Immediate Press Release    NASHVILLE AT THE CROSSROADS   WHAT: 11th Annual Homelessness Marathon broadcast WHERE: Originating from the Campus for Human Development in Nashville and broadcast on over 100 radio stations and Free Speech TV on the Dish Network. WHEN: 7 p.m., EST, Wed., Feb. 20th to 9 a.m., EST, Thurs., Feb. 21st.     The 11TH Annual Homelessness Marathon radio broadcast will originate from Nashville, Tennessee, starting at 7 p.m., EST, on Wednesday, February 20th and ending 14 hours later. The Homelessness Marathon, the world's leading broadcast focusing on homelessness and poverty, originates from a different city every year. Last year's broadcast, originating from Fresno, CA, aired on over 120 radio stations coast-to-coast with another 30 or so stations across Canada carrying a parallel Canadian Homelessness Marathon. "This year, we picked Nashville," explains the Homelessness Marathon's director, Jeremy Weir Alderson, "partly because it is a city at the crossroads in terms of its treatment of homeless people, and in this respect, it is like many other cities across the United States." Leading the fight for more humane policies is the Nashville Homeless Power Project, one of several organizations supporting the broadcast. The NHPP is composed of homeless and formerly homeless people who are organizing for housing and worker's rights. The broadcast will originate from the Campus for Human Development, a single site of services for both emergency and long-term homeless in Nashville. The Campus shelters an average of 200 people a night in area congregations through its Room in the Inn Program, reflecting a city-wide commitment to helping the poorest of America's poor. On the other side of the equation, some in Nashville are lobbying for harsher treatment, including an anti-panhandling bill currently before the Nashville Metro Council. Nashville's police routinely roust homeless people from heating grates and other makeshift shelters in a perceived crackdown. And not only does the city not have enough low-income housing or even shelter beds for everyone in need, it has no plans to build enough either, thus all but guaranteeing future conflict. "We must never forget that Nashville, like the rest of the country and especially the South, once embraced the cause of slavery, and it was the powerful folks, not the powerless ones, who brought that shame upon the city," Alderson says. "We're hoping our broadcast can reach across class and color lines to help tip the balance towards treating homeless people like citizens instead of criminals, not just in Nashville but across America. The Homelessness Marathon is a non-commercial broadcast that does not raise funds for charity. Its mission is to raise consciousness, and it does this by covering a broad range of topics, speaking with experts, taking calls from around the country and, above all, by putting homeless people on the air directly. This is the only chance most Americans ever have to hear who homeless people really are and to learn about the obstacles they really face. The Homelessness Marathon's local broadcast host will be community radio station WRFN. It will be available free to stations over the NPR satellite, the Pacifica satellite and a state-of-the-art webcast. This will also be the first Homelessness Marathon to be televised live -- by Free Speech Television, channel 9415 on the DISH Network. Additional information about the Homelessness Marathon, can be found at http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org.