Occupy Wall Street is still sending out posts and communiques. Apparently, the National Lawyers Guild has activated its “strike force” due to large numbers of arrests, reportedly at least 80-100 with some level of injured arrestees. USA Today is also documenting arrests.
The group’s website is now putting out a call, and appears to be scheduling an “Occupy Boston” using facebook. If you use facebook, search for “Occupy Boston” and you will find a page with 300+ members. You heard it first here.
Please share widely!
And BOY, am I happy I’m not working in the city anymore!
Drawing attention to these issues close to an election would not be good for your party.
No, Occupy Boston is not a farce. Yes, this is happening. We aren’t a secretive group working in the shadows; we are still forming, still working out our first movements, and we would love to have you on board. Despite what you might be hearing from the teeny weeny bit of MSM (mainstream media) coverage we’re getting, we aren’t a bunch of smelly trustafarian hipsters. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. We are a diverse group of individuals from all walks of life. We are tired of seeing our and our parents’ retirement funds being pillaged by Wall Street; we want JOBS; we want our government to protect unions, to reinforce infrastructure, and to fairly tax the top 1% of wage earners.
Some of us are in NYC right now; some of us are here in Boston. Therefore, organizing is taking some time; we are taking cues from NYC and other city movements across the country (Phoenix, SF, Seattle, LA, etc etc), trying to coalesce something that has quite literally sprung up overnight into something cohesive.
Join us! add us on the facebook site here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Boston/178047252273900
On Twitter: @occupy_boston and @occupybeantown and if you add us back we’ll DM you and are happy to hear your suggestions about organizational tactics. Transparency is key.
Look for us at the postal union action on Tuesday afternoon at Government Center, the Rumsfeld protest at the State House on Monday night, and wandering around downtown mapping out camping/march sites- assuming we aren’t stuck in a jail cell in NYC. We are the 99%, and you are too. JOIN US!
–Occupy Boston
Just noticed. Apparently something is planned for next Tuesday, read above.
Tuesday night, 7:30 PM on Boston Common by the gazebo. If we get in trouble for assembling without a protest (we have no idea whether we’ll have 5 attendees or 50!), we will become a roving protest.
sorry, I totally wrote that wrong. It’s been a long day, and I’m on my 14th straight day of working with no days off (FYI, hopefully that’ll dispel your “oh, she’s a bored, unemployed young person with nothing better to do). If we get in trouble for assembling without a PERMIT, we will become a roving MEETING.
Now, off to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
intended ironically? please? “Organize a general assembly”? Eh??
Tip: I worry that this kind of group doesn’t have the margin for error of a funny like that. Too easy to get pegged as eco-anarchists, ANSWER, etc.
Or maybe that’s what you are. Please prove otherwise.
And I don’t feel like I “know” what has happened in NYC – or is happening, and that concerns me, too. So my efforts are to try and get good coverage – but also, I am well aware that there are far too many in the 20-30 age group with nothing better to do, economic refugees of a sort.
@Charley: “general assembly” is the term that the Wall Street protesters use for the meetings that they have throughout the day. This is how they spread information, come to make decisions about what to do, etc. Using a bullhorn is apparently illegal in NYC, and due to the fact that there are hundreds of people at their meetings, they have had to resort to a creative tactic. one person speaks, the people who can hear that person turn around and tell the person behind them, and so on and so forth.
Our first meeting in Boston will be our first “general assembly”.
I think the left’s fear of protesters looking like a bunch of hippies or, these days, hipsters, has prevented us from stopping the media from ignoring protests.
We allowed it to happen many years ago because we were too afraid of the way they looked or the fact that they were “arrested” (which used to be a badge of honor during the Southern Freedom Movement/civil rights era), because they sat in the wrong spot or because police or the powers that be got fed up with protestersand made stuff up. We were afraid to look bad so instead of standing up for the people who were standing up and fighting the good fight — because they wore their hair the wrong way or didn’t have an office job — it was better that they were ignored than we actually act on what was important.
For so long has that festered that it’s still a prevalent view by Americans and even some on the left, and why — far from cheering protesters for having the courage to put their convictions to the test — many utterly disdain them, or ignore them for fear of being “tainted” by them, guilt-by-association style.
I actually think it’s pretty sick. Stop that nonsense, Charley. These people are the first people to actually stand up loud at the street level and get any kind of attention, combating the stuff Wall Street has done to us. They have real cajones to do it on/near Wall Street and if they keep it up, they *will* win and could really spark something from it. Your disdain for them, if it’s shared by enough on the left, could just snuff out one of our last hopes of achieving a popular movement to save this country that we could get.
Female protesters penned and maced
See: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/recognize-men-and-women-who-are-occupying-wall-street/tX0ZX8Z7
Who are the lost generation? Those who are now between 20 and 30 – the old keep working, the young graduate to a shrinking economy and no jobs in their fields, and diminished opportunities for training. These are the folks in Liberty Square, among others.
The link, again, at the White House Blog’s petition site is
And NO I didn’t start the Petition!
They destroyed our economy and millions of jobs and homes that were lost.
No wait, they got billions in salaries and bonuses and those protesting get arrested.
Part of organizing is diligence in promotion. The less flash ($) in advertizing the more vocal or creative organizing must be.
The organization is not single-minded. It is the common dissatisfaction of many individual situations.
As folks meet-up, they will recognize the unique qualities of personal struggles -economic, civil, legal, environmental, etc. Overlap awareness will also emerge.
I have made some sharp critiques of the Days of Rage, Occupy Wall St. movements (http://t.co/JWykPvLP) -as have I against the J14 (Israel) encampments and most other matters which offer me alternatives but remained mired in archane thought and processes. (The Take The Square movements seem more suited to my particular æsthetics)
This does not mean I do not work toward the continued empowerment of those we have come to know as “The 99%”, the bottom 99%. Those who the top 1% buy, sell, own and operate. Those who seek to grow beyond the shakles of their current corporate existance, whether the CEO be a mere human of psychopathic tendence or a mythical deity.
In the interest of transparancy, I will acknowledge that I have been shut out of the organizational structure of Occupy Boston. This is acceptable. I already occupy Boston, as do all the other folks I have refered to above.
I will be following along at some level and ‘blogging’ the topic. Perhaps some of you will follow along with me. That would be nice. However, should I liberate myself alone, I am free, and if I assist and am assited by one or more, as we’ll. In the words of Charlie Sheen, “Winning!” What a media-manipulated mediation! The point I hoped to make is that either road leads to freedom, and freedom is the goal.
To be free, one must first self-organize. Then one must help others, not ask for help. Or as the Buddha stated, “Before Enlightenment one chops wood and carries water. After Enlightenment, one chops wood and carries water.” If I see him, I will kill him for all of our good.
They were just a few women peacefully protested, seperated from the police and other protesters by orange, plastic netting the police had used to “herd” the crowds…
and then a vicious cop comes out there and pepper sprays them right in the freaking eyes!
Here’s an article — with the youtube video — from The Guardian. It’s been almost impossible to read any press about these protests in the MSM in the US, but it was front page in the Guardian.
I hope these vile, underhanded tactics will inspire many more people to protest. The so called “leaders” of our country and the corporate MSM overlords are TERRIFIED of what’s going on in NY and desperately want to stop it from gaining traction, but we can’t let that happen. People need to see and hear this stuff so they know people are fighting back — that’s the only way we’ll start to see the rank and file people, the 99% of us who aren’t at the top, join in.
…why isn’t anybody in power getting out front and volunteering to be the leader, or at least voice, of this movement? Sounds like it could be a political winner.
Plenty of people with some sort of power have spoken out on our behalf. We’re finally getting some MSM coverage. Rapper Lupe Fiasco has been there since day one; he’s everyone’s favorite famous guy right now. Michael Moore keeps speaking out about it. The thing is though, we don’t want one politician or celebrity running the show. This is a people’s movement.
Come out Tuesday night, you guys! It’s gonna be something interesting, I promise.
if someone tried to claim it, I don’t think they’d be accepted and it may even be enough to kill it. I think people like Michael Moore are being very smart in encouraging it, in applauding it — but not in trying to take leadership of it, or claim it as theirs.
I think this will be more effective and popular if it remains something organic and relatively leaderless, at least in terms of there being no real ‘spokespersons.’ There will always be ‘leaders’ in the grassroots…. but with much of the best grassroots, the ‘leaders’ are the people who call 5 friends and make them come — and I think that’s becoming more and more true as time goes on and information and communication tools allow people more options to organize and learn.
What I’m suggesting is that someone seeking office, whether incumbent or challenger, can say to these people, “I hear your concerns, and if you elect me I will address them.” After all, only law enacted by elected officials can ultimately change the system that is the cause of the offense.
“Occupy Wall Street” sounds like a romantic aspiration from a grainy, old-fashioned leftist movie, but what’s the point? What sort of popular movement will it stir? Whose mind is it trying to change?
Whose mind could it change?
Keith Olberman interviews Michael Moore on the Occupy Wall Street movement
Mayor Bloomberg “There will be riots in the street if there are not jobs soon”.
Moore believes that this movement will spread, and this coverage interviews folks, laid off workers, makes clear that this is all about corporate greed and holding those who crashed America and robbed us all accountable – as well as several speakers stating that the Citizens United decision is robbing them of their future.
Moore believes that the working poor have suffered long enough and will erupt like a geyser – and what will be known is that Occupy Wall Street is where change all began.