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Marches, students and nurses
By adamg on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 7:45am
On march through Downtown Crossing. Photo by Jeff Tamagini. More.
Occupy Boston almost had its first arrests Wednesday. Marchers moved out from Dewey Square and surrounded the Bank of America headquarters on Federal Street (where 24 had been arrested in a different protest on Friday). They began to lock hands around the entrances. Police called in prisoner transport wagons. And then, they broke for a bite to eat. Protesters also demonstrated outside Goldman Sachs offices on High Street:
Later, back at Dewey Square, one protester doused a Channel 25 photographer and his camera with water. Bill Sheerin, an assignment editor at the Fox affiliate, tweeted:
According to photog, this person stalked & taunted him before finally throwing water on his camera.
Joining the protests yesterday: students at local colleges and members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. Princeton (and former Harvard) professor Cornel West also showed his support:
Berklee students are also on hand, lending their musical talents to the Dewey Square tent city.
The Phoenix reports on the good relations between the protesters and the city; talks to Tom Menino about it all.
Photo copyright Jeff Tamagini. Tagged as universalhub on Flickr.
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Comments
Hate to say it...
but every one of these protests should be taking place on K Street, not Wall Street. The idea of using Wall Street to bring attention to their cause is admirable, but I believe real change has to start with our legislators and the scumbag lobbyists who buy their votes.
Hate to say it...
But they are.
http://occupydc.org
Well, then..
I stand humbly corrected!
I think you missed the point.
I think you missed the point. All the protests should be there. Protesting here is a waste of energy unless you're showing up at the offices of your representatives.
Amanda Palmer, today at 4 p.m.
She'll be at Dewey Square to show support and play her ukelele.
She bringing her husband?
If so, I need to alert the geeky offspring.
I don’t know what to say
I don’t know what to say about this collection of layabouts, ne’er-do-wells, professional agitators, hippies, yippies, academics, naive college kids, stoners, boners, groaners, red-diaper babies, trust-fund socialists, idiots, idjits, fidgets, New Age freaks, anarchists, union thugs, post-modern relativists, lookie-loos, journalists, and random stupid people. Additional commentary simply seems unwarranted -- listent to them yammer, shake your head, and go about your (productive) business. Think of it this way: if these people had something more important to do or somewhere more important to be, they wouldn’t be standing around in the middle of a workday shouting nonsense.
thanks for the insight, mr.
thanks for the insight, mr. magoo
Personally
I've talked to more people that wish they could take the time off to throw in their own support, but can't for fear of losing their jobs or missing a days income, or need to be at work.
These people are right, there's 90% or so out there that agrees with them, but are stuck in the meat grinder and can do nothing but quietly support them.
These people weren't funded by anyone like the "teaparty". they ding it of their own accord, and on their own time and dime.
It's democracy in action, and it's sad it took this long to get the media to break it's blackout and even mention them.
Reminds me of the HUGE antiwar protests in 2004, that got little but a murmur from the media. Anything that doesn't paint a rosy economic consumerist culture picture is blacklisted.
You're either with them, or you're (rich/deluded).
I believe they think its important that the 99% of us with no money stand up to the 1% with money. Unless you're in the 1% or one of their duped minions I would think this would be important to you too since they're trying to make YOUR life better.
What's next, making fun of people who do the Walk for Hunger?
Deriding people who wear pink in support of the fight against breast cancer?
BINGO!
I've got Generic Talking Points Bingo! In fact, I think everyone in the room just won on a blackout!
Nice job compiling just about every insult, cliche,slur, stereotype and overgeneralization in the "LOOOOK AT ME: I'm Morally Superior to People Exercising their Civil Rights" handbook - all in one neatly ignorant and cowardly anonymous package!
You win the GRAND PRIZE: one foreclosure of your mortgage or your landlord's mortgage that cannot be stopped even by a court order or paying off the loan in full!
If not now, then in your unregulated future.
if these people had something
Ohhhh, I get it. If we just went to college, got degrees, and got jobs we wouldn't have anything to complain about.
Guess what? We have gone to college and earned degrees - often, more than one. We have put forth the effort, going into debt so we can educate ourselves and contribute to society.
But we can't. The jobs ARE NOT THERE. We want to have a workday, but we aren't even being given the opportunities that we have worked for. They're just not there. I'll even use myself as an example: I have a BA, working towards my Master's, and plenty of work experience from co-ops, internships, and multiple part-time jobs. During undergrad there were times I worked roughly 60 hours a week. I have taken on an obscene amount of debt so I could get my education. I've worked my ass off.
Yet it wasn't even enough to get an interview - yes, just an interview - with Starbucks. That is how terrible the job market is.
We're not lazy, we're just sick of working for nothing. Being told that we are lazy and aimless is beyond insulting.
You know what I LOVE?
The new trend of employers not hiring the unemployed, regardless of their qualifications.
Because if there's one thing that shows that someone is a no good, worthless employee, it's being unemployed in the worse recession since the great depression. Regardless of work history, and education mind you.
The system is broke. The power at be broke it, because it the last place to squeeze out quarterly profits. They're still squeezing, but they don't seem to realize the deadly game they're playing.
Things have been and still are good for them, and a lot of other people too. But not for long at this rate.
There appears to be a stigma
Among employers, there definitely seems to be a stigma attached to being long term unemployed. I was laid off almost two years ago, and each time I apply for a job the employers seem practically aghast that I have been out of work that long, as if there is something unemployable or wrong with me. I have qualifications and held my previous job for 12 years. They invariably ask what I have been doing for the past two years, as if I have been vacationing on a beach in Hawaii, instead of seeking employment. I get the distinct impression that if an employed person applied for the same job as me, they would get it.
Not a workday for everyone
These folks are protesting problems that happen BECAUSE of people like you who think that only corporate executives exist and who don't even consider the people who bag groceries, wait tables, mop floors, drive ambulances, care for children, run printing presses, etc. for whom today may not be a workday.
Nursing Shifts run 24/7/365
I wonder when was the last time our commentator needed to go to a hospital and found it closed after 5 pm?
My niece, who has joined Occupy Chicago for the day, usually works 3 to 4 12-hour overnight nursing shifts a week (the fourth one is overtime).
Just ignorant.
Not them, me. I honestly have no idea what these people want, specifically. I know what the people in Cairo and Tunis wanted, but this strikes me as a bit more nebulous. What do "The 99%" want? Is there a list of demands, a manifesto, anything?
I'm not trying to be snarky or crack wise, but I honestly have no idea what their specific beef is and what their specific proposed remedy is, nor how they plan to acheive that remedy by setting up largely non-disruptive tent cities in several major cities.
Still at the Howard Beale stage
They're still opening their windows to yell that they're mad as hell and won't take it anymore. Is there an anger equivalent to the Kubler-Ross stages?
That there is not a single set of demands or charismatic leader, that these things are being run as exercises in classic New England democracy, is not necessarily a bad thing. As important as Martin Luther King obviously was to the civil-rights movement, it did not begin with him; its strong and diverse roots ensured it did not die with him, either.
Understood . . .
But what is the "it" that they can't take anymore? Is it just a general frustration that life seems to be hard and getting harder? Are they upset that Warren Buffett ends up with a lower tax rate than his secretary? That Countrywide took advantage of people who couldn't afford fancy homes and gave them mortgages for fancy homes anyway? That their parents have finally kicked them out of the basement/attic? That the leaders they voted for in 2008 on a promise of hope and change utterly failed to change anything? That there's not a more gaussian distribution of wealth?
I'm probably just naive and a tool of the system, but I always just thought that (as a white middle class male) that life is hard, but if you just work hard, eventually, things will work out. When things seem not to be working out, I apply the Jurgis Rudkus, "I will work harder." Sure, I've been lucky, and I've never been poor, but my wife and I have collected our share of unemployment checks in the past 3 years, and I know I will never be part of the 1%. Isn't that just life?
Mad as hell, and not going to take [all of] it anymore
I believe it's all of what you listed in your first paragraph, in varying combinations depending upon who you ask. Like you, I tend to see things through the lens in the second paragraph. I recall my early 20s as a time of debt, poor employment prospects, and a general sense of insecurity/vulnerability. I grew out of it, as did most of my friends. Being poor for a time wasn't a big deal in the larger scheme of a many decades long life. But maybe the debts now are bigger, the employment prospects even worse. Maybe their parents are out there, too, because they've been laid off with no prospects of re-hire, lost their house, etc.
Maybe it's more people, hurting more. I've argued around these many threads that this group does not truly represent the 99% in its entirety. And I've admired the arguments made by others (eg IsaacG) that there is a cost to a great many of us 99% folks if the system is quickly and dramatically altered. But at the same time, I don't think yours and my answer (keep your head down, work harder, look for incremental improvement) will work for all. So people are mad as hell, they just don't yet know what to do about it.
The problem is now
many people, almost 15 million of them, have no jobs and can't find a job. They can't work harder, cripes, they can't even find work! I have a good friend who has been out of work for going on 10 months now, has done everything she could to find work, nothing. Even the temp agencies have nothing.
These blogs are not the place to articulate economic theory, especially a place to discuss the detriments of a society that has only two classes, rich and poor, (which our country, in my opinion, has a very good chance of becoming). All of us, those of us working hard at a job or pounding the streets hard looking for work should be very concerned about this.
All movements start somewhere. I give these protestors credit for at least saying what many of us are wringing our hands over while those in power play handball with each other.
To make things interesting
Perhaps they should try a march on Causeway to coincide with the Bruins pre-game banner raising festivities and the short Stanley Cup parade. I am sure they would recive a warm welcome...
Yeah
Because there are not librul Bruins fans. Or union Bruins fans. Or blue collar Bruins fans.
Gimme a break guy. If anything they'd all march back to the Financial district and show BOA/GS whats up.
Oh lord
Not Cornell West. Please not Cornell West. Everytime I see him, I have horrible visions of him in his embarrasing performance in the Matrix II. It makes me cringe. Also, as of 2008, it only took an adjusted gross income of about $380K to be in the top 1% of taxpayers. Isn't Cornell West likely in the 1%? If he has joined the 99% does this mean that this is now a movement against only the .99%? Also, where does Buffett stand? Some of his ideas seem to be what the 99.1% (including West) are advocating. Buffett has got to be worth at least .5%, maybe more. Is this just really everyone against the Koch brothers and Dick Cheny?
Have to agree
Entertaining to watch and listen too, but when he goes on trolling about something, but you realize he's serious, well...
Still, Brilliant and entertaining minds aren't right about everything, always.