Poor People’s Campaign Puts the Spotlight on Poverty
“James Shearer was living out of sight and beyond care among Boston’s homeless in the 1980s. Now he is helping to give them a voice.
“Why does this country cater to the rich while allowing working-class men and women, who work multiple jobs, with long hours, to live in places that are unfit for humanity?” asked Shearer, sixty, at a mass meeting on February 5 in the small town of Greenfield in western Massachusetts. “Instead of helping the homeless, they are criminalized, abused, arrested, preyed upon by bullies, and marginalized. And when we die in the street, there is no funeral.”