Marching in DC

In this city of marches, I'm not much of a marcher but yesterday I walked in the Help the Homeless walkathon to raise money for a myriad of DC area homeless charities. I've only become involved with the homeless issue in the past couple years. Like the community it serves, the service providers are a disparate group- churches, non-profits, grass roots volunteer organizations and just people like me who help out on a regular basis while not representing a larger organization. It was great to see 30,000 people come together on a cold (for Washington) Autumn day to walk three miles and raise around 8 million dollars for the various homeless charities. I'm always skeptical about how much money goes to the actual charities for events like this, but the people who work at my program, The Dinner Program for Homeless Women, www.dphw.org , assure me that this event is one of their most important sources of funding. We walked along the Potomac for a brief period yesterday, near the Tidal Basin, the leaves brilliantly changing color and still clinging to branches despite high winds on Thursday. One of the good things about the abysmal leadership in America the past few decades is that people don't expect the government to help out very much. Its down to us from here on out I think. This march started 20 years ago with 150 people from Fannie Mae. 30,000 people working on this issue ought to be able to make some difference. Lets hope so.