Spare Change News

Tag: Issue 10-04-2012

  • Meeting My Father For the First TIme, Again

    A gentleman and I recently had a brief conversation about an article I had written for Mother’s Day. He congratulated me on the article, and suggested I write one on behalf of Fathers. Upon hearing the mere suggestion of paying homage to fathers, I experienced a barrage of emotions. I felt anger, sorrow, hurt and…

  • Fathering: A Short Story

    When I was asked to write something about my father, I first thought to myself, “That will be a short story.” See, there isn’t much I can tell you about my old man because I never really knew him. I don’t remember him as a child, and I only saw him once or twice when…

  • The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi in the US

    “I’ve always thought of myself as a politician,” Aung San Suu Kyi explained to a packed audience at the Harvard Kennedy School’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on September 27. Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San, who founded the modern Burmese army and is considered the father of Burma’s independence from Britain.…

  • Romneycare vs. Obamacare

    When Mitt Romney spearheaded the healthcare law here in 2006, supporters shouted that “Romneycare” ushered us into the mythical realm usually reserved for unicorns: Healthcare reform that worked. Then the Feds joined the fray. Obamacare was upheld in a legendary 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court this summer, so the Affordable Healthcare Act (AHA) jumped…

  • Voter Suppression: Millions of minorities and youth may be turned away on election day

    The disenfranchisement of democratic leaning constituencies (including low-income, working, welfare, African American, Latino and student populations) has become a major focal point breeding political negativity. This is along with corruption in the voting process as our national election between Republican Mitt Romney and the President Democrat Barack Obama looms approximately six weeks on the horizon.…

  • No Voto Latino

    Regressive voting laws pushed by Republican controlled legislatures in 23 states across the country could keep more than 10 million Latino citizens from registering and voting this year, according to a new study to be released Monday. The new report by the Advancement Project, a multi-racial civil rights organization, is the first state-by-state analysis of…

  • Homeless Vote: Losing one's home does not mean one loses the right to vote

    Tucked away in a corner of the mail-in voter registration form for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a small diagram of a city intersection, with streets labeled north, south, east and west. This chart, for those who cannot describe their place of residence “as a number and street or as a rural route and box…

  • Gordon Gekko for President

    At one time Mitt Romney was my neighbor. Well, I use the term ‘neighbor’ loosely but he did live in Belmont, just not in my section of town. Where I live there are predominantly two or three family houses and, from what I understand, former Governor Romney lived in a mansion. I remember when Romney…

  • Interdependence & The Elections

    The Conventions are over. Whew. But how striking is it that in this, the world’s most powerful nation, two months away from a critical presidential election whose results will profoundly impact over 7 billion people world-wide, issues of foreign policy and globalization have been nearly invisible. In an unprecedented age of cosmopolitanism and interdependence, our…