Video: Mel King tells Occupy Boston: “You have the right to revolution”

King Mel is a long-time Boston community activist and civil rights leader who served as State Representative and ran for Mayor of Boston in 1982.

King told the Boston occupiers, “You have the right to alter and change. You have that right. You are deserving, and no change comes to any individual or group until they assert themselves that they are deserving?Your message is getting into peoples minds and you’re saying ‘we are deserving.'” Waving in his hand the second issue of “The Boston Occupier” (the local counterpart to the “Occupy Wall Street Journal”) King added, “You have the right to revolution.”

http://blastmagazine.com/the-news/local-news/video-mel-king-tells-occupy-boston-you-have-the-right-to-revolution/

“Home For The Holidays”: Housing Activists Announce Successful Relocation Of Evicted Family

According to a City Life press release issued Thursday, mortgage holder Deutsche Bank’s foreclosure of the Fowler Street home was discovered by housing advocates to be “faulty.” The owner, said the release, will rent the house rather than move back in.

http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/2134

[City Life/Urbana Vida is a 38-year-old activist organization focusing on issues of economic and social justice, especially around housing. In 2007 it launched a Post-Foreclosure Eviction Defense campaign, and has recently invited Occupy Boston to join in its direct action efforts, including occupying foreclosed homes to return them to their rightful owners. While other occupations around the country may act alone to occupy foreclosed homes, many within Occupy Boston aspire to work in alliance with experienced activists such as those at City Life/Urbana Vida. Occupy Boston will join with City Life / Vida Urbana for an”Occupy our Homes” rally and march on Monday, December 19, 2011 at noon at 10 Causeway St. in Boston, the Boston Regional Office of HUD.]

‘Occupy’: Helping to restore the Greenway

The Occupy Boston encampment took a toll on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Officials estimate the clean-up bill could total $60,000. On their own initiative, the protesters have raised about $3,500 toward defraying clean-up costs – a welcome gesture. Occupy Boston made accountability a key theme, demanding that financial firms should be responsible for messes they’ve made. The protesters made their point powerfully, and helped change the national dialogue. Now they can lead by example.

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2011/12/16/occupy-helping-restore-greenway/2l6uuYVvTHRKzKUNYKwMeN/story.html

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 12/17/2011” »

Occupy Everywhere

Just hours after a 5 am police raid cleared Dewey’s tent city – Occupiers braved the cold to regroup at the Boston Common bandstand. On Sunday, they met there again to get down to business, planning a new strategy: Occupy Everywhere.
Already, neighborhood Occupy outposts are popping up from Allston to the suburbs. In Boston this week, more than a dozen well-attended working groups met each day. Without the burden of maintaining the campsite, the focus has been on action, and lots of it.

Whatever else Occupy was, it was a home to people who now need new accommodations – but the passion and resolve of Occupiers is intact.

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/131316-occupy-everywhere/

Occupy Boston camp raided

“While Occupy Boston protesters may be exercising their expressive rights during the protest, they have no privilege under the First Amendment to seize and hold the land on which they sit,” McIntyre declared in her decision. “The act of occupation, this court has determined as a matter of law, is not speech. Nor is it immune from criminal prosecution for trespass or other crimes.”
It should also be noted that on December 8, there were two right-wing bigots who attempted to disrupt our General Assembly by telling us that we should leave. There were only the latest in a line of wreckers and police provocateurs who have attempted to disrupt our General Assemblies over the weeks. Fortunately, our chanting was able to drown them out, and they left early.

http://socialistworker.org/2011/12/15/occupy-boston-camp-raided

Judge rules that Occupy Movement protesters are common trespassers

For interest to our real estate readers, the Judge balanced the City?s property rights vs. the protesters First Amendment speech rights. The judge ultimately concluded that the “occupation” as practiced by the Occupy Boston protesters – physically taking over the public park from the City and to the exclusion of others – was a classic trespass and not a First Amendment right.

http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/blogs/renow/2011/12/judge_rules_tha.html

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 12/15/2011” »

Time’s Person of the Year: The Protester

The nonleader leaders of Occupy are using the winter to build an organization and enlist new protesters for the next phase. They have shifted the national conversation. As Politico recently reported, the Nexis news-media database now registers almost 500 mentions of “inequality” each week; the week before Occupy Wall Street started, there were only 91. But what would count, a few years hence, as success? According to gung-ho Adbusters editors Kalle Lasn and Micah White, it’s already “the greatest social-justice movement to emerge in the United States since the civil rights era.” Yet it took a decade to get from the Montgomery bus boycott to the federal civil rights acts, which were just the end of the beginning.

The wisest Occupiers understand that these are very early days. But as long as government in Washington – like government in Europe – remains paralyzed, I don’t see the Occupiers and Indignados giving up or losing traction or protest ceasing to be the defining political mode. After all, the Tea Party protests subsided only after Tea Partyers achieved real power in 2010 by becoming the tail wagging the Republican Party dog. When radical populist movements achieve big-time momentum and attention, they don’t tend to stand down until they get some satisfaction.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2101745_2102132_2102373,00.html

Occupy protesters arraigned; some get probation

Arrested on the denuded Dewey Square early Saturday, 24 Occupy Boston protesters were arraigned yesterday in what has become a familiar place to the movement, Courtroom 17 in Boston Municipal Court.

Five men and three women refused offers of probation and decided to continue to fight the charges. Another 16 defendants accepted probation, from six months to a year, and were ordered to stay away from Dewey Square.

http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/12/13/occupy-protesters-arraigned-some-get-probation/aJTspKJ5czqJeNobXSbUGN/story.html

Occupiers seize the day – in court

Sixteen Occupy Boston protesters accepted prosecutors’ offer of pre-trial probation yesterday while eight others were arraigned in Boston Municipal Court and released on their own recognizance after their eviction from their Dewey Square encampment.

“We are going to continue taking over public space – with permits – to spread our message,” said Daniel Chavez, 23, of Boston. “There’s even more passion now. We don’t need tents to continue to build momentum for this movement.”

Chavez, like most of the protesters, was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest. The resisting arrest charge for Chavez and 11 other protesters who agreed to a year’s pretrial probation was dropped, according to the DA’s office. If they stay away from Dewey Square and don’t break any laws, they will not be arraigned and their cases will be dismissed, the DA’s office said. Four female protesters were placed on six months’ pretrial probation with the same conditions.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_1214occupiers_seize_the_day__in_court/

Tiny tents in Dewey

Photographer Aaron Spagnolo took a miniature Coleman tent down to the newly refurbished Dewey Square for some camera fun. I am no expert when it comes to photography like this but it’s pretty cool.

http://boston.com/community/blogs/less_is_more/2011/12/tiny_tents_in_dewey.html?comments=all#readerComm

[see the pictures on Flickr here:]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronspagnolo/6506656161/in/set-72157628406065771/

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 12/14/2011” »

Beyond the Rhetoric: The Complicated, Brief Life of Occupy Boston

Whatever you think of the Occupy Wall Street’s tactics, methods or politics, one thing is indisputable: the Occupy Wall Street movement make people emotional. Even after wading through confusion to understand how Occupy actually works, people tend to love it or hate it.

And Boston is an emotional city. More than any occupy I visited, passersby would scream and honk in support and derision many times a day.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/brief-complex-life-of-occupy-boston/?pid=212&pageid=34330&viewall=true

Occupy Boston: ‘This is a movement of the mind’

Occupy Boston protesters marched back to Dewey Square on Monday. It doesn’t look like the place they remember. Barricades up, police standing guard, walling off the newly planted sod at Dewey Square from the occupiers who took over and called this place home for more than two months.

“I’m glad we’re here just to show that we’re not locked down on a physical property because this is a movement of the mind,” Carlos Ashmanskas of Quincy said, adding that he had camped out since Sept. 30.

http://www.necn.com/12/12/11/Occupy-Boston-This-is-a-movement-of-the-/landing_newengland.html?blockID=610998&feedID=4206

Boston counts, counsels homeless

In Downtown Crossing, Mayor Thomas M. Menino and emergency shelter director Jim Greene offered assistance to Courtney Smith, 35, during Boston’s homeless census last night.

Menino and Greene spent several minutes talking to Harris, as an activist passing by with a tray of sandwiches from an Occupy Boston meeting handed him one.

“I’ve been feeding the homeless for a long time,” said the activist, David Lamoso, 30, of East Boston. “We did it a lot in Dewey Square” where Occupy Boston had been located. As the night and the count went on, some homeless residents accepted transportation to shelters, while other refused.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/12/13/boston-counts-counsels-homeless/IcX5EnERCaG84LkqsTfr6I/story.html

Boston Herald runs photos of arrested Occupy protesters as columnist mocks

Howie Carr: A mug shot is worth a thousand words. And these BPD mug shots from Occupy Boston tell us quite a story, namely, how greasy and dirty you’ll look if you stop bathing for weeks at a time.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view/2011_1213wonder_why_occupy_lugs_have_no_jobs/

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 12/13/2011” »