"Dwindling Boston Occupiers remain resolute; With Dewey Square camp gone, planning for movement’s 1st anniversary isn’t easy" by Martine Powers | Globe Staff, September 17, 2012
Nearly a year after the start of the movement known for its defiance has struggled even if they continue to raise hell around Boston — or at least try. They camped in front of the State House to protest MBTA fare hikes, staged demonstrations in front of Bank of America, and last weekend took a road trip to New York City for “S-17” — the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. But many Occupiers attend events only sporadically.
Gee, that's odd. I didn't see any Globe articles in my printed pos that covered those; otherwise, I would have noted it on my pad.
There’s palpable frustration at the group’s general assemblies, biweekly meetings, the assemblies often drew hundreds of people in raucous, hourslong arguments over camp decisions, fueled by digressions into political theories.
Now, the gatherings are more mundane in tone, more fuddy-duddy in tenor. At a recent meeting, the Occupiers approved funding for Occupy Boston balloons and camera equipment for the New York trip.
It’s a big change, admits Bil Lewis, a lanky, neatly-dressed 60-year-old from Cambridge with the voice of a National Public Radio broadcaster. He discovered Occupy last year on his way home from a Toastmasters meeting. Last December, as protesters awaited eviction, Lewis gazed out over the tents and declared, “This is the life I want to have led. I am so honored to have been here.”
Now, Lewis says he’s nostalgic for the “wild community” of the old camp. But, he has to admit, it’s a lot easier to get things done now.
Related: Occupy Boston Folds Its Tent
“We don’t have people who just need to get up every day and tell their sad life stories anymore, and we don’t have drunkards screaming at us from the back row,” Lewis said. “We’re able to make good decisions much faster now.”
The camp attracted homeless people, registered sex offenders, and drug users. Arguments erupted on whether to allow them inside the Occupy community, highlighting how the camp had become a microcosm of the challenges of modern-day society.
And that’s what made the camp so special, some said.
“It was such a beautiful laboratory of democracy,” said Dana Moser, an Occupier from Jamaica Plain.
But the current exclusion of the homeless — whether by lack of outreach or inconvenient meeting times — means that Occupy is now falling short of its Dewey Square ideals, said Cherie King. A short woman with a heart-shaped face, King was drawn to the camp because it was better than staying in a homeless shelter. But she soon found herself involved in the ideals of the movement.
See: Globe Gift: Occupy is History
Last week, she reflected on how Occupy changed her: By the end, her soft, breathy voice had grown strong, and she could capture the attention of a crowd as she spoke forcefully about the issues facing the city’s homeless population. She remains homeless, and frustrated.
“The thing I miss is that we don’t have that space, and without that space, there’s no movement,” said King. “There’s nothing to remind people that there is injustice.”
That's why there are blogs.
John Ford, 31, agrees that there is nothing to match the encampment.
“I definitely miss the sense that we had already won, that it was going to build and build and build and build,” Ford said. “I miss that momentum-building feeling, where every day the camp got kind of more grand in its scale and more teeming.”
But Ford believes that many are still working toward the movement’s ideals....
And no matter where the protesters are now, they remain connected by their experience.
Related: An Occupy to Remember
I wonder how those kids are doing these days.
Andrews Claude was “the sink guy.” With a wide grin, long ponytail, and the demeanor of a friendly lumberjack, he designed and constructed an industrial kitchen sink with a self-contained plumbing system that was meant to revolutionize how Occupiers would do dishes. When he and others tried to carry the sink into camp, a riot ensued, and three were arrested. The sink was detained, too.
The incident became one of the most epic stories of the Dewey Square occupation.
Claude died in April....
Just like the movement itself if you believe the corporate media.
“We only knew him for six months,” one protester said, “but in Occupy time that’s a long time.”
Yeah, the Globe in general and corporate media in particular have been so kind to Occupy.
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"NYC police arrest 180 on Occupy anniversary; Demonstrators try to cordon off Stock Exchange" by Colin Moynihan | New York Times, September 18, 2012
NEW YORK — More than 180 people were arrested Monday as protesters tried to block access to the New York Stock Exchange on the first anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Demonstrators had planned to converge from several directions and form what was called the People’s Wall around the stock exchange to protest what they said was an unfair economic system that benefited the rich and corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Notice the money media says it is the protesters that say the system is unfair. It's implied that the system is fair first.
Last year, protesters took over Zuccotti Park, not far from Wall Street, setting up an encampment that became an inspiration for similar Occupy campaigns around the world.
But after being evicted from the park in November, the protests lost much of their energy, though their message of economic inequality has resonated in Washington and in the presidential campaign.
Protesters marched through the streets, waving banners and banging drums while accompanied by bands playing ‘‘Happy Birthday.’’
At several points during the morning, crowds of protesters numbering in the hundreds briefly blocked intersections before being dispersed, with arrests in some instances.
Though organizers said more than 1,000 people participated in the demonstration, the roving groups did not appear to cause much disruption on Wall Street.
By early evening, 181 people had been arrested, the police said.
Although officers sometimes surrounded large groups of protesters, they did not appear to make mass arrests.
But on several occasions, officers plunged onto sidewalks packed with protesters and arrested people after saying the crowds were blocking pedestrian traffic.
At one point, at Broad and Beaver streets, a commander grabbed a man from a crowd standing on the corner.
Protesters tried to pull the man back, but officers surged into the crowd and wrested the man away, placing him in handcuffs.
One of the more turbulent episodes took place along Broadway where several hundred people marched.
Officers approached a man who had been yelling objections to the metal police barricades that cordoned off Wall Street.
One officer repeatedly shoved news photographers with a baton, and a police lieutenant shouted at one point that no more photographs would be permitted, adding, ‘‘That’s over.’’
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Organizers said they had planned the protest to show that the Occupy movement still had vitality and to express continuing frustration with the economic environment.
Among those gathering early Monday was Oren Goldberg, 32, who said he had joined the protest partly because he felt the need to somehow register his conviction that the financial system was not operating properly. ‘‘It’s exciting to see any group of people attempting any sort of change,’’ he said....
As the protesters gathered as early as 6 a.m., police vans were parked on side streets throughout the financial district, and helicopters buzzed overhead.
Workers in suits walking to work passed contingents of officers posted on corners.
Sporadic marches continued through the afternoon, along with arrests.
Several demonstrations took place outside financial institutions. Some people were arrested at a Bank of America branch opposite Zuccotti Park.
Later the police arrested about a half-dozen people who sat down in front of Goldman Sachs headquarters on West Street while a crowd chanted ‘‘arrest the bankers.’’
As the police directed the crowd to leave the area, people in the building could be seen gazing down from windows.
Some of the protesters pointed up to the windows and shouted, ‘‘Goldman Sachs, we’ll be back,’’ as they began marching toward Zuccotti Park.
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The tears are for the funeral service of Sunday:
"Occupy, Menino, and getting results" by Tom Keane | September 23, 2012
The point of politics, one would think, is to get something done.
It’s an idea apparently lost on the Occupy movement, which began just a year ago with its takeover of New York’s Zuccotti Park and then rapidly spread to cities across the United States. Boston’s own version, located on Dewey Square, began Sept. 30. With clever slogans (“the 99 percent”) and novel tactics (such as the encampments), the media were enthralled. Something big, it seemed, was in the wind. When police arrived on Dec. 10 to move the protesters out, they were greeted by these defiant words: “You can’t evict an idea.”
That sure as hell wasn't my my impression all these months.
Or perhaps you can. A year after it began, the Occupy movement is lifeless. Efforts to revive it — one in March and another on its one-year anniversary — were a bust. Occupy’s remnants seem a sad-sack of misfits, longing to find a place in the world, while the public has lost interest. If Occupy is the vanguard of the revolution, the emperor has nothing to fear.
You know, I'm not feeling remembrance now. I'm just feeling rage at the insults.
Of course, they are right about the lack of interest. The mouthpiece media claims it's impacted the presidential race, and that couldn't be possible because the public doesn't pay interest to newspapers anymore.
Yup, once again we have s***-slop served up as serious journalism.
But don’t blame the cops. In part, Occupy went bust because it was oversold and overhyped, more media creation than reality.
Well, that is sure true. The last thing the media reports accurately is reality.
Yeah, the media created Occupy, right.
One is struck by the credulousness with which it was greeted at the time, as if it truly were a mass movement. Yet the number of campers in New York at best was a few thousand. It was far fewer elsewhere.
More importantly, Occupy seemed — almost deliberately — determined to undermine its own effectiveness. One understood that in general it was about the gaps between the rich and the rest, but pinning down specifics was impossible.
I am so sick of that canard when they put out a list.
The early question to the Occupy protesters — what would it take to get you to go home? — had no answer.
Yeah, it did. End the wars, jail the bankers, and dump the organized thievery known as private central banking. That hasn't happened.
The movement refused to have an agenda or leaders (around which others could rally) and refused to engage in conventional politics (something the Tea Party did extraordinarily well).
That's because the Tea Party was co-opted by big money and turned into a controlled front to further serve corporate interests.
It is certainly conceivable that Occupy could have had a major influence on this November’s presidential election. Instead, it’s irrelevant....
Oh, then they are just like newspapers!
Like Occupy, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino used soft power — in this case, the bully pulpit that his position gave him — to identify an issue and raise it to national prominence.
No one likes a bully, right?
Unlike Occupy, however, Menino and other politicians made clear what their agenda was and gave the company a way to respond to their concerns.
It’s a striking contrast. Menino saw an opportunity to advance the cause of gay rights, and deftly seized it. The Occupiers had a similar opportunity to advance issues of economic opportunity, and squandered theirs.
The difference being, of course, that the gays have the mind-manipulating media agenda-pushers and the money that is behind them on their side.
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I have no more tears, readers.
