Facing freezing temperatures and snowy weather, several hundred protesters gathered at courthouses in Chicago and across the nation Friday as they protested a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed most limits on corporate and labor spending in federal elections.
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In Boston, fife and drum music played as protesters rallied at the federal courthouse. Some protestors even dressed their dogs in pinstripes and red ties, saying that dogs should be able to vote if big businesses basically can.

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Boston rally protests corporate election funds

About 200 people in Boston joining a national “Occupy the Courts” protest on Friday to mark the second anniversary of a Supreme Court decision on campaign financing.

They rallied at the federal courthouse against a ruling that says the First Amendment prevents government from limiting election spending by corporations and unions.

State Rep. Cory Atkins told protesters it’s “an outright felony” corporations can give unlimited money for political donations while citizens can’t. She asked demonstrators to work to pass a state resolution calling on Congress to overturn the high court’s decision.

http://tinyurl.com/7mq3ea2

Protesters Occupy the Courts

It was the federal courts’ turn to get occupied Friday, as demonstrators across the country gathered to protest the two-year anniversary of a controversial Supreme Court ruling that extended the rights of natural persons to corporations.

It is a “preposterous notion that corporations are people and enjoy the same rights as citizens,” said Marc Strickland, who brought his 10-year-old son with him to LA’s downtown federal building. “It takes away a fundamental part of the democratic process.”

Federal buildings in Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Santa Barbara, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Courthouse in Riverside were on the list to be occupied in a string of demonstrations across Southern California.

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Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 1/21/12” »

A recent report unveiled in December at Harvard Law School suggests this is the case in the Northern suburbs. And the New York Times noted the national pattern of erstwhile middle-class neighborhoods shrinking, “as rising income inequality left a growing share of families in neighborhoods that are mostly low-income or mostly affluent.” Built up largely with modest homes in immediate post-war years, Lexington was generally not considered “affluent” until the 1980s. That has changed drastically since then, and many of those houses are disappearing.

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Occupy Storms All 3 Branches of Government

(video)

http://tinyurl.com/74o5omu

The New Student Activism

ASHLEY WARD, an aspiring idealist with waning faith in the world, was standing in the newsroom of her college paper at Humboldt State University in Northern California when a fellow student rushed in with startling news.

Three thousand miles due east, on a tiny patch of Lower Manhattan, people were camping out to protest Wall Street, decrying its stranglehold on politics and continuing enrichment as the economy flatlined. It was the first that Ms. Ward, then a senior, had heard of Occupy Wall Street, and as she learned more about it, her heart glowed. “I’ve been waiting for something to happen for years,” she said. “I was personally starting to get afraid that something like this wouldn’t happen in my lifetime.”
. . .

While students as recently as 2009 were taking over campus buildings – across California and in New York, at the New School – Occupy has drawn a wider swath. Previously apolitical students have been drawn by personal woes – their parents’ vanishing 401(k)’s, their fears of the job market. “This has been a catalyst for getting more students involved,” said Anne Wolfe, 20, a junior at Tufts who is working with protesters at Boston University and camped out at Occupy Boston.

“We’re able to get out of our own college bubble,” she said.

http://tinyurl.com/6tzyqv5

Occupy Boston takes on MBTA fare hikes, service cuts

As public opposition mounts for service cuts and fare hikes proposed by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Occupy Boston activists have turned their attention to the issue.

Working largely through social media, an Occupy MBTA group has begun an effort to organize opposition to the MBTA’s proposals. At 3 p.m. Wednesday, the group’s Twitter account had 176 followers.

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Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 1/20/12” »