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    The OB Media Rundown for 1/25/12

    January 24th, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 1/25/12

    State of the (Occupied) Union

    Remember the protesters who commandeered New York’s Zuccotti Park and clashed with Oakland police this fall, in the name of the “99 percent”? Tuesday’s speech was arguably their greatest accomplishment yet, as the president called economic fairness “the defining issue of our time.”

    http://tinyurl.com/7gpuj2h

    The Cost of Commuting: MBTA’s Fare Proposals

    Bostonians have been expressing their outrage about these proposals all over the online world and the topic itself is being tackled by hundreds of bloggers, journalists, and commuters all over the metro Boston area!

    Twitter has been at the front of this frenzy with thousands of users tweeting their comments to MBTA of?cials (@mbtaGM), State Officials (@MassGovernor ), or just out to the Twitterverse hoping that someone out there is listening. Several groups have also formed out of the frustration, such as Occupy MBTA (@OccupyMBTA) a Twitter adopting the moniker of the Occupy Boston movement and Students Against T Cuts, (@StudentsTCuts) a group that consists of college students from around Boston who believe that the proposed scenarios are a step backwards in the development of the city’s businesses, people, and institutions of higher education.

    http://tinyurl.com/7adztw7

    No Layoffs for Harvard Libraries

    On January 19, Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton told stunned Harvard Library staff that their numbers were to shrink. She announced that the cuts would be accomplished by July, through voluntary and involuntary means. Officials would rewrite some job descriptions and eliminate other jobs completely, and staffers would have to apply for a smaller number of reconfigured positions.
    . . .

    During its last wave of mass layoffs, Harvard maintained, unpersuasively, that a drop in its huge endowment made job losses inevitable. After a 21.4 percent jump in the endowment during the last fiscal year, to $32 billion, Harvard cannot possibly make any such claims today. Union activists believe the University’s plans to cut costs come at the expense of local communities. In a particularly ominous development, 15 out of 22 employees at Harvard Health Publications learned on January 11 that they would lose their jobs in March. The devastated staffers of HHP must wonder how they will find new positions in the current bleak economy. As of last week, library workers must wonder the same thing.

    However, since 2008, the ground has shifted. The Occupy Wall Street movement has pointed a glaring spotlight at social inequalities, the concentration of wealth, and widespread unemployment. Harvard’s workers have actively participated in Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard. Important links have been built, and potentially powerful networks have risen up. Employees who stayed on the sidelines of past years’ pickets now boldly advocate direct action to fight the planned cuts. No Layoffs campaigners know they will have many more allies this time around.

    http://tinyurl.com/7gljdv9

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 1/25/12” »

    The OB Media Rundown for 1/24/12

    January 23rd, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 1/24/12

    Protesters stand with Malden foreclosure victim as she battles Wells Fargo

    A 23-year Malden resident is claiming victory after Wells Fargo decided to repurchase her house at a foreclosure auction this afternoon, a move she said would give her leverage to re-negotiate her mortgage and keep her children in their home.

    Marie Odestin was joined by 30 protesters outside of her home, with members from groups as varied as City Life, Occupy Boston and the Industrial Workers of the World, who said they were trying to send a message to banks like Wells Fargo that they should work with underwater homeowners.

    “The Odestin family was mistreated, ignored and stonewalled by Wells Fargo,” City Life Lead Organizer Dominic DeSiata said, accusing the bank of giving the family the runaround as they tried to re-negotiate their loan. “Wells Fargo has been bailed out by taxpayers, and they should be working with people in our communities (to reach) a fair outcome.”

    http://tinyurl.com/74ta7de

    Students set up camp and occupy UMass Boston

    Borrowing a page from the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, about 20 students on Monday occupied the campus center at University of Massachusetts Boston to protest cuts in public education spending and hikes in tuition.

    “Public universities were built for the 99-percent and we intend on maintaining that,” said Amanda Achin, a 22-year-old student of political science at UMass Boston. “We need to end the wars, tax the rich and fund public education.”

    http://tinyurl.com/86rxel8

    The MBTA’s Proposed Fare Hikes And Service Cuts Draw Attack

    MBTA officials absorbed withering attacks Monday on their proposals to hike fares up to 43 percent and slash dozens of bus routes, commuter rail hours, weekend E Line service and ferry service.

    A familiar refrain – that the elimination of services would strand people in their homes, shatter a fragile economy and worsen pollution – was amplified during a hearing on the proposed fare hikes and service cuts that drew dozens of boisterous opponents to the state Transportation Building in downtown Boston.

    Eliminating weekend and late-night commuter rail service, a component of one of the proposals, would prohibit visitors from the South Shore and central Massachusetts from attending Boston sports games, some of the critics argued. Others drew on the language of Occupy Boston to argue that the “1 percent” had bankrupted the T by borrowing to support the Big Dig and then foisting the fiscal burden on riders.

    http://tinyurl.com/7jdn8om

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 1/24/12” »

    The OB Media Rundown for 1/22/12

    January 22nd, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 1/22/12

    Spain’s “Indignados” and the Globalization of Dissent

    (video)

    The Occupy Movement has taken much of its inspiration from Spain’s “Outraged” Movement: what lessons does Spain have for Occupy now?

    http://tinyurl.com/6pjhno2

    ‘The real effects of SOPA and PIPA are going to be very different from the proposed effects’

    (video at bottom of post)

    What happens when a government hollows out?

    Answer:  Private interests take control of the machinery of state to enhance and protect their profitability.

    In some cases, this results in simple looting (like the US mortgage fiasco and EU meltdown).  In others, Byzantine laws and rules are enacted that crush innovation and trample personal rights.

    http://tinyurl.com/75qezex

    Occupiers Glitter-Bomb Santorum At South Carolina Primary Night Speech

    Members of Occupy Charleston “glitter-bombed” Rick Santorum at the tail end of his speech here at the Citadel tonight.

    The occupiers, mostly College of Charleston students, shouted “Occupy!” and threw green glitter in the direction of the podium. One of the students told BuzzFeed afterwards that “I got him in the face!”

    Men in the audience tried to contain the group of about 10 protesters — including an elder son of the reality-TV Duggar family — getting hit with glitter themselves in the process. Police removed the protesters from the event as they yelled “Bigot! Bigot!” and “Occupy is everywhere!” An attendee of the speech hit one of them in the face on their way out the door.

    Before being able to get a picture of the protesters or even ask for their names, BuzzFeed was ordered to leave the Citadel campus — which is public — by Charleston police officers. The officers pushed and shoved this reporter and ripped away an iPhone, saying “No cameras!” as occupiers chanted “She is press!”

    http://tinyurl.com/82ar84p

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 1/22/12” »

    The OB Media Rundown for 1/21/12

    January 21st, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 1/21/12
    ‘Occupy the Courts’ protesters blast Citizens United ruling[Thousands of Occupy supporters protested yesterday separately in cities and towns around the country, yielding dozens of articles – too many to link here.]

    Facing freezing temperatures and snowy weather, several hundred protesters gathered at courthouses in Chicago and across the nation Friday as they protested a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed most limits on corporate and labor spending in federal elections.
    . . .
    In Boston, fife and drum music played as protesters rallied at the federal courthouse. Some protestors even dressed their dogs in pinstripes and red ties, saying that dogs should be able to vote if big businesses basically can.

    http://tinyurl.com/7njkpmw

    Boston rally protests corporate election funds

    About 200 people in Boston joining a national “Occupy the Courts” protest on Friday to mark the second anniversary of a Supreme Court decision on campaign financing.

    They rallied at the federal courthouse against a ruling that says the First Amendment prevents government from limiting election spending by corporations and unions.

    State Rep. Cory Atkins told protesters it’s “an outright felony” corporations can give unlimited money for political donations while citizens can’t. She asked demonstrators to work to pass a state resolution calling on Congress to overturn the high court’s decision.

    http://tinyurl.com/7mq3ea2

    Protesters Occupy the Courts

    It was the federal courts’ turn to get occupied Friday, as demonstrators across the country gathered to protest the two-year anniversary of a controversial Supreme Court ruling that extended the rights of natural persons to corporations.

    It is a “preposterous notion that corporations are people and enjoy the same rights as citizens,” said Marc Strickland, who brought his 10-year-old son with him to LA’s downtown federal building. “It takes away a fundamental part of the democratic process.”

    Federal buildings in Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Santa Barbara, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Courthouse in Riverside were on the list to be occupied in a string of demonstrations across Southern California.

    http://tinyurl.com/7d3ol6a

     

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 1/21/12” »

    The OB Media Rundown for 1/20/12

    January 20th, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 1/20/12
    Inequality in the Boston real estate market: The disparity from town to town is nothing new, but is the gulf widening?

    A recent report unveiled in December at Harvard Law School suggests this is the case in the Northern suburbs. And the New York Times noted the national pattern of erstwhile middle-class neighborhoods shrinking, “as rising income inequality left a growing share of families in neighborhoods that are mostly low-income or mostly affluent.” Built up largely with modest homes in immediate post-war years, Lexington was generally not considered “affluent” until the 1980s. That has changed drastically since then, and many of those houses are disappearing.

    http://tinyurl.com/7va4xr5

    Occupy Storms All 3 Branches of Government

    (video)

    http://tinyurl.com/74o5omu

    The New Student Activism

    ASHLEY WARD, an aspiring idealist with waning faith in the world, was standing in the newsroom of her college paper at Humboldt State University in Northern California when a fellow student rushed in with startling news.

    Three thousand miles due east, on a tiny patch of Lower Manhattan, people were camping out to protest Wall Street, decrying its stranglehold on politics and continuing enrichment as the economy flatlined. It was the first that Ms. Ward, then a senior, had heard of Occupy Wall Street, and as she learned more about it, her heart glowed. “I’ve been waiting for something to happen for years,” she said. “I was personally starting to get afraid that something like this wouldn’t happen in my lifetime.”
    . . .

    While students as recently as 2009 were taking over campus buildings – across California and in New York, at the New School – Occupy has drawn a wider swath. Previously apolitical students have been drawn by personal woes – their parents’ vanishing 401(k)’s, their fears of the job market. “This has been a catalyst for getting more students involved,” said Anne Wolfe, 20, a junior at Tufts who is working with protesters at Boston University and camped out at Occupy Boston.

    “We’re able to get out of our own college bubble,” she said.

    http://tinyurl.com/6tzyqv5

    Occupy Boston takes on MBTA fare hikes, service cuts

    As public opposition mounts for service cuts and fare hikes proposed by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Occupy Boston activists have turned their attention to the issue.

    Working largely through social media, an Occupy MBTA group has begun an effort to organize opposition to the MBTA’s proposals. At 3 p.m. Wednesday, the group’s Twitter account had 176 followers.

    http://tinyurl.com/7xgyx8k

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 1/20/12” »

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