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    Save CITY SOIL from Big Corp TWEET NOW #savecitysoil

     

    You can’t get more GRASS-ROOTS than this!

    City Soil IN ACTION in Boston! #savecitysoil

    City Soil is a locally rooted, small, socially responsible, democratically run GREEN operation that  is UNDER ATTACK by a BIG CORP which focuses on creating RED DYED mulch.  The commercial supplier with government connections wants the land that City Soil has been operating on for years!  Please take a few minutes to support our friends over at City Soil. See the link or the summary below about City Soil’s mission.

    ACTION:

    TWEET:  some version of the following (or copy it): 
    Please let @citysoilma stay on their @MassDCR land in #Mattapan!

    #savecitysoil
    #mapoli
    #bospoli

    @MassEEA – Respectfully requesting that you meet ASAP with @CitySoilMA to discuss @MassDCR eviction!
    @CitySoilMA 
    @DevalPatrick
    @MassGovernor
    @MassEEA 

    1.  Call Secretary Sullivan respectfully asking that he SAVE CITY SOIL: 617-626-1101
    2.  Update your Facebook status and photo to educate your friends about the campaign
    3.  Start thinking about other people/groups that we can bring into the coalition.
    4.  Forward this to 20 people, and call and/or text them during the day to see if they’ll take action!

    City Soil develops projects ranging from centralized in-vessel commercial composting and anaerobic digestion facilities to decentralized compost operations serving community gardens, farms, schools and and residential backyards. Our team’s breadth of experience and expertise puts us in a unique position as we move into a new era of sustainable agriculture and organic waste recycling. City Soil has pioneered the design and construction of educational outdoor classrooms, greenhouses, living roofs and growing systems with many leading nonprofits and environmental organizations. We provide soil, compost, mulch and our specialized ‘grow-how’ to community gardens, landscapers, agricultural startups, and homeowners.

    Urgent notice from The Divest Harvard Team

    Urgent notice from The Divest Harvard Team:  PLEASE join Divest Harvard from 12:00-12:45pm tomorrow (Friday) at Mass Hall!

    For the past two days, Divest Harvard members — including undergrads, grad students, staff, and alumni — blockaded Mass Hall asking for an open dialogue on divestment and Harvard’s response to climate change. Rather than allowing space for discussion, the administration sent police to arrest students and rough them up.

    Tomorrow, we will return to Mass Hall to tell the administration that this is unacceptable and will not stop our movement for climate justice. We will hand deliver over 60,000 signatures from supporters who stand with us, and show the administration that using police to do their dirty work is NOT okay.

    PLEASE join us from 12:00-12:45pm tomorrow (Friday) at Mass Hall!
    60,000 is AMAZING! But if you’d like to make that number even larger, here’s the petition: http://act.forecastthefacts.org/sign/solidarity_harvard_divestment_2/
    Thank-you,
    The Divest Harvard Team

    Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5/25/12-5/27/12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: Tell me they aren’t going to use these on protesters: American police officers may soon be able to use unmanned aircraft not only for surveillance, but also for offensive action. The drones may be equipped to fire rubber rounds and tear gas. The US military and CIA have used drones armed with lethal weapons to target militants overseas for years. The prospect of having “lite” versions of those remotely controlled killer-machines circling over America gave some second thoughts to rights groups. “It’s simply not appropriate to use any force, lethal or non-lethal, on a drone,” Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told CBSDC. For more, see Drones Over U.S. to Get Weaponized. And the business of marketing drones to law enforcement is booming. Now that Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open up U.S. airspace to unmanned vehicles, the aerial surveillance technology first developed in the battle space of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is fueling a burgeoning market in North America. And even though they’re moving from war zones to American markets, the language of combat and conflict remains an important part of their sales pitch — a fact that ought to concern citizens worried about the privacy implications of domestic drones. For more, see Drones for Urban Warfare. And the TSA is expanding its powers and is now conducting random searches on highways. For the video news report, click here. For a good round-up of recent news about attacks on our civil liberties, including TSA mistreatment of children and adults in airports, see Occupy Albany’s Civil Liberties Review. And a Saudi inventor’s proposal to insert semiconductors subcutaneously in visitors and remotely kill them if they misbehave will not be patented in Germany. Reporters said the document proposed that tiny semiconductors be implanted or placed by injection under the skin of people so their whereabouts could be tracked by global-positioning satellites. This could be used to prevent immigrants overstaying. A model B of the system would contain a poison such as cyanide, which could be released by remote control to “eliminate” people if they became a security risk. The document said this could be used against terrorists or criminals. For more, see Patent for Killer Chip Denied. And a member of Occupy Boston was among the NATO protesters who was attacked by police. He has 10 stitches in his head, and a genuine concern for those who were brutalized even harder. Asked whether he plans to attend the next major action wherever it may be, he answers in the affirmative. For more, see Behind The Stiches: The Face Of Chicago Police Violence At NATO Protests. And Occupy Chicago reports a first-hand account from the NATO protester who was run over by a Chicago Police van: “Amico was hit in the chest and fell hard, slamming his head onto the pavement. ‘It stomped on the gas the second I stepped in front. It was intentional,”’he told OCT. ‘Mind you, they sped off after this. It was a hit and run.’ James “Jack” Amico was struck, thrown to ground, and treated for a concussion at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.” For the story, see CPD’s Hit And Run Victim Exists, And Tells His Story.

    Other Occupies/Protests: More than 400 protesters were “kettled” and arrested last night (5/23) in Montreal and mass arrests were reported in other cities in Canada as the student-led demonstrations gained even more momentum. This came after at least 300 people were arrested and twenty were injured in Montreal during weekend clashes between police and protesters, according to CTV. The movement began after a proposed tuition hike of $1,625, which would be implemented over several years. Support rallies were held in some cities in the US. For more, see 400 Arrested in Montreal Last Night, and Protests Spread to Other Cities. And on May 19, at least 20,000 people held a major rally of the local Occupy movement in Frankfurt, Germany, to decry austerity measures affecting much of Europe, the dominance of banks, and what they call untamed capitalism. The protesters peacefully filled the city center of continental Europe’s biggest financial hub on a warm and pleasant afternoon, said Frankfurt police spokesman Ruediger Regis. He said 20,000 people were there, while organizers put the number at 25,000. The protest group, named Blockupy, has called for blocking access to the European Central Bank, which is located in Frankfurt’s business district. For more, see 20,000 March at Frankfurt Occupy Protest Rally and Frankfurt sees 20,000 Protest Austerity. And Germany’s changed social stuctures means there’s a section of voters no longer served by the main parties. They are the only German party that treats freedom not just as an idealistic utopia or an economic principle but as a very real tenet of organisation. They want to protect civil rights, to increase every individual’s range to take action, and to give citizens more power to take part in political decisions through electronic means. Their method of policy-making illustrates their unconventional approach to policy-making. They call it “Liquid Democracy” and it involves members making suggestions online which then get bounced around through chat rooms, which they call Pirate Pads, before emerging from cyberspace into the real world as policy. Polls suggest that the biggest support for the Pirates is among those aged under 34. For more, see The Pirate Party Fills the Political Gap and Germany’s Pirate Party Riding High.

    Continue reading “Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5/25/12-5/27/12” »

    Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5/23/12-5/24/12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: Nan Wigmore brought her walker and packed her sign, “Grateful Great Grandmas Circle The Wagons, Support Occupy,” and rode on a bus for some three days, sleeping in the same clothes, to make it to the NATO protests in Chicago.The 75-year-old from Portland, Ore., says she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else despite the discomfort of her journey. For her, there was nothing more important than being in Chicago protesting against NATO, calling for money to go to health care, for example, and not to war. She said she was “very serious” about her protesting and did not intend to stop. For more, see Great-Grandma: “Ready to Lose My Life” Protesting. On Sunday, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including Scott Olsen of Occupy Oakland who marched with a helmet after having had his skull fractured by police months ago at a protest, as well as members of Afghans For Peace, led a peace march of thousands of people. Iraq Veterans Against the War held a ceremony where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit. “I am giving back my global war on terror service medal in solidarity with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Jason Heard, a former combat medic who spent 10 years in the U.S. Army. “I am deeply sorry for the destruction that we have caused in these countries and around the globe.” See the video here. And they gathered at the corner of Washington and Dearborn Streets armed with bulbous red clown noses and huge painted smiles on their faces. A few of them honked horns, others shouted “hooray, hooray, hooray” in squeaky clown voices. But these clowns were not performing at a child’s birthday party. Instead, they were protesting at the National Nurses United rally against NATO. “Think rodeo clown,” Vermin Supreme, a protesting clown from Baltimore, said. Supreme and his clownish cohorts are part of a movement affiliated with Occupy Wall Street known as ClownBloq. A rodeo clown’s main job is to protect bull riders in the ring. If the people of the world are the bull riders, then the world leaders gathering for the NATO summit are the raging bulls. For more, see Clown Bloq makes a statement at NATO protest event. And the National Lawyers Guild is demanding answers after police raided a home Wednesday looking for Molotov cocktails – a stash the group of protesters say was a home beer brewing operation. For the video, see “Beer Not Bombs” Activists Speak Out. And as Occupy activists from around the country begin heading home to their respective cities after a weekend of protests in Chicago, many say the massive gathering has helped revitalize a movement that has gone months without staging the kind of headline-grabbing spectacle that made “99 percent” a popular concept. For more, see Occupy Activists: Chicago NATO Summit Helped Revitalize Movement. And although there was a lot of police brutality documented by photograph, livestream, and eyewitness accounts at the NATO protests, perhaps one of the most shocking details was the actions, or inactions, of some of Chicago’s finest.  In a surprising turn of events, reports have emerged that numerous Chicago Police officers openly refused to arrest non-violent protesters – some officers even refusing to show up for work. One blogger writes: “I had the honor of speaking with one of these brave men, and although he wishes to remain anonymous (for obvious reasons), he wasn’t shy about how he and many other officers feel in regards to the ever-increasing police state.” For more, see NATO Protests in Chicago: Some Officers Refuse to Arrest Non-violent Protesters. And Occupy Boston’s own Una Spenser writes: “I’m kinda sick of it. A fully-armed, military-style police force comes out to stop protesters from marching or assembling – because traffic and lawns are more important than human rights and social justice – and if, out of many thousands, a minute number of protesters physically resists the impediment of that force, people paint the entire movement as lacking credibility because it isn’t non-violent. We’re faced with guns, LRADs, tear gas, truncheons, horses and more, but if we push back; if we try to continue marching when they block us, if we fight to get out of their grip, gawd forbid use balsa sticks which break on impact, its then justifiable for protesters to be beaten bloody by the police. The movement is delegitimized because its not “non-violent”. The Gandhi purity from those on the sidelines is disturbing.How is it that with all that weaponry, including shields and body armor, we could ever see the protesters as the threat? As the aggressor? The very moment those police don those weapons, they are the aggressor. They are making it known that they will use whatever force they feel like it to achieve whatever compliance they  – or their masters – want from us.” For more, see Why Don’t People Tell The Cops to be Non-Violent?

    Other Occupies/Protests: Students in Québec are marked their 100th day of an unlimited general strike on Tuesday, May 22nd, the culmination of the most stunning mass protest movements of recent months and North America’s largest student movement in years. In fact, the mobilizations in Québec might just be Canada’s Arab Spring. Students have been organizing against tuition hikes for nearly one and a half years, when the Quebec government first proposed to raise tuition fees by 75% over five years (amended to 82% over seven years by the government at the end of April). But this struggle represents more than students. It represents an attack on the middle class and lower income families, their sense of social cohesion, and the social entitlement and equality of access to public services amid rising cost of living. For more, see “We Didn’t Know It Was Impossible, So We Did It!” For more information, see Ten Points Everyone Should Know About the Québec Student Movement. In response to the ongoing student strike, on Friday, May 18, the Québec legislature signed a special “emergency law” to “restore order” in the province following three months of student protests in a strike against the government’s proposed 80% increase in the cost of tuition. A legislative debate lasted all night and resulted in a vote of 68-48 in favor of the legislation. The legislation has three main focal points: it “suspends” the school semester for schools majorly affected by the strike, it establishes extremely high fines for anyone who attempts to picket or block access to schools, and it imposes massive restrictions on where and how people may demonstrate and protest in the streets. So this is where we’ve come to now: the government of Québec has decided that instead of compromising on its tuition hikes – something it has stated from the beginning that it was unwilling to even consider – and instead of negotiating in good faith with the students, as all the negotiations have been farces thus far, it will instead “crack down” on the students of Québec, implementing the “worst law” since the War Measures Act of 1970, which was a declaration of martial law. Bill 78 amounts to a pseudo-declaration of martial law against the students of Québec.For more, see Québec Inches Closer to Martial Law. And Spanish teachers went on strike on Tuesday to protest against cuts in education spending that unions say will put 100,000 substitute teachers out of work but that the government says are needed to tackle the euro zone debt crisis. Tuesday’s strike affected all levels of public education, from kindergarten to university. Teachers at some private schools that receive state subsidies were also on strike. For more, see Teachers strike across Spain, protesting cuts.

    “‎It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair

    Continue reading “Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5/23/12-5/24/12” »

    Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5/21/12-5/22/12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: Wondering why people are protesting NATO? See NATO: Just why are people protesting? Livestreamers including Tim Pool of @Timcast were followed by Chicago Police who pulled them over at gunpoint, watch the video here. For the story, see Occupy Journalists Stopped, Searched, Handcuffed, and Interrogated at Gunpoint. And here is An Open Letter from three Anonymous protesters in Chicago: The Chicago Police’s actions today, May 19th, were a brutally violent attack on our bodies and on our rights. An absurdly large police force was deployed in order to intimidate and provoke a peaceable assembly, and resulted in unbridled, militaristic attacks on activists demonstrating against NATO, inflicting several serious injuries – including broken noses, bloodied eyes, and a particularly sickening incident in which a dedicated comrade was belligerently run down by a police van. For a brief video of some of the police brutality yesterday against NATO protesters, including a clear shot of a cop assaulting a protester with his bicycle, click here. Here is another brief video of Chicago Police beating kettled protesters in Chicago on May 19. And buses that were scheduled to take protesters to NATO were mysteriously cancelled at the last minute by the bus company. For more, see Buses Scheduled to Transport 99 Solidarity Riders to NATO Protest Cancelled. For a good collection of photos and videos, click here. And the old trope of the bomb-throwing anarchist is back in the news, with a round-up in Ohio on May 1 and the three would-be NATO protesters arrested on Wednesday who are now charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism. While the impression that appears in the media is one of remnants of the Occupy movement verging toward violence, the driving forces behind these plots are the very agencies claiming to have foiled them. For more, see Entrapment of Cleveland 5 and NATO 3 is Nothing New. And Occupy Boston, Occupy Wall Street and other Occupies held solidarity protests on Sunday to fight back against the police state – here is a good summary of recent concerns, from Occupy Wall Street. “We must not allow this type of intimidation to continue. We must rise up and nonviolently resist. We must take our justifiable rage and use it to grow our resistance and solidarity. We will not turn against one another, and nor will we sacrifice our values. We will not be terrorized; our numbers will only grow as we expose the brutality of the system we oppose. The attacks on activists in the U.S. are but a fraction of the seemingly endless warfare imposed by NATO and the G8 countries on the nations they occupy across the world. We have exposed a tiny fragment of the true terror that is NATO. We will resist.” For more, see #SolidaritySunday: Fight Back Against State Terrorism!

    Other Occupies/Protests: From Occupy Wall StreetOn Saturday, May 26th, at 12pm at Bryant Park, 42nd Street at 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10018, OWS Direct Action Group launches Summer Disobedience School – kicking off 3 months of city-wide mayhem! We’ve completed Spring Training – and we’re moving and communicating in the streets like never before. Now we take our fight to sites of injustices throughout NYC, gradually building a culture of radical non-violent disobedience. We’ll be disrupting banks, corporations and the state all summer long, starting with the crooks in mid-town. We graduate as a full-on revolutionary force September 17th: City-Wide Shut Down! More details to come… Facebook event page is: https://www.facebook.com/events/343421022384775/355202957873248.

    “‎The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: “Is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.’ And we kill those people.” Bill Hicks

    Continue reading “Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5/21/12-5/22/12” »

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