OCCUPY BOSTON SUMMIT
Speak Up — Add Your Voice — Join The Conversation
- Where is our movement headed?
- What opportunities and challenges are we facing?
- How do we think creatively about the future?
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 19 @ 2-6 pm
Quincy School
885 Washington Street, Chinatown
A 15 minute walk from Dewey Square
or Orange Line to Tufts Medical Center
Planning to come? Need childcare or translation? Want to volunteer? Let us know! obsummit@gmail.com
http://tinyurl.com/obsummit
9 Responses to “Occupy Boston Summit on Sat Nov 19”
on November 18th, 2011 at 6:48 pm #
[…] link: Occupy Boston Summit on Sat Nov 19 This entry was posted in Boston and tagged boston, conversation, events, future, […]
So encouraging to see that the movement is entering its next phase and that we are starting to think about “where it is headed”. The start of collaborations among major hub city occupations which I am observing as part of a working group is also great progress. Once a plan is in place on how to get onsite and offsite supporters working together towards the common cause and common goals the impact of the movement will be more palpable. I hope there is a moderator so the summit is fruitful, focused and doesn’t go off on target. The core issues for which the movement started and fight against money and politics and corporate greed should be the focus along with any planning around related topics and actions.
Looking forward to see the outcome and some of the goals set as a result of this Summit!
Well said! I am a supporter of the Occupy movement and am sorry I won’t make summit today. Plan on being at next one, which I hope will be soon!
correction – …”and doesn’t go off on tangents”
Occupying Wall Street, etc., has replaced corporations with real humans in the public square, and that is the message that must be carried on, –that from here on, the campaign must be one that coninues to re-occupy the public square with real human beings and to displace fictional corporate “persons” who are nothing but machines, — property, not people.
The effort to conintue to deny the Bill of Rights to machines is key and should be the message and focus of future efforts. Corporate machines were only intended from the beginning to be entities comprised of property rights given by states so that they would have longevity and coninuity apart from their individual members in order to conduct business consistently and with certainty. None of those requirements necessitates political speech for its success, only commercial speech at most, and that must be regulated by the state granting its charter such that it confine itself to its commercial purposes. Any corporation wishing to influence political change must heretofore only act through its individual members in a PAC according to the same rules that public interest organizations and unions must abide by.
The history of caselaw that established corporations as perons with first amendment rights can be easily attacked upon close scrutiny for its misinterpretation of the founding fathers’ intent. They NEVER intended corporations to have the right of political speech. The movement needs to work on federal judge appointments and a consitutional amendment as the two avenues available to change this insanity and return ours to a government of “WE THE PEOPLE” from “WE THE CORPORATIONS!”
With that as the focus, the movement needs to establish permanent offices near the occupied financial centers and use them as centers for marshaling resources to not only carry on the campaign to end corportate personhood, but as a physical presence ready at any moment to spread out into the public square again, in the face of the corporations, to carry on whenever necessary to confront and expose corporate usurpation of peoples’ rights. That will require fundraising and staff, but will keep the poitlical heat on and ready at a moment’s notice to demonstrate and educate, pubicly, while continuing always to work the vineyard.
The economic parity of oportunity for the 99%, in a democracy, arises only from and is sustained only by, the unobstructed exercise of political speech and assembly for people, unfettered by the deafening din from cash-fed coroporate coffers mischaracterized and wrongfully protected as public speech. Get rid of the profiteering coroprate takeover of the public square and the rest will follow by course of democracy as human discourse once again is heard filling the air free of corporate dissonance.
Sign this:
It’s Time for a Constitutional Amendment
Record spending in the 2010 election — including hundreds of millions of corporate dollars — has shown us clearly what’s wrong with the idea that corporations have a right to spend limitless money on elections, as if they were people. When corporations take over our democracy, people lose.
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/7003/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4677
The OB Summit was great! Good energy, good discussions. I hope there are more of these.
There was no formal request from the Summit organizers for feedback on the Summit, but then again the day after the Summit the domestic partner of one of the organizers who attended the Summit sent out an email (on another topic) bemoaning the lack of a community wide forum where the needs of the camp could be discussed and acted on–I guess that says it all.
There may not be a request FROM the Summit organizers for feedback, but here is a formal request TO the Summit organizers for an update for all supporters out here on a summary of discussion, topics, accomplishments, decisions and tasks decided upon, actions to be undertaken in the SHORT TERM AND LONG TERM. Everyone is losing patience with the endless churn. I, as a supporter, am very worried about the lack of organization and focus on results. (Aria, you have been great and very receptive – please pass this on…can you identify some of the folks who actually have leadership qualities, and have those folks mobilize offsite supporters then take proposals back to the GA? I will continue to support however I can, but need to see some movement on the organization front. Instead of simplifying things due to lack of resources, things are mushrooming out of control. Hope that you can pass this on and that the organizers listen and steer this in the right direction again.
OccupyBostonSupporter