Occupy Harvard Protesters Speak Out Against Layoffs

Approximately 45 protesters gathered in front of the Science Center on Tuesday with signs and a megaphone for a “Speak-Out Against Layoffs at Harvard.” The event, which was organized by the No Layoffs Campaign, the Student Labor Action Movement, and Occupy Harvard, featured short speeches from workers, students, and faculty opposing the layoffs of Harvard Library workers.

The speak-out is the latest in a series of protests and rallies regarding library layoffs following Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton’s Jan. 19 announcement that the library’s reorganization would include staff reductions.

Library assistant Geoff P. Carens, who introduced many of the speakers, said that events like these have “definitely raised awareness” about the situation facing library workers. He called the “speak-out” format “more of an opportunity to reach out to the broader community in a more conversational way.”

http://tinyurl.com/cl9s8hb

Harvard Students Celebrate Occupy Art

The alcohol was provided at Bring Your Own (BYO): Voices of the Contemporary’s discussion about the role of art in the Occupy movement at the Sert Seminar Space on Tuesday.

More than fifty college and community members delved into the open bar and Thai food at the “Unstable Art” discussion as they were greeted by the event’s facilitators-a various collection of Graduate School of Design students and artists.

“We really wanted to foster discussion about the involvement of art in the Occupy movement,” History of Art and Architecture graduate student Claire R. Grace said. “This evening is for open-form discussions, so that the conversation can form organically, much like the organizational structure of the Occupy movement.”

http://tinyurl.com/bwmafjt

Occupy Wall Street: Surviving the winter

(video)

Al Jazeera looks at how Occupy Wall Street continued to build itself through the winter months by following key organisers through planning meetings, days of action and assemblies – and how the movement must battle political co-optation in a US election year.

http://tinyurl.com/cqpxa8p

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/29/12” »

After major 1st Amendment ruling protecting citizens’ right to record arrests, Boston police settle lawsuit

Simon Glik was prosecuted for recording video of an arrest in a public place; a U.S. appeals court ruled the First Amendment protected his right to do so.

The city of Boston will pay $170,000 to settle a lawsuit that forced a landmark ruling on a citizen’s First Amendment right to record the activities of police officers in public. The settlement, announced today by the ACLU of Massachusetts, ends a case that produced a significant victory for those who believe citizens – and journalists – should have the right to record police activity in public places.

In October 2007, Glik he said he saw police officers arresting a teenager in the most public of places – the Boston Common – and pulled out his cellphone to start recording video. Within minutes, he was under arrest for illegal electronic surveillance under Massachusetts’ wiretapping statute.

http://tinyurl.com/84y24e9

Occupy Wall Street Goes to School

For all their irreverence, the protesters are becoming serious about their tactics. Over the next few weeks, demonstrators will take part in hundreds of training sessions in all 50 states. This weekend in New York, activists learned how to form human walls, surround each other in tightly locked circles, and scatter to pose as normal civilians, a technique that enables them to get around police lines before regrouping. Classes in New York will continue every Friday and culminate in a major protest on May 1.

http://tinyurl.com/cp6oewp

Occupy Spring

Almost from the moment Occupy Wall Street protesters were evicted from their camp in Zuccotti Park last November, observers have speculated whether the movement was finished, or if it would somehow rebound in the spring.
Dedicated Occupy activists dismissed the possibility that the movement had already run its course and promised an “American Spring,” kicking off a new season of activism with May Day events coordinated across the country.

As it turns out, spring came early.

http://tinyurl.com/cz2zywn

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/28/12” »

Who Rides the T? Justice in Transit According to the Demographics of the MBTA

According to the 2008 Ridership Survey, 25 percent of MBTA riders do not have access to a vehicle. Indeed, many area residents are not paid enough to afford a vehicle, and are barely scraping by. The Federal Poverty Level is defined as $10,380, but according to the Massachusetts Economic Independence Index 2010, a resident of Boston needs to make $28,717 annually just to make ends meet. The living wage number jumps to $45,931 for a household with one adult and one school-age child. Yet, according to the 2008 Ridership Survey, nearly 40 percent of MBTA riders have a household income less than $40,000, and 17 percent have a household income less than $20,000.

http://tinyurl.com/bqt25u3

Rightwing websites, bloggers, pundits and Fox News launch smear campaign against murdered black teen in Florida

Over the last 48 hours, there has been a sustained effort to smear Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old African-American who was shot dead by George Zimmerman a month ago. Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, said, “They killed my son, now they’re trying to kill his reputation.”

Thus far these attacks have fallen into two categories: false and irrelevant. Much of this leaked information seems intended to play into stereotypes about young African-American males. Here’s what everyone should know:

http://tinyurl.com/cr4es5g

Cash mobs tackle the issue of struggling local economies

cash mobs are a buy-local movement that combines social networking, small business and shopping. Most cash-mob organizers have a lot of Twitter followers and Facebook friends and set a time and place for people to meet and spend money.

For example, a group called Occupy Riverwest organized a cash mob in December at Fischberger’s Variety, 2445 N. Holton St. Dozens of people showed up at the same time and shopped, many buying holiday gifts. Owner Sarah Ditzenberger says the group spent about $1,200, which is twice what they would make on an average day.

Occupy Riverwest organized three more cash mobs in December. The second, called “Cafe Day,” was at Cafe Corazon, 3129 N. Bremen St., Riverwest Co-op Grocery and Cafe, 733 E. Clarke St., and Cafe Centro, 808 E. Center St.

http://tinyurl.com/d5vyzsa

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/27/12” »

Memo Show Corzine Ordered Raiding MF Global Customer Account of $200 Million

We know America is a hopeless kleptocracy, but if Corzine does not go to jail, given the revelation that he approved the raiding of a customer account of $200 million, it means that no one in the officialdom is interested in keeping up the pretense that we have a functioning regulatory and judicial system.

http://tinyurl.com/7n6hxnu

Capitalist Life-Crises and The North American Left: Problems and Prospects

The struggles across the Middle East and North Africa and on-going resistance to austerity in Europe catalysed a fightback in North America – the Occupy Movement – that no one saw coming. Together, all testify to the pervasive and deepening crisis of capitalism, not just as an economic system, but as a comprehensive way of living and valuing.

This civilizational crisis creates the opportunity for a renewal of socialist politics, but also poses hard questions to socialists: what does capitalist crisis mean on the deepest levels, what are the lessons of the Occupy movement, what ought our relationship to existing political and social institutions be, and how to do we go about building a broad democratic movement that has a plausible chance of overcoming capitalist life-crises? The following ten theses aim to be part of a conversation, not the conclusion to an argument.

http://tinyurl.com/7tv8xcj

Letter to the editor: Cape Occupiers, like many, grateful to Calvary Baptist

Occupy Cape Cod has been meeting at the Calvary Baptist Church for the past five months. We have been welcomed there in an extraordinarily generous way, which seems to be characteristic of Pastor Smith and his congregation.

They give witness to Christ and what it means to follow him.

http://tinyurl.com/7fp25jy
Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/26/12” »

Law that enabled Trayvon Martin killing: ‘Hard to imagine a more radical attack on the justice system as we know it’
Florida lawmakers and the NRA are operating within a broader ideological framework. As NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer put it: “Through time, in this country, what I like to call bleeding heart criminal coddlers want you to give a criminal an even break, so that when you’re attacked, you’re supposed to turn around and run, rather than standing your ground and protecting yourself and your family and your property … Taking away the rights of law-abiding people and putting them in jeopardy of being prosecuted and then sued by criminals who were injured when they were committing crimes against victims is wrong.”

This rationale has several key hallmarks of conservative ideology: It adopts the liberal language of rights – but only to take them away from some, while turning them into privileges for others. It also pretends to be protecting the law-abiding against the criminal, and to oppose the erosion of traditional rights by the presumably liberal “bleeding heart criminal coddlers”. But the reality is exactly the opposite. Outside the home, the duty to retreat is the traditional common law doctrine. Hammer and the NRA are the ones radically altering the law. And the second prong – prohibiting criminal prosecution – goes even further.

“As the law stands, it contradicts the entire purpose behind the justice system. It takes the decision out of the hands of the jurors,” said Brian Cavanagh, head of the state attorney’s homicide unit, commenting with regard to a Broward County case in December 2011. It’s hard to imagine a more radical attack on the justice system as we know it.

http://tinyurl.com/89bjhvb

Mass state senator’s proposed legislation resembles  FL ‘Stand Your Ground’ law at issue in Trayvon Martin’s death

Under the legislation by Sen. Stephen M. Brewer, a Barre Democrat, the state would expand its current “Castle Doctrine,” which says a person has no duty to retreat from intruders at home before using deadly force.

Brewer’s bill would expand that Castle principle to using deadly force in public anyplace the person has a right to be. The principle is called the Stand Your Ground Principle. More than two dozen states have passed either the Castle Doctrine, Stand Your Ground or both, according to the Associated Press.

Florida’s “stand your ground law” is receiving new scrutiny after a 17-year-old, unarmed black man was shot to death by a neighborhood watch captain in a gated community. The captain is claiming self-defense during a confrontation.

http://tinyurl.com/8yn55q6

What is at the core of Occupy Wall Street movement?

(video)

Obstacles to unity between Occupy and US blacks ‘a political cultural problem.’

http://tinyurl.com/7dnrlwf

Wall Street Wage Gaps Give Women Yet Another Reason To Occupy

“Women who want to earn more on Wall Street than their male colleagues have one reliable option. They can set up a shoe-shine stand in Lower Manhattan.”

So concluded Bloomberg reporter Frank Bass after crunching Census data on the gender wage gap in various professions. His findings: Out of 265 major occupations, service work such as shoe shining and personal care was the only one in which women earned, on average, more than men ($1.02 to every $1). And the high-paying jobs of Wall Street had the biggest gap:

The six jobs with the largest gender gap in pay and at least 10,000 men and 10,000 women were in the Wall Street-heavy financial sector: insurance agents, managers, clerks, securities sales agents, personal advisers and other specialists.

http://tinyurl.com/6po9sew

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/25/12” »