A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Robyn Woof
The following article is part of INSP’s Changing the Narrative series. It has been written as the result of the new journalism training academy, established in 2025 by INSP to provide people with direct experience of homelessness and poverty the opportunity to learn about journalism and the media, and to enhance their storytelling and written abilities. The training academy has two ambitions: to challenge media and public misconceptions about homelessness;
by Amy Romer
Garth Mullins has spent years telling other people’s stories — amplifying voices of drug users through his award-winning podcast Crackdown and organizing with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU). Now, he’s turned the lens on himself.
His memoir, Crackdown: Surviving and Resisting the War on Drugs, is not a victory lap or redemption tale; it’s something rarer: a grounded,
story and photos by Giles Clasen
Political oppression has pushed Maria, Juan and their daughters from Venezuela to Colombia to the United States, where their future remains uncertain.
Maria and Juan’s life together began in a shrimp processing facility in Venezuela, where they worked long hours to support themselves.
“We peeled and sorted shrimp until the early hours of the morning,” Maria said. “It wasn’t much;
by Joemae Santos
This year, San Francisco will host APEC downtown at the Moscone Center. The summit is a convening of 21 heads of states, primarily from the Indo-Pacific region, where they will discuss economic foreign policies. With these policies come agreements that will only benefit the politically elite and the wealthy such as the privatization of industries or the establishment of agreements binding one country’s resources to the interest of another.
By Franz Chávez, Inter Press Service / International Network of Street Papers
They haul many kilos of recyclable materials on their backs but receive little in return. These Bolivian women who help clean up the environment from dawn to dusk are fighting for recognition of their work and social and labour rights.
The inhabitants of La Paz, Bolivia’s political centre, walk hurriedly and almost oblivious to the women of different ages silently opening heavy lids of municipal garbage dumpsters that are taller than the women themselves.
by Keith McHenry
“This cause is a great cause and we’re tired of being treated like dirt. We’re not, we’re human beings. We bleed just like you and we’re good people. We need a safe place and this is a safe place right here.” – Deseire Quintero
Volunteers with Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs wait outside what had been a large homeless camp that welcomed visitors for over one half year.
29 July 2016 by INSP News Service
L’Itinéraire vendor Jo Redwitch candidly reflects on her former career as a “sex dancer” in Montreal. Her essay is in reaction to Canada’s controversial new prostitution bill, which has been widely denounced by sex workers. Jo believes the bill “isn’t suited to the reality of sex work” and hopes more sex workers can “find the courage to speak out and share their point of view” to challenge common stigmas.
Dec. 15, 2017
by T.J.Johnston
The topic of homelessness is often addressed as an economic, health, or safety issue. But a special investigator from the United Nations came to San Francisco on December 6 to hear from community members with a take not often heard from officials in the U.S.: the human rights of homeless people.
Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights,
A group of women farmers who organised to fight a centuries-old monopoly over land ownership by men are seeking plots of land to farm in order to contribute to the food security of their families and of the population at large.
Matilde Rocha, vice president of the Federation of Nicaraguan Women Farmers Cooperatives (Femuprocan), told IPS that since the late 1980s, when women trained in the Sandinista revolution organised to form cooperatives,
Dozens of topless women, joined by hundred of fully clothed protesters, demonstrated in Buenos Aires on Tuesday to demand the right to sunbathe semi-nude on February 7 to demand the right to sunbathe semi-nude after police asked bare-breasted women to leave a nearby beach.
Smaller protests have occurred throughout the country in recent weeks in response to the January incident and it remains unclear if Argentine law allows women to go topless on public beaches.
