[act-ma] 2/20-2/21 Annual Homelessness Marathon radio broadcast

[linda pinkow]

Homeless take the airwaves
Marathon radio program airs Feb. 20-21 nationwide
 
The 10th Annual Homelessness Marathon will be broadcast live starting
Tuesday night, Feb. 20 until Wednesday morning, Feb. 21.
 
The Homelessness Marathon is the world’s leading radio broadcast focusing
on homelessness and poverty, airing on over 100 radio stations in the
United States. 
 
This unique program will air in the Boston area on WMBR 88.1FM (and
streaming live at wmbr.org), MIT’s student- and community-run radio
station. The broadcast will begin at 10 p.m. and run through the night
until 9 a.m.
 
The program is formatted in one-hour segments, with each hour focusing on
a specific topic related to being homeless in America. There are panels
of experts, and call-ins from listeners, with a priority given to those
who are actually homeless. The host, “Nobody,” and his guests are in an
outdoor broadcast booth all night long, with a microphone set up for
people who are out on the street that night.
 
The Homelessness Marathon airs from a different city each year. In 2001
it originated in Harvard Square, Cambridge. This year it will be in
Fresno, California, hosted by local community radio station KFCF and an
ad hoc committee of activists on poverty and housing issues.
 
“We picked Fresno,” explains the Homelessness Marathon’s director, Jeremy
Weir Alderson, “partly because of the extraordinary cruelty with which
homeless people are being treated there.” Allegedly, in the course of
making sweeps, the City of Fresno has thrown away people’s money, ID’s,
sleeping bags and tents as well as a list of items Alderson calls
“particularly shocking,” including someone’s false teeth, a cane, a
wheelchair, the ashes of someone’s dead grandchild and a tent thought to
have kittens inside (the kittens were never seen again).
 
Additional information about the Homelessness Marathon can be found at 
http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org


Linda Pinkow
news director  news at wmbr.org
WMBR 88.1 fm   http://wmbr.org
community radio at MIT
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://act-ma.org/pipermail/act-ma_act-ma.org/attachments/20070218/3e83f20d/attachment.html>