Citizens United uniting citizens across the country

[For information about actions against Citizen’s United in the Boston area Jan. 20-21, go here: http://tinyurl.com/6ueezzw]

“The U.S. is a great place to be a corporation but increasingly a desperate place to live and work.” – A member of Occupy Boston, challenging Mitt Romney on his statement that corporations are persons.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the controversial Supreme Court case decided by a narrow majority of 5 justices in 2010, may have the consequence of uniting citizens across the country at the local level – in opposition to the ruling. “Occupy the Courts” actions, sponsored by Move to Amend and other groups including various Occupy sites, are being planned to mark the 2-year anniversary of the decision which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts to influence elections.

http://tinyurl.com/7qdebja

Protest foils Lynn foreclosure auction

Sixty-one-year-old Cheryl D’Amico spent the past few months going to bed afraid. “I was fearful someone would knock on my door and ask me to leave my house,” she said on a sidewalk outside her Lynn home. D’Amico came close to that nightmare scenario Tuesday when a foreclosure auctioneer arrived at her Lexington Avenue home to sell it to the highest bidder.

http://tinyurl.com/8yb2bnc

Coast Guard deployed to protect grain ship that will be met by union and Occupy protesters

The U.S. Coast Guard will escort the first ship coming to the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview this month, and the Occupy movement and local labor groups say they are planning to greet the vessel with a massive protest.

EGT officials say they have not scheduled a date for the ship’s arrival. The freighter is expected to haul thousands of tons of grain to Asia, but opposition groups are already marshaling their forces to support the lengthy protest by union dock workers at the grain terminal.

The Coast Guard will deploy one or two vessels to escort the grain ship up the Columbia River, with more on call if necessary, said Lt. Lucas Elder, a spokesman for Coast Guard’s Portland-based marine safety unit. Other law-enforcement agencies will also be present, he said. Small boat captains who refuse to get out of the way of the ship could face hefty civil penalties, Elder said.

http://tinyurl.com/6lk6qg5

Rule of law triumphs in resolution to Occupy Boston

THE RISE AND fall of the Occupy Boston encampment at Dewey Square has been hailed as a model of how police and city officials should respond to peaceful political dissent in the public sphere. Compared with video footage of cops pepper-spraying and clubbing protestors in Oakland, San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere, Boston looked pretty good. After nine weeks of occupation, most of the Boston protesters peacefully left Dewey Square-their statue of Gandhi held high, their message against economic and power inequalities heard by millions. Their banners proclaimed: “You can’t evict an idea.”

Media pundits praised police and city officials for showing “uncommon restraint.” It’s a narrative that, while true in part, misses the real story. In truth, it was a court’s intervention-not benevolent cops -that protected both the peace and the right to protest in Boston. And who brought in the courts? It was the Occupy Boston protesters themselves.

http://tinyurl.com/79g22n9

Today is the anniversary of Roosevelt’s ‘Second Bill of Rights’ Speech

[Roosevelt] We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

http://tinyurl.com/82fj4yj

Fighting Cynicism Without & Within

Among the dozens of attempts to launch a movement against greed and inequality this year alone, no one will ever know exactly why Occupy Wall Street actually worked. Now cynicism and inequality face hard questions from all corners. The challenges to inequality unfold more publicly than those to cynicism. There are at least three examples of tortured cynicism we can assume with confidence are occurring, even if the actors don’t report to duty in the twitterverse.

1) Established activists, organizers, and the institutional forces of progressivism feel hella butthurt over OWS. We spent decades shouting into the abyss, hoping our shenanigans would spark a national movement for economic justice. Then a movement started without us, and it didn’t even have the decency to give us credit or accept our obviously superior leadership. It turned out we never planned for what we would do if the uprising we always wanted to happen actually happened. We can assume that every union leader, lefty intellectual, or nonprofit operative lingering at the margins is really thinking, “Why isn’t this MY movement?”

http://tinyurl.com/7lcf724