HOMELESS VETERENS IN AND AROUND BOSTON
AND AROUND THE WORLD
Hello Boston and Revere Bands!
My name's Chris - I run my own small Boston-based homeless charity called Stop The Bleeding - we put on benefit concerts for lesser-funded shelters and soup kitchens in the Boston area and this is our story -
Contributing Writer Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Growing up in the semi-Boonies of Maine, although there was homelessness up there as well as everywhere else, my exposure to it was somewhat limited. I would generally only really see it when going to a concert in a bigger city, so when my musical ambitions brought me down to Beantown in 1994 it was then that I really got a dose of the harsh reality that is homelessness in our country. I was living on Haviland St. in downtown Boston across from Berklee, and on a Friday or Saturday night especially you literally couldn't walk 20 or 30 feet without someone asking you for some change. While somewhat taken aback by the frequency of it, I felt bad for the people as I think most people do on some level - and I proceeded to whip out a few bucks here and a few bucks there and hey here's another guy and geez this guy really looks down and out. It didn't take me long to realize I couldn't possibly keep up this pace, otherwise I would end up broke as well rather quickly. So I went about my business but still felt there was something seriously wrong with this scenario - it seemed there was a general apathy towards the homeless. Now I'll stop right here and say hey, we all have our own lives and our own bills to pay, and our own families to take care of - that doesn't mean we don't care about other people, but it does kind of limit how much we care and to what extent we can help. I undertsand that. I do. While consistently bothered by it, a good 11 years of my life would go by before I would try to do something about it, so believe me when I tell you I don't judge anybody who isn't involved in charity or is hesitant - everyone has their own reasons for doing or not doing something. But man, this really bothered me - it would gnaw at me, honestly. The majority of the jobs I worked sinced moving to Boston would involve a lot of delivery driving, which put me in certain places at certain times of day I would not otherwise be, and I would see a large portion of the homeless population that at other times of the day is largely invisible. A blatant, constant reminder that I have a job, food, clothing, and shelter and they don't. So as much as I've despised most of the jobs I've had, they served the general purpose of self-sufficiency and the larger purpose of keeping me caring aboutpeople who have nothing.
Fast forward to 2004 - my job had taken a physical toll on my body to the point where I was experiencing major lower back issues that was affecting my ability to work and to play music, I had been laid off from said job(which was a good thing), the Sox had won it all - Woo-hah! - and there I sat. For about 8 months, unemployed - happy to be unemployed, ecstatic that the Sox had won it all, and as I mentioned, sitting - doctors orders to take it easy. I'd love to say I had the epiphany the second I was laid off, but it took a good 5 months or so to realize that I was being given an opportunity to do something I had thought about for years but had never had time to do - start my own homeless charity, in an attempt to do something, anything, about homelessness in Boston. The initial self-doubt tried to creep in(self-doubt has a way of always doing that, doesn't it?) - "What the hell do I know about starting or running a homeless charity?" When I arrived at the quick answer - "nothing" I then asked myself "Well, what do you know about?" - an easy question to answer, because music, at least at that point, was pretty much the only thing I knew a lot about. I knew musicians, I knew a lot of bands, I had an okay repertoire of/relationship with local venues - so why not put together some benefit shows? I'll pause again here to mention that I had learned that sometimes not everyone on the street that you might give money to is actually homeless, and even if they are, what they do with the money after you give it to them is often times not what you had in mind - you were thinking food for survival, maybe they were thinking alcohol and/or drugs for survival. I also want to say at this point in the story that there is a lot of self-imposed problems in the homeless community - to put it more simply/harshly, a lot of times the homeless have brought it on themselves. That said, I don't think that means they don't deserve help at some point if they need it - and when they do need that help, let's hope it's actually there for them, and not not there due to lack of funding or withheld because somebody's being judgemental.
With that in mind I started looking for homeless shelters in the Boston area that could use some funding - smaller places that could REALLY use it, so the money, even if it's not that much, would go farther towards really helping somebody.
I'll fast forward some more to the present - as of right now we are in our 7th year of existence and our 6th year of putting on benefit shows. We have put on over 30 shows and, while our totals are generally not huge amounts of money, we've managed to raise a little over $13,000 for several worthy Boston area shelters and soup kitchens. While I feel we've done okay in that regard, I have noticed that Boston is one of the best places in the country to be if you're homeless but there are still a LOT of people living out on the street. One of the biggest problems I see is that the homeless aren't necessarily aware of the help that's available to them or how to go about getting that help. So this brings us to what I hope will be our next phase of development - we are looking at some point to open our own walk-in help center for the homeless - somewhere where they can come and relax, come in from the heat in the summer, come in from the cold in the Winter, sit and have a bite to eat, come talk to us about what their needs are, what problems they might be having or obstacles they may be trying to deal with, just what's going on with them. A place where they will be treated with respect and treated like human beings and not discarded or shoved aside as society's undesirables. There are such places already in existence in Boston, but there are often waiting lists and red tape which often leaves the homeless literally killing time standing around on the street. We would like to serve as a conduit between the homeless and the help available to them, and to be somewhat of an informal support for them in the meantime.
Beyond that, I have all kinds of ideas about a humongous all-in-one shelter/help center/ sanctuary/home for the homeless the likes of which will cost millions of dollars - and again, places like that already exist too, but I have some diferent ideas in mind regarding our approach to helping the homeless that I hope will result at some point in a significant decline in the amount of people suffering from homelessness.
For now, though, we're just doing our part to help the many great, small but worthy organizations that are doing these things every day. We are currently doing shows for 7 Boston area homeless help organizations and soup kitchen kind of places - 6 to 8 shows a year of various musical styles including Rock, Hard Rock, Metal, Acoustic/Folky, Blues, and Reggae. Just a footnote, but a significant one - we donate 100% of what we make at these shows to whoever we're doing the show for - we don't keep any of it.
Come on out to a show!
These are our websites -
Welcome To letsstopthebleeding.org
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