Category: Voices from the Streets
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Why Our Country Can’t Trust Mitt Romney
By Marc D. Goldfinger So, as Mitt Romney wins in the Illinois Primary and knocks Rick Santorum out of the race, which makes him the Republican candidate, he decides he will not sign up for Medicare. Would that we all had that option! If I were as rich as Mitt, I wouldn’t take Medicare either.…
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"Shantaram," by Gregory David Roberts: A Book Review
Marc D. Goldfinger Spare Change News My daughter gave me a softcover edition of this book. I held it in my hands and looked at the massive size of it. I flipped to the back and thought, “Good God, 936 pages. I’m never going to get through this.” I almost put it aside and then…
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Activists See Homeless Teens as Growing Problem in Massachusetts
By Colleen Quinn STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, APRIL 18, 2012…..Diamond McMillion vividly remembers constantly feeling cold when she became homeless at 16 years old. For the first two years she lived on the streets – sleeping in elevator shafts, under bridges, in parks – she could not shake the cold. “There was…
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How The Troll Met Ar Lain Ta (Conclusion) (The Second of Two Parts)
By Marc D. Goldfinger “Well folks,” the Troll would say, “now that I got your limited attention, let me tell you a true story that nobody will believe if you take it out of here. You can try, but remember, who believes a junkie? Heh, heh, no one with any damn sense, and you can…
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How The Troll Met Ar Lain Ta (Part One)
Marc D. Goldfinger Spare Change News There’s dope houses and then there’s dope houses. Any junkie knows what I mean when I say that. The dope house of the Troll is like the last house on the block, you know, for the junkie who has tried everything to stop using and nothing works. The Troll.…
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A Bureaucratic Limbo
Marc D. Goldfinger Spare Change News Just imagine that all of a sudden you die; you find out that there may be no God. You’re thrust into a world full of drifting ghosts like yourself, all distraught because no one knows where to go. You talk to other ghosts and some of them say that…
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The Birth Of Ar Lain Ta (Conclusion)
Marc D. Goldfinger Spare Change News Ar Lain Ta was a man of humble origins. His parents were farmers from the west bank of the Salween River. The terrorist but legally sanctioned army of Burma, known as the Tatmadaw, had driven his parents from their farm. The Tatmadaw used what they called a “Four Cuts…
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The Birth of Ar Lain Ta (Part One) The Birth of Ar Lain Ta (Part One)
By Marc D. Goldfinger Everyone gets to pay the gatekeeper. In the end we pay with the only currency that we own. The gatekeeper’s desires are simple. All he wants is all we’ve got. They call me the Troll. I’m a gatekeeper of sorts and I have my own kingdom. Of course, I have to…
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Let’s Re-Imagine America
By Marc D. Goldfinger If Barack Obama stood up this election year and said, “I will not take any Wall Street money,” he could possibly win the election by a landslide. That’s just a conjecture. One of the wonderful elements about the Occupy Movement is that everyone is a leader. Right now, close to 50…
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Love, Lies, and Broken Dreams (Conclusion)
By Marc D. Goldfinger Jeanie nods her head as the tears spill down her cheeks. We huddle together on the mattress, both of us crying, until we fall asleep. We sleep for 30 hours. When we wake up I go over to the office of the trailer park and they offer to buy the trailer…