Queer & Homeless

PRESS RELEASE The 8th Annual Homelessness Marathon
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT:
Rogi Riverstone
Albuquerque: 505-842-8175
Toll Free: 1-877-718-0691
(rriverstone@yahoo.com)

8th ANNUAL HOMELESSNESS MARATHON Broadcasting in Albuquerque

Local producers will carry a live, hour discussion, to be aired at 10pm local time, on the impact of homelessness on Gay, Lesbian, Transexual, Transgendered, Pansexual and Bisexual people in Albuquerque. Stay tuned to KUNMfm 89.9 and http://kunm.org for further details.

The 8th Annual Homelessness Marathon is a nationally-produced show. Participating Pacifica, NPR and independent, community and public radio stations will both broadcast and air it. The Marathon will be broadcast from 9pm, EST on Monday, February 14th to 11am, EST on Tuesday, February 14, 2005. The broadcast will be carried on KUNMfm 89.9.

The Homelessness Marathon has been called, "the most significant media event focusing on homelessness and poverty" by Donald Whitehead, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. And it is unlike any other broadcast in the world.
The Marathon is almost entirely live, covers taboo territory and features the voices of people who are rarely heard on the air. Perhaps for this reason it has grown rapidly. The first Marathon, in 1998, was on one tiny station in central New York. The 7th Marathon, in 2004, was on 80 stations coast-to-coast, with another 30 stations across Canada carrying a parallel Canadian Homelessness Marathon.

As always, the 8th Marathon's broadcast booth will be set up outside, to dramatize the plight of people with nowhere to go in the cold, and calls will be taken from around the country. But there will be no on-air solicitations. The Marathon is a consciousness raising, not a fundraising broadcast.
The 8th Marathon will be distributed via the NPR and Pacifica satellites and will be streamed on the web. More information, including broadcast schedules and audio clips from past broadcasts may be found at the Marathon's web site: http://kunm.org and http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org.

Homelessness Marathon

Homeless?

Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Transexual, Bisexual, Pansexual?

We want to hear from you!

Join us for a live discussion.

February 14, 2005

(hour still to be determined)

KUNMfm Albuquerque (http://kunm.org) will host a one-hour broadcast during the Homelessness Marathon. Our local focus will be about the issues facing the Queer community who are homeless.

Participants have the options of remaining anonymous. We can even digitally alter your voice, so you can't be recognized.

We want to hear your experiences, not cause further victimization. Your voice matters. Your experience is important. This is an opportunity to tell a national audience what life is like as a homeless person who is maginalized as a result of your sexuality, gender and orientation.

(505) 842-8175 Albuquerque or 1-877-718-0691

rriverstone@yahoo.com

The URL for this flier is

http://rriverstone.com/homelessmarathon/flier.html

Please feel free to print, distribute and post this flier anywhere!

Purpose?

The Point Is To Write



I find I did not stop writing after Net4TV Voice stopped publishing. I was writing in alt.discuss groups, usenet for MSNTV users only. These posts are automatically purged from the system after 30 days. I would try to save some by emailing them to myself, but I usually forgot.




I'm blogging to get myself back in the habit of writing publicly on a regular basis.



I site track, to see which ISPs are visiting and how long they stay. I don't know identities of individual viewers.



Blogging can be just about anything that particular blogger wants it to be. I've only begun to take blogging seriously as a medium, and am finding my way. I'll find my direction as I go.



One thing I'm already noticing is that, while topics may be different, the stories are growing parallel to other topics. A book, conventional journal, etc progresses in a more linear fashion: the author must either include all tangential info in the body of work or edit out what isn't relevent to the topic.



By blogging, I have eliminated this need to either crowd or cull. I can write as much as I want about an issue in one blog, and still have information about that issue in another blog, from a different perspective.



I get caught up in journalism-style writing: stick to the "lead." This has meant I edit out a lot of the decorations and clutter of real life. Makes the story easier to read, but it's sparse, antiseptic, unreal.



Real life is messy. It doesn't conform to a plot- or time-line preimposed on it. Life meanders, dawdles, pokes, stalls, races, switches directions and ambles in concentric circles.



I think blogging could more accurately represent that. Blogging could be more of a "web" like medium: radiating out from a center, connected but not the same. The center of the web is my: life, ego, experience and need to communicate. I'm the spider; the readers are the flies (sorry). I'm more likely to "catch" one if I broadcast from different directions and angles.



Broadcast: casting broadly. Why confine my writing? I don't know where I'm going; I'm simply trying to write regularly and as honestly as I know how. I won't know, until some patterns and directions emerge, where this is going! Why confine it to a single direction or purpose? That would doom it from the start.