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    • People Of Color Working Group supports preservation of Silver Maple Forest

    May 10th, 2012 · · News and Announcements One comment

    “We, The People of Color Group of OCCUPY Boston, in solidarity with the entire OCCUPY BOSTON community, extend this invitation to join us for a ceremony to preserve the last standing grove of Silver Maple trees that are slated to be cut down for the “redevelopment” of the Alewife green space into luxury apartments for the benefit of the 1%. This sacred parcel of land is privately owned, yet is accessible to the masses and has a connection with all people who enjoy the natural wild life habitat. Land that was used by the indigenous Americans before their genocide. In protest we will have a ceremony to protect the land consisting of readings, performances and a universal “ohm” that will persist for 15 minutes at the closing. The walk to the sacred trees will begin at 8:15pm. Everyone is welcome to attend and we suggest bringing a flashlight, water, and/or an musical instrument. This is a peaceful protest that is meant to call attention to the gravity of the destruction of this sacred land that holds the last of these beautiful trees. We are asking that you please make every effort to attend this event for the sake of preserving our precious planet.”

    Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5-10-12

    May 10th, 2012 · · Daily Digest Comments Off on Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5-10-12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: May 4 was the anniversary of Kent State. On May 4, 1970 Allison Krause was shot dead by an Ohio National Guard bullet as she protested the Vietnam War, the American war draft and the military occupation of her college campus at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The Krause family is asking for the Kent State Massacre to be considered before the International Criminal Court. For more, see Justice for Kent State Massacre? In a related story: according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, J. Edgar Hoover and FBI’s “Cointelpro” Operation have been linked to the Kent State killings and FBI cover-up. For the article, see Kent State Killings. And in other news: “How can we help? How can we help? How can we help?” It’s not your average protest slogan, but it’s what the activists chanted Sunday as they marched from Zuccotti Park to 120 Broadway, which houses the office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The AG chairs President Obama’s task force to investigate the routine fraud and abuse that characterized Wall Street during the Bush-era inflation of the housing bubble and precipitated the 2008 financial crash and subsequent recession. For more, see New York Activists Ask Attorney General “How Can We Help?” And, more on the Occupy/99 Percent Spring debate: are unions and liberal groups like MoveOn valuable allies? Or do they pose a threat, seeing the Occupy Movement as nothing more than a “brand” whose language can be slipped on and deployed to their own ends–namely, a Democratic triumph in November? The source of these fears is the “99 Percent Spring” and similar campaigns. For more, see The Dangers of Co-Option. In a related story, watch this video: a MoveOn.org infiltrator attempts to hijack the General Assembly of Occupy the East End in Long Island, New York. See MoveOn Infiltrator Exposed at Occupy East End. And for more information on the Neo-Nazi party on the rise in Greece, see Q&A: Greece’s Golden Dawn. And here’s an update on the Occupy the Farm action in Albany, CA: The UC administration barricaded the Gill Tract on Wednesday with concrete, metal barriers, and dozens of police who threatened farmers with “chemical agents and impact force.” … A bulldozer loomed on the edge of the farm for the majority of the morning. For more, see UCPD Locks Gate on Professor’s Research, Farmers Move to Remediate Neglected Portions of Gill Tract.

    Other Occupies/Protests: Vladimir Putin was sworn in as Russia’s president at a glittering ceremony on Monday, hours after clashes between police and thousands of protesters in the country’s capital laid bare the deep divisions over his return to the Kremlin for six more years. In the latest demonstrations on Sunday, police detained more than 400 people, including three opposition leaders, after tensions boiled over at a rally attended by about 20,000 people across the Moscow river from the Kremlin. Police hit protesters on the head with batons as they tried to stop demonstrators advancing towards them, carrying metal crowd barriers and throwing objects. The crowd fought back with flagpoles before the police eventually restored order. For more, see 400 Protesters Arrested Hours Before Putin’s Return to Russian Presidency.

    “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both.” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

    The OB Media Rundown for 5/10/12

    May 9th, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 5/10/12

    Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation

    This initial reflection on the #Occupy Everywhere movements is based on my observations and participation in #Occupy Boston since late September 2011, including the period after the dismantling of the camp on December 10. I especially focus on how social media have shaped the forms and practices of #Occupy, comparing and contrasting the #Occupy movements to a previous wave of global justice activism that was also significantly influenced by digital media (Juris 2008a). How are the #Occupy movements using new technologies? What difference does employing social as opposed to other forms of new media make? How do virtual and physical forms of protest intersect? What are the strategic and political implications of emerging dynamics of organization and protest within #Occupy, particularly in terms of issues such as sustainability, racial diversity, political demands, and movement impact.

    http://tinyurl.com/d42rjv6

    [For more articles in Occupy in the new issue of American Ethnologist  magazine go here: http://www.americanethnologist.org/]

    Rejecting the lie that Harvard doesn’t do student activism

    Before a journalist suggests, yet again, that Harvard students never put their feet on the ground about issues they care about, I think it’s important to point out the impressive nature of this school year’s student activism. In the fall, students from the Trans Task Force and Anti-Imperialist Movement  protested President Drew G. Faust signing an agreement that brought Naval Reserve Office Training Corps back on campus. The students of the Environmental Action Committee and Students for a Just and Stable Future travelled to Boston and Washington D.C. with the Tar Sands Action Campaign to protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline; meanwhile, the Global Health and AIDS Coalition held multiple actions all year calling out both Senator Scott P. Brown and Merck & Co. for their failure to support global health goals.

    While students staged a walkout of professor N. Gregory Mankiw’s Economics 10 lecture and prompted Goldman Sachs to cancel recruiting events at multiple colleges, Occupy Harvard maintained a tent city in Harvard Yard for over two months. Other students concerned about economic justice organized with library workers to demand no layoffs in the restructuring process. The Palestine Solidarity Committee held a one-day hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinian administrative detainees; black student groups organized a rally for Trayvon Martin. And just last Saturday, Harvard students joined with feminists from around Boston to protest the War on Women. Moreover, this year’s student campaigns have been successful: In response to student demands, Harvard not only halted future investments in HEI Hotels and Resorts but also funded cage-free eggs in the dining halls and sustainable jobs for Harvard’s food service.

    http://tinyurl.com/d6mylfo

    The latest Occupy impostors – Two groups claiming to represent America’s youth are, in fact, fronts for phony D.C. centrism

    Tens of thousands of young people took to parks, streets and banks last fall to demand an end to the laissez-faire political order that permitted financial titans to bankrupt the economy and deny us a chance at finding decent jobs.

    Half a year later, a collection of young people backed by major foundations and companies like Dell are promoting two new organizations, Campaign for Young America and Fix Young America. In a recent profile, the New York Times touts the groups as “advocacy groups for jobless youth” on the order of the AARP or NRA. They are, the Times claims, “younger siblings of Occupy Wall Street, but with a nonpartisan agenda, more centralized leadership and one specific mission: to help young people find jobs.”
    . . .

    They are nothing at all like Occupy Wall Street: The groups have no real criticism of the American economic order, they are not democratically run, and they seem to focus on providing Monster.com-like service of helping individual people find jobs.

    The book even includes a contribution from Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the conservative legislator who last May infamously accused Elizabeth Warren of being a liar.

    http://tinyurl.com/chkx4c5

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/10/12” »

    Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5-9-12

    May 9th, 2012 · · Daily Digest Comments Off on Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5-9-12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: Surveillance cameras are now so powerful they are able to zoom in and read your text messages – leading to fears of further privacy intrusion by a “Big Brother”-style state. As well as being advanced enough to close in on an individual’s phone screen, security cameras will soon be able to pick up on raised voices and sniff out drugs too. The revelations were made at a privacy conference in Wellington, New Zealand, where it was also disclosed that the average person is digitally recorded about a dozen times a day. For more, see Watch what you type! And four generations of a Georgia family, including a toddler, were evicted at gunpoint by dozens of sheriffs and deputies at 3am last week in an Atlanta suburb. The eyebrow-raising eviction, a foreclosure action, might have been another anonymous descent into poverty were it not for Occupy Atlanta activists who tried to help the family stay in Christine Frazer’s home of 18 years. The eviction came as Frazer, 63, who lost her husband and then job in 2009, had been challenging the foreclosure in county and federal courts by seeking to restructure the terms of a delinquent mortgage. For more, see Dozens of Police Evict Georgia Family at Gunpoint at 3am. In Canada, a revolt against a government tuition fee hike is growing into Occupy-inspired dissent against austerity and inequality. Canadian students have been furiously mobilizing for a freeze on tuition fees since last spring, when the Liberal provincial government announced hikes of 75% over five years. A general strike launched this February shuttered most of the province’s colleges and universities. In Montreal, family-friendly street-theatre and marches peaked with a historic rally of 200,000 on 22 March; business-unfriendly blockades of banks, bridges and government ministries have often paralyzed the downtown core. And over the last week, tens of thousands have joined a nightly protest ritual, marching through Montreal past the midnight hour. For more, see Quebec student protests mark “Maple spring” in Canada. And in related news, the Canadian government will support a private member’s bill that would make it a crime to wear a mask or disguise during a riot, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Sunday. The Concealment of Identity Act would create two Criminal Code offences with maximum penalties of five years in prison and fines of up to $5,000. For more, see Legislation would prohibit masks during riots. And across Canada over the past several weeks, police officers have been dressing as panhandlers and clutching cardboard signs to mimic the curbside come-ons in order to get close enough to see drivers using handheld phones while driving. “We don’t want to give panhandlers a bad name by people thinking that they’re cops,” said John Clarke, an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. “They are displacing people who are trying to survive by panhandling. The level of social cutbacks is such that, for panhandlers, there are no survival margins at all. And from a general decency point of view, it is a sneaky and unsavoury tactic.” For more. see No escaping hobo cop. 

    Other Occupies/Protests: FREE BUS TRIP TO CHICAGO FOR NATO SUMMIT: 99% Solidarity, a Working Group of Occupy Wall Street, is excited to participate in nonviolent direct actions in Chicago from May 18 to 22, 2012. We have secured buses to bring people to these actions from several U.S cities. So far, there are buses leaving from the following cities: New York City; Washington, D.C.; Boston, MA; Providence, RI; Burlington, VT; Salem, NH; Philadelphia, PA; Atlanta, GA; Oakland, CA; Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco, CA; Portland, OR. We are currently working on the travel schedule, agenda and other important details of this trip, and we are working hard to add more cities, so please check back often if your city is not listed. We will be contacting you with updated information shortly. For now here are a few updates:

    – The Bus trip is free

    – 50 people from each city must sign up and board the bus for the trip take place. If a city has less then 50 sign ups, then we may have to cancel the bus for that city.

    – Meals will be provided on board the bus to and from Chicago

    – We are working on housing and meals while in Chicago

    There are several direct actions and events that we will participate in while in Chicago including:

    – May 18 – The People’s Summit

    – May 19 – the 99% Solidarity People’s Convention

    – May 20 – CANG8 rally and march.

    Please visit 99solidarity.net often to get the most up to date information and be sure to invite your friends and fellow occupiers to join you on this exciting, historic trip.  In addition, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter: @99solidarity. http://99solidarity.net/chicago/. *Note: There’s a possibility of undercover law enforcement being present on some of these buses. Do not give information to anyone about activity you wouldn’t want everyone knowing about.

     “The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” John F. Kennedy

    The OB Media Rundown for 5/9/12

    May 8th, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 5/9/12

    Universities hold students’ transcripts hostage over debt

    American universities — whose grads often owe six-figure debts that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can even be charged against their Social Security checks — are increasingly engaging in the (legal) tactic of refusing to provide transcripts to grad schools or employers as a means of extorting payment out of students who get behind. A good summary of what this means comes from NYU’s Andrew Ross, a prof who helped start Occupy Student Debt: “It’s worse than indentured servitude. With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture.”

    http://tinyurl.com/bmb9rd9

    The ‘Austerity Trap’

    “When you have high unemployment and a lot of underutilized capacity, the idea is you cut public budgets? That’s insane. Because that leads to a shrinking of the entire economy, when the real problem is … the ratio of debt to the size of the economy overall,” the former secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration says about the backwardness of the budget cuts being imposed by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. “If you shrink the economy, that ratio becomes worse and worse. That’s an austerity trap. That’s what happened to Spain. It’s what’s happening even to Britain. It’s what’s happening to Europe as a whole. Angela Merkel is absolutely wrong. You need jobs and growth first, before you embrace austerity.

    “Now we’re gonna come to exactly the same decision point in January, because we’ve got these sequestration cuts coming up. If nothing is done between now and then, we are going to be forced to embrace our own version of austerity economics at a time when there is still going to be high unemployment and still a lot of underutilized capacity in the United States. We have got to understand … that jobs and growth have to come first before so-called fiscal austerity discipline.”

    http://tinyurl.com/cutm5r9

    Europe in Revolt

    In America, anti-austerity has found its voice through the Occupy movement, which stands resolutely outside electoral politics. But in Europe resistance has often been orchestrated through mass parties that do stand for elections. This Sunday’s vote saw the stunning success of many such groups across the continent. I spoke to Seth Ackerman, editor of a special section on the European left in Jacobin’s new issue, about the new developments.

    http://tinyurl.com/72qx4n8

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/9/12” »

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