A Couple of Suggestions for Students Occupy Boston

As its stands, and I’ve said this ad nauseam, most of the current goals of the Occupy movement are either for things that we’ve had in the past in the US – like fair taxation on corporations and the rich – or for things that lots of other countries have had for a long time – like free public higher education for all.

All great and needed stuff. But the right-wing dominated discourse in this country has made it seem like such things are all far out kooky ultra left fantasies. They’re not. They’re merely the best of the ideas for democratic reforms under capitalism.

Fortunately, broader demands for replacing market capitalism with democracy and some kind of socialism have also been put on the table by the Occupy movement. And that’s why it has been so popular.

Occupy has actually been calling for the transformation of the existing society into a new and better society. And people love that.

http://tinyurl.com/7b9xsp2

International Women’s Day 2012: Labour peace is dead, long live the class war

Now some have remembered what May Day was all about and are calling for a general strike on May 1st..

I know how much work it would take, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Our letters and our lobbies go unheeded; we need something bigger. Let’s keep building alliances with all the communities and well-intentioned people who were lit up and revealed to us in the flare of the Occupy movement, whether they were camping, critiquing or somewhere in between. I think as feminists, we should roll up our sleeves and make it happen. Time to end the labour peace because we are being invaded.

A general strike on May Day. There’s time to plan. As Rosie the Riveter said: We can do it. Now there’s some feel-good womany stuff!

http://tinyurl.com/7bwzoe8

The Occupation of Workplace Democracy: Challenges and solutions for a solidarity economy

In this, the second and concluding part of an email dialogue about the work of SolidarityNYC, Cheyenna Weber discusses the challenge of cooperative self-management in the context of social movements like Occupy Wall Street.

It’s interesting that the barriers to starting a co-op, are not money or expertise but stable and trusting relationships. In your experience so far, what does it look like to build those kind of relationships successfully?

A few years ago a friend did a series of interviews of veteran co-op members in and around the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts. When asking why co-ops failed individuals routinely said having a strong process for confronting conflict, and allowing individuals to advocate for their own needs, was the most important component of success in the governance of a co-op.

http://tinyurl.com/8873fre

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/9/12” »

Occupy Boston Holds March for Free Public Higher Education for All

Almost 100 students from several Boston area colleges held a protest march around Boston as part of a National Day of Action for Education – called by students in the Occupy movement around the United States. The local action was organized by Students Occupy Boston – a working group of the Occupy Boston movement – and its core demand reflected the main theme of the national action: free public higher education for all.

Nate Matthews, a Tufts University student and press representative for Students Occupy Boston explained, “We held this march in solidarity with students in California, New York, and around the nation who called for action on these issues. Tuition has gone up by 900% since 1978, 650 points over inflation. Student debt has soared in recent years, nearing $1 trillion and passing credit card debt as the nation’s leading form of debt. If this bubble bursts, the effects will be felt throughout the economy.

http://tinyurl.com/7ampl4p

Education takes spotlight in Occupy protests

Student protesters said the recent activity among Occupy protesters nationwide does not reflect a new emphasis on education, but rather a possibly more narrow approach to addressing students’ concerns._The Occupy movement resurged Thursday with the National Day of Action for Education.

BU Occupies Boston members joined local supporters and protested throughout downtown Boston and at the Massachusetts State House Thursday, said College of Arts and Sciences junior Brandon Wood, a BU Occupies Boston member.

http://tinyurl.com/87kkvgc

For homeless advocate, paid employment doesn’t bring shelter

Cherie King, 36, has been living in and out of shelters since August 13, 2011. She’s homeless because she dropped everything to care for her mentally ill brother and bedridden mother, the latter of whom died last year. In her work as a homeless advocate with Occupy Boston, King has made it a point to bring light to her story, and to those of more than 1000 other Boston adults who are in the same predicament. She’s also quick to dispel homeless stereotypes: King doesn’t drink or use drugs, and she works as many part-time jobs as she can land. According to a 2011 survey by the US Department of Mayors, Boston’s homelessness rate is in moderate decline. Still, the plight of the working, struggling people on the street remains a real one.

According to past surveys, only about 30 percent of the homeless population in Boston is female. What makes it especially hard to be a woman on the street?

There are not enough beds for women in any shelters. At the same time, there are less services to help men. I came across a single father of a 12-year-old boy; the mother, who is also homeless, is out of the picture totally. There are very few services are out there to help this man keep his child.

http://tinyurl.com/6m92whq

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/8/12” »

Women Who Took the Pill Had an 8 Percent Higher Income by Age 50

In short, women on the pill are better able to get degrees, choose their occupation, and enter (and leave) the workforce when they want, which in turn gives them better footing with men in terms of commanding wages. “Our estimates imply that the pill can account for 10 percent of the convergence [of] the gender gap in the 1980s and 30 percent in the 1990s,” write the researchers.

http://tinyurl.com/6v5r4vq

Occupiers mic-check Israeli ambassador at AIPAC conference

Shortly after the people’s mic began, the crowd of AIPAC attendees reacted forcefully. Some of them climbed over chairs to reach the demonstrators, and one of the disruptors, Rick Colbath-Hess, was violently yanked down to the floor by his necktie. After the mic-check, Laura Kacere of Occupy DC and Ridgely Fuller of CODEPINK and Occupy Boston both stood on top of chairs and chanted “Don’t bomb Iran!” The AIPAC crowd responded by singing the Israeli national anthem, led by Representative Ros-Lehtinen, and the activists were eventually escorted out.

http://tinyurl.com/6m8rdf7

Privacy Mom Leads Collegiate Nation Against All Tracking

As part of its Occupy Privacy campaign on college campuses, Collegiate Nation announced today that it is promoting the message that college students should not have their youthful transgressions, photos or thoughts stored forever on data bases belonging to companies whose first loyalty is to advertisers, data miners and data brokers.

“Tracking those within our society who are most vulnerable, valuable and likely to make youthful mistakes is not only unethical but cruel,” stated Evelyn Castillo-Bach, the founder of Collegiate Nation — also known as GoCNCN.com

http://tinyurl.com/83glhcl

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/7/12” »

Coming together for schools – Activists gather around the country on March 1st to resist attacks on education

A MARCH 1 day of action turned out thousands of Californians to walkouts, rallies, teach-ins and other protests to take a stand against brutal cuts to public education.

At every level, from K-12 classrooms to universities and city colleges, students, teachers and staff are feeling the budget ax. California was the epicenter of the protests, but there were also other cities, such as New York City and Chicago, where activists also used the opportunity to show their resistance to education cuts in their states.
. . .

At an event happening at the same time for Mass White Ribbon Day addressing domestic abuse, organizers welcomed March 1 protesters. Students joined and spoke out against violence against women along with issues regarding education.

“This action shows that there is a core group of students in Boston dedicated to stopping the privatization and corporatization of higher education,” said UMass Boston student Chris Morrill. “While this was the first action organized since the end of last semester, it was an important step in a long process of building a mass movement for education.”

http://tinyurl.com/7a57yu6

Occupy Birth Control

I just finished reading 99 Nights with the 99 Percent, by journalist Chris Faraone. For his book, subtitled Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution, Faraone spend 99 nights (including days) in various cities across the country with Occupy protesters to examine who these individuals are, what they believe in, and what their daily grind consists of. Faraone’s narrative made me think about birth control. If you think that sounds like a wild leap, it’s not. Bear with me.
. . .

The vast majority of Americans want a just economic system, want banks held accountable for predatory lending and other immoral (and sometimes illegal) practices, and want the government held accountable for enabling these practices, the vast majority of women, and the men who care about them believe access to birth control is a right. The idea that women, 51 percent of the population, should have equitable health insurance coverage and the power to decide their own reproductive destinies is as much a no-brainer as the idea that in a democratic nation the rich should not be getting richer by neglecting and taking advantage of the poor.

So let’s occupy birth control. Women who use birth control and the men who support them need to speak up and speak out about this issue. Women, who have the unquestionable right to decide their own destinies, are the 99 percent. Imagine if we used Chris Faraone’s idea (I’m assuming he’ll forgive me for stealing it) and spent 99 Nights with the 99 percent of women all across America who use birth control. We would surely meet women of all walks of life, ages, races, professions and belief systems who are making a difference in their communities and families.

http://tinyurl.com/7rhk3db

Obama Moves G-8 From Chicago to Camp David: “Occupy Camp David” Explodes on Twitter

In a move that some are saying is a response to fears over massive Occupy protests, Obama announced Monday that he would be moving May’s G-8 summit from downtown Chicago to the rural presidential fortress of Camp David. “They are running scared from the people,” tweeted @OccupyWallStreetNYC.
. . .

Twitter users have been having a fun time recommending a “lovely camping trip in May” and making jokes about camping and tents,  but despite the posturing, the logistical nightmare of marshalling protesters anywhere close to Camp David will severely confine any kind of protest. Elite marine patrols wouldn’t help either.

Still, the area probably won’t escape protest-free: an Anonymous-affiliated account tweeted the location for another camp near Thurmond, MD: Cunningham Falls State Park, suggesting that protesters might want to make reservations. It’s not exactly in David itself, but since the media is going to have a much harder time getting credentialed at Camp David than they would have in Chicago, a nearby Occupy camp would likely be viewed as an acceptable alternative for coverage.

http://tinyurl.com/776oth8

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/6/12” »

The austerity-based class war against the American people

Rapidly rising deficits at both the federal and state and local government levels, along with prospective long-term financing problems in the Social Security and Medicare programs, have triggered a one-sided austerity-focused class war in the US and around the globe.

A coalition of the richest and most economically powerful segments of society, conservative politicians who represent their interests, and right-wing populist groups like the Tea Party has demanded that deficits be eliminated by severe cuts at all levels of government in spending that either supports the poor and the middle class or funds crucial public investment. It also demands tax cuts for the rich and for business. These demands constitute a deliberate attempt to destroy the New Deal project, begun in the 1930s, whose goal was to subject capitalism to democratic control.

In this paper I argue that our deficit crisis is the result of a shift from the New-Deal-based economic model of the early post-war period to today’s neoliberal, free-market model. The new model has generated slow growth, rising inequality and rising deficits. Rising deficits in turn created demands for austerity. After tracing the long-term evolution of our current deficit crisis, I show that this crisis should be resolved primarily by raising taxes on upper-income households and large corporations, cutting war spending, and adopting a Canadian or European style health care system. Calls for massive government spending cuts should be seen as what they are – an attack by the rich and powerful against the basic interests of the American people.

http://tinyurl.com/7cxvbfm

Obama’s middle-of-the-road austerity budget “less savage” than Republican proposals

(video)

http://tinyurl.com/6mhm8vo

The Secret Austerity Society: Bipartisan Group Works on Grand Bargain

Intransigence from Republicans basically kept us out of a grand bargain last year. Plenty of Democrats were willing to do it, the White House was more than willing to do it, and even John Boehner was willing to do it, at least on a conceptual level. But House Republicans wouldn’t betray their tax pledge and so it didn’t happen.

There are some different dynamics to the next round of the grand bargain. There are still enough Democrats willing to deal, led by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. The White House has de-emphasized a deficit deal, but their budget still shows a blueprint for one, and if they get revenue in exchange, they’ve stated openly that they would make cuts to Medicare and other social programs. So is there a new willingness on the Republican side? According to The Hill, Republicans have joined a bipartisan working group that is preparing a document on deficit reduction.

http://tinyurl.com/7h76q7s

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/5/12” »