National Occupy expansion to smaller towns and cities grows with formation of Occupy Portsmouth [RI]

A group calling itself “Occupy Portsmouth” says it’s planning a meeting in town next month and intends to set up shop there as part of the national Occupy movement.

The Newport Daily News reports that the group announced this week that it will hold a “general assembly” April 3 at Patriot Park to plan what it calls “the future occupation of Portsmouth.” The group says it’s part of an expansion of the national movement into smaller towns.

The movement against corporate excess and economic inequality began six months ago with Occupy Wall Street and spread to cities worldwide, including Providence.

http://tinyurl.com/869yk5y

Boston Climate Activists Make Bank of America ATMs More Truthful

In another action targeting Bank of America for its financing of the coal industry, this one timed to coincide with Occupy Wall Street’s “Occupy Bank of America” March 15 day of action, RAN activists transformed over 70 ATMs into Automated Truth Machines, this time in and around Boston.

Activists used special non-adhesive stickers designed to look like BoA’s ATM interface. Instead of checking and savings accounts, customers are offered transaction options like investing in coal plants, foreclosing on homeowners, or bankrolling climate change.

Elite BoA executives like CEO Brian Moynihan reside in and around the city, making Boston an arena ripe for protests and ethical debate for the 99%. Targeted actions against BoA are expected to escalate between now and the company’s anticipated Annual General Meeting, where activists plan to gather en masse in May in Charlotte, North Carolina.

http://tinyurl.com/7yrrn6n

Wall Street firms face skeptical students

Wall Street firms have generated lots of controversy with their recruiting trips to universities.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has protested them energetically, and now the noisy resignation of Greg Smith, who was a key player in recruiting for the bank, has raised some related issues.

In his now famous op-ed piece, he wrote, “I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.”

http://tinyurl.com/82futm8

New Occupy forms in Arlington

Please join us on Sunday, March 18 from 2-4 p.m. in front of Arlington Town Hall for the launching of Occupy Arlington.  Make Arlington a vital part of Greater Boston’s growing Occupy movement.

If you’re interested in issues such as countering the impact of corporate greed, stopping the sellout of our democracy, finding solutions to disappearing jobs, making education and housing affordable. . .  we want to hear your voice.

http://tinyurl.com/7mej34d

Occupy! and Make Them Do It

(video)

When protest movements do emerge, the price of appeasement can rise dramatically. Protest movements raise the sharp and divisive issues that vague rhetoric is intended to obscure and avoid, and the urgency and militancy of the movement-with its marches, rallies, strikes and sit-ins-breaks the monopoly on political communication otherwise held by politicians and the media. Politicians trying to hold together unwieldy majorities and their big money backers strive to avoid divisive issues except in the haziest rhetorical terms. But movements-with the dramatic spectacles they create and the institutional disruptions they can cause-make that much harder. Movements work against politicians because they galvanize and polarize voters and threaten to cleave the majorities and wealthy backers that politicians work to hold together. But that doesn’t mean that movements are not involved with electoral politics. To the contrary, the great victories that have been won in the past were won precisely because politicians were driven to make choices in the form of policy concessions that would win back some voters, even at the cost of losing others. Thus the Democrats who finally supported civil rights legislation were not stupid. They knew that by conceding to the civil rights movement they were risking the long-term support of the white South. They tried to straddle the divide. But the movement forced their hand.

Thanks to the lunacy that has overtaken the GOP, Obama is in a good position to win re-election. But he is vulnerable to an escalating Occupy movement. In particular, minority, young and poor new voters are volatile voters, and they are susceptible to the appeals of Occupy. I, for one, hope the movement forces Obama to pay for its support, in desperately needed economic, political and environmental reforms.

http://tinyurl.com/6pzg4hs

Give up your bank for Lent

According to the progressive website ThinkProgress, “As congregations across the country observe the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter by sacrificing and repenting, religious leaders are asking big banks that have wrongfully foreclosed on homeowners and exacerbated the pain of the housing crisis to do the same.”

On Ash Wednesday, churches in San Francisco announced they were removing $10 million from Wells Fargo and called on the bank, as per the advocacy group Faith in Public Life, “to put an immediate freeze on its foreclosures and repent for their misconduct.” The March 9 New York Times reported that “The Rev. Richard Smith of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal church in San Francisco, likened the divestment campaign and public protests to early Christianity’s ritual of ‘reconciliation of the penitents.’

http://tinyurl.com/6o3h7af