Good Morning from Occupy Boston!
Stories of the Day: Follow @Boston_M1GS on Twitter for updates on the Occupy Boston M1 General Strike today (and search for #M1GSBOS and #occupyboston). Planning on photographing a protest? Know your rights. Taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right – and that includes federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties. Unfortunately, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs from public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply. For an ACLU photography fact sheet, click here. The history of May 1 as a workers’ holiday is intimately tied to the generations-long movement for the eight-hour day, to immigrant workers, to police brutality and repression of the labor movement, and to the long tradition of American anarchism. To read more, see May Day’s Radical History: What Occupy Is Fighting for This May 1st. According to Noam Chomsky, people seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning. Today, there is a renewed awareness, energized by the Occupy movement’s organizing, around May Day, and its relevance for reform and perhaps eventual revolution. For more, click here. And several hundred NYPD officers have been conducting training exercises on Randall’s Island in preparation for May Day’s protests. For the story, click here. The New York Police Department is closely following the “fissures” inside the Occupy Wall Street movement in preparation for what it sees as possible violence from splinter groups, according to a leaked memo. For more, click here. Whether workers, students or banking customers, OWS is calling on all Americans to stop offering their labor and money to corporations for one day and join their local Occupy chapter for a day of resistance. For more, click here. If past coverage is any indication, corporate media will not tell the May Day story accurately or with depth or analysis. That’s why more than 25 independent media outlets belonging to The Media Consortium are collaborating to provide coordinated, national coverage of May Day events from around the country. Calling themselves “Media for the 99 Percent” (http://www.mediaforthe99percent.com), these diverse outlets will offer a live TV and streaming broadcast, an interactive map, breaking news reporting, and coordinated social media coverage across their sites, reaching a combined audience of more than 50 million Americans. And the people who created the website http://www.occupy.com created an Occupy TV ad; if you haven’t seen it, check it out. And, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Richmond [CA] Police Department for police training documents, Mo Karn received much more than expected in return: homeland security and crowd control guides that show how the police target protests. And buried in the training guides are insights into three trends in law enforcement that have been occurring not just in Virginia, but nationally: the demonization of protest, the militarization of police, and turning local cops into “terrorism” officials. For the story, click here.
Other Occupies/Protests: The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said. Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on May 1 are JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy’s May Day planning committee. Events are scheduled for more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week. For more, click here.
“Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.” Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Upcoming Events:
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Lecture at MIT: THE ILLUMINATOR PROJECT: Developing Best Practices for Public Projection Interventions, MARK READ of New York University
May 3, 2012 (Thursday)5pm-6pmRoom 14E-310, MIT
Free and open to the public, light dinner to followThe Illuminator is a white cargo van equipped with video and audio projection, as well as a fully stocked infoshop and mini-library. It is a tactical media tool available to the Occupy Movement, both useful and beautiful. It is a shapeshifter, a transformer of public space which disrupts the patterns of everyday life, and embodies the social and political transformations for which the Occupy Movement continues to fight.
Mark Read is an artist, activist, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. He is perhaps best known as the creator of the “99% Bat Signal” that was projected onto the Verizon Building in New York City on November 17th, 2012. His films have been shown internationally in a variety of venues, from the Piazza de Ferrari in Genoa Italy, to the Halls of the Whitney Museum. He is an adjunct professor of Media Studies at New York University.
Sponsors: MIT Cool Japan research project and Comparative Media Studies.Contact: Prof. Ian Condry, condry@mit.edu -
Occupy Boston’s General Assembly has agreed to hold the Saturday, May 5 General Assembly at the fabulous Wake Up the Earth Festival in Jamaica Plain. The Wake Up the Earth Festival is the best summer festival in Boston–it not only commemorates a major victory of the 99%–it brings together one of the most politicized and diverse neighborhoods in the city. Wake Up the Earth—WUTE–is a great opportunity to meet, greet and galvanize thousands of people while catching some rays and listening to live music. Staff the table! Help with children’s activities!10:30: Parade set up11:30: Parade leaves the Peace GardenPeace Garden, corner of School St. and Washington.Stony Brook T Stop, Orange lineHere’s a map from the T to the Peace Garden: http://g.co/maps/4pcp85:00: General Assembly, Southwest Corridor Park–in front of the Stony Brook T in the Sacred Circle–look for the OB banner.6:00: festival ends. 9:00–after party at Spontaneous Celebrations.The rain date for the festival is 5/6. If there is rain, then Strategic Action Assembly will meet at WUTE instead of GA. In the case of rain, GA will be cancelled on 5/5.For more information or to sign up for a table shift, contact/click:Aria: aria@littlhous.netJoe: cc2manj@verizon.nehttp://
spontaneouscelebrations.org/