Chicago Activists Demonstrate Against NATO Arrests, City Summit Spending

Nearly 100 demonstrators massed at Jackson and LaSalle yesterday evening to highlight what they call targeted repression and the use of entrapment tactics by law enforcement of activists involved with the NATO summit protests and occupy movements. At 5:30 p.m. several dozen demonstrators paired off and zip-tied themselves to one another to symbolize what they see as the politically motivated arrests of protesters throughout the NATO summit.

They marched with others from the corner through the Loop chanting slogans like “we have nothing to fear from home brewed beer” and “we’re activists, not terrorists,” before ending at Daley Plaza, where activists held a press conference. The speakers were flanked by demonstrators holding up masks featuring photos of two people they say infiltrated various local movements on behalf of law enforcement in order to incite violence to justify police surveillance and arrests.

http://tinyurl.com/cwlezkp

Austerity champion Gov. Scott Walker Beats Barrett in Wisconsin Recall Race

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will successfully overcome a recall vote that would have stripped him of his job, CNN projects based on exit polling data and partial vote results.

Walker, a Republican hero for pushing austerity measures that stripped collective bargaining rights from most public unions, was leading Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by a 59-41 margin with 31% of the vote in.

http://tinyurl.com/c55nbg6

Paycheck Fairness Act Fails Senate Vote

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that would have ensured women are paid the same amount as their male counterparts.

The Senate failed to secure the 60 votes needed to advance the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have required employers to demonstrate that any salary differences between men and women doing the same work are not gender-related. The bill also would have prohibited employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers, and would have required the Labor Department to increase its outreach to employers to help eliminate pay disparities.

http://tinyurl.com/bnywx74

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 6/6/12” »

Malden Residents Form Union To Fight 22%-58% Rent Hikes

Tenants across the city found every renter’s nightmare slipped under their doors last week: a notice their rents will increase anywhere from 22 percent to 58 percent next month, with just two weeks to decide whether to accept the new agreement.

But residents say they won’t take the hikes without a fight, and a majority of the tenants have formed a union – Malden Tenants United – to prevent what they call unreasonable increases in a sluggish economy.

The sudden increase and union-organizing comes after a total of 265 units at 349 Pleasant St., 17/19 Washington St. and 86-96 Maple St. in Malden, as well as 53/63 Fellsway in Medford, were purchased by Brighton-based Alpha Management, which owns and maintains more than 60 properties in the Greater Boston area.

http://tinyurl.com/6o2brua

Patrick: ‘T must prepare for additional cuts,’ MBTA says service cuts will be the only option

Gov. Deval Patrick said Monday that unless lawmakers move soon on legislation to bail out the cash-strapped MBTA, he expected agency officials to begin drawing up plans for additional service cuts on the Boston-area transit system.
. . .

Joe Pesaturo, an MBTA spokesman, said Monday that staff was developing a “watch list” of bus routes that would potentially be eliminated if the legislation was not passed.

“Our only option will be service cuts if we don’t have the revenue by July 1,” Pesaturo said.

http://tinyurl.com/7o7wdwr

Occupy Providence protest seizes on 38 Studios ‘debacle’

Occupy Providence is seizing on what it calls the debacle involving former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s now troubled video gaming company.

The protest group says the state “recklessly gambled” on 38 Studios, which was lured to Rhode Island from Massachusetts in 2010 with a $75 million loan guarantee from the Economic Development Corp.

http://tinyurl.com/79javq8

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 6/5/12” »

OMB Audio: Occupy Boston Considers Future Of Movement

Friday evening, about 75 stalwart activists took part in an Occupy Boston assembly in front of the Parkman Bandstand on the Boston Common.

Horizontal democracy and consensus decision-making was in full force as facilitators encouraged as many people as possible to address both long-term and short-term goals of the movement. Speakers identified themselves as proponents of a wide range of leftist beliefs: from anarchists to economic reformers to democratic socialists.

Much of the agreement in strategy and philosophy revolved around a universal distaste for so-called austerity measures that have led to wide and deep cuts in government budgets. Speakers decried public services being reduced while prices go up.

http://tinyurl.com/7dzf74e

The facts are clear – This cruel austerity experiment has failed

Last week was an awesome warning of where go-it-alone austerity can lead. It produced some brutal evidence of where we end up when we place finance above economy and society. The markets are now betting not just on the break-up of the euro but on the arrival of a new economic dark age. The world economy is edging nearer to the abyss, and policymakers, none more than in Britain, are paralysed by the stupidities of their home-spun economics. Yanis Varoufakis, ex-speechwriter for former Greek prime minister George Papandreou and now an economics professor in the US, said last week: “There is precisely zero chance of austerity working. It is the same as thinking you can escape from gravity by waving your arms up and down.”

http://tinyurl.com/6npga6o

OWS ‘Summer Disobedience School’ prepares for Black Monday

Last Saturday saw the kickoff of Occupy Wall Street’s Summer Disobedience School (OWSDS), described in its “Curriculum” as a “twelve-week training program that will empower us to map, target, and disrupt sites of capitalist injustice across the city with a wide range of creative tactics accessible to people with all levels of experience.” The program, developed by the Direct Action Working Group, is divided into four three-week quarters, with each quarter taking a different city park as a staging-ground: Bryant Park, Central Park, Washington Square Park and, ultimately, Liberty Plaza. While focused primarily on tactical training, OWSDS is also a long-term strategic platform for the summer in advance of the one-year anniversary of OWS on September 17 – a date that is already looming large in the imagination of the movement under the sign of “Black Monday.”

http://tinyurl.com/6wpzyhb

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 6/4/12” »