Category: Social Justice
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Editorial: Get Smart On Crime
“Tough on crime” talk might sounds good to legislators who like surefire-sounding answers that sell well to a crime-weary public. Three strikes and you’re out. Lock ‘em up and throw away the key. Build more jails. But even some of the nation’s more conservative states are learning that being “smart on crime” means more than…
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Mass. Farms Fight Food Insecurity
Robert Sondak Spare Change News The Produce to Pantries program at the Boston Natural Area Network (BNAN) was founded two-and-a-half years ago as a way to connect community gardens and people with limited means who were also facing food insecurity. Since the summer of 2010, this program has been providing local New England-grown produce gathered…
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Poor Planning Mars State’s Homeless Fight
By Sarah Ferris The state’s $65.3 million HomeBase program could have prevented thousands of families from entering emergency shelter last year, if funds had not been drained months into the effort, one of Massachusetts’ nonprofit housing partners said this month. The housing-first effort – spearheaded by Governor Deval Patrick as part of his campaign to…
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Photo Essay: Homeless in Heaven and Hell
Photos and words by Chris Swan. Homeless in Heaven and HellAlmost invisible, we people the city Living in the shadows we shine out, Moving, breathing heart of life. We may be forgotten, ignored, But we stand in your midst, Questions to be answered, Lives to be affirmed. Spare Change News decided to search out the…
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Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz Discusses The Price of Inequality
Mike Reilly INSP The work of Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York and former Chief Economist for the World Bank, is recognized worldwide. He has written a long string of books, numerous papers and a wide variety of essays and articles, many focusing on equilibrium in the world. In 2001, he…
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Editorial: A work in progress
No one can argue with the good intentions behind HomeBASE, the centerpiece of the Patrick administration’s “housing first” approach to homelessness. The idea is to move the homeless out of emergency shelters — and costly state-subsidized hotel and motel rooms, which are used in the frequent event that shelters are full — and into permanent…
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Women On The Rise: Cambridge Organization Forges Personal Relationships within the Growing Female Homeless Community
Zachary Goldhammer Spare Change News On The Rise, the name of the Cambridge women’s day shelter located at 341 Broadway in Cambridge, has recently taken on a new meaning. The phrase not only represents the ideological aims of the program—to rehabilitate women who have been left on the streets—but also an unfortunate reality: the number…
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The Rise of Women’s Boxing: From Local Gym to Olympic Arena
Noelle Swan Spare Change News No sooner had the bell rung than Jamie Jacobsen’s fist connected with my nose. Instantly, my eyes welled up with water and a cold chill set in all over my body. By the second round, my nose had swelled up beyond utility, leaving me struggling to learn how to breathe…
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Boston: Human Rights City
Beatrice Bell Spare Change News Dottie Stevens and Debbie-Ann Meskimen Ferretti, along with several others joined together in February 2010 to discuss how to have Boston become a Human Rights City. With the work from this union and several events during 2010 and 2011, Boston became a part of the Human Rights City Project on…
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Common Courtesy: Pay It Forward
Anthony Thames Spare Change News Recently, while I was commuting home via the No. 222 bus to Weymouth, a mother boarded with an infant child in a stroller. The bus was fairly crowded, as is normally the case on a late Tuesday afternoon. There were no open seats in the front of the bus, and…