WVEW-lp, Brattleboro Community Radio (107.7fm or wvew.org), will once again air the annual Homelessness Marathon, starting at 7pm Tuesday evening (Feb. 17th) and running until 9am the next morning. For those not familiar with the broadcast, it is not a fund-raiser, it’s a conciousness raiser. This will be the 17th time the marathon has set up outdoors on one of the coldest nights of the year to talk to people who are homeless, housing advocates, workers at crisis centers, and occasionally a poitican or two willing to discuss the issue. This year the marathon will broadcast from Sarasota, Florida. (Last year it originated from Brattleboro using a booth set up in front of the Baptist Church.)
The broadcast has generally been ignored by the big media concerns; its distribution has mainly been Community Radio stations, college radio, pirate stations, and a few PBS outlets. It has been carried in our area for many years – first by radio free brattleboro, and now by WVEW. When rfb began airing it, there were ony two stations in all of Vermont which carried the marathon. This year there are four.
Special thanks go to the program hosts who ceded their time for the evening to make it possible to carry the full marathon: DJ Pockets of ‘Buttahmilk’ (6pm to 8pm), Frederic and Steve of Noise by Noyes/West (8pm to 10pm), and Eugene Uman of ‘No Boundaries’ (10pm to Midnight).
For more information: http://news.homelessnessmarathon.org/
Worth listening
Always worth tuning in for at least a while. It’s not often most people hear from those who are on the streets, and this program does a great job, year after year, highlighting issues.
Often you’ll hear from people who are “just like you” who stumbled, fell through the cracks, and can’t climb back out. Everything going fine until that one medical emergency… or that one layoff.
WVEW does service by playing this each year. Hopefully more people tune in each time around.
Sarasota, eh? That’s typically though of as a rather expensive Florida retirement area. It’s minutes from St Armand’s Key – a collection of shops for the wealthy. It’s one of the nicer places in Florida, in my view. Good beaches, interesting architecture, remnants of old Florida attractions (Jungle Larry!), and the home and arrest-location of Pee Wee Herman. Ringling Bros. winter headquarters (and home and museum) are there.