Boston Police Patrolman’s Assn magazine ‘Pax Centurion’ provides revealing look inside the minds of city police officers

I knew immediately that they all came from Cambridge, Newton, Arlington, Jamaica Plain, and other places where insane people reside. Soon, some sort of strange Native American or Indian music began to fill the air. The assembled idiots began a huge circle dance, back and forth for hours on end. Unfortunately, there were several young children with them, who were also forced to dance with the graying hippies. Those kids represent the next generation of idiot liberals, (they all looked like little Elizabeth Warrens, for some reason) and will be screwed up for life, or attend Harvard. (That’s redundant, isn’t it?)

And to think I actually submitted an overtime slip. For the entertainment alone, I should have paid the city…

http://tinyurl.com/cdbbdkm (Link is to the Nov/Dec 2011 issue pdf. Editorial excerpted is on page A7. This issue and others can be accessed directly from the Boston Police Patrolman’s Assn website http://bppa.org/)

“Occupy Cop” under attack – Retired Philadelphia Police Capt. Ray Lewis could lose his life insurance for wearing his uniform to a protest

Lewis continues to protest. In uniform. Last week he was in Center City Philadelphia, protesting outside police and FOP [Fraternal Order of Police] headquarters. He says that FOP leadership , a major force in city politics, depends on corporate donations to finance its union election campaigns and quarterly magazine.

“The major part of the movement is to hold corporations accountable and to stop them from having so much control over lives and the earth,” he says. “If John McNesby is a receiver of the favors of corporate America, then I’m going to be the number one enemy. Because I’m a tactical warhead.”

http://tinyurl.com/6w3qaz7

Video captures WI gov. Scott Walker describing ‘divide and conquer’ strategy to destroy unions

(video)

The video clip shows Walker meeting with Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, who has since donated $510,000 to Walker’s campaign. Hendricks asked: “Any chance we’ll get to be a completely red state, and work on these unions, and become a right-to-work – what can we do to help you?”

“Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill,” Walker said. “The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we get for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out…That opens the door once we do that. That’s your bigger problem right there.”

http://tinyurl.com/burfls2

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/12/12” »

 Secure Communities program assailed by immigrant groups

Leaders from an immigrant rights group said Thursday they plan to “demand” that Gov. Deval Patrick sign an executive order against the planned launch next week of the controversial Secure Communities program.

“If he is really against this program he can really do it,” said Patricia Montes, executive director of the Latino immigrant organization Centro Presente.

The federal program, which refers arrested illegal immigrants to federal immigration officials, is slated to launch in Massachusetts next Tuesday, the Globe reported. Boston is the only community in Massachusetts that has enacted the program.

http://tinyurl.com/cetcgzy

Occupy global call to action on May 12th

We are living in a world controlled by forces incapable of giving freedom and dignity to the world’s population. A world where we are told “there is no alternative” to the loss of rights gained through the long, hard struggles of our ancestors, and where success is defined in opposition to the most fundamental values of humanity, such as solidarity and mutual support. Moreover, anything that does not promote competitiveness, selfishness and greed is seen as dysfunctional.

But we have not remained silent! From Tunisia to Tahrir Square, Madrid to Reykjavik, New York to Brussels, people are rising up to denounce the status quo. Our effort states “enough!”, and has begun to push changes forward, worldwide.

This is why we are uniting once again to make our voices heard all over the world this 12 May.

We condemn the current distribution of economic resources whereby only a tiny minority escape poverty and insecurity, and future generations are condemned to a poisoned legacy thanks to the environmental crimes of the rich and powerful. “Democratic” political systems, where they exist, have been emptied of meaning, put to the service of those few interested in increasing the power of corporations and financial institutions.

http://tinyurl.com/cjjumu2

Tactical briefing – Occupy’s turning point, and how governments are now using ‘lawfare’ to attack us

Last May 15, a hundred thousand indignados in Spain seized the squares across their nation, held people’s assemblies and catalyzed a global tactical shift that birthed Occupy Wall Street four months later. Our movement outflanked governments everywhere with a thousand encampments in large part because no one was prepared for Occupy’s magic combination of Spain’s transparent consensus-based acampadas with the Tahrir-model of indefinite occupation of symbolic space. Now exactly a year later, a big question mark hangs over our movement because it is clear that the same tactics may never work again.
Spring re-occupations have largely failed here in North America. The May Day General Strike was stifled by aggressive, preemptive policing that neutralized Occupy’s signature moves. In light of these challenges, Saturday’s May 12 rebirth of the indignados could be a tactical turning point.
Across the world, authorities are using “lawfare” to piecemeal outlaw any tactic that we used last year. In Spain, there is an attempt to criminalize the use of the internet to catalyze nonviolent protests and occupations. The International Business Times reports that this is part of a larger European move to “punish those who use social media and instant messaging to organize and co-ordinate street protests.” Canada wants to ban wearing masks at “unlawful assemblies,” a legal designation often used to disperse nonviolent protesters. Meanwhile Germany is taking a more direct route: they have simply issued a decree “banning” the Blockupy anti-bank protest in Frankfurt. As in the U.S., when outlawing free speech and the right to assembly doesn’t work, authorities are increasingly using brutal, paramilitary force.

http://tinyurl.com/czuuvkp

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/11/12” »

Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation

This initial reflection on the #Occupy Everywhere movements is based on my observations and participation in #Occupy Boston since late September 2011, including the period after the dismantling of the camp on December 10. I especially focus on how social media have shaped the forms and practices of #Occupy, comparing and contrasting the #Occupy movements to a previous wave of global justice activism that was also significantly influenced by digital media (Juris 2008a). How are the #Occupy movements using new technologies? What difference does employing social as opposed to other forms of new media make? How do virtual and physical forms of protest intersect? What are the strategic and political implications of emerging dynamics of organization and protest within #Occupy, particularly in terms of issues such as sustainability, racial diversity, political demands, and movement impact.

http://tinyurl.com/d42rjv6

[For more articles in Occupy in the new issue of American Ethnologist  magazine go here: http://www.americanethnologist.org/]

Rejecting the lie that Harvard doesn’t do student activism

Before a journalist suggests, yet again, that Harvard students never put their feet on the ground about issues they care about, I think it’s important to point out the impressive nature of this school year’s student activism. In the fall, students from the Trans Task Force and Anti-Imperialist Movement  protested President Drew G. Faust signing an agreement that brought Naval Reserve Office Training Corps back on campus. The students of the Environmental Action Committee and Students for a Just and Stable Future travelled to Boston and Washington D.C. with the Tar Sands Action Campaign to protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline; meanwhile, the Global Health and AIDS Coalition held multiple actions all year calling out both Senator Scott P. Brown and Merck & Co. for their failure to support global health goals.

While students staged a walkout of professor N. Gregory Mankiw’s Economics 10 lecture and prompted Goldman Sachs to cancel recruiting events at multiple colleges, Occupy Harvard maintained a tent city in Harvard Yard for over two months. Other students concerned about economic justice organized with library workers to demand no layoffs in the restructuring process. The Palestine Solidarity Committee held a one-day hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinian administrative detainees; black student groups organized a rally for Trayvon Martin. And just last Saturday, Harvard students joined with feminists from around Boston to protest the War on Women. Moreover, this year’s student campaigns have been successful: In response to student demands, Harvard not only halted future investments in HEI Hotels and Resorts but also funded cage-free eggs in the dining halls and sustainable jobs for Harvard’s food service.

http://tinyurl.com/d6mylfo

The latest Occupy impostors – Two groups claiming to represent America’s youth are, in fact, fronts for phony D.C. centrism

Tens of thousands of young people took to parks, streets and banks last fall to demand an end to the laissez-faire political order that permitted financial titans to bankrupt the economy and deny us a chance at finding decent jobs.

Half a year later, a collection of young people backed by major foundations and companies like Dell are promoting two new organizations, Campaign for Young America and Fix Young America. In a recent profile, the New York Times touts the groups as “advocacy groups for jobless youth” on the order of the AARP or NRA. They are, the Times claims, “younger siblings of Occupy Wall Street, but with a nonpartisan agenda, more centralized leadership and one specific mission: to help young people find jobs.”
. . .

They are nothing at all like Occupy Wall Street: The groups have no real criticism of the American economic order, they are not democratically run, and they seem to focus on providing Monster.com-like service of helping individual people find jobs.

The book even includes a contribution from Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the conservative legislator who last May infamously accused Elizabeth Warren of being a liar.

http://tinyurl.com/chkx4c5

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/10/12” »