Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Markin comment:
And as always-everybody, young or old, needs to stand by this slogan - An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers Everywhere! Hands Off Occupy Boston!
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Markin comment December 8, 2011:
Those of us who have been around the left-wing political movements for a while know that you have to use every tactic, every principled tactic, including the use of their courts, their agencies, their Congress, and their, well, everything. But as Judge McIntyre’s ruling indicates, when the deal goes down it is still their courts, their police, and their damn park. So right now, right this minute, we are left to our resources, the power of our arguments and the power of our people. Defend Occupy Boston! Hands Off Occupy Boston!
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Markin comment December 9, 2011:
Every hour past the midnight deadline proclaimed by Czar Menino in which his Cossacks are held at bay by the efforts of a mass movement is a victory for our side. Not a big victory like that new society we are fighting like hell for but a victory. For those of us who have spent some time in left-wing politics we know even those small victories are few and far between so let us savor it. Savor it in the knowledge that this particular struggle in this particular form will not be a physical victory. We fought, we have lit the spark and that is a start. The cry of the hour is still- Defend Occupy Boston! Hands Off Occupy Boston! Forward.
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Markin comment Decemeber 10, 2011:
We knew the other shoe was going to drop (first the lifting of the TRO and then a police raid) and now it has. The idea thought will live. And those who have struggled will continue to struggle. Right this minute that struggle means standing in solidarity with our arrested brothers and sisters. Free All Occupy Protesters! Drop All Charges!
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Markin comment December 11, 2011:
“What will we do now, now that they have taken our camp away, taken our freedom of assembly, taken what we have fought for away ?,” asked a young woman, near tears, but holding them back knowing after ten weeks that this was not the time for tears, not public tears anyway. She expressed those dearly won sentiments at the old Parkman Bandstand, the traditional spot for protest rallies, vigils and the start of marches in this city, and the spot where the Occupy Boston was cradled while waiting for the General Assembly (GA) in exile to start this cold, clear Saturday night.
A young man beside her, although not her companion, in the de rigueur all black Black Bloc all black answered “Fuck the system, we will be back, back bigger than ever.” But something in his voice betrayed a sense that a serious defeat had been taken with the successful nighttime police raid of Occupy Boston at Dewey Square, and that maybe that heavily bundled young woman’s almost tears, almost public tears, were closer to the heart of the matter. Her look, her somewhat startled look, at his response spoke eloquently to that fear.
A second young man, an obvious student, with an obvious trying-to-to be-wise-beyond- his-years wisp of a beard attempting to deepen his face and demeanor posed it another way for the now head down woman. “GA tonight will figure out what is next, we will figure out what is next, and if we all work together now when things are tough we will pull through this and next spring we will come back stronger than ever.” Something in his manner and his words brought the woman’s head up, momentarily, as if in recognition that this whole adventure had gone beyond her wildest “new world a-bornin’” dreams anyway and that if she could just keep the dream alike through the winter that wise, bearded young man might just be right.
Standing a few away from this trio, this remnant trio of the good fight, the good American Fall fight, stood an older man, graying, maybe a professor or some kind of teacher, but no “generation of ‘68” guy battle-scarred from fighting racist monsters in the black civil rights South, or against the bombs of American imperialism Vietnam, or even drawing away from conventional bourgeois society and heading to the hills of old Vermont to create a new society away from city madness. He just stated this proposition to his trio audience. “Study history a little, the history of social struggles, revolutions, poor people’s marches, national liberation struggles, rent strikes, eviction parties, fights for freedom for class-war prisoners, struggles against American imperialism. Study them hard and you will notice that they all go through this growing pain thing that we are in right now. Sure we have taken a defeat, a big defeat, on the freedom of assembly question but the camp issues, stay, go or half-stay were starting to drown out what we are here for- tame, or get rid of, the capitalist monster on our backs. So it’s okay to have a minute tear but now we have to get off our knees, dust off our knees, and get back to the struggle. We will rise from the ashes just like the phoenix. Bet on it.” And, you know maybe he was right because that young woman stopped putting her head down for the rest of the evening. .
This blog came into existence based on a post originally addressed to a fellow younger worker who was clueless about the "beats" of the 1950s and their stepchildren, the "hippies" of the 1960s, two movements that influenced me considerably in those days. Any and all essays, thoughts, or half-thoughts about this period in order to "enlighten" our younger co-workers and to preserve our common cultural history are welcome, very welcome.
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