Occupy Boston Lives on After Dewey e Right to the City: City Life/Vida Urbana and Occupy Boston Team Up Against Foreclosures by Stephen Squibb Before the start of the Occupy movement, Steve Meacham participated in a conference call with representatives from twenty different cities. e topic of discussion was occu- pation—housing occupation. Meacham is an organizer with City Life/Vida Urbana, a 38-year-old organization devoted to defending housing rights in Boston, with a history of success that others hope to emulate. Indeed, if one were looking for immediate inspirations for the Occupy movement, City Life/Vida Urbana would stand out both for its steadfast commitment to economic justice and for the undeniable power of its methods. So, when Occupy Boston and CL/ VU announced an alliance in mid-December, it felt less like a risky new investment and more like coming home for the holidays. Eviction Crisis ere are two large maps on the walls of the City Life’s Jamaica Plain office: one charting the foreclosures in Greater Boston and the other charting violent crimes in Boston. Dorchester and East Boston stand out like deep wells of red ink on a white canvas. e message is clear: the social costs of eviction are huge. “City Life works with people to stay in their homes,” says Cynthia Peters, who has been involved with the organization since the 1980s. Peters outlined City Life’s process: “When a homeowner is facing eviction, we pressure the bank to reduce the principal of the loan, which is often much higher than the current market value of the property. With the help of volunteer lawyers, we try to convince a judge to intervene on the homeowner’s behalf.” But what happens when the bank and the justice system deny homeowners a renegoti- ation of their loan? “If these steps fail,” Peters said, “we perform an eviction blockade.” An “eviction blockade” is when “City Life staff and members link arms or chain (themselves) to railings. We let the banks know that we aren’t leaving except under arrest.” Peters points out that it isn’t just homeowners who are facing unlawful eviction. Renters also lose their homes when the property they are living in is foreclosed on. In these cases, the tenant has done nothing wrong. ey are up to date on their rent and willing to continue paying rent, but often the bank won’t accept it. “We ask the bank: ‘Why should you evict these families? Why not just accept their rent?’” e choice to evict may make short-term sense from the point of view of large financial organizations, but, as the maps at CL/VU make clear, the social cost of eviction is the destruction of communities and an attack on what many are calling “the right to the city.” e Right to the City Over the past forty years, there has been a growing consensus that the city cannot be treated simply like another space, but that it actually maintains a special position in the larger economy. As French philosopher Henri Lefebvre wrote, “e urban center can no longer consider itself outside the means of production, their property and their management.” In other words, because the value of urban property is created by the collective desire of the community to live there, that same property cannot be simply sold off. e community has a role in producing the value of a house or an apartment building, and so they have a right to help decide the fate of that property. In late 2010 several banks, including Bank of America, briefly halted foreclosures nationwide, following revelation of widespread legal violations in the foreclosure process. Although foreclosures resumed soon afterwards, ongoing evidence of unlawful and deceptive conduct in the foreclosure process -- including false and fraudulent documentation—has recently led Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to file a lawsuit against five of the nation’s largest It was the end of the beginning. At about 2am on December 10th, roughly three hours before the police raid on Occupy Boston, dozens of protesters could be seen gathered in a circle at the edge of Dewey Square. e mood was quiet but hopeful, as they took turns discussing the future of the movement, the bonds they’d created, and what they were thankful for. Many reflected that they were grateful for their time in Dewey, but knew that the movement would continue on and gain strength because of the bonds and friendships that had been created at the encampment. Kat Cancio, a student at Northeastern, recalls, “As much as we all kept reassuring ourselves that the physical encampment was significant but not defining of our movement, I think there was a mutual understanding that we were not ready to leave.” Others, however, felt ready and eager to move on to the next phase. Since Wednesday evening, when Judge Frances A. McIntyre lifted the temporary restraining order that Occupy Boston held against the city of Boston, the looming threat of an imminent police raid had kept many occupiers on their toes. Rain had kept the police away on Wednesday – with officer safety cited as the reason – and a turnout of over 1000 people on ursday night deterred any police action. However, at 4:45am on Saturday, December 10th, hundreds of police officers finally moved in on Occupy Boston’s encampment at Dewey Square, ending the group’s 70 day occupation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Out of the roughly 150 people present to defend the camp, 46 were arrested. roughout the following day, protests sprouted up across the city: outside of Mayor Menino’s press conference regarding the raid at police headquarters, in front of police stations in the South End and South Boston where the arrested were being detained, and even on the T, where Occupy Boston participants conducted “mic checks” to inform riders of the morning’s events. One question was on everyone’s mind, leading up to the night’s GA: what happens next? e 1000-person strong meeting proved to be anything but an exercise in wound-licking. Many people mourned the destruction of the camp which had served so power- fully to bring the Occupy Boston together as a community, but it was clear that people wanted to get back to work, to plan new actions and initiatives. A lot of ideas were swirling at the first post-Dewey GA, but one thing was clear: even without a physical occupation, Occupy Boston was ready to face the challenges lying before it. A number of these challenges have been logistical. Although its location in the heart of Boston’s financial district was itself part of the movement’s message, the camp also served as an organizing hub and, for many, a communal residence. It was the point of departure and return for numerous marches and rallies. Everyone knew where to find Occupy Boston and occupiers knew where to find one another. With the loss of Dewey, Occupy Boston’s numerous working groups have had to sharpen their attention to communication and coordination, as well as find alternate modes of operating. e Information Working Group, for instance, origi- nally concentrated on staffing the Information Tent in Dewey Square, so that there was always someone whom visitors could ask about Occupy Boston and the larger Occupy movement. Kevin Maley, a 27-year-old sustain- ability associate from South Boston, has participated in the Information working group since early October. He says that the group now plans to set up a “mobile info tent” outside General Assemblies and other Occupy Boston events. “We can talk to people who pass by or wander over from off the street and just want to simply ask, ‘What’s this?’ – just like we did before.” Other groups have also taken seriously the concept of staying adaptable and mobile. One occupier, Jay, who had previously staffed the “Signs” tent at Dewey Square, now bikes to Occupy Boston events with a red Radio Flyer wagon full of protest signs. e first Monday after the eviction, members of Occupy Boston’s Socialist Caucus put together an “open mic” rally and march that drew more than a hundred people to City Hall Plaza. Joe Ramsey, who helped to organize the event, said the main goals were to “protest the city’s decision to evict Occupy Boston and publicly demonstrate that we’re not going away, that you can’t evict an idea.” Ramsey said that the the rally allowed an array of voices to speak out, some expressing “personal anger and sadness about what happened at Dewey,” and others “giving more developed ideas about what our movement should do next.” Suggestions ranged from bringing Occupy into the workplace to “champion[ing] the cause of defending those facing eviction themselves.” At a General Assembly on December 15, Occupy Boston approved by consensus a statement of solidarity with City Life/Vida Urbana. Bryan MacCormack, an occupier who has focused on movement-building between Occupy, labor unions, and community groups, said that he was “very excited about this work. It shows that community organizations and the Occupy movement can do some empowering and mutually beneficial work with the people of the 99% who have been disproportionately affected by the financial crisis.” In a gesture of solidarity following a press conference on December 16, Occupy Boston helped decorate City Life’s “justice tree” with tiny tents made of cut-up Bank of America debit cards. MacCormack says that Occupy is “looking forward to assisting with and learning from future eviction blockades and occupations of foreclosed homes,” as organized by City Life. Occupy Boston isn’t only focused on supporting the rights of those recently affected by foreclosure and eviction. e group has also sought to find housing for those at the Dewey encampment who had no other home, with the support of the houseless themselves. Matthew Shochat, a 27-year-old occupier from Cambridge, said the Houseless and Allies Working Group has floated several ideas of how Occupy Boston might address the displacement, including “utiliz[ing] the homeless resources that are available, to buy a house and make it a work as a living space.” Whether students, who have played a big role in Occupy Boston since the beginning, will stay involved during and after winter break remains a question. With tens of thou- sands of Boston students traveling home for the holidays, some are asking whether the movement will have lost a major source of energy by the time the Spring semester starts up in January. Emma Macdonald, an Emerson College student and frequent participant in Students Occupy Boston, expressed measured optimism, saying that students’ commitments will depend, in large part, on what happens to the Occupy movement itself in the coming weeks. However, “everyone will just be excited to come back [in January]”, and efforts will likely continue. News coverage of Occupy-related actions has dwindled after Dewey. A satirical “Pro-Corporate” march through the Prudential Center on a busy Saturday afternoon went unreported by mainstream outlets, as has been the case for a score of other marches, rallies and gatherings hosted under the “Occupy” banner. While it is true that many initiatives are still only in the planning stages of what some have referred to as “phase two” of Occupy Boston, just as many groups (including the Boston Occupier) are continuing on with business as usual. Although some believed that Occupy Boston would end with the destruction of the encampment in Dewey Square, it appears that the movement is instead evolving and adapting. Only time will tell how, after the cold winter months, it grows and develops in the spring. Occupy Boston Lives on After Dewey By Dan Schneider and Katie Soldau Occupy Boston, Dewey Square the evening before the raid. (Photo: Tess Scheflan / Activestills.org) (Continued on Page 2) www.bostonoccupier.com Issue No. 3 December 21st, 2011 FREE PRESS bostonoccupier.com
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Occupy Boston Lives on After Dewey
The Right to the City: City Life/Vida Urbana and Occupy Boston Team Up Against Foreclosures
by Stephen SquibbBefore the start of the Occupy movement, Steve Meacham participated in a conference
call with representatives from twenty different cities. The topic of discussion was occu-pation—housing occupation. Meacham is an organizer with City Life/Vida Urbana, a 38-year-old organization devoted to defending housing rights in Boston, with a history of success that others hope to emulate.
Indeed, if one were looking for immediate inspirations for the Occupy movement, City Life/Vida Urbana would stand out both for its steadfast commitment to economic justice and for the undeniable power of its methods. So, when Occupy Boston and CL/VU announced an alliance in mid-December, it felt less like a risky new investment and more like coming home for the holidays.Eviction Crisis
There are two large maps on the walls of the City Life’s Jamaica Plain office: one charting the foreclosures in Greater Boston and the other charting violent crimes in Boston. Dorchester and East Boston stand out like deep wells of red ink on a white canvas. The message is clear: the social costs of eviction are huge. “City Life works with people to stay in their homes,” says Cynthia Peters, who has been involved with the organization since the 1980s.
Peters outlined City Life’s process: “When a homeowner is facing eviction, we pressure the bank to reduce the principal of the loan, which is often much higher than the current market value of the property. With the help of volunteer lawyers, we try to convince a judge to intervene on the homeowner’s behalf.”
But what happens when the bank and the justice system deny homeowners a renegoti-ation of their loan? “If these steps fail,” Peters said, “we perform an eviction blockade.” An “eviction blockade” is when “City Life staff and members link arms or chain (themselves) to railings. We let the banks know that we aren’t leaving except under arrest.”
Peters points out that it isn’t just homeowners who are facing unlawful eviction. Renters also lose their homes when the property they are living in is foreclosed on. In these cases, the tenant has done nothing wrong. They are up to date on their rent and willing to continue paying rent, but often the bank won’t accept it. “We ask the bank: ‘Why should you evict these families? Why not just accept their rent?’” The choice to evict may make short-term sense from the point of view of large financial organizations, but, as the maps at CL/VU make clear, the social cost of eviction is the destruction of communities and an attack on what many are calling “the right to the city.”The Right to the City
Over the past forty years, there has been a growing consensus that the city cannot be treated simply like another space, but that it actually maintains a special position in the larger economy. As French philosopher Henri Lefebvre wrote, “The urban center can no longer consider itself outside the means of production, their property and their management.” In other words, because the value of urban property is created by the collective desire of the community to live there, that same property cannot be simply sold off.
The community has a role in producing the value of a house or an apartment building, and so they have a right to help decide the fate of that property. In late 2010 several banks, including Bank of America, briefly halted foreclosures nationwide, following revelation of widespread legal violations in the foreclosure process. Although foreclosures resumed soon afterwards, ongoing evidence of unlawful and deceptive conduct in the foreclosure process -- including false and fraudulent documentation—has recently led Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to file a lawsuit against five of the nation’s largest
It was the end of the beginning. At about 2am on December 10th, roughly three hours before the police raid on Occupy Boston, dozens of protesters could be seen gathered in a circle at the edge of Dewey Square.
The mood was quiet but hopeful, as they took turns discussing the future of the movement, the bonds they’d created, and what they were thankful for. Many reflected that they were grateful for their time in Dewey, but knew that the movement would continue on and gain strength because of the bonds and friendships that had been created at the encampment. Kat Cancio, a student at Northeastern, recalls, “As much as we all kept reassuring ourselves that the physical encampment was significant but not defining of our movement, I think there was a mutual understanding that we were not ready to leave.” Others, however, felt ready and eager to move on to the next phase.
Since Wednesday evening, when Judge Frances A. McIntyre lifted the temporary restraining order that Occupy Boston held against the city of Boston, the looming threat of an imminent police raid had kept many occupiers on their toes. Rain had kept the police away on Wednesday – with officer safety cited as the reason – and a turnout of over 1000 people on Thursday night deterred any police action.
However, at 4:45am on Saturday, December 10th, hundreds of police officers finally moved in on Occupy Boston’s encampment at Dewey Square, ending the group’s 70 day occupation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Out of the roughly 150 people present to defend the camp, 46 were arrested.
Throughout the following day, protests sprouted up across the city: outside of Mayor Menino’s press conference regarding the raid at police headquarters, in front of police stations in the South End and South Boston where the arrested were being detained, and even on the T, where Occupy Boston participants conducted “mic checks” to inform riders of the morning’s events. One question was on everyone’s mind, leading up to the night’s GA: what happens next?
The 1000-person strong meeting proved to be anything but an exercise in wound-licking. Many people mourned the destruction of the camp which had served so power-fully to bring the Occupy Boston together as a community, but it was clear that people wanted to get back to work, to plan new actions and initiatives. A lot of ideas were swirling at the first post-Dewey GA, but one thing was clear: even without a physical occupation, Occupy Boston was ready to face the challenges lying before it.
A number of these challenges have been logistical. Although its location in the heart of Boston’s financial district was itself part of the movement’s message, the camp also served as an organizing hub and, for many, a communal residence. It was the point of departure and return for numerous marches and rallies. Everyone knew where to find Occupy Boston and occupiers knew where to find one another. With the loss of Dewey, Occupy Boston’s numerous working groups have had to sharpen their attention to communication and coordination, as well as find alternate modes of operating.
The Information Working Group, for instance, origi-nally concentrated on staffing the Information Tent in Dewey Square, so that there was always someone whom visitors could ask about Occupy Boston and the larger Occupy movement. Kevin Maley, a 27-year-old sustain-ability associate from South Boston, has participated in the Information working group since early October. He says that the group now plans to set up a “mobile info tent” outside General Assemblies and other Occupy Boston events. “We can talk to people who pass by or wander over from off the street and just want to simply ask, ‘What’s this?’ – just like we did before.”
Other groups have also taken seriously the concept of staying adaptable and mobile. One occupier, Jay, who had previously staffed the “Signs” tent at Dewey Square, now bikes to Occupy Boston events with a red Radio Flyer wagon full of protest signs.
The first Monday after the eviction, members of Occupy Boston’s Socialist Caucus put together an “open mic” rally and march that drew more than a hundred people to City Hall Plaza. Joe Ramsey, who helped to organize the event, said the main goals were to “protest the city’s decision to evict Occupy Boston and publicly demonstrate that we’re not going away, that you can’t evict an idea.” Ramsey said that the the rally allowed an array of voices to speak out, some expressing “personal anger and sadness about what happened at Dewey,” and others “giving more developed ideas about what our movement should do next.” Suggestions ranged from bringing Occupy into the
workplace to “champion[ing] the cause of defending those facing eviction themselves.”
At a General Assembly on December 15, Occupy Boston approved by consensus a statement of solidarity with City Life/Vida Urbana. Bryan MacCormack, an occupier who has focused on movement-building between Occupy, labor unions, and community groups, said that he was “very excited about this work. It shows that community organizations and the Occupy movement can do some empowering and mutually beneficial work with the people of the 99% who have been disproportionately affected by the financial crisis.”
In a gesture of solidarity following a press conference on December 16, Occupy Boston helped decorate City Life’s “justice tree” with tiny tents made of cut-up Bank of America debit cards. MacCormack says that Occupy is “looking forward to assisting with and learning from future eviction blockades and occupations of foreclosed homes,” as organized by City Life.
Occupy Boston isn’t only focused on supporting the rights of those recently affected by foreclosure and eviction. The group has also sought to find housing for those at the Dewey encampment who had no other home, with the support of the houseless themselves. Matthew Shochat, a 27-year-old occupier from Cambridge, said the Houseless and Allies Working Group has floated several ideas of how Occupy Boston might address the displacement, including “utiliz[ing] the homeless resources that are available, to buy a house and make it a work as a living space.”
Whether students, who have played a big role in Occupy Boston since the beginning, will stay involved during and after winter break remains a question. With tens of thou-sands of Boston students traveling home for the holidays, some are asking whether the movement will have lost a major source of energy by the time the Spring semester starts up in January. Emma Macdonald, an Emerson College student and frequent participant in Students Occupy Boston, expressed measured optimism, saying that students’ commitments will depend, in large part, on what happens to the Occupy movement itself in the coming weeks. However, “everyone will just be excited to come back [in January]”, and efforts will likely continue.
News coverage of Occupy-related actions has dwindled after Dewey. A satirical “Pro-Corporate” march through the Prudential Center on a busy Saturday afternoon went unreported by mainstream outlets, as has been the case for a score of other marches, rallies and gatherings hosted under the “Occupy” banner. While it is true that many initiatives are still only in the planning stages of what some have referred to as “phase two” of Occupy Boston, just as many groups (including the Boston Occupier) are continuing on with business as usual.
Although some believed that Occupy Boston would end with the destruction of the encampment in Dewey Square, it appears that the movement is instead evolving and adapting. Only time will tell how, after the cold winter months, it grows and develops in the spring.
Occupy BostonLives on
After Dewey
By Dan Schneider and Katie Soldau
Occupy Boston, Dewey Square the evening before the raid. (Photo: Tess Scheflan / Activestills.org)
(Continued on Page 2)
www.bostonoccupier.comIssue No. 3 December 21st, 2011 FREE PRESSbostonoccupier.com
bostonoccupier.com | The Boston Occupier - Free PressPage 2 Dec. 21st, 2011
banks.“People are being foreclosed on without the
proper paperwork,” City Life member Antonio Ennis told the crowd at a rally of Occupy the Hood, which is organizing in black neighborhoods in Boston, earlier this year. “Families are being put out on the street. The only thing that is going to stop it is people power.” “People power” created the value the banks now seek to seize, and this same “people power” is now the only thing preventing the wholesale destruction of the community.Reform vs. Systematic Change
James Theckston, a former banker for Chase, told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that his bank pushed subprime loans on minority borrowers, even when they qualified for a prime loan. Kristof explained: “[Theckston] says that some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers—those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English—and nudged them toward subprime loans. These less savvy borrowers were disproportionately black and Latino, and they ended up paying a higher rate so that they were more likely to lose their homes. Senior executives seemed aware of this racial mismatch and frantically tried to cover it up.”
This kind of systemic failure shows the
difficulty community organizations like CL/VU face. How can they hope to work within the system when the laws that exist, such as those prohibiting discrimination in mortgage lending based on race or ethnicity, aren’t enforced? “We identify as radicals,” Peters says, “in that we look to attack the root of the problem. While we work for reform, we are constantly asking ourselves, ‘How can we also be addressing systematic change?’ Much of our work is trying to stop evictions, but how do we also take aim at the banking industry or capitalism?”
One of the results of this interest in radical change has been City Life’s participation in the Radical Organizing Conference, held in collaboration with other grassroots organi-zations in Boston. There have been six such conferences in the last eight years. Here, workshops on different styles of organizing mix with forums for sharing ideas on how to move forward. “The question,” Peters says, “is how do we create a larger left out of all the different activist organizations doing great work in really specific, focused ways?”Occupy Together
The alliance between Occupy Boston and CL / VU is in keeping with national devel-opments in the Occupy movement. On December 6th, activists in more than twenty cities took part in a national day of action called Occupy Homes. In Brooklyn, Occupy Wall Street rallied to support a homeless family as they re-occupied a vacant foreclosed
home as part of the Occupy Homes initiative.In Boston, the publicly announced alliance
between CL / VU and Occupy Boston was the result of a learning process that dates back to the establishment of the Dewey camp on September 30th. In the first weeks of Occupy,
relations between the two groups could be rocky, as each learned how to work with the other. “Community-building is tough,” says Katie Gradowski, a member of Occupy Boston’s Outreach Working Group and liaison to CL/VU. “Occupy Boston comes in as kind of blank slate—it’s this big, crazy, unwieldy, beautiful project, with a lot of heart and a slightly incoherent message. We have a lot to learn from community organizations, and a lot to bring to the conversation. After a month or so of working to develop these relationships, we’re in a better place to actually get out beyond Dewey Square and start doing stuff.”
Investment in relationship-building has produced stronger and smarter “people power.” In recent weeks, participants in Occupy Boston have increased their participation in CL/VU events, according to occupier Bryan MacCormack, who says that members of Occupy Boston now “consistently attend meetings in JP and East Boston, and auction protests.” Protesters have attended recent anti-eviction actions in Dorchester and Cambridge and several even traveled to Springfield to attend a regional action with
CL/VU and several affiliated organizations. Those at Occupy Boston who participate in CL/VU actions often speak of their work as an apprenticeship in community organizing.
Continued from Page 1: The Right to the City
The Raid of Occupy Boston
By Matt Cloyd and Aliza HowittIt was shortly after 4:45 am, late enough that
many protesters had concluded there would not be a police raid, when two people ran into the midst of the Dewey Square encampment, breathless. One yelled “Mic check! They’re here!” as dozens of white police vans surged around the Federal Reserve, lining Atlantic Ave and quickly blocking off all clear views of the camp.
In a rush of activity, several protesters crossed the street together, moving to the plaza in front of the Federal Reserve. Others gathered in the center of the camp, awaiting arrest.
In front of the Federal Reserve, police formed a moving wall to force protesters and onlookers to move across the intersection to South Station, further away from the camp. Police did not respond to onlookers’ inquiries as to why they weren’t being allowed to stand across the street.
Arrests happened quickly. Within one hour of arrival, more than forty occupiers were arrested, according to Jason Pramas of Open Media Boston.
Five men sat in front of a front-end loader, which they suspected would be used to clear the park. The commanding officer on the scene, after attempting to negotiate with them, told them they would be charged with resisting arrest and informed them they would not be able to be released on bail. (The occupiers were correct: the front-end loader began to demolish the camp at 6:50 am.)
During these arrests, three Boston Police officers with bright LED flashlights approached the Occupy Boston Livestream and other videographers who were standing on the sidewalk. The officers shined the flashlights into the camera lenses, creating lens flares in an attempt to prevent the cameras from capturing the arrests. The officers kept their flashlights to their chests, obscuring their badge numbers.
Throughout the early morning, groups of protesters entered the street and sat down, arms linked, as a show of solidarity with those who had been arrested in the encampment. One group of protesters, refusing easy arrests by sticking their ground or going limp, were hauled into police wagons. A Public Works truck was attempting to leave Atlantic Ave when an older woman, standing by herself, blocked it. She was also arrested.
Four women who locked arms and entered the street shortly after sunrise and were promptly arrested, but rocked the police wagon from inside, much to the amusement of the onlooking occupiers.
Most of the protesters who had been herded in front of South Station remained there through the morning, joining together in chants and songs expressing solidarity with those who had been arrested and condemning the destruction of the encampment.
The thirty arrested occupiers whom the police identified as male were taken to the District D-4 South End station, while the thirteen identified as female (including one legal observer) were taken to the District C-6 station in South Boston.
As the protesters in front of South Station grew louder, the police presence at the corner of Atlantic and Summer went from three officers to approxi-mately twenty. Protesters openly vented their disap-proval of the many arrests, chanting and yelling angrily. Apparently moved by their words, Robin Jacks noted that one officer temporarily retreated in tears multiple times, to the consternation of her superiors.
One officer was heard laughing derisively at protesters and joking about using hand grenades on them.
Despite claims from only a day earlier that no raid was imminent, the Boston Police demonstrated clear strategic planning by evicting the occupiers at 5 am on a Saturday morning. Just before the eviction, there were at most 200 people in Dewey Square, compared to over 1000 the night before. Since it was Saturday, traffic was at a minimum, and the eviction would not be highly visible to the public.
Unlike many evictions around the country, the Boston Police Department evicted occupiers without resorting to pepper spray or beatings. However, police were prepared to use violence against the peaceful protesters. A pickup carrying an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), also known as a “sound cannon” for its potential to cause permanent hearing damage, was parked on Summer St. In addition, several officers were equipped with unidentified canisters on their backs, and the white vans were purportedly full of riot gear.
At 8:05 am, a truck labeled “Graffiti Busters” began demolishing the mural of signs and artwork on the north wall of Dewey Square, even as Greenway officials are considering a permanent structure honoring the occupation and its contri-bution to the city’s now-famous parcel of land.occupying the square. And at 5 am on a Saturday morning, visibility and traffic were small issues.
At 8:05 am following the eviction, a truck labeled “Graffiti Busters” began demolishing the mural of signs on the north wall of Dewey Square, even as Greenway officials are considering a permanent structure honoring the occupation and its signifi-cance to the history of the Greenway’s now-famous parcel of land.
Walking Out On Mainstream Economics
By Pan AngelopoulosA little over a month ago, in early November,
more than seventy students in Professor N. Gregory Mankiw’s introductory economics course at Harvard University stood up and walked out of the lecture. They organized this walk-out to protest the course’s neoliberal predispositions, the corporatization of higher education, and the growing burden of student debt. The students explained that their action was in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, and went on to join a march in downtown Boston.
In organizing this action, the students drew attention to a problem that has its roots in the mainstream neoclassical theory that dominates today’s economics departments. According to such theory, the discipline is a positive science that can be used to reach empirical judgments free of bias and ideology. This way of thinking about economics has generated elegant math-ematical models, but these cannot compensate for its incorrect assumptions. The Harvard student protest, and the Occupy movement more broadly, prompt reconsideration of what it might mean to walk out on mainstream economics.
The primary problem with neoclassical economics is that its conceptual apparatus is supposed to transcend social and class relations. In fact, however, this supposed transcendence conceals capitalism’s natural inequality. Focused only on the way economic relations look superfi-cially (i.e. like relations between things), neoclas-sical economics is not able to analyze the exploit-ative and alienating relations that underlie the process of exchange, relations that are becoming clearer and clearer to masses of discontented and dispossessed workers as a result of the current crisis.
The fact that the majority of academic econo-mists rarely address these concerns is certainly not a matter of intelligence, but rather one of ideology and class allegiance. As Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” In his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci developed this analysis further, drawing attention to the role of intellectuals in capitalist society: “The intellectuals are the dominant group’s deputies exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. These comprise… The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group.”
It is because of the above reasons that orthodox economics is normative and apologetic. It is more interested in defending the interests of the capitalist class and its hangers-on (the 1%) than in critical inquiry. Neoclassical economics is, in short, the economics of capital.
The urgent need now is for a political economy of the working class, one which includes the
‘old’ proletariat of the factories and the ‘new’ precariat of part-time work, exhausting ‘flexible’ hours, intensive exploitation, and, in general, of precarious employment circumstances. Such an economics would provide a theoretical foun-dation for the liberation of humanity; that is, for a society where the free development of each individual is a condition for the free development of all.
Although radical political economists do inte-grate capitalist class relations into their theories, for orthodox economists to join their heterodox colleagues would require nothing less than a revolution in their way of thinking. It would involve understanding capital not as a thing, but as the independent social power of capitalists over workers, of the primacy of profits over human needs and rights. Politically, it would entail abandoning the principles of neoliberalism, resisting the commodification of the commons, and fighting for an economy geared towards the satisfaction of human needs and built upon the foundations of dignity, justice, equality, decen-tralized planning, and workplace democracy.
Economics is thus both a social science and a contested battleground - one that the Occupy movement needs to fight for. The most enduring critiques of established economic dogmas – Marxist critiques, Keynesian, and others – were backed by popular movements that demanded radical social and political change. People fought for new economies, and social and political change, in their workplaces and in the streets. Today, after years of political and ideological defeats at the hands of the 1%, we can and must draw conclusions different from those of economic orthodoxy. It is imperative to show that working people do not have to pay for capital-ism’s crises through cuts to social services, unem-ployment, lower living standards, poverty, and depression. Furthermore, as part of this struggle, it is necessary to emphasize the unity of the 99%: those engaging in both manual and intellectual labour, unionized and non-unionized, legal and ‘illegal’ workers, regardless of skin color or sex.
In order to confront the prevailing economic thought, however, it is necessary to make clear that economics is not pure mathematics and economic thinking is not fit only for technocrats. The disciplines of political science, sociology, economics, history, and philosophy are deeply interconnected. Their connection reflects of the real interactions between the market economy, the state, the political sphere, social and class rela-tions, and ideology. To argue that economics is an objective science divorced from these spheres is precisely to misunderstand it. It is to view capi-talism’s crises as natural disasters rather than as products of the system’s contradictions.
Against such a perspective, we must approach social science with the courage, as Marx urged, to undertake “ruthless criticism of everything existing,” not afraid of its own conclusions or conflicts with the powers that be. To take a step in this direction means deciding between real democracy and cannibalistic capitalism. It is to take sides on the burning question that confronts humanity in our time: socialism or barbarism.
The Boston Occupier’s Staff/
Contributors:
Gar AlperowitzPan AngelopoulosAngie BrandtHeidi V. ButtersworthMatt CloydIan CorneliusDoug Enaa GreeneEthan HarrisonOmer HechtAliza Howitt
A “Home for the Holidays” speak-out in Dorchester with CL/VU, the Bank Tenants Association and Occupy Boston on December 16, 2011.(Photo: Tess Scheflan / Activestills.org)
bostonoccupier.com | The Boston Occupier - Free Press Page 3Dec. 21st, 2011
Occupy La MigraThe following is a shortened version of the speech given by Lando, of Ocupemos el Barrio, on December 3, 2011. Lando spoke at a rally outside the Boston offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
My friends, the immigration policy in this country is morally bankrupt. At the present time our justice system commits gross injustices against its citizens, its legal residents, and those who have been segre-gated and marginalized by labeling them ‘illegal aliens’.
The current deportation practices of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) are inefficient, discriminatory, and cruel. The ICE rounds up people of color in factories, in their homes, and in the streets. It profiles them because of their appearance and then subjects them to a sham of a legal process, an “expedited deportation” system in which up to fifty people at a time are given less than one minute to plead their innocence. You don’t have a lawyer to advocate for you? Too bad. You don’t speak English? Too bad. American citizens are routinely denied due process, incarcerated, and finally, months later, dumped on the other side of the border.
Alarmingly, the ICE outsources incarceration to private businesses, such as the Corrections Corporation of America. For this reason alone, the entire ICE bureaucracy should be shut down! Since when is it appropriate to hand over the jailing and deportation human beings to for-profit companies? Or to receive a financial incentive for every person
deported? Such practices are representative of the nefarious deals the government has made with private companies. Because these gross injustices affect minorities almost exclusively, few people learn of them and fewer complain.
Those in the 1% would have you believe that most people being deported have broken the law. But I ask you: What law is being broken by a person who works to put food on the table for his or her family? The answer is: an unfair law. In the self-righteous question, “What part of illegal don’t you understand?” – we can hear the echo of those who asked our African-American brothers and sisters, “What part of ‘the back of the bus’ don’t you under-stand?” or “What part of ‘we serve whites only’ don’t you understand?” We have unfair laws with unfair punishments, and the law must be changed now.
Moreover, let’s not forget what causes masses of people to migrate to the United States. The American imperialist project, with its military-industrial complex, seeks to control entire continents. It pursues its goals by destabilizing governments, dominating economies, and exploiting natural resources. The juggernaut of corporate multina-tionals displaces small businesses, lowers the wages of workers on foreign shores, and denies them the right to organize unions by means of so-called “free-trade agreements.” Who suffers the consequences of such systematic greed? The farmers, the workers, the poor of other nations, who finally have almost no other option than to risk freedom and life itself to seek dignified livelihood in the United States. And even that is being taken away.
Almost no American citizen accepts employment
in sweatshops like those operating right now in East Boston or in Worcester. Almost no American citizen lives in a house with thirty other migrant workers, sometimes ten in a small room, to sustain him- or herself on pitiful wages. The reason they don’t do so is because this is exploitation. However, such condi-tions are exactly what the current immigration laws impose: human-rights abuses on a massive scale and an underground economy rife with the mistreatment of workers. Those in the 1% want minorities and immigrant communities to settle for this.
Contrary to some claims, undocumented immi-grants do pay taxes, and they do build and support their communities. Nonetheless, they are denied the fruits of their contributions. We are denied health care, education, job opportunities, bank accounts, and even a driver’s license to travel to and from work. Over 4 million people have been deported since January 2009 when Barack Obama took office, more deportations than under George W Bush. During this year alone, over 45,000 families have been torn apart because the head of the household was deported. We say to President Obama: Wake up! No human being is illegal! We demand our human rights! Stop all deportations now!
In closing, I want to invoke the words of Mohandas Gandhi: “non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.” These words were echoed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. many times, most famously when he wrote that “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Democratizing the Economy
by Gar AlperovitzThe “occupations” in Boston and around the country are
a justified response to the outrages of our current political-economic system. This is a system that looks the other way as the top 1% runs off with almost a fifth of the nation’s income and more than a third of its total wealth. Wall Street and the banks are both appropriate targets for protest.
However, the deeper reality is that our economic system – corporate capitalism held (weakly) in check by labor – is fading before our eyes. It was labor’s political power that in large part gave liberalism the ability to enact modest reforms, including regulations to keep the bankers partially in line. Those reforms have decayed too: the elimination of Glass-Steagall in 1999 and the slow undermining of Dodd-Frank regulations are only the most glaring examples. Moreover, globalization continues to undermine traditional communities and labor’s political clout.
There may be no viable way forward. If there is, however, it is all but certain to be very different from the former economic model. One development that holds possibilities for a different future is the ongoing creation of community-based economic institutions.
One of the most advanced of these institutions is the major effort underway in Cleveland, which involves an integrated complex of worker-owned cooperative enterprises. These enterprises include a weatherization and solar installation co-op, an industrially scaled (and ecologically advanced) laundry, and a commercial greenhouse. The “Cleveland Model” seeks to secure the considerable purchasing power of large scale “anchor institutions,” such as hospitals and universities. In addition, the model includes a revolving fund, so that profits made by these businesses help in establishing new ventures as time goes on.
The new model has also become the basis for new national legis-lation soon to be introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown, which seeks to provide federal support to test this model in other cities. Already,
exploratory efforts are under way in Atlanta; Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and several other communities.
Experiments such as these have the power to change what is discussed in debates about the economy, particularly regarding who should own “the means of production.” In this way, community-based economic institutions challenge the dominant, hegemonic ideology in unorthodox and pragmatic ways – we might say, in very American ways. Efforts to develop these institutions, therefore, are examples of the historical creation of political knowledge. They introduce new ideas into common culture and shift what can be explored in political discourse.
They also suggest the outlines of a new power constellation that slowly displaces corporate influence. This approach may one day take its place alongside more traditional “countervailing power” strategies,
which aim to regulate, tax, and ‘incentivize’ corporate power.Worker co-ops are one practical alternative to today’s
literally medieval patterns of ownership in which a mere 400 individuals have more income than the entire bottom 60 percent of society put together. However, co-ops are not the only way. Numerous other efforts also suggest ways to “democratize ownership,” or move ownership out of the corporate system and into community-serving institutions.
“Social enterprises” engaging in business to support specific community missions now make up what is sometimes called a “fourth sector” of the economy. There are roughly 4,500 not-for-profit community development corporations in operation. More than 11,000 businesses are owned in whole or part by their employees, and six million more individuals are involved in these enterprises than are members of private-sector unions. Another 130 million Americans are members of various urban, agricultural, and credit union cooperatives. In many cities, important new “land trust” developments are underway using an institutional form of nonprofit or municipal ownership that develops and maintains low- and moderate-income housing.
At this stage, the central strategic questions are how to refine and expand these various models and how to legitimate the idea of democratized ownership. Ultimately
such strategies must converge with (and provide new content for) political mobilizations. Movement-building and electoral efforts need to take us beyond liberal and populist categories of change to include larger economic institutions. A far reaching transformation of this kind might one day be achieved if activists build on current devel-opments to create even more advanced democratizing models and if constituencies come to understand why these new economic models are important to a democratic future.
Gar Alperovitz is the author of AMERICA BEYOND CAPITALISM: RECLAIMING OUR WEALTH, OUR LIBERTY AND OUR DEMOCRACY. He is Co-Founder of the Democracy Collaborative and Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland.
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About UsThe Boston Occupier is an independent source of news on Occupy Boston and the Occupy movement. We report on the day-to-day happenings from Occupy Boston, as well as local and national news pertaining to issues raised by the movement. We also publish opinions and other pieces in the service of fostering an articulate, open discourse on a range of subjects.
Political Speech vs. Consumer Camping?By Josh Sager
Urban camping is not an unusual occurrence, but with the rise of the Occupy Movement, it has become the topic of heated debate in many cities. Shown to the right are two photographs of recent urban encampments, one that cropped up before the premier of the movie “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” (Right-Top: Photo Credit: Underactive, via Flickr) and the other that occupied Dewey Sq. as the physical home of Occupy Boston (Right-Bottom Photo Credit: Josh Sager ).
As one can see from the photos, both camps are similar in terms of location, structure, and spacing. Both camps are located in the middle of the city, staged in a flat area next to large, commercial buildings. Tents and makeshift structures are arranged in a largely empty public space, enabling a small group of campers to wait in relative comfort until their goals are met. The primary differences between the two camps lie in their purposes and in the reactions they provoke.
While the two camps are physically similar, one difference between the two camps is the permanence of the camps. The “Occupy” camps are set up for long term occupation and in most cases have no set end date. The consumer camps usually have a set end date: The release of a product, the premiere of a movie, or the staging of a performance. However, I don’t consider this factor relevant, because situations of fire safety, criminal activity and sanitation are not significantly affected by the time period of an occupation.
One complaint raised in past months about Occupy encamp-ments is that protesters inhabit public spaces needed for “casual use” or “passive enjoyment.” While it is certainly correct that the “Occupy” encampments use public space to the exclusion of others and without paying for it, the same is true of consumer camps; like the one pictured above or those which appeared outside shopping plazas on the evening of Thanksgiving (or “Black Friday Eve”). When occupiers, associated with the movement, occupy a plot of land, they don’t totally exclude others from using it; they offer food, activities and shelter to virtually everybody who asks, making the “occupy” camps actually less exclusive than consumer camps.
Occupy encampments across the country have encountered inter-ference from local governments, zoning boards, and police forces, justified with reference to health concerns. Police in cities across America, including Oakland, New York, and Denver, have raided
Occupy sites under the pretense of “health and safety” issues. When Occupy Boston campers brought the city to court in an attempt to stop an eviction, the entirety of the city’s case was based around fire safety. The city claimed (accurately in many cases) that the tents of the encampment posed a severe fire hazard, thus the entire camp must be shut down. However, while any urban camping site poses analogous challenges of sanitation/fire safety, I have yet to find any official complaints or raids on other urban camps, such as movie premieres or sale lines outside of stores.
Finally, at protest occupations and urban camps, cold weather brings the need for insulated tents, bedrolls, and jackets. At several Occupy locations, including Occupy Boston, the police have prevented
campers from bringing in cold-weather gear, citing fire safety and zoning concerns. How is it safe for campers in movie premiere lines to have winter gear, but unsafe for “Occupy” campers to have the same gear in a similar situation? Fire does not discriminate between protest and consumer camps. In fact, the occupation of Boston was far safer than any consumer camp in terms of fire safety. The Occupiers placed numerous fire extinguishers around the camp as well as fire alarms in virtually every tent, precautions not common in any other urban encampment.
The physical and practical similarities between consumer camping and Occupy protest encampments foreground the inconsistency in the police responses and the hypocrisy inherent in the divergent reac-tions to the camps. If the occupations have identical hygienic situ-ations and superior fire safety precautions to the consumer camps, then clearly it is not a matter of straightforward facts that gives rise to cities’ fierce rejection of the protest occupations.
If the difference between the reactions to the occupations and the other “urban campsites” is not in the physical presence, then it must be in another characteristic of the camps. The “Occupy” camps are intended to promote a political message and protest social and economic issues, while the other camps are based around the increased consumption of goods. The constitution of the USA guar-antees the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”, while it mentions nothing about the right to wait outside of a business in order to receive a service or a product faster. I am not saying that the shoppers don’t have a right to wait in line for days rather than risk receiving their goods a little later, but unlike the occupiers, their actions are not constitutionally protected. While some may not agree that the occupations are manifestations of free speech, the argument that they are using to deride the occupations is simply based upon the lack of safety in the camps, not the right of the occupiers to assemble.
If it is truly unsafe for protesters to camp on the streets, then surely it is unsafe for those who are camping to receive commercial goods. Unless the police are willing to argue that commerce and quick consumption are more important than a constitutionally protected political protest, they must either stop all urban camping or cease breaking up the occupations.