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    • Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 4-24-12

    April 24th, 2012 · · Daily Digest Comments Off on Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 4-24-12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: Occupy has been organizing something extraordinary: the first truly nationwide General Strike in U.S. history. Building on the international celebration of May Day, past General Strikes in U.S. cities like Seattle and Oakland, the recent May 1st Day Without An Immigrant demonstrations, the national general strikes in Spain this year, and the on-going student strike in Quebec, the Occupy Movement has called for A Day Without the 99% on May 1st, 2012. For Occupy Wall Street’s page of cities where Occupy May Day events are being planned, as well as other resources, click here. Note: This is a living document. Check back for updates! For historical background on May 1 and creative posters Occupy has produced in their effort to agitate for a General Strike on May 1st, with some observations and historical notes, click here. And: An Occupy Wall Street protester has lost his bid to quash a subpoena seeking his Twitter records from last fall, when he was arrested during a mass protest on the Brooklyn Bridge. And the time to fight back against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is now. CISPA effectively allows the federal government and corporations to “spy” on citizens. Information shared under CISPA could be used for almost any purpose. CISPA could put your data in the hands of the military — and out of reach of public oversight.  If a company mishandles your data, it is nearly impossible to sue them and win. For more info, click here.  And: The Yes Lab claims credit for satirical Bank of America website in collaboration with Rainforest Action Network, New Bottom Line and Occupy Wall Street.

    Other Occupies/Protests: April 28-29. The peace group CodePink, the civil liberties organization Center for Constitutional Rights, and Reprieve, the United Kingdom-based legal advocacy organization that represents drone victims, are sponsoring a Washington, D.C., conclave that they are billing as “the first international drone summit.” Speakers and participants will include human rights advocates, robotics technology experts, lawyers, privacy advocates, journalists and activists. Organizers say the purpose of the conference is “to inform the American public about the widespread and rapidly expanding deployment of both lethal and surveillance drones, including drone use in the United States.” The conference was slated to feature the personal stories of Pakistani drone-strike victims, but the State Department refused to grant a visa to prominent Pakistani human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, whose organization represents families of drone victims. Akbar had previously had no trouble geting a visa until, in 2010, he took on a case for two families of drone victims, according to Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CodePink and Global Exchange. He was subsequently denied a visa to speak at Columbia University’s law school in May 2011 at a human rights symposium. Benjamin and other organizers charge that the Obama administration, which “will not even acknowledge the existence of the covert drone program, much less account for those who are maimed and killed,” is trying to silence Akbar, who has facts and stories to “contradict the convenient narrative that drone strikes only kill ‘militants’.”

    “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Elie Wiesel 

    Upcoming Events:
    • Media Meeting: To try to help us explore how the entire community can be empowered to create its own media, we invite /urge you, the community, to participate in a conversation about the future of media work at Occupy Boston next Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 7pm at Encuentro 5 (5th floor, 33 Harrison Ave, Boston). We will discuss the best way to reallocate existing resources in a way that is equitable and consistent with OB’s values. People who want to help copy/edit, write stories, make videos, etc. should come. I’ll be there, hope to see you too!
    • April 25, 5:30pm-7:30pm, Cohen Auditorium, Tufts Campus, Medford. Karl Rove Un-Welcoming Committee: Karl Rove, war criminal and torture apologist, will be speaking at Tufts campus. See event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/336321973087555/ Let’s make it clear that Rove is not welcomed here! And that Tufts students, the Somerville/Medford community, and the Boston community finds it unacceptable that Tufts University spends university money to promote “dialogue” with someone who has normalized and promoted state-sanctioned torture. Un-Welcoming Committee event page is http://www.facebook.com/events/329629033769092/
    • What is Occupy Wall Street? A film screening. Occupy HCC (Holyoke Community College) is hosting a film screening of short films produced by Occupy Wall Street in the Forum at HCC, April 27, 3pm-5pm. Come and find out about the Occupy Movement that started on Wall St. and has spread across the globe! There will be a Q&A session following the films with activists from different Occupy groups across the Northeast. This event is sponsored by the Holyoke Community College Student Senate.
    • On April 28, 2012 from 5pm to 10pm, artists from Occupy Boston will host a gathering with artist and cultural provocateur Steve Lambert. Taking place at Samsøn (450 Harrison Avenue), this event will be an opportunity for Lambert and the greater Occupy community to connect over questions of messaging, humor, culture jamming, and creative activism as the movement heads into the coming seasons. Following the discussion, we will screen the film The Yes Men Fix the World.
    • MA Unite Against the War on Women Rally, April 28, 10am-2pm, at City Hall Plaza. Help defend women’s rights and pursuit of equality. Join Americans all across the United States as we come together as one to tell members of Congress in Washington DC and legislators in all 50 states, “Enough is enough!” All Americans have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, including contraception, without interference from government, business or religious institutions. Please join us as we gather together and show both state and federal legislative bodies that we won’t stand silently by as they propose and pass laws that will impact women’s choices, health, and wellbeing. We need everyone’s voice! These decisions affect all genders, races, and socio-economic statuses!
    • May 1st Training with Occupy Boston: Sunday, April 29, 12pm-3pm, location TBA (see Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/396045130426024/). Gearing up for May 1st? Want to feel more prepared? Join Occupy Boston as we get ready for the General Strike! Direct Action and the Medics will be providing basic training this Sunday in preparation for Tuesday’s General Strike! There will be plenty of fun activities as well as training in basic safety procedures. Join us!
    • Boston New Sanctuary Movement Presents A Return to A Faithful Understanding, An Interfaith Conference: Toward a More Compassionate National Debate on Immigration, Sunday, April 29, 2012, 12:30 – 5 p.m.  (12-1, lunch provided by Brazilian Immigrant Center), Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury St., Boston, MAWorship leader:  Rev. Rob Mark, Pastor, Church of the Covenant, Boston, Presbyterian/UCCSpeakers, Reflection leaders:  Members of the Boston New Sanctuary Movement. Schedule: 12:30  Registration; 1:00 Welcome, opening reflection; 1:15  Current Immigration issues in Boston, and the Boston New Sanctuary Movement; 1:40 Workshops, period I; 3:10 Workshops, period II; 4:40 Closing reflection; 5:00    Networking. 
    • May 1 General Strike! A Day Without the 99%. NO WORK – NO SCHOOL – NO SHOPPING – NO BANKING – NO TRADING. GENERAL STRIKE AND BOYCOTT CALLED! 7am-11am: Financial District Block Party! (corner of Federal and Franklin Streets). Bring a friend and let’s party! Bring whistles, drums, noise makers. Bring street theater ! 12:00pm: Boston City Hall Rally. Can’t make it to Boston City Hall at Noon? Well how about: The Chelsea City Hall? – Gather at Noon – March at 2pm (For More information please contact La Colaborativa (617) 889-6097). 2pm: LoPresti Park Rally/March (Blue Line: Maverick Square) (For more information contact Dominic at City life/Vida Urbana (617) 710-7176). 4pm: Everett – Glendale Park (For more information please contact La Comunidad (617) 387-9996). 7pm: Death of Capitalism Boston Funeral March (Copley Square). We invite people to participate in this piece of street theater which includes puppets, a marching band, and other creative surprises. People will begin gathering at 7pm at Copley Square Park (by the steps of Trinity Church) to put on costumes, puppets and face-paint and get info on their respective role in the funeral procession. We ask that people participate as: mourners (dressed in black), celebrators (wearing neon/bright colors/glow stuff), skeleton block (bring your own skeleton costume). The funeral procession will leave Copley Square Park at 8pm and will travel through areas of wealth and commerce. 
      Continue reading »

    The OB Media Rundown for 4/24/12

    April 23rd, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 4/24/12

    Occupy Student Debt Campaign calls for national day of action to mark the moment total US student debt passes $1 trillion

    On April 25th the total amount of student loan debt in the U.S. is due to top 1 trillion dollars. This marks a momentous victory for Wall Street-much to the despair of student loan debtors across the country. On this date, the profiteers on Wall Street will be popping champagne bottles, eating caviar, and sneering at the debt-burdened students and graduates who lug around this 1 trillion dollar ball and chain.

    Occupy Student Debt Campaign is hosting a party of its own.  Throughout the country we will be taking direct action to raise awareness about this crisis as part of a new movement to make education a right.

    http://tinyurl.com/7l9mmfa

    1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed 

    Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

    In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

    According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor’s degree or higher to fill the position – teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren’t easily replaced by computers.

    http://tinyurl.com/79a2kse

    Bad Education 

    If you’re enrolled in four college classes right now, you have a pretty good chance that one of the four will be taught by someone who has earned a doctorate and whose teaching, scholarship, and service to the profession has undergone the intensive peer scrutiny associated with the tenure system. In your other three classes, however, you are likely to be taught by someone who has started a degree but not finished it; was hired by a manager, not professional peers; may never publish in the field she is teaching; got into the pool of persons being considered for the job because she was willing to work for wages around the official poverty line (often under the delusion that she could ‘work her way into’ a tenurable position); and does not plan to be working at your institution three years from now.

    This is not an improvement; fewer than forty years ago, when the explosive growth in tuition began, these proportions were reversed. Highly represented among the new precarious teachers are graduate students; with so much available debt, universities can force graduate student workers to scrape by on sub-minimum-wage, making them a great source of cheap instructional labor. Fewer tenure-track jobs mean that recent PhDs, overwhelmed with debt,  have no choice but to accept insecure adjunct positions with wages kept down by the new crop of graduate student-workers. Rather than producing a better-trained, more professional teaching corps, increased tuition and debt have enabled the opposite.

    If overfed teachers aren’t the causes or beneficiaries of increased tuition (as they’ve been depicted of late), then perhaps it’s worth looking up the food chain. As faculty jobs have become increasingly contingent and precarious, administration has become anything but.

    http://tinyurl.com/3qgbln6

    Continue reading »

    Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 4-23-12

    April 23rd, 2012 · · Daily Digest Comments Off on Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 4-23-12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: UC Davis campus police chief resigns after Occupy protest pepper spray incident. UC Davis spokesman Barry Shiller said the police chief, Annette Spicuzza, had told the school she was retiring immediately.UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who also faced heavy criticism has refused to step down. And more California news: Armed with placards reading “Please Raise Our Taxes” and colorful budget charts, about 75 well-dressed middle-aged folks assembled on the steps of San Francisco City Hall at noon on Tuesday, Tax Day. For more, click here. And: the Happiest Place on Earth? Click here to read about homeless children living on the road to Disney World. And for an infographic detailing how much money a woman loses every year for not being a man ($10,784!), click here. And one of the projects at the upcoming Burning Man event is “Burn Wall Street.” And this documentary on how to start a nonviolent revolution looks amazing, no release date yet, but for the trailer, click here (you can save it on Netflix FYI).

    Other Occupies/Protests: Support for Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is charged with leaking diplomatic and Iraq and Afghan war-related classified materials to Wikileaks, will be one of the subjects of an April 23 civil disobedience protest at the Justice Department in downtown D.C. The rally also will call for an end to the death penalty, an end to solitary confinement and other brutal practices in the nation’s prisons, an end to prison privatization, the release of radical journalist and long-time prisoner (and until recently death-row inmate) Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a call to spend federal money on jobs, education and health care – and not on jails. Among the expected prominent participants in the event is actor Danny Glover.

    “The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.” Noam Chomsky

    Upcoming Events:

    • Tuesday, April 24, 10am-8pm, Occupy Brandeis is hosting The Great Teach-In on the Great Lawn. For the schedule of events, click here.
    • The Occupy Boston Media Working Group has dissolved. To try to help us explore how the entire community can be empowered to create its own media, we invite /urge you, the community, to participate in a conversation about the future of media work at Occupy Boston next Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 7pm at Encuentro 5 (5th floor, 33 Harrison Ave, Boston). We will discuss the best way to reallocate existing resources in a way that is equitable and consistent with OB’s values. People who want to help copy/edit, write stories, make videos, etc. should come. I’ll be there, hope to see you too!
    • What is Occupy Wall Street? A film screening. Occupy HCC (Holyoke Community College) is hosting a film screening of short films produced by Occupy Wall Street in the Forum at HCC, April 27, 3pm-5pm. Come and find out about the Occupy Movement that started on Wall St. and has spread across the globe! There will be a Q&A session following the films with activists from different Occupy groups across the Northeast. This event is sponsored by the Holyoke Community College Student Senate.
    • On April 28, 2012 from 5pm to 10pm, artists from Occupy Boston will host a gathering with artist and cultural provocateur Steve Lambert. Taking place at Samsøn (450 Harrison Avenue), this event will be an opportunity for Lambert and the greater Occupy community to connect over questions of messaging, humor, culture jamming, and creative activism as the movement heads into the coming seasons. Following the discussion, we will screen the film The Yes Men Fix the World.
    • MA Unite Against the War on Women Rally, April 28, 10am-2pm, at City Hall Plaza. Help defend women’s rights and pursuit of equality. Join Americans all across the United States as we come together as one to tell members of Congress in Washington DC and legislators in all 50 states, “Enough is enough!” All Americans have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, including contraception, without interference from government, business or religious institutions. Please join us as we gather together and show both state and federal legislative bodies that we won’t stand silently by as they propose and pass laws that will impact women’s choices, health, and wellbeing. We need everyone’s voice! These decisions affect all genders, races, and socio-economic statuses!
    • Boston New Sanctuary Movement Presents A Return to A Faithful UnderstandingAn Interfaith Conference: Toward a More Compassionate National Debate on Immigration, Sunday, April 29, 2012, 12:30 – 5 p.m.  (12-1, lunch provided by Brazilian Immigrant Center), Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury St., Boston, MAWorship leader:  Rev. Rob Mark, Pastor, Church of the Covenant, Boston, Presbyterian/UCCSpeakers, Reflection leaders:  Members of the Boston New Sanctuary Movement. Schedule: 12:30  Registration; 1:00 Welcome, opening reflection; 1:15  Current Immigration issues in Boston, and the Boston New Sanctuary Movement; 1:40 Workshops, period I; 3:10 Workshops, period II; 4:40 Closing reflection; 5:00    Networking. 
      Continue reading »

    The OB Media Rundown for 4/23/12

    April 23rd, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 4/23/12

    All-day teach-in at Brandeis will focus on the Occupy Movement

    Members of the Brandeis faculty, student body and staff have organized an all-day teach-in from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday on the Great Lawn outside the Shapiro Student Center to consider various aspects of the Occupy Movement.

    Among the subjects of the sessions are “Media and Occupy,” “May Day and Occupy,” “Israel and Occupy,” “Occupy and Democracy” and many others. Provost Steve Goldstein will welcome participants, President Fred Lawrence will lead discussion of “Occupy as National Teaching Moment” and Environmental Studies Program chair Laura Goldin will hold a session on “Whose Earth Anyway? Environmental Justice for the 99%.” Numerous students and other faculty will participate, as will activists from around greater Boston.

    http://tinyurl.com/7ugvnd2

    UN to investigate plight of US Native Americans for first time

    Many of the country’s estimated 2.7 million Native Americans live in federally recognised tribal areas which are plagued with unemployment, alcoholism, high suicide rates, incest and other social problems.

    The UN mission is potentially contentious, with some US conservatives likely to object to international interference in domestic matters. Since being appointed as rapporteur in 2008, Anaya has focused on natives of Central and South America.

    A UN statement said: “This will be the first mission to the US by an independent expert designated by the UN human rights council to report on the rights of the indigenous peoples.”

    http://tinyurl.com/7kqta7n

    Protesters occupy Berkeley-owned farm tract in Albany

    Occupy the Farm, a coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists are planting over 15,000 seedlings at the Gill Tract, the last remaining 10 acres of Class I agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay area. The Gill Tract is public land administered by the University of California, which plans to sell it to private developers.

    For decades the UC has thwarted attempts by community members to transform the site for urban sustainable agriculture and hands-on education. With deliberate disregard for public interest, the University administrators plan to pave over this prime agricultural soil for commercial retail space, a Whole Foods, and a parking lot.

    “For ten years people in Albany have tried to turn the Gill Tract into an Urban Farm and a more open space for the community. The people in the Bay Area deserve to use this treasure of land for an urban farm to help secure the future of our children,” explains Jackie Hermes-Fletcher, an Albany resident and public school teacher for 38 years.

    http://tinyurl.com/7722guq

    Continue reading »

    Occupy Boston to Give $ to Occupy Cape Cod and Occupy JP

    April 22nd, 2012 · · News and Announcements Comments Off on Occupy Boston to Give $ to Occupy Cape Cod and Occupy JP

    These proposals passed General Assembly on April, 21, 2012.

    •  Give Occupy Cape Cod $1,000 to use as they wish directed towards their May 13th and May 20th actions.

    •  Occupy Jamaica Plain requests funding, $312.00, to pay for a one-quarter page advertisement in the Jamaica Plain Gazette, to promote our participation in “Wake Up The Earth Day,” May 5, 2012.  Jamaica Plain is a community with many activists and many progressive organizations, and Wake Up The Earth Day has been an extremely popular, well attended event in the past 30 years.  We are planning an information table, children’s activities, and a small parade float built with the help of the kids on the theme of “Imagine a Neighborhood You’d like to Live In.”  We believe our involvement in this event will be an excellent opportunity to spread the word about who Occupy and Occupy JP are, what we do, and to recruit new members.

    Contact us

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