The first issue of the Boston Occupier publishes the results of Occupy Boston’s survey as to the core problems in the United States, and the initial consensus involved in remedies for those problems. This survey involved emailing surveys three times to EVERYONE who had provided email addresses to Occupy Boston, was designed by a young man studying in this field, with consensus input from both a working group, and every recipient who emailed back.
Journalism students and journalism graduates, as well as others are working together to create this online and hardcopy newspaper. There is information in this paper concerning Occupy Boston, and other issues, you cannot access anywhere else. This project shows part of the reason that “the medium is the message” since the visible encampment facilitates human connection, such as this working group. 25,000 copies were also printed and distributed, with this project funded via kickstarter . As an aside, if you want to create a movie, a magazine, a CD of your music, kickstarter is a venue that works, especially if you are willing to email your friends, or set up a website, or blog about your project.
Also, everyone who has questions and concerns, or desires to work to remedy a social problem or address an issue has a location to do this – open 24 hours a day, where they can come, connect, and pitch their issue or concern, or join a working group. Without Occupy Boston, I do not think that The Boston Occupier would be happening as a bi-monthly newspaper. There are other projects that are also in various stages of productive development.
Anyway, I am thankful for the heterogenous collection of people with the courage to go public and associate, and work together however imperfectly to make this country and this world a better place.
I am also thankful that I am well enough to work, have a warm place to live, and family to spend time with today. Whether you observe The National Day of Mourning or the traditional to the United States and Canada Thanksgiving holiday I hope you also have people you care about, and who care about you with whom to spend the day.
I am also thankful for Blue Mass Group, the working group (David, Charley, and Bob) who keep this forum open and available for discussion for folks like me who want to share and explore ideas, as well as the passive readers who come here to get information that is not available in the commercial, corporate media, or to encourage involvement in the causes and events of the day.
My experience has been that this forum is open, more courteous than most, and a place where I come to both learn and to share.
First, just for the record, I’m pretty sure Canada celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October, which happens to be Columbus Day here in the States, also a day not terribly popular with our Native population.
This leads to my second issue, which is I’m not sure why they are upset over Thanksgiving. That feast was a high point among relations between the Native and English peoples, held in part to celebrate a treaty which would remain unbroken for 50 years. Sure, there are plenty of OTHER examples of European-Americans harming the Native population, but this isn’t one of them and for the sake of intellectual honesty and historical accuracy they should not be lumped together.
In my view, Thanksgiving has about as much to do with native Americans as President’s day has to do with cars.
Thanksgiving is the only secular holiday where virtually everything is closed, where families and friends traditionally gather, and where the business world essentially pauses for a week. My wife, who is European and has no religious tradition, loves this holiday because she and her European friends and family are fully welcome and can fully embrace the spirit of the holiday without any sense of being an outsider because she is a “non-believer” (not to mention non-American).
I fully appreciate and am sympathetic to the concerns of Native Americans who rightly reject the mostly-mythological “historical” traditions of Thanksgiving, and the Day of Mourning seems like a perfectly reasonable response.
Thanksgiving is our family’s favorite holiday because it is the only week during the year when all (five) of my children, their respective partners, spouses, significant others, and friends, our friends (and often their family), and so on can put the stresses of work and school aside and simply enjoy each other — without any hint of religious ritual (to either embrace or reject).
I therefore give thanks for Thanksgiving — just as it is, warts and all.
(Happy Thanksgiving, Amber)
http://mi.tt/MittGear. Just use MITTSALE30 for 30% off.
I’m looking for the official pair of flip flops. : )