We liked this article in this morning’s Herald so much, we’ll just repost the whole thing, despite the actual number for Friday night’s over-nighters being closer to 60.
BY Margery Eagan
OK, so only 40 or so mostly 20-somethings braved downpours Friday night to camp out in mud at Boston’s Federal Reserve Bank with Occupy Boston, our local branch of the nationwide group that’s protesting Wall Street greed.
And OK, among them was barefooted Charlie Hatch, 25, of Beverly, whose laminated “Ailments Helped by Seaweed Therapy” listed every disease known to man. And his own seaweed packets were available for purchase for $3.
Remember: The Tea Party started small and kooky, too.
The Occupy Boston crowd had reached nearly 1,000 Friday night. Neither the bad-weather defections nor Charlie’s seaweed passion made him wrong yesterday when he said he showed up because “nobody’s really in control and it’s scary for this country.” It’s particularly scary when you’re 20-something, up to your neck in college loans and unable to find a job.
Boston, in fact, had several modest protests this weekend. Twenty-four protesters were arrested peaceably Friday night at Bank of America’s front door. They were mad both about the bank’s foreclosures and its charging customers $5 per month to use bank-issued debit cards to get access to their own money.
Right to the City, a nationwide advocacy group for those with low incomes, planned a neighborhood sit-it yesterday at a Fowler Street home in Dorchester they claim was foreclosed on illegally by Deutsche Bank. Occupy Boston was planning an evening march to the Hynes convention center.
Something’s happening here and across the country, despite repeated dismissals of these protesters as the usual, disorganized and dizzy suspects in their “Arrest Bush and Cheney” T-shirts. They aren’t focused, critics say. They’re leaderless, tiny in numbers; a “bunch of spoiled brats” said the New York Daily News about the Occupy Wall Street protesters this week.
Well, I’ll take spoiled brats over the rest of us complacent sheep who just lie down and take what’s happened here: that is, a corrupt Wall Street that bankrupted millions of Americans, through no fault of their own. The financiers not only escape prosecution but get bailed out by taxpayers. Now these same financiers are underwriting campaigns of politicians who are supposed to fix this mess to benefit the public, not the high-rollers who stuff their campaign chests.
Without millions more spoiled brats — and their parents — fighting back, I doubt anything will change.
It was widely reported this week that the 12 congressional members of the deficit-fixing so-called super-committee have received at least $41 million in campaign contributions from financiers over the years. And super-committee members have more than two dozen current or former aides who have represented Wall Street as lobbyists.
The Herald reported just yesterday that one Republican consultant expects each side in the Scott Brown Senate race to spend close to $30 million.
I wonder: How much access and influence and even votes can all those millions buy?
Standing in the mud yesterday, Occupy Boston’s Nadeem Mazen, 28, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and Cambridge small businessman, said he got involved because money is corrupting our system in ways we’ve never, ever seen it do before. Nadeem Mazen is right.
Photos by Tullianography
14 Responses to “Claps for the Boston Herald”
I was amused that although the media has been using phrases like “small group”, “tiny band” and the like when talking about New York, somehow the police managed to arrest “over 700” from that “insignificant” group.
Questions and suggestions: you ask for donated items – is there an address most appropriate to ship to?
Money – is there a PayPal account we can contribute to?
Cold weather is coming sooner than not. How to keep this energy going through that?
“Occupy the Web” is something that all of us too old or infirm or otherwise unable to directly participate might do. If everything we do on the web mentions the occupy movements, we can at least help keep it in front of people’s faces every day.
With that in mind, I just registered “occupytheweb.org” and will be happy to either host it myself or transfer the name to OccupyBoston if you’d like.
I hope this grows and grows, becomes more focused and filled with people willing to do this as passive resistance to the machine.
If we don’t do it, who will?
Perhaps we can convince the less insane people in the teaparty to join in a real march to regain our rights as citizens…long shot I know, but…
The less insane people? Do you mean the REAL tea party as it existed before the GOP acquired it? How it was a protest againts both bush’s and obama’s failed bailouts in 2008 & 2009. They somehow fooled people into believing that the GOP isnt 50% responsible for the clusterfuck our country is in (the democrats hold the other 50%, both parties are taking bribes, oops i mean campaign contributions that protect those that have caused all the problems)
Remember when you put an elephant and a donkey in a room you end up with a lot of shit)
Don’t let this movement suffer the same fate as the Tea Party. Keep the ultra leftist Soviet flag waving idiots out (they will destroy credibility much like the hillbillies waving the rebel flag) and keep the left wing money money and politicians out (they will take over just like Rupert Murdock and Sarah Palin).
I mean the really less insane people…not the nutcakes who are basing their case on hate and fear.
The Herald does an op-ed on #OccupyBoston, but The Globe only runs an AP piece on #OccupyWallStreet?? Thankfully we have our own media BUT that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep reminding the corporate media to do their job! newstip@globe.com
617-929-8477. Editorial: 617-929-3000
I think (unless you happen to be a constitutional lawyer) that working on details and demands is a bad idea.
These are complex issues. I think we should simply demand change and let the politicians figure out how to make it happen. Demand that the influence of money in politics be drastically reduced, demand that lives not be destroyed because of financial shenanigans that made other people millionaires.
Details are dangerous – the various failures of well meant campaign finance reform laws show that. It’s foolish for those of us without legal background or experience to say HOW things should be done. All we should be asking for is results.
I like Dylan Ratigans push to GET THE MONEY OUT of politics.
Please don’t repost articles or columns in their entirety on your site. Please respect the work and copyrights of others — excerpt and link.
Ms. Eagan could not be more wrong than describing the Bank of America protest on Friday as “modest.” The Murdoch owned right wing rag for which she serves as a token liberal voice placed the crowd at 3,000. The crowd, composed of citizens of all ages, including many from the poorer neighborhoods where BOA foreclosure policies have done the most damage, marched loudly through the streets from Boston Common, pausing to shout “Shame” at a Verizon outlet and a Hyatt Hotel. Verizon’s workers are fighting for a fair contract to preserve middle class jobs. The Hyatt fired its longtime housekeeping staff in 2009 after requiring that staff to train its minimum wage replacement workers. When we reached the bank we surrounded it and blocked the entrances. The noise echoing on the streets was deafening. Modest indeed.
It was far from a “modest” demonstration. Keep in mind that this movement is relatively new and just getting started. We have a lot of growing to do but in the meantime, it would serve everyone’s best interests if each person in the US reflects on just how corrupt our government has become and how they protect the criminals on Wall St. No regulations have been put in place and certainly none of these corporate thugs have been brought to justice. Business as usual, you say? Well, that is about to change. This movement is growing and is not going anywhere except to the halls of Congress. Of course, that carnival sideshow could disappear tomorrow and we wouldn’t even notice. That is how ineffectual they are. Crooks, too closely related to their cousins on Wall St.
need mailing addy please to send care packages from the Cape thanks!
What a change from the herald after calling us failed after the first general assembly
That was nicer than Margery Egan has ever been to a Tea Party demo.
I can’t believe the Herald posted something that not only didn’t cause an embolism, but made me smile. Granted, calling Right To the City “modest” is hilariously underplaying the 1500+ participants, but somehow I expect that this was an editor’s change, not the author. The point is: this is a fantastic article, and it cuts to the heart of what I believe this movement to be about the most: corporations need to stop buying our politicians. The Herald is also displaying integrity by criticizing the practices of the politician it has supported most strongly in recent years, Scott Brown.