WMBR Special Events Calendar

This Month

WMBR Broadcasts the 10th Annual Homelessness Marathon

Hosted by:

Originally aired:

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. 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).

Location: 88.1 FM

For more information about this event, contact:
Linda Pinkow
news@wmbr.org
617-721-5153

Visit: http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org