. According to market research corporation Marketdata Enterprises, Americans spent…

  • Honoring Dr. King

    As we get closer to Martin Luther King Day, I believe he would be proud of the strides we have made in the 45 years after his death. Minorities have accomplished much. Today we have a voice — a voice that, judging by the last election, is determined to be heard no matter how others…

  • Spare Change's Editor-in-Chief Discusses the Newtown Shooting at the Huffington Post

    Spare Change News’s editor-in-chief, Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, has a new article up at the Huffington Post on the mass-shooting in Newtown, Connecticut: “An Elegy for Innocence.” Here’s an excerpt: This year alone in Chicago, Ill., more than 400 people have died from gun violence — many victims are children and teens. Yet there is…

  • The United States of Solitary Confinement

    “What happened to me in that cell tore me down. I scream at night. In my dreams, I’m back in that cell,” says Brian Nelson, who spent 12 years in solitary confinement. But that’s not how the story began. Brian Nelson was sentenced to 26 years in prison for participation in an armed robbery that…

  • Book Review: HR by Geoffrey Neil

    HR (Human Resources) by Geoffrey Neil (Priorities Intact Publishing, $2.99) “To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: This is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle. . . . Without cruelty there is no festival.”—Friedrich Nietzsche Morana was beautiful and intelligent, with no sense of morality…

  • Flight: A Movie Review

    Even if you rarely go to a theatre to see a movie, you will want to see “Flight” starring Denzel Washington who won an Academy Award for his performance in the movie “Training Day.” In “Flight”, Denzel Washington plays a totally different character. He is an accomplished pilot, previously a stunt pilot who, at one…