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DESCRIPTION:The Mayor, the Broadcast and the Truth\n\nThe Tenth Annual Homelessness 
 Marathon will originate from Fresno, California starting at 4 p.m., PST, on 
 Tuesday, February 20th and ending at 6 a.m., PST, Wednesday, 2/21/07. The 
 Homelessness Marathon is the world's leading radio broadcast focusing on 
 homelessness and poverty. The 9th Marathon, which originated from Atlanta, 
 was on more than 110 stations coast-to-coast, while another 30 or so 
 stations across Canada carried a parallel Canadian Homelessness Marathon.  
 "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 the meager possessions of 
 homeless people, including their IDs, money, 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). In response to a lawsuit filed by a group of volunteer 
 lawyers, including the ACLU and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, 
 U.S.\n\nDistrict Judge Oliver W. Wanger issued a preliminary injunction 
 ordering the City of Fresno to stop throwing away the possessions of its 
 homeless citizens. In his decision, Judge Wanger characterized the City's 
 arguments as "disingenuous" and "dishonest." Fresno's mayor, Alan Autry, 
 responded by calling Wanger's ruling "cavalier" and "veracity challenged," 
 suggesting that the judge, "enter the real world and find out the real 
 truth." He didn't stop there.\n\nIn a radio appearance, Autry insisted that 
 one homeless encampment had to be cleaned up because kids in the 
 neighborhood were "watching [homeless] people have sex," and because the 
 encampment was "a disease factory." "This mattress that the judge says we 
 should have gave back was riddled with everything from e. coli to 
 hepatitis... something that it would take a hazmat suit to give back to 
 that person." But Mike Rhodes, editor of Fresno's Community Alliance 
 newspaper and the only reporter to attend the entire court hearing, points 
 out that\n"the evidence at the hearing was clear - the City of Fresno was 
 violating the constitutional rights of the homeless.  They were taking the 
 property of homeless people and immediately destroying it.  There were no 
 bizarre allegations, like the mayor made, about sex in the street or 
 mattresses with e. coli and hepatitis at the hearing. These continuing lies 
 and attacks on the homeless are just more evidence that this city has a 
 long way to go in understanding how to treat the homeless with dignity and 
 respect.”\n\nAdditionally, the city has based it's estimate of how many 
 homeless people are in the area partly on a statistic attributed to HUD. 
 But HUD disavows the statistic completely, and no one associated with the 
 city will explain where it really came from. Fresno's mayor, police chief 
 and city manager were the first people invited to be guests on the 10th 
 Homelessness Marathon (but so far they have not responded). The broadcast 
 will be available free to stations over the NPR satellite, the Pacifica 
 satellite and a webcast. It will be hosted by local community radio station 
 KFCF and an ad hoc committee of activists on poverty and housing issues. 
 "Mayor Autry says he wants the truth to come out," says Alderson, "and 
 we're going to help him with that, but unlike the mayor, we're going to see 
 to it that the homeless people of Fresno -- and across the country\n-- get 
 their say too."\n\nAdditional information about the Homelessness Marathon, 
 can be found at the Marathon's web site: 
 http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org Additional information about the court 
 case can be found at: http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/14787.html 
 http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/11/23/18332519.php \n\nContact:\n- 
 Jeremy Weir Alderson, Director, Homelessness Marathon, 
 607-546-2084,\nradio@lightlink.com\n\n- Mike Rhodes, Editor, Community 
 Alliance, 559-978-4502\nmikerhodes@comcast.net\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/02/08/18359651.php
SUMMARY:The Homelessness Marathon
LOCATION:The Broadcast will originate from the Mexican American Baptist Church at 
 the corner of “E” street and Mariposa in Fresno.  
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/02/08/18359651.php
DTSTART:20070221T000000Z
DTEND:20070221T120000Z
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