Friday, April 2, 2010

The Letter "L"


Follow the link above for a spirited article (written by my late husband~ and you know it's powerful) from 2000 that suggests *gasp* mainstream media IGNORES the poor!
While in DC, we learned about a newspaper called "Street Sense" featured above. This paper costs $1.00 and homeless persons are vendors. Poor and homeless persons earn $.65 for each dollar and $.35 goes into production of the news. Articles in the paper are written by and for persons who are poor and needy.
Some of the issues presented in the papers I purchased and perused were pretty surprising. For example, Martin Luther King Library (in the center of the city) is going to be closed on Monday mornings. While this sort of information wouldn't have even caused me to blink (prior to the immersion); following our immersion, I am aware that closure of the library will directly affect homeless persons because they frequent the library in the morning (to get warm, check the computers for job listings, and to read).
In other large cities (such as LA), there are even regulations that prevent persons who smell (of alcohol, body odor, etc) from frequenting libraries. Regulations such as these target homeless persons and restrict their access to libraries, which means even fewer places for them to find safe havens.


1 comment:

  1. Your blog is doing really interesting and important work to document the difficulty of homelessness in D.C. In addition to being ignored by the media, many of these people are ignored by their neighbors and fellow citizens. I thought you might enjoy reading some of these stories that I collected from the former, current and future homeless of D.C. The goal of these stories is to simply shed light on who these people are in their own words.

    http://peoplesdistrict.blogspot.com/search/label/Poverty

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