Compiled by John M and the OB media team to help keep the Occupy Boston community informed with the latest local, national, and international occupy-related news and stories.
An inside look at Occupy Boston’s last morning in Dewey Square
Waiting for arrest, a male occupier shouted for and got the people’s mic. He then yelled, “the officers…are enforcing…the law…in the past…people have…stood up against…laws…so their voice…could be heard…It’s sad…that this…is what it took…for us…to get our voice…but now…we have a voice…and we’re not going to…shut up…we are relevant…listen to us!”
Seconds later, a female occupier mic checked saying, “we have a right…to assemble…it is not up to them…to tell us when…to stop assembling!” Another male voice, mic checking as well, complained that the press had been pushed too far back to record what transpired. A fourth voice, belonging to a person holding a camera and weaving between the police, assured his comrades that the live stream was broadcasting it and had thousands of viewers. Someone yelled, happily, “Thank you, Internet!”
Occupy protesters gear up for court, next steps
The protesters said there were no plans to use the court proceedings as a platform for dissent, as has been the case in some other cities – although they plan to attend the arraignments carrying a statue of Gandhi. As for longer-term plans, they said their next steps were still being developed, with suggestions made at a meeting yesterday ranging from a symbolic placement of tents across the suburbs to an attempt to shut down Boston’s port operations.
Occupy Boston plans to hold a “speak out’’ at 4 p.m. today at Government Center, followed by a 6 p.m. march to Dewey Square, according to the group’s website.
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/12/12/occupy-protesters-gear-for-court-next-steps/WTv3haHu4qsZDbtFyikBYK/story.html
Occupy Boston cleanup to cost Greenway $40K to $60K
So far, the Greenway has collected $10,000 in donations and Brennan hopes more contributions will be made to help offet the cost. “When we looked at the site in October, we estimated that the repair cost would be $15,000, a number we could have absorbed,” Brennan said. “But as people stayed longer and the soil was compacted further, the costs escalated and it’s something we never budgeted for.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/real_estate/2011/12/occupy-boston-cleanup-cost.html
Protester: ‘This was never about tents’
“We didn’t occupy Dewey Square because we wanted to camp out. We occupied Dewey Square because we think there is something fundamentally wrong with the system,” one protester said.
“I think something was sparked three months ago, which has changed the tenor of this country,” another protester said.
http://www.necn.com/12/12/11/Protester-This-was-never-about-tents/landing_newengland.html?blockID=610432&feedID=4206
Occupy Boston Closed Saturday Morning
Among the group at the Occupy Boston encampment in Dewey Square on Thursday night were 30 Harvard affiliates, according to Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student Neil Peterman.
Peterman, who is involved with both Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard, said that Occupy Boston would continue even without the encampment in Dewey Square. The movement has spread already to a number of neighborhoods throughout Boston as well as to all of the major universities in the area, according to Peterman.
“The slogan is ‘evict us, we multiply. Occupy will never die,’” he said.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/12/12/occupy-boston-evicted/
Protesters promise no police payback
Members of Occupy Boston — the social movement founded on demands for fiscal accountability — were divided yesterday on whether they should surrender any of their $60,000 in donations to cover the hefty costs of restoring the muddied Rose Kennedy Greenway where they built their tent city.
But they were united in saying there’s no way they’d contribute some of their tens of thousands of dollars in donated funds to defray police overtime costs.
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1387781&position=1
GOODBYE OCCUPY? Dewey Sq. protesters kicked out in weekend of uproar, arrests
The police, he said, told him, “‘You don’t have to get arrested – you can walk away and make it easy on yourself.’ I said no thank you, I believe in my right to be here.”
MacKenna said he linked arms with the other protesters and thought, “I have to be there. I have to be standing in solidarity with my friends. It was not a question, it was ‘I must.’”
Occupy Boston Protesters Plan Next Steps
“No regrets. No regrets. I feel like maybe I should have warned my mother a little more in advance that I’d be getting arrested. I did not want to leave their of my own will because I value so much what we’ve created,” said Stephanie Fail.
Protesters said they may take to the streets for a march Monday afternoon. Police said there may be more arrests if there’s a march without a permit.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/29975268/detail.html
Campsite cleanup wraps up as protesters regroup
According to the Herald, members of the ‘Occupy’ movement are considering whether to offer any of their $60,000 in donations to help clean up the area.
Protesters have said they will not give any money to help pay for police overtime costs.
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/boston/12006138664881/campsite-cleanup-underway-as-protesters-regroup/
US culture breeds dehumanization
An activist highlights the disconnection between the wealthiest one percent and the rest of society has led to de-humanized and irresponsible treatment of people.
Press TV talks with John Dwyer, activist for Occupy movement in Boston about the current challenges and progress of the movement that extends to developing protester/police relations. He shares his thoughts on the issue.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/215269.html
Occupy Wall Street looks to block West Coast ports
But a plan to shutter multiple ports simultaneously could prove difficult because some of the facilities are in massive complexes with multiple entrances that would be tough to fully block, even if large numbers of demonstrators turn out.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/12/usa-protests-ports-idUSN1E7B80XF20111212
Occupy Maine to sue city
Deciding they had no other choice left, members of the Occupy Maine movement in Portland on Sunday authorized their attorney to sue the city of Portland, claiming it violated their constitutional right to free speech.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/occupy-maine-to-sue-city_2011-12-12.html
BPD’s William Evans forged 100 percent cooperation
Lost in all the public clamor to “broom the hippies” or “drain the swamp” was the “working relationship” that Evans said developed between the police and a group of key occupiers. It was a partnership that prevented countless problems, both inside and outside the encampment.
http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view/2011_1211bpds_evans_forged100_cooperation
Occupy group plans to shut down Vancouver port
Occupy Vancouver is taking its message to the waterfront.
Since being booted from the front steps of the Art Gallery, Occupy Vancouver has taken its show on the road, and on Monday groups vow to shut down Port Metro Vancouver and six other Pacific seaports as part of the ?West Coast Coordinated Port Shutdown.’
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Occupy+group+plans+shut+down+Vancouver+port/5844933/story.html
Occupy Denver plans protest of local Walmart distribution center
[Several occupations in major cities away from the coasts are coordinating actions against Walmart in solidarity with the port blockades)
Setting their sights on the biggest retailer in the world, members of Occupy Denver are gathering their forces for a protest against Walmart, which a representative turned “the most aggressively anti-union company” in the U.S.
The protest is slated for Monday, December 12, 9 a.m. at Walmart’s local distribution center at 7500 Crossroads Boulevard in Loveland, Colorado and is being held to show solidarity with Occupy protestors along the West Coast who are attempting to shut down ports in California and Oregon on the same day.
Occupy SLC to target Walmart distribution centers
Occupy SLC will participate in D12 (December 12), a day of action scheduled to focus on the disruption of shipping ports and Walmart distribution centers. Acting in solidarity with groups on both coasts who plan to disrupt the nation’s seaports, Occupy SLC is standing in solidarity with Occupy Denver and others to “organize mass mobilizations across the nation to support these actions.”
They maintain Walmart is “an excessively oppressive corporation that is actively destroying communities throughout our nation.” According to the Berkeley Blog, in 2007, six Walton family members reportedly had a combined net worth of $69.7 billion, equal to the total wealth of the bottom 30 percent of all US households.
Occupy Pittsburgh defies eviction; seizes Downtown park
Organizers of the Occupy Pittsburgh tent encampment said today they are “seizing” the BNY Mellon’s privately owned park in Downtown, will rename it “People’s Park,” and will serve BNY Mellon with an eviction notice Monday.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11345/1196236-100-0.stm
Occupy conference wraps up in Orlando with plan to move forward
Hundreds of people, from 16 different cities, were in Orlando this weekend for the first state-wide Occupy Wall Street event. For months they’ve occupied city parks across the state. However, protesters with the Occupy movement have grown tired of just sitting around.
“It resolves nothing to just protest,” says protester, Valerie Cepero. “If you don’t have a goal, then how do you know you’ve made any progress?”
This weekend, protesters worked to develop a list of objectives they hope can pass as legislation. They divided up into small groups and made a list of issues that are important to them.
http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2011/december/356266/Occupy-conference-wraps-up-in-Orlando-with-plan-to-move-forward
Protest camp breaks up, with many left homeless
Occupy Seattle broke down its tents at Seattle Central Community College on Friday and prepared to move, but no one knew exactly where. The group of protesters started camping to make a political statement. Now, many of them are camping because they have no place else to go.
“I’ll stick with the group,” said William Irwin, 60, folding tent poles. He would have preferred to stay, but was persuaded to break down his camp. “People are just saying, ‘Hey, we’re past time, and we’re expecting a raid.’ ”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016980329_occupy10m.html
Undercover police spied on protesters at Occupy LA
(Reuters) – Undercover police officers infiltrated Occupy LA’s tent city last month to spy on people they suspected of stockpiling human waste and crude weapons for resisting an eventual eviction, police and city government sources said.
Authorities also used security cameras mounted outside City Hall, where the camp was located, and monitored publicly available Internet chatter and video on social-networking sites such as Twitter, sources said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/11/us-protests-undercover-idUSTRE7BA0OR20111211
How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers – Occupy Protesters Plan to Shut Down West Coast Ports in Protest
But what many people may not know is that these sweatshop conditions don’t end when those goods hit American soil. Between the dock where the cargo is unloaded and the shelf from which you pluck your treasure, there are several critical lynchpins. One of them is port truck drivers. These drivers (around 110,000 of them in the United States) are responsible for moving approximately 20 million containers a year from the ports to railway yards and warehouses. Drivers operating large trucks are expected to safely haul loads up to 80,000 pounds. It’s a job for professionals, only these professionals are earning poverty wages, sometimes even less than you’d make flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant. Once a middle-class profession, the port trucking (or drayage) industry has now been dubbed “sweatshops on wheels.”
http://www.alternet.org/economy/153393/how_goldman_sachs_and_other_companies_exploit_port_truck_drivers_-_occupy_protesters_plan_to_shut_down_west_coast_ports_in_protest/
Obama: The “Trust-Buster” Who Never Busted a Trust: Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Obama claims that bailing out the banks “infuriated” him. Lucky for them. “When Obama supposedly got furious at the banks, he put the whole government and the Federal Reserve at their beck and call and funneled more than $16 trillion into their accounts.” We could all profit by becoming the objects of Obama’s rage. He also imagines he’s Teddy Roosevelt – except for the fact that Obama, as president, has never shown the slightest inclination to bust up monopolies.
http://blackagendareport.libsyn.com/webpage/obama-the-trust-buster-who-never-busted-a-trust
We’ve Known for Thousands of Years
[Each of these statements contains a hot link to another blog that sourced the assertions]
We’ve known for literally thousands of years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this.
We’ve known for 1,900 years that that rampant inequality destroys societies.
We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse.
We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/the-financial-crisis-was-entirely-foreseeable/
Depression and Democracy
It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it’s not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege.
On that last point, I am not being alarmist. On the political as on the economic front it’s important not to fall into the “not as bad as” trap. High unemployment isn’t O.K. just because it hasn’t hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/opinion/krugman-depression-and-democracy.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Lindsey Graham: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a ?Stalinist era’ thing
In the mind of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), protecting consumers from financial malpractice is something from the Joseph Stalin playbook.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/11/graham-the-cfpb-is-a-stalinist-era-thing/
Long-Term Jobless Eye Bleak Future As Unemployment Benefits End
Parks and Jones are among the nearly 7 million Americans receiving jobless benefits under seven different state and federal programs. Around a quarter of those will fall off the rolls in January if Congress does not renew an extended benefits program that expires at year end.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/11/long-term-jobless-eye-ble_n_1141780.html
New Nevada law spurs big drop in homes entering foreclosure
The number of Nevada homes entering foreclosure in October fell 75%, even as the rate surged elsewhere in the nation, largely because of a state law that gets tough on companies doing the foreclosing.
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-nevada-foreclosure-20111210,0,5514369.story
Bankers are the dictators of the West
What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries. The Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and the Gaddafis and the kings and emirs of the Gulf (and Jordan) and the Assads all believed that they had property rights to their entire nations. Egypt belonged to Mubarak Inc, Tunisia to Ben Ali Inc (and the Traboulsi family), Libya to Gaddafi Inc. And so on. The Arab martyrs against dictatorship died to prove that their countries belonged to their own people.
And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against “governments”. What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people’s power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of “experts” from America’s top universities and “think tanks”, who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
10 Responses to “The OB Media Rundown for 12/12/11”
We have an embarrassing amount of funds at our disposal. If you would like us to assist, we very easily can.
PressTV? Really? The same media outfit that has broadcast “interviews” from a cell inside Tehran’s Evin Prison that was done to look like a studio? Guys, I support you, but that is not cool.
None of these links are an endorsement of the news outlet, we are just keeping people informed of the media created about us and relevant to the movement.
The City/Greenway claim there was an underground sprinkler damaged. Yet there was a long strip about 15 feet wide maybe that the Occupy folks did not touch or trample that was a failed garden of bare dirt and sickly stunted plants that was obviously planted and never watered. And the claim that compaction has somehow ruined the soil. Yet a possible benefit of that compaction is that it will wick moisture from several feet below. The long dry strip I spoke of seemed to have the problem that it was too fluffy and unable to wick. Also when this organic matter is dry and fluffy it repels moisture. The city runs green spaces like a Soviet collective farm. And the wild spaces of vacant lots are left to grow until the summer drought and then stripped and mowed to stubble and dry dirt. This is why our city has no butterflies. Yet many of the Occupy Boston folks have been trained to want more socialism and communism and these expensive government union work projects like this fake Greenway repair.
Losif, what do you mean by failed garden? We said we would restore it the site to the condition it was before the occupation. are you suggesting we not keep that promise? we could have occupied a vacant lot like the ones you describe but we choose this place and said we would restore it. we should show that we keep our word and that we treat others fairly even when we dont receive the same.
The failed garden I am speaking of was there before the Occupy folks came. If you came into the main entrance of the Occupy camp and walked down that long path to the end where the General Assemblies are held the long garden was all along the left of the path you walked. I go barefoot most of the time and I always notice what is going on with the plants and soil. I don’t think Occupy Boston really damaged the Greenway at all. It just needed to be seeded. Some of the grass part where the tents were had poor drainage for a public park. I like those special bricks with holes that allow grass to grow up near the General assemblies area. I wish they would just rip out all the other plants and cover the whole space with that.
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I get the feeling that Dewey Square is considered a failure by the Greenway people. It is supposed to be the entrance the Greenway but that horrible building (behind the General Assembly space) was put there. I bet these Greenway folks were screaming bloody murder trying to prevent that building from being put there. It basically ruins the Greenway.
That building is one of several air vents for the I-93 tunnel below. The original Greenway plan had many more buildings on it.
Dewey Square was the last parcel to be developed – and it was underway this summer before Occupy Boston arrived. The long “failed garden” was new and in the process of being planted when Occupy arrived to take over the space.
It was never watered – because Occupy took over the space.
The long failed garden did not need to be watered when the Occupy folks came because it was October by then. We are talking about the same space, right? The failed garden had bean plants that never really took and stunted 2 foot high sunflowers I think. It was like a regular food type garden that had not been watered in the Summer. And the soil was too problematic for it to work without watering. I love what they do with the clumps of grasses on the other parts of the Greenway.
Yes – we’re talking about the same strip of land. It was planted in August (beans grow better into the cooler months). And then there was Irene. And then weeks of rain. Everything was stunted due to the over-watering of the area by Mother Nature.
I work two blocks from there and watched them as they planted during my morning commutes and lunch hours.
on December 12th, 2011 at 7:11 pm #
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