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News :: Education : Human Rights : Media : Race : Social Welfare |
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The 11th Annual Homeless Radio Marathon |
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by Linda Pinkow
Email: eclecticideas (nospam) juno.com (unverified!) |
19 Feb 2008
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The 11th Annual Homelessness Marathon, a 14-hour national radio dialogue on poverty and housing in the US, will take place Wednesday night to Thursday morning, February 20-21. Originating this year in Nashville, the Marathon is a live, outdoor, broadcasting event featuring homeless people, advocates for the homeless and call-ins from the public. A broadcast booth is set up outside, with open mics for people who are out on the street in Nashville that night. The Marathon does not raise money for charity. Its mission is to raise consciousness, by covering a broad range of topics, speaking with experts, taking calls from around the country, and above all, by putting homeless people on the air directly.
LISTEN LIVE: At WMBR 88.1FM or via streaming at www.wmbr.org |
 Photo: Compliments of www.dctvny.org |
More than 100 radio and TV stations across the country will air this unique program; in the Boston area, you can hear it on WMBR 88.1 FM, or streaming live at wmbr.org.
The national broadcast starts 7pm Weds. to 9am Thurs. The WMBR News Dept. is also producing a one-hour program on homelessness in Greater Boston, which will air 6-7pm on Wednesday. Invited guests include:
* Joe Finn, executive director, Mass. Housing and Shelter Alliance, and a member of the State Commission to End Homelessness. The MHSA is a public policy advocacy organization with the mission of ending homelessness in the Commonwealth.
* Ruth Woods Dunham -- Executive Director of On The Rise, Inc.,. a Cambridge-based non-profit organization assisting homeless women in the area who are unable to get the support and services they need from traditional programs.
* James Shearer, a formerly homeless man who was one of the original co-founders of Spare Change in 1992, and is now President of Board of Trustees of Homeless Empowerment Project (which publishes Spare Change).
"This year we picked Nashville," explains the Homeless Marathon's director and founder, Jeremy Weir Alderson, on their press release "party because it is a city at the crossroads in terms of its treatment of homeless people, and in this respect, it is like many other cities across the United States." Nashville is leading the fight against poverty through its Homeless Power Project composed of homeless and former homeless people, organizing for housing and workers rights.
"We're hoping our broadcast can reach across class and color lines to help tip the balance towards treating homeless people like citizens instead of criminals," said Alderson.
For more information, visit: |
See also:
http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org
http://homelessness-marathon.blogspot.com/
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This work licensed under a
Creative Commons license. |
