Dave Goodman's PORTFOLIO
http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/784
For Economic Insecurity, Common Security Clubs Promoted As Way to Create A New Economy
by Dave Goodman / IBIS Radio (Staff), Jul-10-2009
BOSTON/Jamaica Plain - On the third floor of Building L at the Brewery Complex in Jamaica Plain, staffers with the Institute for Policy Studies, the Forum Organizing Project, and the Jamaica Plain Forum, are laboring over a critical question for our times: how to pull people out of the quicksand that is the U.S. economy.
Andree Zaleska, Director of the Forum Organizing Project and Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies Senior Scholar, and their partners with the Grassroots Policy Project and On The Commons, think they have a pretty good answer: "common security clubs."
Inspired by such historical organizations as mutual aid societies and economic cooperatives, these activists believe cooperation and collaboration between and amongst individuals must eventually supplant the "winner take all" and "pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps" attitudes Americans are taught from Kindergarten through old age.
On Common Security Clubs, Collins says "it's a small group, coming together; it's independent, it could be secular...some of them are connected to union locals or neighborhood groups, [and] some of them are connected to religious congregations."
The point, say organizers, is to encourage people to work on solving their economic difficulties along with others facing similar problems. The power of working together, in a cordinated way, sharing information, in a social environment, is an old idea but mostly forgotten or ignored by many Americans.
Several clubs currently meet in the Boston area. A number of others have cropped up in other states as well. Organizers recently held a meeting at the First Church Unitarian Universalist in Jamaica Plain to promote the concept and sign up more people.
Open Media Boston and I.B.I.S. Radio's Dave Goodman prepared the following story about Common Security Clubs:
Click to stream or download.
Quick Navigation to audio:
News:
Features:
Living:
More stories published on Open Media Boston:
Coal Burning Plants
Fuels Protests
openmediaboston.org/node/89
Commission Hears Testimony On Immigration Raids
openmediaboston.org/node/107
Residents of Jamaica Plain Meet Following Local Homicide
openmediaboston.org/node/137
Activists Gather to Block Eviction
openmediaboston.org/node/247
Latino Workers Launch Campaign Against Labor Abuse
openmediaboston.org/node/304
Housekeepers, Laid Off From Hyatt,
Want Jobs Back
openmediaboston.org/node/1045
http://www.fsrn.org/content/teacher-deported/2226
Popular Boston High School Teacher Deported
by Dave Goodman / IBIS Radio (Correspondent), May-23-2008
Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, acting on a judge's order issued in 2004, this week deported a popular Boston high school teacher. Obain Attouoman [read: oh-ben ' ah-two'-ah-min] came to the United States in 1992 fleeing repression against teachers in his native Ivory Coast.
In 2005, following protests by staff and students from his school, and intervention by Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, the math teacher was granted a two year stay of the judge's order. But since March 2007, he has been living and working in legal limbo. Dave Goodman has our story.
Click to stream or download.
Local Feature produced for "Homelessness Marathon" broadcast on WMBR, Cambridge (and on radio stations throughout the U.S. during the 2010 homelessness marathon on February 24th)
by Dave Goodman / IBIS Radio (Producer), Feb-20-2008
In
Cambridge and Boston, some homeless people work as newspaper
vendors, selling "Spare Change
News" to passersby on the street. The paper which costs a dollar
- vendors make 75 cents per - has managed to survive many twists and
turns in the economy. Articles are written by homeless and formerly
homeless people and their advocates.
In this report we hear first from Gregory, a colorful hawker of Spare Change News who subsists on the money he makes selling the paper in Harvard Square.
Click to stream or download.
Feature on Artist Joanne Rice (Mobius Artists Group)
by Dave Goodman / IBIS Radio (Producer), Feb-10-2008
This
feature and interview with artist Joanne Rice aired during "RADIO
with a VIEW" produced by Dave Goodman and Marc Stern. Ms. Rice's
installation comes to a close in October, 2009. We plan to speak
with her again before she ends her piece.
Click to stream or download.
http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/856
Tenants Left In Limbo by Missing Condo Owners; Advocates Call On Banks To Help Create Housing Coops
by Dave Goodman / IBIS Radio (Staff), Aug-19-2009
BOSTON/Roxbury Wanda Castle does
just about everything the owner of a Boston triple-decker would do
to maintain her property, including basic repairs and paying for
water and electricity in common areas of the building.
And if this were a normal situation, Ms. Castle who has lived in this building on the Roxbury/Jamaica Plain border as a tenant for two and a half years - would be paying a regular, stable, rent to live there.
But the situation is anything but normal. Wanda Castle, her fourteen year old daughter, and her neighbor Inell Mendez, are living in limbo as the banks and mortgage service companies that own the three separate condo units of this triple-decker figure out what to do with these properties sitting on the edge of foreclosure; known in banking parlance as non-performing assets.
Click to stream or download.