Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Camp Charlie reoccupied! Supreme Court will re-examine Citizen’s United decision. The South Carolina House has given the go ahead to use gold and silver as real money. And chemicals used in frackinghave been linked to breast cancer and reproductive health problems and there have been reports of rises in crimes against women in some fracking “boom towns.” And in our town, state officials are pushing two separate bids today to take tighter control of the Rose Kennedy Greenway — one to tweak the state’s relationship with the Conservancy that now runs the 15-acre downtown park, the other to entirely cut off the embattled nonprofit.“What we have here is a partnership run amok,” said state Rep. Peter Durant (R-Spencer), a Greenway Conservancy critic who said he will file a bill today for a total state takeover. “It’s welfare for the 1 percent,” Durant said about the nonprofit, which has come under heavy scrutiny for its payroll, heavy with six-figure salaries and underwritten by taxpayer funds. Read more here.

Other Occupies/Protests: Occupy Tucson protester blog post: Tucson Police Department Protecting and Serving the 1%. There is no place in the City of Tucson that can be occupied twenty four hours a day, even for the purpose of peaceable assembly. For more, click here.  Student radicals are suspected in an act of vandalism with Biblical overtones after swarms of locusts overran Montreal’s main business school on Thursday.

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Thomas Jefferson

Volunteer Opportunities/Announcements: 

• Occupy Boston’s newspaper, The Boston Occupier, is looking for new staff members, including writers, editors, photographers, and those willing to help with fund-raising and distribution of the newspaper. Everyone is welcome to attend today’s working group meeting (see below)!
• Help support Camp Charlie! Protesters need healthy food, water, hand warmers, sweaters, blankets, duct tape, and you! Also musicians needed, acoustic only. Bring friends/bands/instruments…sorry, no power.  And if anyone has time to come by for any amount of time and help out by sitting at the Info table to talk to people that would be great!

For a partial listing of Working Groups looking for volunteers, please click here!

Upcoming Events:

• Justice for Farmworkers! Picket, Delegation and Theater at Stop & Shop Headquarters, Thursday, April 12 at 12pm, Stop & Shop Corporate Office Headquarters, 1385 Hancock St., Quincy.

  Just days before the Ahold (parent company of Stop & Shop) Shareholder Meeting, please join farmworkers and Fair Food allies in calling on Stop and Shop to join the Fair Food Program!

  For decades, Florida’s farmworkers faced poverty wages and daily violations of their basic rights — including physical abuse, sexual harassment, and in the most extreme cases, modern-day slavery — in order to harvest the food on our plates. Today, however, a new day is dawning in the fields. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) — an internationally-recognized farmworker organization — has reached groundbreaking agreements with ten of the world’s leading food retailers, including McDonald’s, Subway and Trader Joe’s. Hailed by the New York Times as “possibly the most successful labor action in the US in twenty years,” the Fair Food Program establishes a worker-designed code of conduct in the fields and requires retailers to pay one more penny per pound for the tomatoes they buy to go directly to the workers who picked them—all of which is monitored and enforced by the independent Fair Food Standards Council. Supermarkets like Ahold leverage their high-volume purchasing power to demand the ever-lower prices that result in farmworker exploitation. By refusing to partner with the CIW, the steps the company has taken fall far short of the substantive, verifiable and enforceable standards that the situation requires, consumers expect, and others within the industry have embraced.

  Join farmworkers and Fair Food advocates in demanding that Ahold uphold human rights and join the Fair Food Program! More information: www.ciw-online.org, Contact: elena@interfaithact.org; 650.678.9127

• Raise Taxes on the 1% Tax Day Rally and March, Tuesday, April 17, 5:30PM, Dewey Square (South Station). Occupy JP and Occupy Boston will participate, along with many other groups, in a protest against the unfairness of the current tax regime, where people such as Mitt Romney pay at rates far lower than those earning far less, and Warren Buffet’s now-famous secretary pays at a higher rate than Warren Buffet.  The Rally and March will begin at 5:30pm at Dewey Square (South Station) and the march will begin at 6pm and proceed through the city streets, pass by several notorious corporate tax dodgers, and end at Post Office Square. Things to bring:  yourself (most important), signs, noise-making stuff (pots, pans, kazoos, whatever). For a list of co-sponsoring organizations visit http://www.taxdayboston.org.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Please note events are subject to change; check https://www.occupyboston.org for the latest information!

Event Highlights:

Camp Charlie actions and events for April 11:

8:00 AM — Greet the Commuters We’ll be at Park Street Station with banners and flyers to greet morning T commuters and engage them in conversation about the Occupy MBTA campaign and the larger fight for transit justice. Meet at Camp Charlie at 8:00 AM — if you’re not already there from the night before!NOON — Screen PrintingThe Occupy Boston Screen Print Guild will be holding a public screen printing workshop. Bring anything that you’d like to have printed — t-shirts, fabric, bags, etc — and join in on the fun!

4:00 PM — Ride the Rails Come Ride the Rails with us to spread the word to Boston’s subway riders about Camp Charlie, the Occupy MBTA campaign, and the broader Occupy Boston community. We’ll be meeting at Camp Charlie at 4:00 PM for a brief training, after which we’ll be setting out in teams to connect with Boston’s rush-hour commuters and recruit them for the movement through speaking, leafleting, and distributing copies of the Boston Occupier. Let’s seize the unique opportunity to engage thousands of T commuters about the issues that could immediately impact them — the cuts, hikes, and layoffs — as well as the deeper issues that they raise for us all. See you there!

Please note: Ride the Rails will meet every day at 4:00 PM at Camp Charlie until the occupation has run its course.

6:00 PM — Crash Course on The MBTA Budget Crisis

Over the years, the MBTA’s financial viability has been wrecked by Big Dig debt, forward funding, and interest rate swaps ($26 million owed annually to Wall Street banks). The MBTA now possesses a total debt load of $5.2 billion and counting. How did the MBTA get into this position? What are the current proposals on the table? And how does this occupation fit into this plan? Come join us to find out!

• Discussion on Autonomy & Consent & OB’s Values – Ideas WG.  7pm – 9pm. 38 Ash Street (Chinatown) Room 505. DescriptionTonight’s Ideas WG discussion will focus on Occupy Boston values, particularly in regard to autonomy and consent. One of our goals wil be to address issues raised at the 5 April 2012 General assembly .
• OBR Holds Producer TrainingWednesday  April 11th & Saturday April 14th
  6-8pm 10-12pmAt Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Avenue, 5th floor, Boston, MA 02111Learn the Ins and Outs of simple Internet broadcasting.
  Using “Broadcast Using This Tool”, a computer and mixer, OBR will guide you through the steps of LIVE Internet broadcasting. Using the mixer as a multi-purpose tool (mix-ins, call-ins, sound effects) and with the guidance of some broadcast procedure you’ll be up and running in no time. This will be a training geared towards live broadcast and producing, editing will come later in the series.
  All are welcome and the training is free.
•  [Ongoing] Occupation of State House Steps for Public Transportation, April 5 – 14, 2012, Camp Charlie at the State House. On April 4, Occupy the MBTA, a working group of Occupy Boston, launched Camp Charlie, a ten-day occupation of the Massachusetts State House steps to protest fare-hikes and service cutbacks on the MBTA. Having survived the depths of the recession, the 99% now faces additional taxes in the form of escalating T fares and the loss of essential transport routes. This is a further transfer of public wealth to the banks. These are the same institutions that were bailed out by the American taxpayer after being rendered insolvent by their own, criminal recklessness. The only debt in need of servicing is their debt to us. In a country that lavishes four billion dollars in subsidies on the oil companies, the relentless assault on public transport could not make less sense – ethically, environmentally, or otherwise. Camp Charlie will be a place for public debate, conversation, and outreach – a living testament to the refusal of the people to be further abused by a clutch of corporate interests, multinational banking cartels and consolidated oil interests.

Calendar for Wednesday, April 11, 2012

3 pm – 4 pm Icarus Project WG Support Group, at the Gazebo at the Common

5pm – 9pm Facilitation WG meeting, City Place Food Court , in the Transportation Building. FWG will meet to discuss its mission and meeting process.

5:30 pm – 7 pm Info WG Meeting at United for a Fair Economy, 29 Winter St., 2nd Floor, Boston.

6 pm – 8 pm Radio WG Meeting at Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave., 5th Floor, Boston

7pm – 9pm Joint OBIT/Media WG meeting at Encuentro 5 (33 Harrison Ave in Chinatown, 5th floor)

Please note! Due to the increasingly warm weather, meeting locations may change. We encourage you to check the Occupy Boston Calendar for the most up-to-date information.

These are just some of the many events at Occupy Boston. Check out our Daily Calendar for more information.

For more information on Occupy Boston’s General Assembly, including passed resolutions, click here!  

And if you’re interested in learning more about Occupy Boston and how you can participate, click here! 

Contact Us: Want to subscribe to the Daily Digest? Click here to have it sent to your email inbox every morning! All Working Groups or Occupy Boston events that need placement in the Daily Digest, please email AnnaC@OccupyBoston.org. And subscribe to the Occupy Boston Media Rundown, a daily listing of Occupy-related news, by contacting JohnM@OccupyBoston.org.