The 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.

District 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.

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