On Saturday, February 4th Occupy Boston’s Action for Peace Work Group joined communities across the nation, with over 60 endorsing organizations, to alert people to the ominous drumbeat, that unimpeded, will lead to war on Iran. The following video was produced by Occupy Boston Media Working Group member David L.
Presenting the nights format /Photo by Matthew J Shochat
On January 27th, 2012, at 6pm, about 150 Occupy Boston and Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered at The Democracy Center at 45 Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge. The first couple hours were spent as a casual meet and greet between both parties. Food was provided by the Brookline Food Co-Op, founded fifteen years ago by Tom and Vicki Schnoes. The Brookline Food Co-Op receives donations from local restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets that would otherwise be discarded. The food they receive is used to help those who don’t have enough resources in order to feed themselves and their families, which include those who face homelessness, live in subsidized housing, and immigrants just coming to the US.
The Wall of Possibilities /Photo by Matthew J Shochat
At 8pm, everyone then got together as the presenters discussed what exactly would be happening that night. The form was described as a Non Structural Conference in which individuals place a paper on a portion of the wall with a time and place to meet, on a ‘Law of Two Feet’ format. These groups would then discuss the topic including educating others, troubleshooting issues, and expanding personal growth on socioeconomic issues. Such topics on the wall included “How Spirituality and Politics influence Occupy Movement?”, “Conversation on Facilitation Challenge”, and “Non-Violent Direct Action.”
For those who may not have found the event as engaging as others, Occupy Boston’s Screen Print Guild was located in the Library for anyone who desired to create prints. The event lasted until at least 1am before the crowd dispersed.
The below proposal reached agreement at OB General Assembly, on February 4, 2012.
Fossil fuel and nuclear corporations are some of the wealthiest interests on the planet – yet they still suck up billions of dollars in government subsidies. They buy off elected officials and corrupt our political process while sticking us – the 99% – with the bill for the health, ecological and climate destruction they cause. Their coal, oil, gas and nukes fuel our unjust economic systems, imperil our planetary future and prevent us from shifting to a clean energy economy of, by and for the people.
Occupy Boston therefore calls for:
• An end to all government subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear energy interests;
• An end to corporate influence, including energy industry influence, on politics;
• Immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to below the safe atmospheric threshold of 350 parts per million CO2e; starting with the rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline
• A just transition for workers currently employed in fossil fuel and nuclear energy sectors to sustainable employment.
We pledge to make personal and group choices that support these aims.”
Photo by Matthew J Shochat
On February 2nd, 2012, members of Occupy Boston gathered to support KnockOut Barstool in the quad between the Speare Hall & Stetson East Buildings) for a Speak-Out against Barstool Sports. Braving the cold, many in the crowd got up to share personal stories of mistreatment and concerns about the well-being of women in society.
Photo by Matthew J Shochat
The crowd listening to one of the speakers. David “El Presidente” Portnoy had tried to address the crowd, speaking over someone else in the process, before being removed from the stage.
Photo by Matthew J Shochat
The march winded its way from Northeastern University all the way to Newbury Street. Many local colleges took part, including Tufts, Boston University, Boston College and Emerson.
Photo by Matthew J Shochat
Protesters gathered in front of House Of Blues on Lansdowne Street. They remained here for at least 45 minutes, speaking out against rape culture, perpetuated by Barstool Sports, and specifically against comments made by David “El Presidente” Portnoy over the internet.
Photo by Matthew J Shochat
As the protest began to move down Lansdowne Street, many of the ‘Bros’ of Barstool Sports decided to show the protesters what they think of their efforts. The crowd eventually made it’s way back to Northeastern University.
Tents gone, students turn to Occupy 2.0
Since students have returned from winter break, Occupy Harvard has held two meetings each week to plan the movement’s next phase: Occupy 2.0, Korn explained. “The idea behind Occupy 2.0 is transitioning from our physical encampment to more cohesive, disruptive, interesting, fun, targeted actions,” she said.
Among these actions, Occupy Harvard has begun working on the No Layoffs Campaign with SLAM (Student Labor Action Movement). The No Layoffs Campaign gained considerable attention in 2008 when students participated in a wave of demonstrations as the university laid off several staff workers. This year the campaign aims to protest on behalf of the library staff, many of whom will be laid off due to a restructuring of the library system, according to university administration.
Occupy Harvard has also joined with the Occupy UMass Boston movement only established more than a week ago. Occupy Harvard has lent tents, solidarity signs and other resources to the students at UMass in an effort to show “we are all students fighting the same fight,” Korn said.
Tipped workers – 72.9 percent of whom are women – hope for hike in sub-minimum wage this year
“Thanks to the Occupy movement, more voters are aware of inequality and the terrible toll it takes on low-wage workers and their families,” says Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio. “Support is growing for increasing the minimum wage of tipped workers who work hard, but have fallen farther and farther behind because their wages don’t cover their basic needs.”
The pay of tipped workers has languished because an obscure federal provision, called the tip credit, has established a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers: $2.15 per hour or $4,333 a year for a full-time worker. The federal full minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, or about $15,000 a year for a 40-hour workweek.
Raising the minimum wage may alleviate what researcher Sylvia A. Allegretto calls an under-appreciated factor in the poverty of women.
“The sub-minimum wage hits women hard because 72.9 percent of tipped workers are women compared to less than half the overall labor force,” says Allegretto, co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment of the University of California, Berkeley.
The United States: First Country To Report More Male Rape Victims Than Female
In January, prodded in part by outrage over a series of articles in the New York Review of Books, the Justice Department finally released an estimate of the prevalence of sexual abuse in penitentiaries. The reliance on filed complaints appeared to understate the problem. For 2008, for example, the government had previously tallied 935 confirmed instances of sexual abuse. After asking around, and performing some calculations, the Justice Department came up with a new number: 216,000. That’s 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year.
The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008, likely making the United States the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women.
As sites of governmental authority, prisons destabilize Weber’s definition of the state as the monopolist of violence. In prisons, the monopoly is suspended: anybody is free to commit rape and be reasonably assured that no state official will notice or care (barring those instances when the management knowingly encourages rape, unleashing favored inmates on troublemakers as a strategy for administrative control). The prison staff is above the law; the prison inmates, below it.
Far from embodying the model of Bentham/Foucault’s panopticon- that is, one of total surveillance-America’s prisons are its blind spots, places where complaints cannot be heard and abuses cannot be seen. Though important symbols of bureaucratic authority, they are spaces that lie beyond our system of bureaucratic oversight. As far as the outside world is concerned, every American prison functions as a black site.
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