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    No Layoffs Campaign – Picket at Harvard!

    February 15th, 2012 · · Events, News and Announcements Comments Off on No Layoffs Campaign – Picket at Harvard!
    TOMORROW (Thursday 2/16) 5:30pm
    Lamont Library, 11 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

    Library workers present Occupy Harvard a Valentine's Day card
    Library workers present Occupy Harvard a Valentine’s Day card
    The No Layoffs Campaign will picket outside of Lamont Library, the undergraduate library where Occupy Harvard has set up its temporary, targeted occupation, to call attention to the University’s draconian policies.
    Harvard’s libraries are still reeling from the staff cuts of 2008. That the library “restructuring” involves buyouts & layoffs has come as a shock to many who say that their departments are already incredibly understaffed.
    The Harvard administration has announced a plan to restructure the library system that will make libraries “more efficient” which will include a “smaller workforce.” The jobs of hundreds of staff currently employed by the libraries are threatened; measures include cuts and restructuring by “voluntary and involuntary means.” High unemployment rates make finding a new job nearly impossible, especially for older workers, who are being incentivized to leave “or else.” Harvard’s endowment grew 21% last year, to $32 billion, and the library operating costs represent only 3.3% of the annual budget.
    Support the union of clerical workers and nonunionized Harvard employees, including our research librarians!

    Latest Boston Occupier Out Tomorrow: Distribution Help Needed!

    February 14th, 2012 · · News and Announcements Comments Off on Latest Boston Occupier Out Tomorrow: Distribution Help Needed!

    The latest issue of the Boston Occupier is coming out this Wednesday, February 15th.  Help the Occupier  get out the word — all over Boston, and beyond — that our movement is growing, changing, and as urgent as ever.  Julie O explains the game-plan for distributing all 15,000 copies of Issue #5, as well as an exciting new subscription plan for the Boston Occupier.

    * Our big distribution push is the Wednesday afternoon commute. We need volunteers. We’ve found that the best strategy is actually to ride the T, moving from car to car, passing out papers to riders. This is especially appropriate because we are covering the ongoing protests against MBTA fare hikes & service cuts. Volunteers should meet between 4:30 and 5 pm at “E5” (33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston; if you can’t come until 5:30 or 6, that’s OK too.) It’s more fun to go out in pairs, so hopefully we’ll have enough volunteers to make that possible. So, come spread the Occupy news!

    * Copies of the paper will be available for anyone and everyone to pick up, beginning at 2 pm on Wednesday in “E5” (33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor). All of the papers (all 15,000 of them!) must be gone by the end of the week. Please take a stack and commit to distributing them in your community (small stacks in cafes, libraries, bookshops, laundry mats, community centers, waiting rooms, campuses, etc). In this issue: coverage of “3 Strikes” legislation, the Greenway Conservancy, Occupy UMass, MBTA protests, consequences of the Citizens United decision, churches & Occupy Boston, and more, more, more….

    * If you are a part of another local-area Occupy movement, a union, or a community organization that is willing to distribute papers — let’s make it happen! Send questions or suggestions about distribution to Julie O (juliettejulianna@gmail.com) — or, better yet, just pick up a big pile of papers from E5.

    * Also available with this issue is our new subscription service, part of our effort to raise funds and make the Boston Occupier sustainable for the foreseeable future. Read about it online here. I hope you’ll encourage those you know to subscribe to the paper!

    Please feel free to respond to me (juliettejulianna@gmail.com) with any questions, ideas, or suggestions.

    Harvard is Re-Occupied!

    February 12th, 2012 · · Events, News and Announcements One comment

    Occupy Harvard's occupation of Lamont LibraryThe following communiqué comes from our sisters and brothers at Occupy Harvard. Today they began a one-week, 24-hour occupation of Lamont Café—part of Harvard University’s Lamont Library, which is located in Harvard Yard. You can read the original post here. For more information, check out Occupy Harvard’s press release. Finally, you can support Occupy Harvard by making a donation. Solidarity!

    Harvard’s Lamont Library is Occupied

    Dear Friends and Community Members,

    Lamont Café is occupied.

    We intend for it to remain occupied until Friday at 10 pm.

    At a time when Harvard University is restructuring the library, we are working to change what a library is understood to be. Take a break. Think. The New Harvard Library Working Group of Occupy Harvard has opened a persistent community space for critical thought, engaged learning, and insistent action in the Lamont Library Café.

    We invite you to join us as we engage in communal tasks of producing knowledge (skill-shares, tutoring, and, yes, we will read your paper drafts), meet for morning coffee and conversation, and host twice-daily “Think Tanks”—topical discussions in which participants enter as equals and where professors, students, and workers converse as peers. Our current schedule is included below, but check-in frequently as new events and opportunities will be taking shape as the days progress.

    Why now? Why Lamont? The Harvard Library transition is a simulacrum of the University’s accession to neoliberal imperatives. Occupy, whether at Harvard or Wall Street, challenges and refuses the devastating willingness of our broken society to view humans as expendable resources and systems as ultimately beholden to profit. A library needs the workers who are its lifeblood, just as a functioning democratic society needs the voices of the 99%. The proposed library transition not only fails to address these systemic problems, it replicates them—both in terms of business practice and the production of scholarship and knowledge.

    As members of the Harvard community, we are committed to occupying the spaces of our education with integrity and intentionality. Lamont Library Café is an educational space specifically vested to facilitate the learning ideals of the University. We are doing no more and no less than striving to fulfill the promise of this space.

    Thank you for your engagement, your solidarity, and your support as we live into the possibilities of a new Harvard Library together.

    Take a break. Think.

    New Harvard Library Working Group
    Occupy Harvard

    For the schedule of events at occupied Lamont Library, click here.

    Occupy Film Series Starts Next Week

    February 7th, 2012 · · Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series, News and Announcements Comments Off on Occupy Film Series Starts Next Week

    The Howard Zinn Memorial Lectures Series (part of the Free School University) presents Occupy Film: a film and discussion series on Occupied Peoples and People’s Occupations. The first two films”Left on Pearl” and “3000 Years and Life” will be shown on Feb 16th and Feb 23rd at the Community Church in Copley square (see fliers below for more information about these exciting films).

     

     

    Video from Occupy Boston’s “No War on Iran” Rally

    February 6th, 2012 · · Multimedia/Art, News and Announcements 3 comments

    On Saturday, February 4th Occupy Boston’s Action for Peace Work Group joined communities across the nation, with over 60 endorsing organizations, to alert people to the ominous drumbeat, that unimpeded, will lead to war on Iran. The following video was produced by Occupy Boston Media Working Group member David L.

    Contact us

    Occupy Boston Media <Media@occupyboston.org> • <Info@occupyboston.org> • @Occupy_Boston