Occupy Portland: #F29 Call to Action Against Corporations

(video)

Occupy Portland calls for a national day of non-violent direct action to reclaim our voices and challenge our society’s obsession with profit and greed by shutting down the corporations. We are rejecting a society that does not allow us control of our future. We will reclaim our ability to shape our world in a democratic, cooperative, just and sustainable direction. Already 30+ cities are planning actions. Get involved and find out more at www.shutdownthecorporations.org.

http://tinyurl.com/78zyncn

American Spring

Americans who lift their heads above the miasma of mediated unreality, commercial glitz, celebrity glamor, reality television, bloody police dramas, and war propaganda, a massive disinformation campaign designed to distract and pacify, gaze out upon an America with a crumbling infrastructure. They behold an economic landscape devastated by wholesale financial fraud and political corruption that has caused millions of American families to be evicted from their homes and many millions more robbed of their savings, a nation in which the super-rich get richer still at the expense of everyone else, a nation with a very uncertain future.

The most hopeful response to the financial elite’s controlled demolition of the American dream has come from those with the most to gain and little to lose, idealistic and technically savvy young people.

http://tinyurl.com/6qbnmjh

Chicago Parents, Students Occupy Piccolo Elementary, School Targeted For ‘Turnaround’

A group of Chicago parents, students and activists have staged a sit-in inside, as well as an encampment outside, a West Side elementary school that Chicago Public Schools has targeted for “turnaround.”

The protesters arrived at Brian Piccolo Elementary School early Friday evening to speak out against the school’s closure. Late last year, Piccolo was flagged as one of ten schools that would be “turned around,” meaning that its principal and the majority of its staff will be replaced and, in this case, the school’s management would be taken over by the well-connected charter program Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL).

http://tinyurl.com/72gmyxc

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 2/19/12” »

Occupy Harvard Holds ‘Think Tank’ in Lamont

A day before they plan to end their occupation of Lamont Library Café about 20 supporters of the Occupy Harvard movement talked in the café on Thursday night about the next steps that they will take after they leave this most recent encampment when the library closes at 10 p.m. on Friday.

This discussion was one in a series of small ‘think tanks’ that the group has held twice a day since the beginning occupation of the café Sunday night. According to a flyer distributed by the protesters on Thursday, the think tanks were intended as a “discussion forum where we will engage and collaborate on topics at the heart of our communities, the libraries, and occupation.”

Protesters said that they created the think tanks to make it easier for participants and visitors to contribute their opinions on a focused topic.

http://tinyurl.com/774tp9b

Occupodcast Launches

This week, the Occupodcast, – a series of in-depth conversations with individuals immersed in the occupy movement, launched at Occupodcast.org

Dennis Trainor, Jr, a writer, activist, and new media producer whose projects include Acronym TV and an upcoming documentary on the Occupy movement, will serve as host with episodes planned every Monday- Friday. The Occupodcast is available for free streaming and download at Occupodcast.org.

Guests in this, the first week of Occupodcast include Occupy Wall Street organizer and originator of the 99% call to action David DeGraw, Alli McCracken of Occupy DC, Occupy Harvard organizers Derin Korman & Hannah Hofeinz, Susie Cagle – a journalist covering Occupy Oakland, and Glenn Ford of Black Agenda Report discussing Occupy the Dream.

http://tinyurl.com/77ozwbp

Students weary about fallout from transit cuts

In preparation for a March 1 Waltham hearing on MBTA cuts, Student Union President Herbie Rosen ’12 and Vice President Gloria Park ’13 organized a Town Hall Forum on Monday night for members of the Brandeis community to voice their concerns and hear the university’s response to the recent MBTA plans.

While a handful of students attended the Town Hall meeting, others rallied at Occupy the MBTA, an extension of the overall Occupy movement. On Monday evening, protesters organized by the T-Riders Union took to the rail lines as a means of retaliating against proposed service reductions and fare increases.

“The atmosphere in the demo was incredible. Many familiar faces from the Occupy Boston community, standing strong with the T workers union,” Noam Lekach, organizer of the Brandeis protest, said.

http://tinyurl.com/74w2ya4

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 2/18/12” »

Students attend Occupy summit

Emerson occupiers joined more than 80 other college students at a summit at Harvard University Sunday to discuss systemic issues that do not normally receive attention at general assemblies, according to Emerson Occupies Boston member Mark Rizzo.

The Feb. 12 summit brought students from 18 local colleges and other New England schools to refocus the efforts of Boston’s student occupiers.

The summit started off with a discussion about student debt, and what students need to do to save themselves from being in debt after college, according to Rizzo.

http://tinyurl.com/6o3xw4n

Boston journalist, JP resident documents ’99 Nights’ with Occupy movement

A local award-winning political journalist from Jamaica Plain will release a book next month detailing his visits to protest camps across the country during the first three months of the Occupy movement that began in mid-September.

Chris Faraone, a Boston Phoenix staff writer in his early 30s, will release 99 Nights with the 99 Percent: Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution on March 27.

The 224-page book will include recently-completed, unpublished reporting, along with features Faraone published in the Phoenix, from Occupy camps in 10 cities that Faraone visited during the first three-months of the movement that spawned near Wall Street in New York City and spread as camps formed in municipalities nationwide to protest corporate greed, wealth imbalance, and money’s sway on politics.

http://tinyurl.com/7m59tb9

Breitbart website extensively excerpts Phoenix article on OB sex offender discussion to justify owner’s outburst at CPAC about rape at Occupations

Supporters of the Occupy movement have been on the defense ever since, some rushing to say that rapes and sex offenses have been minimal and don’t represent the whole of Occupy, others blindly and willfully claiming the incidents are non-existent entirely.  The truth is, whether it’s been 20 sex crimes or 2,000, one is too many.  And denying that rapes have occurred is as equally abhorrent as raping those victims all over again.

But don’t take an evil “Breitbart blogger’s” word for it, take it from some of the women from Occupy.

A comprehensive article last month from the Boston Phoenix about Occupy Boston provides remarkable insight into the inner-workings of the movement, as that camp struggles with the same challenges that have plagued so many other Occupy camps across the country in dealing with crime and harassment of a sexual nature.

http://tinyurl.com/7dasy3u

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 2/17/12” »

Longshore workers name Occupy Movement as crucial in settlement with EGT

On Friday, members of the ILWU and the labor community named the Occupy Movement as key to the settlement reached Thursday between ILWU Local 21 and the Export Grain Terminal (EGT). The contract finally provides for the use of ILWU labor in the grain terminal at the Port of Longview [Washington State]. After staging the December 12 port shutdowns in solidarity with Local 21, the West Coast Occupy Movement planned coordinated action together with labor allies for a land and water blockade of the EGT ship in Longview, should it attempt to use scab labor to load. Occupys in states where EGT’s parent company Bunge has its growth and operations were also planning actions against the company on the day of the arrival of the ship.

“This is a victory for Occupy in their involvement in forcing negotiations. Make no mistake – the solidarity and organization between the Occupy Movement and the Longshoremen won this contract,” said Jack Mulcahy, ILWU officer with Local 8. “The mobilization of the Occupy Movement across the country, particularly in Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and Longview were a critical element in bringing EGT to the bargaining table and forcing a settlement with ILWU local 21.”

http://tinyurl.com/6rhvdhd

With camps gone, Occupiers prepare for new fights

In interviews with Occupy groups in more than a dozen states – on both coasts and across the Midwest – activists described training for nonviolent confrontation, plans for spring rallies at state capitols and preparations for a major presence at the G-8 and NATO summits to be held in Chicago in May.

“We have had to get back to more conventional grassroots organizing methods to get more people involved and engaged,” said Chris Schwartz, a member of Iowa’s Occupy Cedar Valley. “What we’re doing is building out infrastructure for the spring.”

http://tinyurl.com/83uavgq

What We Owe to Each Other – An Interview with David Graeber

What we’ve seen over the last 30 years is a war on the human imagination. That’s the other starting point for this book-that in 2008 we had this crash, and all these assumptions we’ve been told we’ve had to accept for 30 years came crashing to the ground along with the market. One of them is the assumption that markets are actually self-sustaining. Obviously not true. Another one was that the people running them are competent. For years we were told that they aren’t very nice people-they’re greedy bastards, actually-but they know what they’re doing. All other systems just don’t work. These guys are incredibly bright, they’re incredibly competent. No, it turns out actually that they don’t even understand the working of their own financial instruments, or as far as they do, they’re engaged in scams. They trashed the entire system.

Assumption number three is that all debts ought to be repaid. Actually, no, debts don’t really need to be repaid, because AIG, who owes money, can wave a variety of different magic wands and debts can be made to disappear. Once you understand that the narrative we’ve been handed has been false, you’d think this would be the moment when you start thinking about larger questions: Why do we have an economy? What is debt? What is money? How could these things be organized differently? What do we need to keep and what do we change? You would think this would be the moment for international discussion about the basic assumptions that we’ve been making, and it seemed for about two weeks that it was going to happen.

http://tinyurl.com/77gnka9

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 2/16/12” »