Occupy 2011: What Occupy Boston Means to LGBTQ Equality
These are some of the most committed and determined protesters and activists I have met since Act UP, Queer Revolt, the Lesbian Avengers, and the Transsexual Menace.
So where do lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people fit into Occupy Boston, you might be thinking? Everywhere.
http://tinyurl.com/7yte79l
Secret subpoena aimed at Twitter user not so secret anymore
Massachusetts authorities apparently thought that asking nicely would suffice to keep secret their subpoena for information on a Twitter user involved with Occupy Wall Street. They thought wrong.
So when the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office sent its request to Twitter, its subpoena ended up in the inbox of the DA’s target, following a decision by Twitter to share it as part of its privacy policy.
Silence of the tweets: Occupy Boston in cop court case
The first amendment is on the ropes as a secretive court ruling will force Twitter to hand user account information over to the Boston Police Department. The case highlights fears that political speech is increasingly being criminalized in America.
Daily Report: A Legal Battle Over a Twitter User’s Identity
The Boston Globe reports that in a court hearing on Thursday in Boston, a lawyer working on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts will attempt to have a subpoena issued to Twitter quashed on First Amendment grounds. The police in Boston and the Suffolk County district attorney issued the subpoena in an effort to get information about the Twitter account @P0isAn0N and other activity on the social network related to the Occupy Boston protests. The owner of the @P0isAn0N account had also linked to personal information about Boston police officers that had been stolen in a hacking attack.
Harvard admin spent three-quarter million dollars to turn Harvard yard into an ‘exclusive gated community’
Occupy Harvard protestors set up camp in Harvard Yard on November 9th. Within hours the campus police under orders from Harvard President Drew Faust locked down the campus turning Occupy Harvard into an exclusive gated community populated only by Harvard students.
The ‘Occupy’ movement lives
In many ways, Occupy Wall Street on the Internet mirrors and expands Occupy Wall Street on the ground. It blurs the lines between online and off-line activism. The anonymity of the Web allows anyone who identifies with the “99 percent” to participate, regardless of their ideology or attitude toward the physical occupiers. A gathering of 25 or 100 people participating in a “mic check” can look, and feel, awkward. But surfing the Internet, one can find mic checks nationwide in the constant retweeting about Occupy Wall Street. Blogs about Occupy Wall Street that generate comments (that frequently generate even more comments) are some of the everyday indications of what is important to Web denizens.
Occupy: The rain and the reckoning
You may have noticed the sudden lack of attention paid to the Occupy movement, now that the gendarmes of the status quo have wielded their truncheons and rolled up the encampments like so many windowshades. Nightly reports by the “mainstream” news media about Occupy actions all across the country have dwindled to almost nil, and for those so disposed, this is a good thing. The roused rabble have been crushed and scattered, and all this talk of inequality and justice can finally be replaced with what has for so long now been the real American anthem: everything is fine, nothing to see here, your betters are in control, go back to work. The uprising has been quelled, it would seem, and it is time to consign the Occupy movement to the dustbin of history.
Nothing, but nothing, but nothing, could be further from the truth.
http://tinyurl.com/7no277z
Presidential campaign needs to get real on salvaging middle class
Occupy Wall Street and its coast-to-coast spinoffs captured the headlines in 2011, but the economic debate it helped trigger should reverberate deep into 2012.
That’s the debate over the future of the American middle class. Rarely has its economic plight been an explicit issue in a presidential election, but candidates on both sides of the partisan divide are poised to make it the centerpiece of their campaigns in the coming year.
http://tinyurl.com/83ktc6a
Occupy the Rose Parade’s Octopus Float Is 70 Feet of Awesome
(PHOTOS)
Occupy Octopus (yes, that’s his name; yes, he’d make an amazing beanie baby) is a 70-foot-long crowd puppet made entirely of recycled plastic bags. The giant sea creature will hover over a band of occupiers for their Occupy the Rose Parade march this coming Monday. And though he’s just going viral as of this morning, it appears the octopus was born over a month ago…
http://tinyurl.com/82lk8tw
Learning from Occupy
It’s ironic that for years unions have been saying many of the same things as the Occupiers but Occupy captured the public imagination and unions haven’t.
Unions are far larger than the Occupy assemblies, with members who are more strategically located to wield power. So why did Occupy take off?
Occupy New Haven Demonstrators Confronted By Gunman
A 22-year-old city man is facing multiple weapons charges after police said he started kicking the tents of Occupy New Haven demonstrators and confronted one with a gun early Friday morning.
Dairres Walden, of Huntington Street, was caught with black baseball gloves and a knit ski mask, police said. A loaded Cobra CA 380 .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun was shoved into the waistband of his pants, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman.
http://tinyurl.com/7meqhnb
Iowa GOP will count ‘uncommitted’ votes after all
After some confusion earlier in the week between county and state-level officials, the Republican Party of Iowa says “no preference” and “uncommitted” votes will be counted during the Jan. 3 caucuses.
In recent weeks, members of the Occupy movement around the state have said they plan to caucus with Republicans but write-in “uncommitted” to express dissatisfaction with the current candidate pool. In response, some county GOP chairpersons, including Cory Adams, of Story County, and Mac McDonald, of Black Hawk County, said they did not plan to count those votes.
“I talked with the Republican Party of Iowa to see if they knew about people trying to count ‘no commitment’ or ‘none of the above,'” Adams said Friday. “They have changed procedures since then.”
http://tinyurl.com/7rr7yg3
Occupy Charlotte shaken by flag burning
An Occupy Charlotte member who was jailed after helping burn two U.S. flags told other members late Friday that while he’s sorry for the trouble it may have caused the movement, he’s not sorry for what he did. “Those were actions taken on my own behalf,” Alex Tyler said at a camp meeting. “I did it to display my utter contempt for American greed, not (the military).”
Tyler told Occupy Charlotte members Friday that he’d met the three other men about 12:30 a.m. Friday. “I’ve seen this group lose its activism and become lazy,” said Tyler, adding that the other men told him, “We’re going to give Occupy Charlotte a wake up call.”
The flag burning led at least 10 Occupy Charlotte members to issue a statement, formally disassociating the movement from the camp at the old city hall. The flag-burning has created a divide within the movement, as evident by the meeting Friday night. Some members condemned the acts as “hideous” “shocking” and “disrespectful.” And a few threatened to leave the camp if the four men weren’t kicked out.
http://tinyurl.com/6mjzhdp
Utah Doctors Join “Occupy” Movement
Taking inspiration from the Occupy Movement, last week a group of doctors and environmental groups in Salt Lake City, Utah announced a lawsuit against the third largest mining corporation in the world, Rio Tinto, for violating the Clean Air Act in Utah.
This is likely the first time ever that physicians have sued industry for harming public health.
http://tinyurl.com/78so7c2
Voting rights: Convicted felons fight for right to vote: ‘We fought very hard as women for that, I think it’s important’
They’ve served their time and now want their voices heard at the polls. Right now, anyone convicted of a felony in Kentucky loses their right to vote for the rest of their lives. Most states restore that right at some point. A Lexington lawmaker is now proposing that Kentucky make some changes to the current law.
More than 180,000 people in Kentucky are forbidden from going to the polls because of past criminal offenses. April Browning is one of them, after getting caught up in drugs,”I got five years on the shelf and got 15 months.”
But after serving her time, Browning says she has changed and believes that Kentucky law should also change to allow her the right to vote again,”We fought very hard, you know in our history, as women for that, I think it’s important.”
http://tinyurl.com/72zvbkv
Famous Wall Street bull to roam free again, as barricades set to be removed
The Wall Street bull has been one lonely bovine since the end of summer. The sculpture was corralled behind barricades when the Occupy Wall Street protest began Sept. 17, as police feared vandals might try to damage the stock market mascot.
After three-plus months of isolation, the iconic animal is going to be freed from its caging at noon Monday, said Arthur Piccolo, bull advocate and chairman of the Bowling Green Association.