Funding has dried up for the drug recovery program I Can't We Can. The group's offices are going unheated. And you know things are really dire when Anthony McCarthy starts denying himself food.
The WEAA radio host and I Can't We Can staffer launched a hunger strike Friday, declaring that he'd consume nothing but water until the public donates $50,000 to the program.
"You know, food is my favorite thing in the world," McCarthy said with a laugh. "I'm a big guy. I'm like a camel. I've stored up enough fat to get me through the next couple of weeks, but I'm hoping the public won't put that to the test."
McCarthy was a longtime aide to Sheila Dixon who, after leaving the mayor's office under less-than-optimal circumstances, worked for an AIDS organization known as HERO. The group announced this month that it is shutting its doors.
"I do have a habit of choosing organizations that are on the brink of financial tsunamis," said McCarthy, who became I Can't We Can's chief administrator three months ago. "But I'm not going to let that happen to I Can't We Can."
McCarthy said the whole city would suffer if the program isn't around to help addicts, "the people who would otherwise be breaking into cars and homes and committing horrible crimes to feed their addictions."
The 10-year-old organization serves about 150 people a day, providing them with food, shelter, drug treatment and mental health services, McCarthy said. Never flush, the group has fallen on especially hard times as the economy has tanked.
The organization doesn't even have the money to replace its rooftop heating and air-conditioning unit, which someone stole back in the summer, probably for scrap.
So the staff is cold. And hungry, in McCarthy's case.
"I don't have any money," McCarthy said. "But I do have the platform of my radio program, and I happen to have a pretty big body that I can put on the line."
The poinsettias are safe, for now
Remember last December when a bunch of suburbanites armed only with pointy-leafed holiday flowers went toe-to-toe with the nation's second-largest mall owner, which had dared to retire Columbia's poinsettia tree tradition?
There was a little - and needless to say, Howard-County civil - protest at The Mall in Columbia, and General Growth Properties just caved, promising to bring back the two-story floral display this year.
