Category: Social Justice
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Ride for Food Takes on Growing Problem of Food Insecurity in Boston Area
DEDHAM, Mass.—Starting at 8:15 a.m. on Sunday, September 21, the first of three teams in the Ride For Food will begin their trek. The Ride for Food is a cycling fundraiser to fight hunger. It is sponsored by Three Squares New England (TSNE), a Dedham-based nonprofit. These bicyclists will ride one of three courses starting…
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Criminalization of Homelessness in US Condemned by the United Nations
By Carey L. Biron NEW YORK, N.Y.—A United Nations panel reviewing the U.S. record on racial discrimination has expressed unusually pointed concern over a new pattern of laws it warns is criminalizing homelessness. U.S. homelessness has increased substantially in the aftermath of the financial downturn, and with a disproportionate impact on minorities. Yet in many…
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Former Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn Looks Back on Busing, Forty Years Later
BOSTON, Mass.—Images of protests and violence in response to the desegregation of the Boston Public Schools are so lasting that movies like “The Departed” and the upcoming “Black Mass” still use them as symbols of racial disharmony 40 years later. Depending who you ask, the furor over busing was a fight over preserving decades of…
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It’s Called Accountability
I can’t say that I was the least bit surprised when I read Shawn Musgrave’s article on Boston public housing and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). I’ve always had issues with them, starting with how they operate their low-income housing program known as Section 8. I have known people who, for…
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Turning Up the Volume
By Andrew Halveron As I settled into the front row seat of my first slam, I felt an active comfort throughout the crowd that was still funneling in. Many faces happy to see each other and many conversations about what was to come from the mic this evening already flowing. I had heard spoken word,…
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Where the Candidates for Governor Stand on Homelessness
BOSTON, Mass.—There is an old parable set in a village by a river. One day, babies inexplicably start floating downstream. Each day brings more babies, and the town has a harder time saving all of them. But the townspeople cannot agree on how to solve the problem: One group wants to go upstream to find…
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State Universities and Community Colleges Suffer Despite UMass Funding Increase
BOSTON, Mass.—Gov. Deval Patrick recently approved an increase in funding for state colleges for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, continuing the pattern of the past few years. The UMass schools, however, receive a greater portion of the funding than do the nine other state universities. There are more students enrolled in the UMass system, and the…
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Shining a Light on Boston Public Housing
On the afternoon of 1 Oct. 2002, a resident of Back of the Hill Apartments in Jamaica Plain called a federal low-income housing hotline to report unacceptable conditions in the complex. “Caller has a complaint that there has not been an exterminator in the building in nine months,” the hotline operator jotted down in the…
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Crimson Care Collaborative
By Robert Sondak BOSTON, Mass.—Every Tuesday evening Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) nursing students form the bulk of the medical team at Crimson Care Collaborative (CCC)—a joint student-faculty clinical program that provide primary care to Boston’s underserved communities. As the students get hands on training, supervised by attending physicians from Massachusetts…