Real Change

1 week ago | realchangenews.org | Guy Oron

Five years ago, the United States was coming apart at the seams. The COVID-19 pandemic rendered millions of people unemployed, forced to rely on benefits from the state. Many began to rethink how society should work, including the role of work, the government and community. Discontent with the vast inequities that define the U.S. was bubbling. The shocking murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin set it all ablaze.

1 week ago | realchangenews.org | Sabra Boyd

In the mid-1980s, Maria Foscarinis left her job as a litigator at a large corporate law firm after volunteering to represent pro bono cases and advocate for homeless families. She led the effort to pass the first federal legislation to help protect the rights of unhoused people and, in 1989, founded the National Homelessness Law Center.

2 weeks ago | realchangenews.org | Sabra Boyd

Seattle is a city of writers. Some of the most celebrated memoir writers in the world live here. And many of those writers are also playwrights. Which came first for these memoirist playwrights? The book or the play? Did the writing process begin with painfully awkward memoir workshops, like when I read aloud to strangers in a harshly lit conference room and a man said, “That’s not how women talk,” when I quoted my own self in my own draft?

2 weeks ago | realchangenews.org | Guy Oron

After a frantic week of advocacy, Tent City 4 (TC4) residents have a place to stay in Lake City, at least for now. However, the lack of a location for TC4 as recently as 17 hours before the encampment was scheduled to move has raised concerns about how serious Seattle officials are handling the city’s homelessness crisis. The sanctioned encampment has been located in the north Seattle neighborhood since May 2024, hosted by the Seattle Mennonite Church (SMC).

2 weeks ago | realchangenews.org | Guy Oron

Why are people poor? If you read the mainstream press or tune into a “manosphere” podcast, you will get bombarded with messages that we all have agency, that the biggest decider of one’s material conditions is their own actions. That ending up homeless on the streets or addicted to drugs is due to personal failings, not structural factors outside your control. You just need to hustle harder — get that second or third job — to reach financial stability.