Save The Date: The Homeless Marathon

Copied and pasted from The Homeless Marathon with our comments in italic: The 22nd Homelessness Marathon will air on Wednesday, December 9th, from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Please click the link, above, for new update.

The Homelessness Marathon is a unique radio program that gives homeless people and their allies a chance to speak with the nation about their experiences. Broadcasting from a different city each year, the Marathon features live reports, interviews with advocates and experts, and calls from listeners all over the country. Each hour of the program focuses on a different aspect of the problem, from youth to veterans, and from evictions to shelters.

The Homelessness Marathon goes underground
to talk with some of the forgotten people of Washington, DC.

Above all, the program centers the voices of homeless people talking about their real circumstances, obstacles, and potential solutions.

The goal is to create a dialogue on poverty, its causes and effects, and ideas for solving the homelessness crisis. The program goes beyond just talking about homelessness. instead, it focuses on hearing and learning from the lived experiences of homeless people around the nation... ideas and voices that are completely missing from current political discourse.

Please save the date and spread the word about their marathon on the 9th December. We walk past homeless people every day but how many times have we stopped to hear their stories? Maybe we chat for a moment when we're offering food but we really don't get to know our street living neighbors. This is the time that we can learn about how the other half live, and we can start to eliminate judgment that 'they live on the streets because they messed up.' Many homeless were born into poverty, came from addicted parents, were physically abused, harassed and bullied for being different, suffered mental health problems or the issue arose from a multitude of bad situations that resulted in street life. Some people may have been recently evicted due to Covid-19 causing their income to diminish, and their landlord refused to give an inch in short-term negotiating rent. Others may have been illegally forced out their home after being unable to retain a lawyer to fight their corrupt landlord's eviction notice, they didn't have enough income to rent a new home nor stable work to show as a reference to a potential landlord so the street was their only option. Never presume that the poverty gave up on life and were incompetent at money management - assume that each has their own unique story and that most of us are one month (or a bad landlord) away from also living on the curbside. Please share this post and join the 9th December Homeless Marathon.