Tonight, around 30 members of OWS will be joining us at general assembly. We have carved out about an hour of time to have a free-ranging discussion about the occupy movement and how we can learn from one another’s successes and setbacks. Join us!
Time: 5pm-9pm+
Where: The Community Church (565 Boylston St., Boston, MA)
Two of our very own occupiers, Mike Hipson and David Lehnert, have been working on a feature-length documentary film about the Occupy Movement. Mike, a member of our community wellness team, and David, a member of our media team, have both lived at the Dewey Square Encampment and have been great assets to our community.
The movie is called OccuNation, and principal photography will be going on until the Summer. Mike and David will be travelling the country filming local occupations across the United States, from big cities like Boston and New York to small town America, exploring themes like localism and social justice activism.
It’s a huge project to undertake, and the OccuNation team just launched their project on Kickstarter, the same fundraising site that the Boston Occupier received its financing from. If you would like to learn more about OccuNation visit the website here, and if you would like to contribute to the project, click here.
We would greatly appreciate it if you could contribute to this amazing project, but if not, that’s okay! We’d love it if you followed us on Twitter, liked us on Facebook, and check out our website every now and then!
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Unilever – corporate owner of OWS endorser Ben and Jerry’s – attacks UK workers’ pensions
As Unilever workers began organising picket lines across the country, the trustees of the company’s UK pension fund rejected union pleas and endorsed management’s proposal to close the existing final salary pension (FSP) scheme and replace it with an inferior career average earnings scheme, known as CARE. The USDAW statement ends, “Unilever’s customers, shareholders and other stakeholders could be forgiven for thinking that the company cares less for its employees and its corporate reputation than it does for one of its brands of soap powder or deodorant.” [From the Ben and Jerry’s endorsement of OWS: “As a board and as a company we have actively been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we pay a livable wage to our employees,. . . “] Open Media Boston Supports Occupy UMass Boston; Calls for Public Action to Defend #OUMB Encampment Open Media Boston strongly supports the Occupy UMass Boston movement’s decision to found an encampment at the UMB Campus Center on Monday. And supports the movement itself. For the first time in a long time, Boston’s working class university – my alma mater – is home to a growing and vibrant network of progressive students who are organizing for radical and much needed changes to public higher education system in Massachusetts. There have been many attempts to spark such a movement in the last four decades – some of which I have personally participated in, and helped organize – but this is first attempt that is part of a society-wide movement for social change. And the first one that looks to be willing to engage in sustained direct action outside “official channels” to demand full government funding for public higher education, an end to the privatization and corporatization of the Mass. public higher education system, free speech on campus, and a complete reorganization of the UMass system to serve the needs of the Commonwealth’s working families rather than the needs of the unelected businesspeople that currently control the UMass Board of Trustees – and our government at all levels. The OUMB movement is swiftly gaining traction among UMass Boston students, staff and faculty – which, as a commuter campus, has long been a very difficult place to engage in grassroots political organizing. And that’s all to the good. http://tinyurl.com/7smvow4 Homeland Security derring-do: Emails show agent ‘infiltrated’ public meetings at Occupy Austin in October and November Internet group Anonymous has leaked information from October and November 2011 suggesting that private intelligence firm STRATFOR has been working with Texas law enforcement to infiltrate the Occupy movement and spy on the Deep Green Resistance movement. STRATFOR “Watch Officer” Marc Lanthemann writes about receiving information on Occupy Austin and DGR from a “Texas DPS agent.” The Texas Department of Public Safety is a statewide law enforcement agency that includes the Texas Rangers, Highway Patrol, and an Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division. In the emails, the staff discuss how a STRATFOR agent went undercover and tried to gather information from an Occupy Austin General assembly. http://tinyurl.com/783xofr |
with City Life/Vida Urbana, Chelsea Collaborative, Occupy Wall Street, and Mass Uniting.
Meet at JP Morgan Chase (50 Rowes Wharf), continue past Fannie Mae, and end at Bank of America (100 Federal Place)
BRING YOUR SWIMWEAR! Participants are encouraged to bring flippers, goggles, swimsuits, snorkels — or just wear something blue! Details at http://www.facebook.com/events/317533048289164/
25% of mortgages nationally are underwater. This means that the amount owed on the mortgage exceeds the value of the house. In this situation a homeowner can make years of payments without ever owning anything. Wall Street Banks profited off of (and promoted) a housing bubble that left millions with underwater loans, then received trillions in taxpayer bailouts. Still they want to keep homeowners on the hook for wildly inflated prices and evict families who can actually afford their homes at real value.
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Saturday, January 28, 10-2 p.m.
Anti-foreclosure Canvassing in Revere
145 Broadway, Revere, MA 21510
The following proposal passed the General Assembly of Occupy Boston on January 26, 2012:
Every Thursday after announcements we will set aside time for people to say what they are thankful for. It’s known as thankful Thursdays. FWG will work out the exact amount of time set aside and will limit it to 5 slots of 2-3 minutes each. This is completely voluntary and is subject to change based on the nature of the GA and whether anyone wants to speak on a particular night.
Occupy Boston Media <Media@occupyboston.org> • <Info@occupyboston.org> • @Occupy_Boston