Posted on 08/02/2004 4:35:18 AM PDT by Lance Romance
Jim Cronin displayed the aplomb and charisma of an old-time ward boss as he cheerfully hobnobbed with the crowd gathered for the voter registration drive. When he took to the stump -- flanked by the mayor and former mayoral candidate Mel King -- the 65-year-old homeless man assumed the role of ambassador.
''Welcome to America!" Cronin belted out to the spirited assembly of newly registered voters, the majority of them homeless, too.
At that July 22 Cast Your Vote! event, Cronin and a team of other Pine Street residents enlisted about 170 homeless and low-income voters. Since December, their local campaign has gleaned 700, according to co-organizer Fred Atkinson. A plucky movement born on a tiny island in Boston Harbor, it has quickly swept the nation. Following its lead, nearly 50 simultaneous voter education clinics for homeless and low-income people were held July 22 across the country, amassing more than 1,000 new registrations in 17 states.
''The residents at Pine Street really pioneered this," said Katie Fisher of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in a telephone interview from her office in Washington, D.C. The coalition's statistics reveal stark discrepancies between income levels and voting patterns. Citing data from the 2000 US Census, Fisher said that 59 percent of people earning between $10,000 and $15,000 a year are registered voters, compared with 82 percent of those making more than $75,000 a year.
While the National Coalition for the Homeless organizes its own weeklong voter registration drive every fall, Fisher, who helped coordinate the July 22 event, said she is unaware of any other voter registration campaign led by homeless people themselves.
The Boston-led drive has been ''very helpful" to the National Coalition, said Fisher. ''It gives them a real opportunity to feel out where the needs are and more time to bring in others. And it makes it a lot easier when homeless people are doing the recruiting themselves."
''It started out with a visit from our representative in the State House," said Atkinson, who, like Cronin, is a resident of a Pine Street-operated substance-abuse treatment shelter on Boston's Long Island. Atkinson said state Representative Anthony Petruccelli came to the shelter during December's budget hearings to brief the 200 homeless men living there about what programs were on the chopping block at the State House relative to issues including affordable housing, health care, and job training.
''Then he told us that, without you being a registered voter, [elected officials] don't have to spend any time listening to you, that you're not part of this process," said the 55-year-old Atkinson.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Wonder who they will vote for? Or will they too busy cooking up a rock, in a Chinatown alleyway, to show up at the polls.
What will their platform be?
Higher alcohol content beer, the right to urinate in public or the right to display festering sores while ranting incohertely?
I thought the Democratic Party machine sent busses around to the Missions for stuff like this. "Register as a Democrat, get a pack of free cigarettes"...
I'm too lazy this morning to do the HTML thing, this has always made me laugh:
http://www.bumwine.com/
It's likely a free rock of crack nowadays.
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