Time’s Person of the Year: The Protester
The nonleader leaders of Occupy are using the winter to build an organization and enlist new protesters for the next phase. They have shifted the national conversation. As Politico recently reported, the Nexis news-media database now registers almost 500 mentions of “inequality” each week; the week before Occupy Wall Street started, there were only 91. But what would count, a few years hence, as success? According to gung-ho Adbusters editors Kalle Lasn and Micah White, it’s already “the greatest social-justice movement to emerge in the United States since the civil rights era.” Yet it took a decade to get from the Montgomery bus boycott to the federal civil rights acts, which were just the end of the beginning.
The wisest Occupiers understand that these are very early days. But as long as government in Washington – like government in Europe – remains paralyzed, I don’t see the Occupiers and Indignados giving up or losing traction or protest ceasing to be the defining political mode. After all, the Tea Party protests subsided only after Tea Partyers achieved real power in 2010 by becoming the tail wagging the Republican Party dog. When radical populist movements achieve big-time momentum and attention, they don’t tend to stand down until they get some satisfaction.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2101745_2102132_2102373,00.html
Occupy protesters arraigned; some get probation
Arrested on the denuded Dewey Square early Saturday, 24 Occupy Boston protesters were arraigned yesterday in what has become a familiar place to the movement, Courtroom 17 in Boston Municipal Court.
Five men and three women refused offers of probation and decided to continue to fight the charges. Another 16 defendants accepted probation, from six months to a year, and were ordered to stay away from Dewey Square.
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2
Occupiers seize the day – in court
Sixteen Occupy Boston protesters accepted prosecutors’ offer of pre-trial probation yesterday while eight others were arraigned in Boston Municipal Court and released on their own recognizance after their eviction from their Dewey Square encampment.
“We are going to continue taking over public space – with permits – to spread our message,” said Daniel Chavez, 23, of Boston. “There’s even more passion now. We don’t need tents to continue to build momentum for this movement.”
Chavez, like most of the protesters, was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest. The resisting arrest charge for Chavez and 11 other protesters who agreed to a year’s pretrial probation was dropped, according to the DA’s office. If they stay away from Dewey Square and don’t break any laws, they will not be arraigned and their cases will be dismissed, the DA’s office said. Four female protesters were placed on six months’ pretrial probation with the same conditions.
http://news.bostonherald.com/n
Tiny tents in Dewey
Photographer Aaron Spagnolo took a miniature Coleman tent down to the newly refurbished Dewey Square for some camera fun. I am no expert when it comes to photography like this but it’s pretty cool.
http://boston.com/community/bl
[see the pictures on Flickr here:]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/a
Editorial: Fissures in Boston!
The very next day after their feared eviction, on December 9, Boston Occupiers amassed against the Department of Housing and Community Development to demonstrate against the lack of affordable housing and ongoing evictions of homeowners, connecting it with the plight of their tent city, citing such statistics:
Each year, 600,000 families with 1.35 million children experience homelessness in the United States, making up about 30 per cent of the homeless population over the course of a year. In any given day, researchers estimate that more than 200,000 children have no place to live. A full time worker earning minimum wage cannot afford a one bedroom unit priced at Fair Market Rent anywhere in the United Stated. Federal Support for low income housing has fallen by 40 per cent from 1980-2003, 15 per cent of all American families and 32 per cent of single parent families live below the poverty line.
During a visit to the site, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis wouldn’t say what the city plans to do about the remaining protesters.”We have learned over the past ten weeks just how powerful the people can be,” stated a spokesperson for Occupy Boston. “Unproductive wealth struggles to justify its inefficiency, and deceit grows helpless before a truth that has found its people.”
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Di
Dewey Square’s rapid turnaround
In less than five days green grass is already back in place at Dewey square, along with spruced up mulch and shrubs.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/met
http://boston.com/community/bl
After Occupy Boston, repairs to Greenway
Repairing the stretch of the Greenway damaged by Occupy Boston’s two-month encampment will cost as much as $60,000, officials estimated yesterday. “The people have their park back,” said Nancy Brennan, who directs the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, which oversees the park.
Last week, park officials spoke with occupiers about paying for some of the repairs, but have not heard back, Brennan said. “Time will tell,” she said. Occupy Boston has received tens of thousands in donations, $3,500 of which is earmarked for Greenway repairs, according to Rita Sebastian, a member of the Occupy Boston financial committee working group.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/met
Occupy Boston protesters face arraignment
BOSTON-Sixteen people arrested when police broke up the Occupy Boston encampment last weekend have agreed to go on probation for one year in exchange for having prosecutors drop trespassing charges against them.
But a separate group of eight protesters on Tuesday demanded that their cases go on trial in the Boston Municipal Court. They were among 46 people arrested when police dismantled the Dewey Square encampment early Saturday morning. They face mostly trespassing and disorderly conduct charges.
http://www.boston.com/news/loc
Opinion: Occupy Boston Movement Raised First Amendment Questions
The Occupy Boston protesters assumed control of a large public area in Boston known to some as Dewey Square. They set up tents and claimed that they were trying to create a more perfect democracy as a form of protest against Wall Street, big business and governmental policies to which they object.
Last week, in a fairly lengthy decision, a Superior Court judge ruled that the Occupy Boston protestors could be ordered to leave the Dewey Square property they have occupied for over two months.
The court’s ruling is too detailed, and too lengthy, to summarize here. But in its most basic sense, the case reminds us all that the First Amendment – despite its special status in the Constitution – does not override other reasonable laws relating to the time, place and manner of political speech, and the health and safety of the public.
http://norwood.patch.com/artic
‘Occupy’ Cost $1 Million For City To Patrol
Boston police estimate the protest cost about $1 million to patrol; transit police said they incurred $25,000 in overtime costs; and the Greenway Conservatory say it will cost $40,000 to $60,000 to clean up Dewey Square, the area used as the group’s tent city base, NewsCenter 5’s Rhondella Richardson reported. Businesses at nearby South Station didn’t offer any hard numbers, but said protesters using the station’s facilities caused their sales to slump because regular customers steered clear.
http://www.thebostonchannel.co
Occupy Boston Protesters Plan Next Steps
Some suggestions out of the meeting included occupying foreclosed homes and setting up tents across the suburbs. “We want to adopt and take best practices in that direction,” said organizer Eric Lawson.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, however, said that would not be tolerated. “That’s trespassing. They can’t move into foreclosed homes,” he said, adding that they can use the Common, but they will not be allowed to live there.
The Boston Globe reported that protesters were also considering a plan to shut down the Port of Boston, though there doesn’t appear to be a clear way to do it. It could also be difficult because of the security in place there.
http://www.thebostonchannel.co
Occupy Boston’s Anarchist Alliance calls for neighborhood-based general assemblies; Occupy Allston-Brighton meeting Thursday
Occupy Boston held its first post-Dewey General Assembly on Saturday evening at the Boston Common bandstand. At Saturday’s GA, a member of the Anarchist Alliance of Occupy Boston made a statement calling for neighborhood-based general assemblies throughout the winter.
“If you would like to be part of this initiative, take leadership in your own community, start it,” he said. “Work with existing neighborhood assemblies. We are all leaders. We have no rulers. All power to the people.”
For updates on neighborhood-based Occupy initiatives around Boston, follow @BostonPhoenix, @Occupy_Boston, @OccupyAllstonBr, and @OccupyCambridge on Twitter. Follow Occupy the Hood, Ocupemos El Barrio, Occupy JP, and Occupy Somerville on Facebook.
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK Occupy protesters make last stand Thursday
The crowd seemed to celebrate their successful occupation of the street, chanting “No, no, we won’t go,” and moving several tents onto the street. The newfound street camp also featured a statue of Gandhi, balloons, and a large banner that said “you can’t evict an idea.”
After about an hour, however, Boston Police seemed to have grown impatient with the camp and began to remove pieces of the camp themselves, including chairs, tables and tents. Protesters were mostly cooperative, and when some of them resisted the police’s removal of a tent, other protesters used the “people’s mic” – consisting of echoes through the crowd – to make it known that “the owners of the tent want[ed] it moved off the street,” a sentiment respected by the crowd.
The police remained calm throughout the night, not making any arrests and avoiding confrontation.
http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N59/o
‘Occupy’ should get out of park, into drive
Both the mayor and police, led by Boston Police Superintendent Ed Davis, should be commended for their restraint. The movement’s tent city was dismantled due to a court order that essentially said free speech doesn’t entitle one to free use of a state-owned parcel of land.
Thus, Dewey Square, the Boston beachhead for the national movement that decries the stranglehold of this country’s wealth and power by an elite segment of the population, was disassembled in a generally orderly fashion.
http://www.sentinelandenterpri
The short, happy life of Occupy Boston’s A-Z Library
Anna Rothman crouched on the floor, scanning books. The online cataloguing service LibraryThing had given the A-Z Library a free account to showcase its titles online. So Rothman, a bright-eyed corporate librarian with a brown bob and wire-rimmed glasses, bought a handheld scanner and got to work.
Ford returned, beleaguered, wearing a busker hat. By the end of the occupation, a look of resignation seemed to have settled permanently across his bearded jaw. He sat on an overturned bucket, frantically thumbing his phone. Two people appeared at the entrance of the tent.
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/a
Occupy Paranoia: LA Cops Mistook Youth Neighborhood Cleanup Crew for A Radical Occupy LA Posse Hellbent on Occupying an Abandoned Library. . . Time to Call Up the Chopper and Swat Crew. . .
What should have been a warm ‘n’ fuzzy cleanup of the abandoned Hyde Park Library in South L.A. this morning went awry when responding LAPD officers reportedly mistook the Youth Justice Coalition for a faction of Occupy L.A.
http://blogs.laweekly.com/info
The Roberts Court v. America: How the Roberts Supreme Court is using the First Amendment to craft a radical, free-market jurisprudence.
What’s missing from the criticism is a picture of what these cases add up to: an identity for the Roberts Court as the judicial voice of the idea that nearly everything works best on market logic, that economic models of behavior capture most of what matters, and political, civic, and moral distinctions mostly amount to obscurantism and special pleading.
The Supreme Court went down a similar road in the Gilded Age and afterward, defending laissez-faire economic principles against minimum wages, maximum hours, and other Progressive and New Deal regulation. The new cases have different doctrinal logic, and the economy has changed vastly, but the bottom lines are eerily alike: giving constitutional protection to unequal economic power in the name of personal liberty.
http://www.democracyjournal.or
Tens of thousands march for defense of voter rights (video)
Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. “What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,” says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.
Elderly African-American protester: “I lived through it one time in Virginia. I won’t live through it again. We weren’t allowed to walk on the same side of the street as white folks. We weren’t allowed to vote. We weren’t allowed to shop in the nicest shops. And they going to try to bring this mess back again? I’ll say like Patrick Henry – Give me liberty, or give me death.”
http://therealnews.com/t2/inde
Rethinking Debt: Washington refuses to understand that debt can be an essential tool for economic growth. Can we overcome this irrational and destructive fear?
Policy-makers seem frozen in place, unwilling to take the necessary actions for one basic reason: doing so would mean deficit spending. Indeed, those at the helm in the advanced economies seem intent on shifting into reverse, pursuing austerity measures that, like medieval bleeding, only make the patient sicker.
http://www.democracyjournal.or
Report: Child homelessness up 33% in 3 years
One in 45 children in the USA – 1.6 million children – were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness.
The numbers represent a 33% increase from 2007, when there were 1.2 million homeless children, according to a report the center is releasing Tuesday.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/n
Illinois Teen Learns About Bank Fees the Hard Way
Melinda Ganziano of McCullom Lake, Ill., wanted to introduce her son to the basics of banking, but he ended up with $229 in fees in two weeks with a balance of just $4.85.
After he put money into the savings accont from his job, Daniel Ganziano’s balance eventually fell to $4.85 and with such a small amount, he ignored it. However, TCF sent him a letter on Oct. 12 informing him that it had charged him a $9.95 monthly maintenance fee six days earlier because the account had a low balance. That led to an overdrawn account by $5.10, which then led to a $28-a-day overdraft fee. The account was 10 cents over the $5 threshold for which the daily fee kicks in. Young Ganziano’s account was now overdrawn by $33.10.
Ganziano, who works in the nonprofit sector, and her son went to the bank that weekend to close his account, the Tribune reported. But they first had to pay the accumulated fees, which totaled $229.10. She asked for the fees to be waived, but the bank would eliminate only one of the $28 daily charges.
http://news.yahoo.com/illinois
Info no go: Wikipedia threatens strike over US piracy bill
Wikipedia may temporarily blank out its pages in self-sacrifice to draw attention to the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. While the bill aims to protect copyrighted material, critics fear corporate manipulation could lead to greater censorship.
http://rt.com/news/wikipedia-s
In California, majority now support raising taxes over more spending cuts
A new poll shows 60 percent of California voters, weary of state spending cuts and unsettled by the prospect of more, are ready to support Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to raise taxes.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capito
In wake of OWS, fearful billionaire blames Obama for ‘setting tone’
[Billionaire finance tycoon Leon Cooperman] “What I can justifiably hold you accountable for is your and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as “class warfare”. Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance. What does matter is that the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them. It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents. And it is an approach to governing that owes more to desperate demagoguery than your Administration should feel comfortable with.”
The first thing to note, here, as Piketty and Saez show, is that the 1% are not actually the people “best positioned to help” the 99%. When the 1% do well, the 1% do well. But that rising tide is nowhere to be seen. But there’s another question raised by Cooperman’s letter, and Andrew Ross Sorkin phoned up Cooperman to ask it. What, exactly, is he referring to when he talks about Obama’s “divisive, polarizing tone”?
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix
Flashback: Language, A Key Mechanism of Control – Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo
“This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”
http://www.informationclearing
5 Responses to “The OB Media Rundown for 12/14/2011”
We have people with no housing who took part in Occupy Boston who need housing through the Winter. If you can house one or more people, please get in touch with Occupy Boston.
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Notice how many people have no homes, as you walk down the street, or go about your day. It is ridiculous, and illustrates the extreme inequality in our society. The state has services but they are inadequate and embody an innate sense of alienation because they tend to treat people with no homes as a problem, a challenge, an item or object, whereas people need to be treated with respect and adequate time. Put pressure on the government to increase budgets for homeless services, and do your part to directly help homeless people, as a human being to human being.
If you choose to report on the fact that the city spent 1,000,000 to police a group of volunteers who fed and sheltered the homeless, could you please contextualize this by delineating the amount of taxpayer money which goes to the US military? 553 billion is scheduled for next year. A few dozen Egyptian protesters were just killed with US-sold weapons.
I’m not sure why you published this on the OB website without bothering to illustrating this very basic point.
Common decency!
None of these links are endorsements. These are headlines and stories from the local, national, and international press. The purpose of this post is to keep people informed as to what others are hearing about us.
This is beautiful and the fact of the picture not just being an “ammerican” (white, straight looking, male) I think is wonderfull. The picture is just powerfull. We ARE STRONG and we are growing. Now this will be in the face of allthe world! This will be on the tvs! Look at what we have been doing, my friends. This has been such a beautiful movment. I mean just a few days ago with the blockads of the west ports. I think people are now seeing that we are not just a bunch of “hippies” dancing around in drum circles. our chants like “THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING” is truer now more than ever. We must stay strong and again we must remind ourselves that this is a proccess….one that I feel we are doing a hell of a job with. To my brothers and sisters In all of the occupies throughout this world. I say… solidarity.
Today, Dec 15, Occupy Wall St and other organizations in NYC are recognizing the 220th anniversary of the signing of our nation’s Bill of Rights. We should also consider commemorating the event that made that possible – a protest in Boston nearly 20 years earlier to the day.
This Friday is the 238th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY PROTEST on December 16, 1773. It was a protest against the British central government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. It was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. After government officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. Colonists objected to the Tea Act because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. The protest was not so much about taxes, per se, but about the people’s lack of a voice in the political process. “NO taxation without REPRESENTATION” was the battle cry. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.
Our legislators in Washington ought to consider the lessons of history as they vote on bills to extend the federal payroll tax breaks and ponder the larger issue of whether to support an economy based on luxury for a few or prosperity for all.
NOTE: The old South Meeting House webpage states, “Since the 1773 mass protest meetings that led to the Boston Tea Party, Old South Meeting House has served as a gathering place for discussion and celebration and a haven for free speech.”
Media coverage of a Tea Party commemoration by Occupy Boston would increase awareness of our movement’s link to America’s earliest acts of civil disobedience in service of the public good.