Good Morning from Occupy Boston!
Stories of the Day: Anonymous responds to CISPA by calling for specific protests throughout May and June. For the video message, click here. And, from The Portland Occupier: In a grandstand maneuver, our president stands tall with Elie Wiesel at the national Holocaust museum to speak out against the governments of Syria and Iran and the way they control their citizens’ internet and phone access. Meanwhile, the NSA security arm of our government monitors the internet and phone usage of its citizens, while police forces across the country conspire to limit the free speech rights of American patriots. For the story, click here. For more on the ironic contrast of the statements our government makes in support of protests in other countries and the way police are treating American protesters, and a timeline of the protests all over the world, watch this short video from the Vancouver-based filmmakers creating Occupy the Movie (who were filming us at our Media discussion on Wednesday!): I Am Not Moving. And, the House of Representatives advanced a bill Friday that funds cheaper student loans by cutting a preventive health care program, the Prevention and Public Health Fund created in President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. For more, click here. And, are you aware that in many cities, laws are being passed to criminalize feeding the homeless? For more, see A War on Homelessness or A War on the Homeless? And, here’s a creative idea: students suspended for walking out of class at Detroit’s Western International High School earlier this week to protest school closures and demand a better education, created a “freedom school.” Classes at the freedom school will be held with help from community volunteers for the duration of the students’ suspensions, including over the weekend.
Other Occupies/Protests: From Occupy Wall Street: The Free University is a collective educational experiment that will be held on May 1, 2012, from 10am-3pm. In solidarity with the general strike, the Free University offers a public space for the 99% to disengage from an unequal system and imagine a model for alternative education. Those gathered in Madison Square Park, and those meeting in other spaces in solidarity, will create a university that is open to all, without debt or tuition for students, without pre-requisites, age limits or any other disqualifying requirements. Learning can only happen through interaction, exchange, and dialogue. To create a living future together, all must be included and welcome. The Free University is an open invitation to educators around New York City to participate in May Day 2012. During the day, lectures, workshops, skill-shares, and discussions will be held — all open to the public. If you are in solidarity with the general strike but cannot cancel your class, bring it here! We also invite all educators interested in volunteering special sessions and classes for the day. We will have designated spaces for the quieter and more intimate classes. No single day, park, or effort can contain our vision; instead, we propose and will struggle to make all our universities places of free education, inquiry, and access to knowledge for all. We demand that our society put forward the necessary resources to provide such an education for all. For the full schedule of actions Occupy Wall Street has planned for the May 1 General Strike, click here.
- May 1 General Strike! A Day Without the 99%. NO WORK – NO SCHOOL – NO SHOPPING – NO BANKING – NO TRADING. GENERAL STRIKE AND BOYCOTT CALLED! 7am-11am: Financial District Block Party! (corner of Federal and Franklin Streets). Bring a friend and let’s party! Bring whistles, drums, noise makers. Bring street theater ! 12:00pm: Boston City Hall Rally. Can’t make it to Boston City Hall at Noon? Well how about: The Chelsea City Hall? – Gather at Noon – March at 2pm (For More information please contact La Colaborativa (617) 889-6097). 2pm: LoPresti Park Rally/March (Blue Line: Maverick Square) (For more information contact Dominic at City life/Vida Urbana (617) 710-7176). 4pm: Everett – Glendale Park (For more information please contact La Comunidad (617) 387-9996). 7pm: Death of Capitalism Boston Funeral March (Copley Square). We invite people to participate in this piece of street theater which includes puppets, a marching band, and other creative surprises. People will begin gathering at 7pm at Copley Square Park (by the steps of Trinity Church) to put on costumes, puppets and face-paint and get info on their respective role in the funeral procession. We ask that people participate as: mourners (dressed in black), celebrators (wearing neon/bright colors/glow stuff), skeleton block (bring your own skeleton costume). The funeral procession will leave Copley Square Park at 8pm and will travel through areas of wealth and commerce.
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Lecture at MIT: THE ILLUMINATOR PROJECT: Developing Best Practices for Public Projection Interventions, MARK READ of New York University
May 3, 2012 (Thursday)5pm-6pmRoom 14E-310, MIT
Free and open to the public, light dinner to followThe Illuminator is a white cargo van equipped with video and audio projection, as well as a fully stocked infoshop and mini-library. It is a tactical media tool available to the Occupy Movement, both useful and beautiful. It is a shapeshifter, a transformer of public space which disrupts the patterns of everyday life, and embodies the social and political transformations for which the Occupy Movement continues to fight.
Mark Read is an artist, activist, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. He is perhaps best known as the creator of the “99% Bat Signal” that was projected onto the Verizon Building in New York City on November 17th, 2012. His films have been shown internationally in a variety of venues, from the Piazza de Ferrari in Genoa Italy, to the Halls of the Whitney Museum. He is an adjunct professor of Media Studies at New York University.
Sponsors: MIT Cool Japan research project and Comparative Media Studies.Contact: Prof. Ian Condry, condry@mit.edu - Keep Immigrant Families Together! Stop the Raids and Deportations! Prayer Vigil for Immigrant Detainees, Sunday, May 6th, 2 p.m.Suffolk County House of Correction, 20 Bradston St., BostonFor more information about the vigil, contact our Facebook page, or email SocialAction@ascboston.o
rg . www.bostonnewsanctuary.org.
- Immigration through Faith: Faith through Immigration – Personal experiences of immigration as a moral and religious issue.
A facilitated panel discussion exploring personal experiences of faith and immigration. This session is designed to help participants articulate and claim religious language and relevancy in a conversation dominated by secular and political messages. The panel discussion will be followed by an open period for questions and reflections. - U.S. Immigration History and Your Faith: We will look at who came and why? What laws were enacted as barriers? What role have people of faith played in this history? We will also ask where we find ourselves in the story, and who belongs here?
- Immigrant Stories in the Struggle for Workers Rights
To register, go to www.bostonnewsanctuary.org,
- Immigration through Faith: Faith through Immigration – Personal experiences of immigration as a moral and religious issue.
- Occupy New England – M12 Day of Action and Regional Gathering. 9am-5:30pm, May 12: Come join Occupy groups from all around New England as we converge in Worcester for a day of action and networking! The day will have four core key components to it: getting as many Occupy groups and participants in one centralized location at the same time for a day of networking and planning, direct actions and public visibility, continued actions against corporations backing ALEC, and finally the flared up “War on Women” – discussion on women’s issues (rights, health care, etc…) Preliminary timeline of events:
(Please note the following is a rough draft discussed by Occupy Worcester and the M12 working group. More details will be released later on, and times/actions are subject to change.)
9 am: Begin gathering at Worcester Common
10 am: Second New England Solidarity March
Late morning: Direct Action (w/ CD potential)
Midday: Occupy New England gathering. Have lunch and talk a lot to each other.
Mid afternoon: Occupy Worcester’s Women’s Caucus event, details TBA - May 17 – nationally recognized transgender activist and member of Occupy Boston Gunner Scott will be honored with The Theater Offensive’s Out on the Edge award. As Executive Director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, Scott led the battle for passage of the Massachusetts Transgender Equal Rights Bill in November. The Transgender Equal Rights Bill, also known as An Act Relative to Gender Identity, makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity in the areas of employment, housing, public education and credit & lending.Who: Transgender activist Gunner Scott. What: The Theater Offensive honors Scott with Out on the Edge award. When: Thursday, May 17 @ 6:30 pm. Where: Hibernian Hall (184 Dudley St, Roxbury). Open to the Public: Yes (with ticket purchase)
- Sponsored by the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series: Book launch for Truth and Revolution by Michael Staudenmaier. May 22 at 6 pm at Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, Boston. Michael Staudenmaier speaks on the Sojourner Truth Organization/STO. STO was Founded in Chicago in 1969 from the rubble of the recently crumbled SDS, the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO) brought working-class consciousness to the forefront of New Left discourse, sending radicals back into the factories and thinking through the integration of radical politics into everyday realities. Through the influence of founding members like Noel Ignatiev and Don Hamerquist, STO took a Marxist approach to the question of race and revolution, exploring the notion of “white skin privilege,” and helping to lay the groundwork for the discipline of critical race studies. Michael Staudenmaier is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Illinois.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Event Highlights:
- May 1st Training with Occupy Boston: Sunday, April 29, 12pm-3pm, at Cambridge Common (see Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/
events/396045130426024/ ).Gearing up for May 1st? Want to feel more prepared? Join Occupy Boston as we get ready for the General Strike! Direct Action and the Medics will be providing basic training this Sunday in preparation for Tuesday’s General Strike! There will be plenty of fun activities as well as training in basic safety procedures. Join us! - Boston New Sanctuary Movement Presents A Return to A Faithful Understanding, An Interfaith Conference: Toward a More Compassionate National Debate on Immigration, Sunday, April 29, 2012, 12:30 – 5 p.m. (12-1, lunch provided by Brazilian Immigrant Center), Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury St., Boston, MAWorship leader: Rev. Rob Mark, Pastor, Church of the Covenant, Boston, Presbyterian/UCCSpeakers, Reflection leaders: Members of the Boston New Sanctuary Movement. Schedule: 12:30 Registration; 1:00 Welcome, opening reflection; 1:15 Current Immigration issues in Boston, and the Boston New Sanctuary Movement; 1:40 Workshops, period I; 3:10 Workshops, period II; 4:40 Closing reflection; 5:00 Networking.
- Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day, Sunday, April 29, 10am – Monday, April 30, 12am. Where: Lots, medians, privatized public land, unpleasant public land. May 1 is International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day — people all over the world will be sowing seeds of optimism and planting sunflower seeds. It’s about occupying our city and promoting gardening, public space, food and habitats for all the human and non-humans who share the Boston ecosystem. Let’s plant 1,000 seeds!
Calendar for Sunday, April 29, 2012
12pm-2pm, Boston Occupier WG Meeting, at City Place Food Court in Mass Transportation Building, 8-10 Park Plaza
1pm – 3pm The Icarus Project WG Meeting, Gazebo on Boston Common (City Place Food Court in the Transportation Building if raining) Radical mental health support and activism.
3pm – 5pm People of Color WG Meeting, Encuentro 5. 33 Harrison Ave 5th Floor
4pm – 5pm Socialist Caucus Meeting, Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave 5th Floor
5pm – 8:30pm, Action Assembly, Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street (across from Copley)
Please note! Meetings and their locations are subject to change. We encourage you to check the Occupy Boston Calendar for the most up-to-date information.
Volunteer Opportunities/Announcements:
1) Issue 7 of the Boston Occupier is out now, and we need your help distributing!!
We rely exclusively on YOU, the broader Occupy community, to get our papers out there to the 99%. So…
** We would love for you to join one of our planned outreach/distribution efforts on the T.
** ANYTIME you’re going to a progressive or Occupy-related event, try to pass out papers. These are the most effective occasions to connect sympathetic readers to our paper. Copies of the issue are stored in the OB cubicle at E5, so PLEASE remember to grab a stack.
** Get them to readers in your community. We recommend small stacks in small stacks in cafes, libraries, bookshops, laundry mats, community centers, waiting rooms, campuses, etc. Be creative!! But we’ve found that the BEST way to get papers to readers is to hand them out face to face, combining outreach and distribution.
** If you are a part of another local-area Occupy movement, a union, or a community organization that is willing to distribute papers — let’s make it happen! You can just come by E5 (between 9 am and 7 pm most days) and grab a stack, or coordinate with us if you’re not able to do so. Send questions or suggestions about distribution to Julie O (juliettejulianna@gmail.com).
** We’re also trying to raise funds so that we can continue printing the stories of the 99%! To that end, we’ve started a subscription service. Read about it online here. I hope you’ll encourage those you know to subscribe to the paper as well!!
As always, we welcome questions, suggestions, and distribution ideas — send to juliettejulianna@gmail.com. We’ve printed a gorgeous May 1st poster on the back of this issue, so we’re hoping to get all 10,000 copies out in the next week and a half, to promote the General Strike. Papers to the people!!
2) Occupy Boston seeks RADICAL CLOWNS to participate in the May Day rally at City Hall Plaza at 12:00 noon. Will you be a radical clown? contact 617strike@gmail.com.
guitar amps
electrical inverters (for 12V to 110/120VAC) (cigarette lighter plug)
blank T shirts
white fabric
black fabric
neon colored fabric
spring clamps
duct tape
black paint
white paint
glow-in-the-dark paint
sharpies/markers
clamp lights
face paint
glitter
neon posterboard
blacklight bulbs (standard light bulb size)
red light bulbs (standard light bulb size)
portable lights with power source/battery pack
Beer coolers (for dry ice)
Brass bell (should ring pretty loud)
3) GA locations:
The following proposal passed the General Assembly of Occupy Boston on April 17, 2012:
Facilitation Working Group proposes the following changes to the current General Assembly schedule:
- Tuesdays: We propose that, effective May 1st, all Tuesday GAs be held outside. We propose the Boston Common as a temporary location with the idea that location may change in the future. We will give Arlington Street Church notice that our last night using ASC space will be April 24, 2012.
- Thursdays: We have ended our relationship with Emmanuel Church and therefore propose that all Thursday GAs be held outside effective April 19, 2012, at the Boston Common as a temporary location with the idea that location may change in the future.
- Saturday: We propose to continue to hold GA at Community Church of Boston on Saturdays in order to ensure that at least one GA per week is held indoors. FWG is in the process of asking CCB whether it would have space available on Tuesdays. If so we would ask the GA to decide whether that one GA indoors should be on Tuesday or Saturday.
- Community Gatherings will remain on Mondays and effective May 14, 2012, will be held at CCB.
This schedule is subject to review by the GA at any time.
Amendments:
- GA will be canceled Tuesday, May 1st.
- FWG will seek access to the web banner and text service to ensure that any change in GA location or time will be widely communicated.
To join the Occupy Boston Community Forum email list, a general discussion list, click here! For a partial listing of Working Groups looking for volunteers, please click here! For a list of Working Groups with contact info, click here! 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! For contact info for other Occupies in the area, 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. To view past issues of The Daily Digest, click here. And subscribe to the Occupy Boston Media Rundown, a daily listing of Occupy-related news, by contacting JohnM@OccupyBoston.