Spare Change News

Tag: Issue 06-15-2012

  • Poems by Jordan Tyler Young

    Claiming Black I stand in front of you all black and all shooting hoops, swirling through the rim while the crowd cheers me on that’s what you see me as my words grab silence and shoot into the air you hear the same darn thing but you don’t see me as a poet no, you…

  • Workin' For a Living: A Tale of Four Spare Change News Vendors

    By Noelle Swan SPARE CHANGE NEWS Like so many others, Atiqa Mallah came to America looking for opportunity. Life in Morocco was hard, she says. Both her parents died when she was young, leaving Mallah and her siblings to care for each other. When she had a child of her own, she wanted to create…

  • Looking Back

    By James Shearer SPARE CHANGE NEWS It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years, two decades, since Spare Change News was created. Yes, much has happened since then. We’ve had our ups and downs, the paper has more than once been declared dead, but as one of the founders once said, “Spare Change is…

  • Census Data: Cambridge Reports an Increase in Homeless Population

    Robert Sondak SPARE CHANGE NEWS The last week in January 2012 hundreds of communities nationwide conducted their annual homeless census, required by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This national census includes two separate counts involving a tally of unsheltered individuals and a tally of families and individuals staying in shelters…

  • Harvard Square Business Association Trains Homeless Ambassadors

    By Adam Sennott SPARE CHANGE NEWS For a few minutes, Denise Jillson was homeless, pregnant and HIV positive. However, when time was up, Jillson went back to being the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association. On June 2, members of the Harvard Square Business Association gathered with homeless advocates at the Harvard-Epworth United…

  • The End of an Era: James Shearer Stepping Down as Spare Change Board President

    By Liam Cunningham SPARE CHANGE NEWS A long chapter in the history of Spare Change News will come to a close late this year, when co-founder James Shearer will be stepping down as Board President. Shearer, who has been involved with the paper in a variety of roles since its inception in 1992, has decided…

  • How I Arrived At Spare Change News (Conclusion)

    By Marc D. Goldfinger SPARE CHANGE NEWS Click here to read Part I of How I Arrived At Spare Change News. The radio in my 1955 Buick was humming as my friend Jack and I sat in a parking lot in the South Mountain Reservation in South Orange, New Jersey, loaded on codeine-based cough syrup…

  • The Early Years of Spare Change News: Insights From Its Founding Organizer

    By Paula Mathieu SPARE CHANGE NEWS Its 20th anniversary seems an apt time for Spare Change News and its readers to look back and reflect on the paper’s early history. “I wouldn’t have predicted this paper would last 20 years,” admits Tim Harris, who in 1992 was the idealistic journalist and homeless organizer responsible for…

  • Editorial: Helping People Help Themselves for 20 Years

    A handful of not-so-likely-to-succeed homeless people started a newspaper 20 years ago. They were staying at a homeless shelter in Harvard Square, and they had a dream. A big dream. It was a little crazy. They dreamed about rising above their plight, their misery, their station in life. Staying in homeless shelters, frankly, was a…