St. Patrick’s Day Peace Parade bigger this year with addition of Occupy, other groups
The alternative parade was larger this year, with the addition of supporters of the Occupy movement, a faith group, and a labor group, said Cole Harrison, 58, a spokesman for Massachusetts Peace Action.
Steve Demetriou, 56, a member of Occupy Maine, came to the Peace Parade from Portland.
“[The Parade] is great,” said Demetriou. “A lot of solidarity and a lot of common issues is here. The establishment doesn’t want the boat rocked, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
ttp://tinyurl.com/73gbbld
Southie’s Green Day
Meanwhile, Occupy Boston occupied South Boston, marching in the alternative St. Patrick’s Day Peace Parade for the first time. A Veterans for Peace organizer said a judge has ordered that the Peace Parade must keep a mile between it and Boston’s “traditional” St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
http://tinyurl.com/7kblth9
Occupy Arlington kicks off with great weather, a good crowd, and many concerns for which to advocate
No tents. No rain and cold. But a lot of community enthusiasm, as 45 people stood in a circle in front of the Jefferson Cutter House on a gorgeous Sunday, March 18, and took turns at the mic to tell why they were part of Occupy Arlington.
The group, which marched from Town Hall to Arlington Center, was organized by Lynnette Culverhouse, a town resident who teaches math in Cambridge.
“I want have people talk to each other,” she said. “I would like to see people have a voice.”
http://tinyurl.com/6s46l98
Occupy to protest at NATO summit
After a long weekend of protesting aimed at reinvigorating their movement, Occupy leaders from around the country set their sights on their biggest target of the spring – the NATO summit in Chicago.
Meeting in a sunny city park Sunday, they echoed the rallying cry of other protest groups: President Barack Obama’s decision to drop plans for holding the Group of 8 economic summit in Chicago the same weekend as NATO was a victory that should encourage even more demonstrators to show up in May.
“G-8 left, I think, directly out of fear,” said Brian Bean, a Chicago demonstrator who came to St. Louis to organize people for the NATO summit.
http://tinyurl.com/84d7goa
Witness: NYC Occupy protesters beaten during arrests
‘ An Occupy Wall Street protester says police gave demonstrators little warning before kicking them out of a New York City park overnight and that officers beat several of them during the arrests.
http://tinyurl.com/7g9yh2u
Police Brutality by Zuccotti Park March 17
(video)
http://tinyurl.com/6lsh84u
NYPD doubles down on arrest of protester who collapsed and had seizure, brings lurid charges of violence against her
Social media reports from Occupy Wall Street supporters as well as members of the media indicate Ms. McMillan may face charges of aggravated assault and bail as high as $50,000, but the bail amount has not been confirmed.
Rolling Stone profile of protester Cecily McMillam
McMillan is Northeast regional organizer for the youth section of the Democratic Socialists of America, which bills itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States. She’s been involved with the Occupy movement since August, despite sharp differences with most of the people in the park. “I believe in a constrained view of revolution,” she says, by which she means putting pressure on mainstream politicians. And for this, she says, she has suffered. “I have been called a terrorist. I have been called CIA, FBI. I have been called a Democrat!” Like Lasn, she wants regime change. Unlike most of the occupiers, she believes it requires the guidance of those, like her, possessed of what she calls “cultural capital.”
http://tinyurl.com/7zdercn
Zuccotti Park aftermath: Attack on OWS moves to the media as MSM hypes anonymous twitter threat against NYPD
[Many stories mentioning this prominently or playing it up, forcing reports of police brutality down the page]
A tweet encouraging the Occupy Wall Street movement to ‘kill’ police officers during clashes in Zuccotti Park is being investigated.
. . .
The writer, believed to be from Florida, had also tweeted several comments about the protests on Saturday night, according to the New York Daily News.
Man behind hyped Twitter ‘threat’: ‘I’ve never been to an Occupy protest, I’m in Florida, what am I going to do?’
The man behind the threatening tweet spoke to the Daily News by phone, without revealing his name. He said he lives in Florida and follows OWS protests online but has never attended one.
He said the tweet about killing cops was a jest.
“It’s not like I meant anything of it,” he said. “Who takes anything like that seriously? I’m in Florida, what am I going to do?”
http://tinyurl.com/7g3s35k
New York Times: NYPD should not run roughshod over the Constitution
Since 9/11, courts have broadened the Police Department’s investigative authority in the vital interest of protecting the city from terrorist attack. The department should not interpret that as a license to run roughshod over the Constitution.
http://tinyurl.com/7s4s357
OWS Protesters “Thank” Bloomberg After 73 Arrests Yesterday
Occupy Wall Street attempted to retake Zuccotti Park yesterday on the six-month anniversary of the start of the OWS movement-and by early this morning, 73 protesters had been arrested or detained by the NYPD. But Ed Needham told Reuters that this has actually reinvigorated OWS: “Every time they use violence to put us down, it only increases the number of people that are empathetic to the cause. It adds fuel to the fire and draws attention to the movement. Mayor Bloomberg did us a big help last night in terms of fundraising.”
Re-Occupation and Police Raid of Zuccotti Park Set Tone for Radical Spring
Occupy Wall Street’s message: prepare for a radical spring. Chants of “a-anti-anti-capitalista” were more frequent and more broadly based than I had ever heard at an Occupy Wall Street event, suggesting that the movement has begun to coalesce around an ideological principle. “Anti-capitalism” may not be the most specific philosophy, but it belies proclamations like Bill Maher’s “they don’t hate capitalism; they hate what’s been done to it,” whatever that means. The group also engaged in a raucous and sprawling “Simon Says”-like activity that helped acclimatize protesters to forming a fortified human wall for “soft blocks,” indicating a more militant, confrontational (yet still nonviolent) attitude brewing among the occupiers.
They got the chance to test out their newly acquired skills not long after the game concluded. A small group of protesters had put up what police were calling a “structure,” which consisted of a dozen or so unfurled cardboard boxes, draped over a banner hung between two trees. This provided occasion for the New York Police Department’s own tone-setting action. The NYPD’s message: prepare for a violent spring.
http://tinyurl.com/7kwzsre
Occupy Wall Street organising for May Day general strike
Even in the United States, the movement grows. The corporate media claims Occupy’s strength is waning, but they are merely in denial. During the coldest months of this year, the US has already seen more revolutionary momentum than it has in decades.
This winter, Occupy refocused its energies on fostering ties with local communities, saving homes from corrupt banks and jobs from greedy corporations, and building and expanding horizontal infrastructure.
This #GlobalSpring, people will take the streets again. On May 1, Occupy Wall Street has called for a general strike. It calls on everyone who supports the cause of economic justice and true democracy to take part: no work, no school, no housework, no shopping, no banking – and most importantly, take the streets!
Occupy Media Grows
“Occupy.com, which means to occupy the commons, will go online later this month,” reported Michael Levitin, a 35-year-old founding editor of the Occupied Wall Street Journal. He spoke on March 16 at an event in Santa Rosa, California, hosted by the forthcoming Occupied Press-North Bay/Prensa Ocupada-Bahia Norte.
“We need an Occupy media to report the national and international evolution of this fast-moving movement,” Levitin observed earlier in the day at an interview in the nearby small town of Sebastopol in Sonoma County. “Tomorrow is the six month anniversary of Occupy,” which was launched Sept. 17 at Zuccotti Park in New York Cirty by Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Two weeks later its free press hit the streets.
At Forum Fueled by ‘Occupy’ Energy, Liberal Scholars and Activists Take On the Corporatization of Academe
In the shadow of marches and small pockets of Occupy Wall Street activities that have continued despite the protestors’ eviction from Zuccotti Park months ago, thousands of progressive scholars and students gathered here over the weekend with communists, socialists, anarchists, and other types of unabashed revolutionaries.
They came together at the Left Forum, an annual conference that has grown this year to an estimated 5,000 attendees. The theme of this year’s conference, held at Pace University, was “Occupy the System: Confronting Global Capitalism.” Fighting back was an underlying thread in many of the conference events, which included panels focused on issues of student debt, student activism, and adjunct labor in higher education.
“This is an action-oriented conference,” said Seth Adler, the conference coordinator. “We’re hoping that people will share their ideas and strategies and continue to network beyond the meeting.”
http://tinyurl.com/6oc33ao
Navajo Louise Benally at Occupy Midwest: ‘No’ to Peabody Coal and Indian water rights theft
Navajo Louise Benally, resisting relocation at Big Mountain, spoke out against Peabody Coal and the three decades of Peabody Coal’s rape of the land, theft of Black Mesa aquifer water and the collusion with politicians devastating Black Mesa and its people.
Speaking at the Occupy the Midwest gathering, Benally urged support to halt the theft of Indian water rights and halt the ongoing push by non-Indians to steal Navajo water rights in Arizona. This includes the machinations underway by Arizona congressmen and non-Indian tribal attorneys.
In St Louis, the home city of Peabody Coal, protesters rallied against the coal giant that has left a dirty trail of disease and destruction on the Navajo Nation, and across America. Benally spoke out against Peabody’s coal mine that continues on Black Mesa, providing coal for one of the nation’s dirtiest and most polluting power plants, the Navajo Generating Station, on the Navajo Nation near Page, Ariz, one of the major contributors to climate change.
http://tinyurl.com/73pu629
Occupy Canada: Income gap has social costs, breeds political cynicism
The Occupy movement expressed important concerns that drew attention to how economic inequality, expressed in the idea of the rich “one per cent,” distorts and perverts human life.
Gross inequality corrupts the very foundations on which democratic society rests. It raises basic concerns about our society’s moral character and values. How are human dignity and justice to be assured? How will every child, regardless of their background, access the resources and opportunities essential for them to thrive?
What are the facts? Revenue Canada reports that in 2010, of the 24.2 million citizens filing tax returns, under one per cent (0.76 per cent) account for almost 11 per cent of all income reported, over 41 per cent of all dividend income, and over 56 per cent of all capital gains deductions.
http://tinyurl.com/75l8dsx
One Response to “The OB Media Rundown for 3/19/12”
on March 19th, 2012 at 7:12 am #
[…] rest is here: The OB Media Rundown for 3/19/12 This entry was posted in Boston, Chicago, Comments, New York City, News and tagged […]