In the days before the New Hampshire primary, Occupy Manchester set up a camp in Veterans Memorial Park to serve as daytime base of operations for activists who came from as far away as the West Coast to protest the perversion of politics by corporate money. On the night before voting, the proximity of this encampment and the Radisson hotel lounge across the street led to friendly conversation between Occupy activists and at least two notable people.

Michael Steele is former chairman of the Republican National Committee. When John Ford of Occupy Boston pressed Steele about why those who caused economic collapse have never been criminally investigated, Steele said “The system moves to protect itself.” When asked by Ford, “What can we do?” Steel replied, “Keep doing what you’re doing.” In regards to the protests and political birddogging the occupiers had done in New Hampshire over the previous few days, Steel said, “You did a great job. Keep it going.”

A while later, activists including Eric Binder of Occupy Boston talked to Juan Williams, a writer and commentator appearing on Fox News Channel. When asked his opinion of Occupy, Williams said “I like it.” When Binder mentioned freedom of speech, Williams laughed in a friendly way and said “imagine what I feel about freedom of speech” (probably referring to a 2010 incident when comments he made on “The O’Reilly Factor” led to NPR terminating his contract). Williams, agreeing with many of the protestors’ gripes, said “there’s a lot to be changed.”

Starting Wednesday (when Mark Provost asked Mitt Romney to update his opinion on corporate personhood to “corporations are abusive people”) through Tuesday, activists with the Occupy movement made themselves seen and heard wherever candidates appeared in public. On Monday, Occupiers staged a protest at Obama for America headquarters in Manchester to send the message that neither Democrats nor Republicans are currently serving the common good.

John Murphy (right) speaks to crowds in Harvard Square during an October rally. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

BLAST: Who are you?

JOHN MURPHY: Murph. I’m 24, from Boston, union carpenter, student at community college.

BLAST: What do you do?

JM: Making sure the movement moves forward. Putting a foot to people’s asses when need be. Simple as that. I would rather be part of history than read about it.

BLAST: What’s your gripe?

JM: I’m involved with the Occupy movement because Americans like to believe and claim that America is number one. But any educated human knows that is false. The US fails in healthcare and education, which are are two most important things any developed nation needs to move forward. Hopefully this movement wakes Americans up and makes them realize the US is only 5% of the world’s population, not 99% of the population. With that, hopefully, more people will realize that the US dictates how other nations should run. The US truly does police the world; that needs to end.

BLAST: Share a memory?

JM: Too many.

BLAST: What’s next?

JM: We move into a warehouse, or office, or open indoor space. In 2016, Occupy will occupy every local, state, and national branch of our government.

Al Suarez, Farhad Ebrahimi and Noah McKenna minutes before arrest on December 10. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

BLAST: Who are you?

AL SUAREZ: My name is Alexander Suarez. Most people on camp called me Al. My hometown is Boston. I’m 27, unemployed. I’m one of the 46 arrested December 10th at the camp, and one of the 25 first arraigned, and one of the 8 of them who plead not guilty and did not accept the deal.

BLAST: What do you do?

AS: On camp I worked with both media group and safety group. One of the reasons safety group was important is because outsiders would sometimes come into camp and seemed like they might hurt people. Media group is important because the mainstrem media is biased. We need to have our own voice.

BLAST: What’s your gripe?

AS: They’re taking our rights bit by bit. I’m involved with Occupy for a better future for our children.

BLAST: Share a memory?

AS: One of my best memories on camp is when I spoke at the GA [General Assembly] for the first time. I got to tell people I came from the camp in Vermont which was shutdown. And I got to tell them how much I admired the fact the Boston camp was still around in spite of what happened there and in NYC, that things were still working in Boston. I told the crowd that we must work together for a new society.

BLAST: Who are you?

NICOLE SULLIVAN: Well, it depends who you ask. First, important demographics: I am a twenty one year old queer women living in Somerville and going to school at a local community college. I have been involved in activism for over a year, I started with anti-rape activism (I am survivor of multiple assaults). I grew up in an upper middle class family, graduated with honors from a top notch private high school and was homeless by the time I was 19. I didn’t use drugs. I was working and in college. I became severely ill from an assault at 18, did not have familial support and the burden was not something I was able to carry. I managed to work my way out of poverty and am now back in school.

Basically, I am someone who has been on both sides of the fence. I’ve seen the amazing privileges that come from being born into the right family and having some modicum of wealth and I’ve seen the incredible hardship of living within a system that is stacked against the average person. I’ve been a hard worker most of my life, it wasn’t that I hit eighteen and became lazy or dumb or an addict. It was just once I lost the backbone of wealth, it did not matter how hard I worked. There is no way to win.

BLAST: What do you do?

NS: At Occupy, I do quite a few things. I am in several action oriented groups such as Direct Action and street teams. I believe that doing actions is the only way to create change. Its like that cliché, “actions speak louder than words.” The fact that Occupy is so action oriented is why I joined. I was sick of talking about things, I wanted change I am also in a couple of outreach groups – outreach and movement building – where we reach out into the Boston community to try to get really grounded in community issues and to bring our message out to the masses. I also do a lot of anti-oppression work. I came into activism through feminism and I see everything from an anti-oppressive standpoint. I fully believe that we need to include the full 99% percent to be a mass movement so the anti-oppression working groups I am in seek to create a space to do that. I also participate in more infrastructure related groups, such as in reach which works on internal communication. Occupy Boston keeps me pretty busy.

BLAST: What’s your gripe?

NS: Well, I could go for a long while about corporate control of our economy and government, income disparity and the like. Those are facets of why I am here. However, for me, there is something much deeper. At the heart of things, I just expect more. I expect more of my government. I expect more of my communities. I expect more of my neighbors. We can be better than mass poverty, income disparity, greed. We can be so much better. We deserve to be better than this. I think it is the very basis of our country, this idea of expecting more. It has gotten lost amid mass apathy and misinformation. For a while, I thought everyone had just given up. Occupy proves me wrong in the best way.

BLAST: Share a memory?

NS: There are so many. One that will always stick with me is the night of the first mass arrest on Columbus Day. I was part of the line defending the expansion camp when the police through us. There were screams, I saw my friends get hurt. I was extraordinarily scared. Then, I looked around. Everyone was scared, the girl next to me was shaking – but none of us were leaving. We were all here to do what was right. I didn’t even know half of the 141 people who were arrested, but it didn’t matter. In that moment, we were all much bigger than individuals. It was a unity I had never seen before in my life.

BLAST: What’s next?

NS: So much. The past two months were barely the beginning. We’re just getting started.

Elizabeth Holmes (left) and other Boston occupiers in Harvard Square on October 23 (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

BLAST: Who are you?

ELIZABETH HOLMES: Who am I? I’m Elizabeth, also known as Mom or Eli.

BLAST: What do you do?

EH: I am a part of medical, safety, wellness, legal and jail support; was in media and direct action.

BLAST: What’s your gripe?

EH: I’m tired of hearing that there are people starving, not receiving (and being billed for) medical care, without a shelter, without quality education. I work in the hemophilia community and teach; several of my gripes come from my experience in both the medical and education fields. Everyone will have access to free quality comprehensive care and free quality education. I’m not sure how that’ll happen but that’s why I’m involved in Occupy.

BLAST: Share a memory?

EH: I walked out of the medical tent at “Take Back the Capital” [in Washington, DC] grumbling about not being able to volunteer there and ran into a bunch of Occupiers mic checking about co-option. It was like running into my long lost family members at the mall.

BLAST: What’s next?

EH: I’m working on a few projects – comprehensive care training for occupations, supply acquisition solution so we can stop spending money, getting medical training to some Occupied Farms, a free comprehensive care clinic in Boston. I’m traveling and am currently at Occupy Wall Street doing research and completing apprenticeship-type experiences. I plan to bring this knowledge back to Boston and then travel about the US with a friend from Occupy LA.

November 19 – Awaiting the release of follow occupier “Ping Pong” from a South Boston police station, Mike Kostigan (center) reads while fellow occupiers sleep. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

BLAST: Who are you?

MIKE KOSTIGEN: I’m 22, Born and raised in Boston. Sailing Instructor. Former Marine Transportation major, transferring to study history.

BLAST: What do you do?

MK: Within Occupy Boston I work with the Direct Action working group. We help to plan marches, as well as try to keep everyone safe during the marches. We also help to coordinate different relevant trainings. Within my Affinity Group (a group of 6-12 people who you really really trust) I helped to build and maintain our sleeping quarters. We had one of the best sleeping areas within the camp. We had two tents, a porch, couches, bike generators and lighting. We all worked hard to build that place, and it showed in that it was one of the last tents standing.

BLAST: What’s your gripe?

MK: I have a laundry list of gripes with the state of our country today. The problem is, I, as a working class person, have no other method left to have my concerns heard.

BLAST: Share a memory?

MK: I have two favorite memories of Dewey Square. One was the second night. We had a big tent, and the next thing we knew the entire immediate neighborhood was over playing music and debating politics. Debate is almost the wrong word because even though we all has staunchly different views we all stayed up until at least 3 a.m. .talking about why we came to those ideas, and even if we disagreed we respected each others opinions and more importantly we gained more respect for each other. The other favorite memory is one I don’t really remember, but sometime along the way my affinity group came to the realization that we were no longer just friends, we had become the single most loving and dysfunctional family the world has ever seen.

BLAST: What’s next?

MK: As for the future there are a lot of plans. Most people agree that we need to hold out for the spring. Immediate plans are to get a home base, housing for everyone, and then plan for the American Spring which is only a few months away.

King Mel is a long-time Boston community activist and civil rights leader who served as State Representative and ran for Mayor of Boston in 1982.

Early in his career, he was a vocal organizer of a 1968 protest in which neighborhood activists erected a tent city in a parking lot where the Boston Redevelopment Authority planned to build a garage. For three days, countless people funneled through the festive shantytown for free food, free music and radical political discussion. When a housing development, not a garage, was built on the site it was named “Tent City” in honor of the activists’ encampment.

Speaking at a small gathering at encuentro5 (a space in Chinatown for community and progressive groups) a week before Occupy Boston’s eviction from Dewey Square, Mel King praised Occupy Boston and drew parallel’s between it and the 1968 Tent City he helped create.

King told the Boston occupiers, “You have the right to alter and change. You have that right. You are deserving, and no change comes to any individual or group until they assert themselves that they are deserving…Your message is getting into people’s minds and you’re saying ‘we are deserving.’” Waving in his hand the second issue of “The Boston Occupier” (the local counterpart to the “Occupy Wall Street Journal”) King added, “You have the right to revolution.”

Full 8 minute video of Mel King’s speech to Occupy Boston:

Editor’s note: John Stephen Dwyer, a contributing editor for Blast, has been writing about Occupy Boston and spending several nights a week in Dewey Square since the protest began on September 30. He also reports on Occupy Harvard, the protest that began on November 9 and continues behind the locked and guarded gates of Harvard Yard.

At 5 a.m. Saturday morning, hundreds of Boston Police officers converged on Dewey Square Park to evict the Occupy Boston tent community that was established on September 30 and had become the oldest standing Occupy encampment in the US.

Arrests began with almost three dozen activists, who sat down in the area used for the General Assembly and locked their arms in defiance. Shortly before 5:40 a.m., police arrested five more men who placed themselves on the ground in front of a front-end loader parked on Atlantic Ave on the opposite side of Summer Street. Things were relatively calm from then until just after 6:30 a.m., when four women bolted into the center of the intersection, sat down, and were arrested as well.

A total of 46 arrests were reported — 32 men and 14 women.

Overall, the morning up to the raid was characterized by warm sentiments between activists and uncertainty about how (but not if) Occupy Boston would carry on once the encampment was leveled. When the raid finally took place two hours before dawn, there was no riot gear worn, no tear gas or pepper spray used, and no angry-faced police thrusting or swinging their truncheons at non-violent protestors. Rather, it was clear many people on both sides of the arrest had a certain amount of respect for one another and, in some cases, were even on a friendly, first-name basis.

Emotional denouement

Although close to 2,000 people gathered around Dewey Square in the early hours of Friday morning in anticipation of a police raid, probably less than two hundred were present Saturday morning to witness the final hours of the Occupy Boston encampment. The atmosphere was one of sentimental camaraderie and triumph with relatively few indications of sadness or anxiety about the looming eviction. People who customarily bumped fists exchanged hugs instead. Looking for words for what they were feeling, they talked about one another as “brothers” and “sisters.”

With tense anticipation in the air, Bill the Medic lightened the mood of both police and protestors with a hand-made sign (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Around 1 a.m., a couple dozen people gathered in a circle on Dewey Square Plaza, the paved area just outside the entrance to Dewey Square Park. Not disturbed by the noise of heavy traffic or the din of a large crowd, they took turns speaking but didn’t need to rely upon the call and response of the people’s mic. The majority spoke in emotional terms about the transformative experience of being part of Occupy Boston for ten weeks and, in particular, about the friends they had made. Many said that the movement would outlive the encampment but no one dwelt on that point. It was, by this time, a common understanding that no one in Occupy Boston openly voiced doubts about.

Bill, an amiable member of the Medic Team popular with both protestors and police, approached the circle wearing his familiar blue vest with reflective patches and the letters “EMT” on the back. In one hand, he held a cigarette and a can of orange soda, in the other hand, a sign saying “medics want to go home / please start the raid.” His snowy-white goatee framed a grin. Pointing towards his sign, he made patrolmen smile, too, by kidding them about not doing their jobs. Protestors also chuckled at his sign, one murmuring to a comrade “Seriously. The wait is worse than anything.”

Balloon-gate

A while later, some young men and women began unfolding a huge, parachute-like sack of material they had somehow smuggled into camp. This tent-like structure was designed to be held up by wind, but they didn’t have success in erecting it in the General Assembly area. Patrolmen told them to end their efforts, but they didn’t speak with convincing authority or urgency. Gently teasing the cops, protestors joked about “balloon-gate” as a reference to the more tense and serious “sinkgate” incident of December 1 when police seized a sink and arrests were made.

Playfully defying the police still further, people grabbed the fabric and ran down the gravel path (briefly labeled “Sacco and Vanzetti Avenue” in mid-October but more recently adorned with a sturdy wooden signpost reading “Thoreau-fair St.”) until the light material caught enough breeze to partially inflate. A group of friends entered it, playfully laughing and joking about “occupy the balloon.” Police let them have some fun before insisting it be rolled back up because no new structures were being allowed.

Jacks attacked

The arrest of this man accused of striking a female activist in the face spurred a round of jests about how "white guys in suits" should be profiled as dangerous individuals. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

A while later, shouts were heard from Atlantic Avenue and dozens of people on camp ran to investigate. But instead of discovering that the raid had begun, they found police arresting a man in a white shirt and suit coat alleged to have followed, insulted and assaulted Robin Jacks — better known as @caulkthewagon, prominent representative of Occupy Boston’s tongue-in-cheek “Twitter Working Group.” After the man was arrested, Jacks hugged Detective Sergeant Jim O’Connor (a familiar plainclothes officer who had recently added a “I am the 99 percent” button to his outerwear) in gratitude.

When Jacks told her tale of ordeal to fellow activists and asked for a “temperature check” on the Boston Police, she received a positive consensus of “twinkle fingers” (the same hands-up, finger wiggling gesture used in American Sign Language to indicate applause) from the crowd. Elsewhere in camp, a stalwart who boasted about defending his tent (but ended up fleeing anyway when police arrived) had erected a small sign saying “no pigs allowed.” Reaction to it was primarily negative.

Police move in

As it got close to 5 a.m., few thought a raid was imminent and most expected the raid wouldn’t happen until Sunday morning. Robin Jacks, sharing her thoughts about the situation, said “It’s been a waiting game, not really knowing what’s happening. Seeing a lot of people here. That’s good. I mean, for an overnight, this is a lot of people, especially people who are out and active and not just people sleeping. Usually if you were to come here at this point on a Friday night, It’d be dead. Just Safety would be out. So, it’s been nice…[seeing] people I haven’t seen in a while. It’s been nice. I might go home and get some Z’s in like 15 minutes.”

Defiantly seated in the same area that Occupy Boston held its General Assemblies, these activists mic checked various messages before being arrested. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Holding an icepack to her face, she then described how she was attacked earlier in the night but was interrupted by the calm voice of her girlfriend, Meghann Sheridan, saying, “Robin, it’s happening” and the raspy voice of Alex “Troll” De Luca shouting “form up!” a split second later. Her head turning, Jacks said “shit” as she ran to see dozens of police vehicles — including prisoner transport vehicles and the white vans of the Special Operations Unit — coming down Atlantic Avenue.

Police, mostly in yellow vests or coats, lined up along Atlantic Ave spacing themselves at arms’ length away from one another as both similarly-dressed patrolmen and black-garbed Special Ops police approached from Summer Street. Soon Captain Bernard O’Rourke, the tall and stern-faced head of District A-1 who has been present at most of Occupy Boston’s marches and direct actions, walked through the camp with a megaphone, sometimes stopping to point it at a tent while saying, “Good morning. This is the Boston Police Department. You are trespassing on Greenway property. If you do not leave the park you will be subject to arrest.”

O’Rourke didn’t respond when a male voice coming from a tent asked how long would be given to collect his belongings but rather continued walking, repeating the above message, and adding, “Please leave the park in the direction of Summer Street and South Station.” Approaching the Medical Tent, O’Rourke gave his direction, “…leave in the direction of South Station, towards Summer Street, please,” without electronic amplification.

Walking along the path of what had been called “Main Street,” O’Rourke resumed his use of the megaphone while adding “…take your property with you” to his message. As a confused camper exited his camp O’Rourke pointed and said, “Go out towards South Station. You don’t want to be arrested.” Lifting the megaphone again, he urged haste saying “Let’s go, guys. Let’s go, gents. Head towards South Station, you won’t be arrested. Head towards South Station, you will not be arrested. Let’s go.”

The Stand-off

Then, coming from the North side of the park, came the call-and-response of the people’s mic and the defiant Occupy chant, “Show me what democracy looks like? This is what democracy looks like!” The noise was originating from the General Assembly area where the occupation had held its horizontally democratic meetings — many long and fairly boring, others long and filled with drama too overblown for film or stage. Now, some three dozen activist sat, facing Atlantic Avenue, on the zigzag paving stones. They locked arms, a gesture understood by many to invite a charge of unlawful assembly or, even, resisting arrest.

Jose, a sometimes member of the Safety Team evicted from a different area of the camp, was dragged out as he swore and complained about not being able to put on his shoes before arrest. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

When asked what would happen to their remaining tents and other property, Superintendent William Evans — the small-built police official who had walked through Dewey Square building relationships with protestors almost daily — answered them through a megaphone saying, “We’re going to throw it away…unfortunately…so if you have property, if you have valuables, anything that might disappear, please get it….we don’t want confrontation.”

John Ford questioned Evans further. Ford, with auburn sideburns and military surplus clothing, is the ever-impassioned “library guy” and “safety guy” whose larger-than-life personality caused a writer for “The Nation” to say, “it’s clear that he’s the de facto leader of Occupy Boston.” This statement ruffled many feathers among the devoutly leaderless occupiers of Dewey Square. Ford’s too. But it didn’t cost him any respect among the many people who rely upon his help, council and ability to, as he puts in, “to do things that need to be done. It’s not that hard. Fuck.”

Ford – who fought at Thursday’s General Assembly for the idea that Occupy Boston might leave the park better than it was found – asked Evans to give occupiers until morning to clean the camp themselves if they promised to leave. “We’ve given you two days to get your stuff out, John,” Evans replied, “No, John, We’ve given you two days. Alright? You had plenty of time. You work with us; I know you tried to help. But people have chosen to stay. If that’s what their choice is, unfortunately…”

Interrupted by Ford’s insistent pleas, Evan’s amplified voice stammering a bit saying, “you guys…want to get arrested. We’re doing this nicely as possible, Alright? Please. We don’t want to have to force on anyone or anyone hurt. Alright? We’re gonna use as least force as we have to. Alright? So please. Go easily, if you can.”

Behind this scene, among the many police assembled, a protestor stood with a wooden sign that had been displayed prominently in Dewey Square since early October. Its square, black letters on a white background spelled out a phrase used by many occupiers with military or law enforcement experience. It read, “I took an oath to defend the Constitution / So here I am!”

Parting mic checks

Waiting for arrest, a male occupier shouted for and got the people’s mic. He then yelled, “the officers…are enforcing…the law…in the past…people have…stood up against…laws…so their voice…could be heard…It’s sad…that this…is what it took…for us…to get our voice…but now…we have a voice…and we’re not going to…shut up…we are relevant…listen to us!”

Seconds later, a female occupier mic checked saying, “we have a right…to assemble…it is not up to them…to tell us when…to stop assembling!” Another male voice, mic checking as well, complained that the press had been pushed too far back to record what transpired. A fourth voice, belonging to a person holding a camera and weaving between the police, assured his comrades that the live stream was broadcasting it and had thousand of viewers. Someone yelled, happily, “Thank you, Internet!”

Ford spoke again, standing, mic checking, and calling to his fellows “I am now…going to protest…[using] my individual right here…to not give them my [bail?] money…I have given you my sweat…my blood…my tears…my advice…but I will not give you any here…that’s what I will say…’you will not get another dime from me today’…but I’m right here.” He walked away down Atlantic Avenue, head characteristically bowed, fists characteristically clenched. It looked like he was leaving but returned after passing his car keys off to Robin Jacks and was arrested along with his comrades.

Al Suarez, an activist who had joined Occupy Boston after the Occupy Burlington encampment was leveled by police, had rushed back from the “Take Back the Capitol” action in Washington, DC when he heard Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s ominous words about a midnight Thursday deadline. Suarez mic checked, “I’d like to give a shout out…to Occupy Vermont…we were shut down then…this time…I’m ready to be arrested…for my country…and for the future of this country…for all of our children.”

Another man, indicating that many occupiers called Dewey Square home and had no where else to go to, mic checked, “how do you think…Menino would feel…if we took his home…out from under his feet…and threw all his things away?…He’d sing a whole different song!”

Air Force vet Alex Ingram yelled his mic check so loud it forced the molassasy twang from his thick Georgia accent as he declared, “We are all witnesses…we were witnesses when…they were taking homes…we were witnesses when…the financial system collapsed…we were witness when…we watched other Occupys across the country…taken down one by one…and tonight…we are witnesses…to solidarity…as long as our eyes and ears are open…we will be a witness…to the good…and the evil…through all the world.”

A woman’s mic check, her voice possessing less volume but no less message than her male comrades, declared, “what does…President Obama…have to say…about the over 4,000…arrests of…peaceful assembly…in the United States…when he encouraged….assembly in…Tahrir…Hamas, Syria…Bahrain…Yemen…Tunisia…and Libya…why are they…getting more support from him…than we are?”

Arrests and dismantling of the camp

The flag on the left was added to this display by Sgt. Robert Merner, Boston Police officer who rescued if after it had fallen on muddy ground in a different area of Dewey Square. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Their combined voices booming, the demonstrators call-and-response chanted “from Mattapan to Allston…Occupy Boston!” again and again as sanitation workers and police began dismantling tents and throwing them into a garbage truck. Arriving on site, Commissioner Ed Davis told reporters “…just some arrests being made, that’s all” and wouldn’t say much else.

Among these uniformed men and woman was Sgt. Robert Merner, an officer with a shaved head who was around Dewey Square all the time for the first month and a half or so of the occupation. Merner took a small flag that had fallen off a tent and carried it over to where the fire extinguisher near the sign tent once rested. He planted the flag at eye level, displaying it next to an identical one atop a sign reading “Occupy is the highest form of patriotism.” But this tableau, too, eventually made it into the trash truck. Whether the flags were ultimately rescued or just tossed in with the rest isn’t known.

As press was lined up on Atlantic Avenue waiting for those arrested to be filed past their cameras, some occupiers felt it was the bankers, not the people protesting corruption, who deserved a perp walk. “We are not here,” said the people’s mic, “for a publicity stunt…we are here…to voice our voices!” Perhaps in reaction to this, or perhaps as part of a plan to avoid media scrutiny, the police backed their transport vehicles into the General Assembly area, loaded them with hand-tied protestors, then drove them away.

Captain Bernard O'Rourke (right), a frequent presence at Occupy Boston events, displayed stern demeanor on Monday when occupiers attempted to bring a winter-proof tent into Dewey Square. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, speaking less than 24 hours after Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frances McIntyre lifted a restraining order that kept the city from raiding Occupy Boston’s tent city at Dewey Square Park, seems to have issued an ultimatum to the activists by saying “We’re going to ask the occupants of Dewey Square to be out there by midnight … [or] we’ll take further action.”

Occupy Boston encamped across from South Station on September 30. It’s now the longest-running “physical occupation” in the US but activists often assert that occupations — including Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Denver and Occupy Los Angeles — are actually communities of people rather than the physical spaces in which they congregate or set up tents.

Today Dewey Square is busy with activity as people move valuable items – such as supplies stored in the Food Tent and books kept in the Library Tent – to safe locations away from the encampment. Many activists involved with Occupy Boston are trying to return from the union-backed actions in Washington, DC where they arrived by bus Monday afternoon. On the home front, many Occupy Boston activists enrolled in college classes are struggling to concentrate on final exams or term papers today but have pledged to be in Dewey Square by midnight.

Occupy Boston posted the following statement today at OccupyBoston.org:

This morning, Mayor Menino issued a midnight deadline for Occupy Boston to leave the Greenway. The articulated threat of eviction is a clear and present danger to the community we have built over the past ten weeks. We came to Dewey Square to practice true democracy and give visibility to injustice; we came to see if we could not–in providing for basic needs–maintain a standing indictment against their enforced deprivation within our broader community. With this commitment came hard evidence of economic suffering, evidence that we present at the doorstep of the Federal Reserve along with our democracy, our songs and our chants that echo daily through the financial canyon. Today, the city threatens that community. It threatens the library, where we hold our classes and discuss ideas. It threatens our food tent, which has served thousands of people many more thousands of meals. It threatens our medical tent, which has provided treatment and care to the sick and to the injured. Not only these, it threatens the lives of those of us who have no place else to go. The city has cited concern for our safety as the reason for forcing us back into the streets. But make no mistake; the city’s concern for our safety will disperse when we do. We have therefore taken steps to ensure the safety of the infrastructure we have built, and to protect the most vulnerable among us in the event of the eviction. We are taking down the food tent, the medical tent, packing up our logistics supplies for safe-keeping and working with social service providers and other allies to secure shelter for our brothers and sisters most likely to experience homelessness if and when the city throws away their tents. We take action–today and always–in the name of economic and political justice, freedom of expression and our entire community.

Chris Ott from ACLU of Massachusetts sent out an email today with a message from the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild which said,in part:

“Across the country, even people who have not been sympathetic to the Occupy movement have been shocked by images of the force used against peaceful protestors, including beatings, and the use of pepper spray. Mayor Menino’s announcement today has ensured nationwide attention for whatever happens next in Boston. We call on the City to show restraint and not repeat the mistakes made by carrying out heavy-handed crackdowns. If the City feels it must act, it at least has the responsibility to ensure a peaceful transition. Midnight deadlines and actions taken suddenly or under cover of darkness are rash and unhelpful. Boston, as part of the long New England tradition of town meeting and grassroots democracy, has an important role to play again in how it responds to Occupy Boston. We believe that Boston can – and must – set an example for the entire nation in protecting the rights of Occupy Boston participants, and the many other concerned citizens they represent.”

Gunner Scott, a well-known transgender activist involved with the Media Working Group at Occupy Boston since its establishment, told Blast, “I think the judge did not grasp the reality that free speech cannot be zoned, that a 24 hour protest is possible and that it is protected by the first amendment.”

Sage Radachowsky, an activist involved with both Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard, expressed a different perspective in saying, “We are breaking the law. This is civil disobedience. We are breaking a law to show that we care immensely about the issues that we are raising. We should never have gone to court. We should have admitted that we are breaking laws, and for good reason. To protest the way that our economy has been gutted by a huge bailout to banks who got paid for ruining our economy, and against an undemocratic political landscape in which some people sleep on cardboard while others sleep in five homes.”

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has issued an ultimatum to Occupy Boston Protesters: Leave by midnight, or the city will force you out.

The news comes just a day after a Suffolk Superior Court judge lifted a restraining order that kept the city from raiding the tent city at Dewey Square.

The ultimatum brings a likely end to the country’s longest-running occupation and sets up an equally likely late night conflict with Boston police today.

The Sacred Space tent at Occupy Boston, now the oldest Occupy encampment still standing in the United States. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

According to McIntyre, “the injunction is denied because, while Occupy Boston protesters may be exercising their expressive rights during the protest, they have no privilege under the First Amendment to seize and hold the land on which they sit.”

With visibility blocked by umbrellas and cameras, the general mood of the assembly was one of excitement and resolve rather than panic. Many reported that connections within the Boston Police Department said that no raid would take place last tonight. Ben Wish, a lawyer for Occupy Boston speaking at the General Assembly, assured those assembled that no police action will be taken immediately. But others, especially non-locals, sent different reports. @RyanRiceLA, for example, tweeted “#OccupyBoston has SWAT staging 4 raid” and @Occupy_PolicePolice wrote “ALERT! Spec Ops Staging in BOSTON NOW!”

The city stated clearly on Wednesday that no police action was imminent.

In the wake of the decision, a spokesperson for Mayor Thomas Menino’s office said:

“We are pleased with Judge McIntyre’s strong decision to repeal the restraining order that prohibited the City of Boston from removing the Occupy Boston camp at Dewey Square. We applaud the judge for clearly recognizing the City’s authority to protect all of our residents, including those currently at Dewey Square. Our first priority has always been and will always be to ensure the public’s health and safety. As outlined in the court proceeding and affirmed in the judge’s ruling, the conditions at Dewey Square have deteriorated significantly and pose very real health and safety risks. The city strongly encourages the Occupy movement to abide by the Rose Kennedy Greenway regulations and remove their tents and refrain from camping in that area. Today’s decision provides clarity surrounding Occupy Boston’s status at Dewey Square and the city will act appropriately to fulfill our duty to preserve the public’s peace and safety.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and the National Lawyers Guild-Massachusetts Chapter released a statement which said, in part:

“We are disappointed with today’s decision and are reviewing the decision with our clients to determine all their options. The Occupy Boston community is making a significant contribution to national discussion of important issues – not merely through what protestors are saying, but their modeling of an alternative to what they see as imbalances and injustices in our society. Just because the court ruled today that the city can shut down the encampment at Dewey Square does not mean that it should. As city officials have repeatedly – and recently – stated, there is no immediate need to remove Occupy Boston from Dewey Square. If city officials decide, nonetheless, to do so, how they go about it also sends an important message. Occupy Boston has always been a peaceful political protest, aimed at drawing attention to the growing inequalities in our society. At a minimum, Boston city officials and the police must exercise restraint and respect with regard to the Occupy Movement and the concerned citizens it represents attention devoted to Occupy sites, and most articles, per journalistic custom, restate the Occupy position…With the exception of the heavy-handed removal of demonstrators from the Rose Kennedy Greenway early in the morning on Oct. 11, Boston has already become a model of respect for freedom of speech to other cities around the country, where Occupy encampments have been broken up with levels of force that have even shocked people who were not involved in the Occupy movement or sympathetic to its aims. Boston, as part of the long New England tradition of town meeting and grassroots democracy, has an important role to play again in how it responds to today’s decision. We believe that Boston can – and must – set an example for the entire nation in protecting the rights of Occupy Boston participants.”

A activist who is the principle maintainer of the Sign Tent at Occupy Boston and uses the name “Guy Sands” when talking to the press explained, “I feel, personally, based on what the mayor has put out consistently, that they’re going to act within the near future to remove Occupy Boston from Dewey Square for violations that they won’t let Occupy Boston remedy.”

He added: “I feel this ruling is somewhat confusing in that the violence towards occupy seems to be the rational used to say that the ‘public’ doesn’t understand the message and that the police reaction is why she judges that Occupy Boston is not expressive speech. I also think the statement in ruling ‘There is scant evidence of how the occupation began’ is foolish due to the sheer number of media articles based in fact, reporting the entire occupation. I also feel that due to the Mayor, police superintendent, fire marshal, and code inspector all making statements about removing Occupy Boston have spoken for themselves regardless of the Mayor’s statement today that there is no plan in place to remove Occupy Boston.”

Speaking at the rainy and muddy General Assembly, Occupy Boston lawyer Ben Wish said he will appeal Judge McIntyre’s decision today. When he mentioned the possibility that Occupy Boston protest might move to the Harbor Islands – the only legal campground within city limits – the crowd responded with laughter. Jeff Fueur of the National Lawyers Guild, speaking at the same assembly, reiterated Wish’s belief that no raid will occur immediately.

Although not as busy as it was in October, Occupy Boston still gets thousands of visitors a week. Most live locally, but others are activists associated with out-of-state occupations. Among those coming to Dewey Square recently was a group from Manchester, N.H. who mic checked Obama on November 22 and a person arriving from Burlington, Vt. to settle in Occupy Boston since the camp he came from no longer exists. Blast interviewed them both.

Occupy Manchester and Obama’s mic check

Paul Brochu, Nikki Brant, Elizabeth Grunewald and Ryan Hirsch were all involved with mic checking Obama during his recent appearance in Manchester. Hirsch was the person who later handed the president of the United States a note with a transcription of the message they tried to deliver.

The note read, “Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protestors have been arrested. While banks continue to destroy the economy with impunity. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.”

Describing the encounter, Hirsh said, “I was already right up there, and he looked like he was listening to the first part, but then his supporters started to drown us out and I was like, crap…he’s not even going to be able to hear this speech, he’s going to be able to say ‘I never heard it.’ So…[later] I handed it to him…it looks like I just shoved the note in his hand, but really as he was coming down the line to shake hands I was just like, ‘Hey, Mr. President, I just want to say I’m sorry for interrupting your speech…here’s a copy of your mic check.’ He grabbed it out of my hand, and actually he read it…he responded to it by saying…’I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been silent on the issue, but I admit that I could be more vocal.’”

“That’s a pretty good response,” said Hirsch, “If he actually does do it, I will be impressed. He will gain a little bit of points with me. Probably not enough for me to vote for him. But he will gain some points…he handled it pretty graciously.” Hirsch also dispelled the notion that “nobody can get that close to the President, nobody can hand the President anything…I was just this dumb guy, Forrest Gump-ing his way up to the President…and everybody’s blowing it out of proportion like it’s this crazy, unprecedented thing…he doesn’t live in a bubble.”

Beth Grunewald described the mic check saying, “there were some other people from other occupations in New Hampshire, but I would say the majority was Manchester people.” Paul Brochu described how they practiced the mic check beforehand in an area with a high ceiling to determine how loud they were.

Occupy Burlington and the wake of tragedy

Al Suarez and some fellow activists from Vermont first visited Occupy Boston the weekend after Josh Pfenning, 35, a veteran living in the Occupy Burlington encampment, fatally shot himself with a handgun on November 10 thus prompting the dismantling of the tents shortly thereafter. After these visitors talked about the suicide in Occupy Boston’s library, Elizabeth Holmes, an Occupy Boston medic who has also spent time counseling rape victims at Occupy Wall Street, told them they needed to deal with that tragedy as individuals and as a community. The group had planned to stay in Boston for a few days but one member of that contingent, feeling threatened by what he perceived as gang activity in Dewey Square, insisted they leave early.

When Suarez, having no where else to go, returned to Occupy Boston recently he explained, “I’m here to stay this time.” He added, “unfortunately we couldn’t bring the [Burlington] camp back yet, and the cops have been after us, especially the homeless members…everybody knows each other at Burlington, so the cops are very discriminatory in their methods and the media is not very cooperative with us…we’re literally not occupying anything. We have [General Assemblies] at parks.”

Suarez, who has an online radio show, also describes “a very serious [homeless] shelter issue….because they’re overcrowded, they’re small shelters, we’re talking about Vermont here, so they’re small shelters…there’s a lot of people on the street. They’re going to suffer from extreme cold. They’re going to die from the cold…they’re treated like scum of the earth…they’re victims of society.”

Saying that half the people in the Occupy Burlington were homeless, Suarez attests, “just because they’re homeless doesn’t mean they’re there to hang out…they’re there because they’re activists like us. And I also became homeless when they closed out the camp…instead of being sensitive to these people who suffered a tragedy, ever since the tragedy’s happened a couple weeks ago, all [the police have] done is take advantage of it.”

Suarez also described the raid saying “they lured us into City Hall…then one of our fellow campers got a text saying they’re taking over the rest of our encampment, they’re taking over our teepee. They lured us there to talk, and then we ran out, and the cops came out ready to shoot tear gas and they started randomly detaining people.” He said events in which the mayor of Burlington was made to like a “hero” for helping to get a detainee released “didn’t exactly happen that way…there’s so many media distortions.”

Woody Tasch, socially conscious investing pioneer, founder of the Slow Money movement, and author of the book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered. (Media credit/Tammy Green via Flickr)

“Slow Money” is the name for a movement started by socially conscious investing pioneer and author, Woody Tasch, who essentially borrowed the conceptual framework of “Slow Food”—whereby participants eschew convenience-oriented “fast” foods, instead filling up their plates with traditional, unprocessed and, ideally, locally produced foods—and applied it to personal finance and investing. As such, Slow Money is dedicated to connecting investors to their local economies by marshaling financial resources to invest in small food enterprises and local food systems.

Tasch’s vision for Slow Money, now not just a concept but also a non-profit organization, seeks nothing less than a complete overhaul of the way we think about and spend our money, channeling much more of it into producing healthy local food, strengthening local communities instead of multinational corporations, and restoring our flagging economy in the process. Instead of venture capital bankrolling far flung high tech start-ups, Tasch hopes to see “nurture capital” funding local merchants and producers who, in turn, plug half of their profits back into their communities, ensuring one small local virtuous circle that values soil fertility, carrying capacity, a sense of place, care of the commons, diversity, nonviolence, and cultural, ecological and economic health as much as financial return. Tasch hopes to get there by persuading a million Americans to invest at least one percent of their assets in local food systems by 2020.

Tasch started Slow Money in November 2008 after the publication of his book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered. Hitting the road to promote the book and the nascent movement in 2009, he was able to attract 450 intrigued investors, farmers and other entrepreneurs to Santa Fe, New Mexico to trade ideas at a three-day gathering. “We just wanted to see who would show up, but four of the small food enterprises that presented raised an aggregate of $260,000,” says Tasch. Tasch then organized another event for some 600 attendees the following June in Shelburne, Vermont. Investors there poured $4.2 million into 12 more producers, and that’s when Tasch knew he was really on to something. More than 1,000 people converged in San Francisco for the third event in October 2011, and Tasch expects untold amounts of “slow capital” to be changing hands for the better as a result.

Whether or not you have money to invest in Slow Money’s virtuous circles, you can show your support by visiting the group’s website and electronically signing the organization’s Principles, a list of six core beliefs shared by the Slow Money community. Or if you have just $25, you could park it with the organization’s Soil Trust, which will seed small food enterprises that promote soil fertility in locales from coast to coast. Tasch sees the Soil Trust as key to opening up the Slow Money concept to all of us and achieving the group’s goal of getting a million Americans involved in the movement over the next decade.

Another key to achieving Tasch’s goal is growth of leadership at the local level. To that end, a dozen autonomous local chapters have sprung up nationwide, with more sure to come as word gets out. The local groups have already gifted or lent hundreds of thousands of dollars to entities working to improve their own community “foodsheds.” Now we all have a way to truly put our money where our mouths are.

CONTACTS: Slow Money, www.slowmoney.org.

Editor’s note: John Stephen Dwyer, a contributing editor for Blast, has been writing about Occupy Boston and spending several nights a week in Dewey Square since the protest began on September 30.  He also reports on Occupy Harvard, the protest that began on November 9 and continues behind the locked and guarded gates of Harvard Yard.

CAMBRIDGE — On November 9, a group calling itself Occupy Harvard set up camp in Harvard Yard.  As the university has closed the gates to anyone without a Harvard ID, all of the occupiers are Harvard-affiliates (mostly students, plus some faculty and employees) and only a few have previous involvement with Occupy Boston or other occupations.  Their unofficial logo, as shown on the @Occupy_Harvard Twitter account, is the Harvard coat-of-arms with the word “Oc-cu-py” replacing “Ve-ri-tas” on the three open books.

They’ve been there more than two weeks.  Camille, a member of Occupy Harvard and a post-doctoral fellow who asked that her last name not be used, told Blast, “…we will be camping during Thanksgiving break. We will have our GA at the usual time (Thursday at 6pm) and will still be here next Monday.”

Tents and attention

The occupation has about 30 tents.  But unlike Occupy Boston, which supports dozens of people with no where else to go, no one can honestly call the Occupy Harvard encampment “home.” Instead, these tents are occupied between classes or other responsibilities — scholastic, social and otherwise.  Harvard’s occupiers donate considerable time to the business of the movement, and some do sleep in tents when they could be in beds just hundreds of feet away, but they make no claims about roughing it, much less mortification of the flesh.  The tents, say Occupy Harvard members, are a specific form of protest used as a gesture of solidarity with people living in poverty and with the Occupy Movement in general.

Idyllic compared compared to the ramshackle tent city of Occupy Boston, the cluster of tents in the Old Yard is new, clean, and safe at night under the constant gaze of both John Harvard’s statue and the Harvard Police.  The activists have the falling autumnal leaves of the Harvard elms and all the amenities of the university.  But undergrad and Occupy Harvard organizer Sandra Y. L. Korn shook her head at media accusations that the encampment consisted of Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean tents and answered “most of these tents cost forty-something bucks.”

But the tents aren’t the occupation, the people are.  Occupy Harvard has a decent-sized group of activists – around 100 – and they get attention.  They were featured in the national media just for walking out of a particular Economics class a week before they pitched tents in the Yard.  More recently, they stole the spotlight from Newt Gingrich when they mic checked the presidential hopeful at the Kennedy School and caused him to cancel a book signing at the Harvard Coop.  And they’re definitely on people’s mind around campus.  Last week, before “the Game,” student entrepreneurs having nothing to do with the protest were outside the Science Center selling $20 t-shirts that said “Occupy Yale” on one side and “We are the 6.2% (referring to Harvard College’s acceptance rate) on the other.

Harvard’s occupiers seem to have leveraged this attention effectively.  “Theoretical issues are important, but we here can make a difference in the next week in the lives of hundreds of janitors,” said Gabriel Bayard, 18, when the Occupy Harvard encamped on November 9.  Bayard’s prediction seemed to come true last week when SEIU Local 615, a union representing many of the janitors working at Harvard, avoided a strike and won a new, five-year labor contract with competitive wage increases and benefits improvements.

Closed gates

The shutting of Harvard’s gates has determined the character of the protest and the criticism made against it.  Whereas Occupy Boston has attracted all kinds of wild characters, the atmosphere at Occupy Harvard is calm and polite.  The occupiers are almost invariably well-groomed and articulate.  The donation jar took in $130 one day, most of it in $20 bills, and it didn’t disappear when no one had their eye on it.

It is, to use a word popular in Dewey Square, “bougy” (fancy, bourgeois).  Many holders of Harvard IDs have a decent shot of joining the 1% if they weren’t already born into it.  The occupiers in the Yard say this privilege – earned through hard work in many cases, inherited in others – gives them more obligation to try to fix the system rather than less.  Despite the difference in character between the two occupations, bad feelings towards Occupy Harvard seem absent at Occupy Boston; full-time inhabitants there tend to shrug and say “if they’re with us, great.” There’s also some overlap between the two groups, as well as a thread of associations starting with Harvard Divinity School students who went to Occupy Walls Street when it was new, formed the Protest Chaplins upon their return to Massachusetts, became involved with Occupy Boston, and now frequent the very civilized GA’s (General Assemblies) behind Harvard’s guarded gates.

Since no one can enter the Yard without ID, everyone who wanders by the Info Tent is a Harvard affiliate.  Faculty and students stop by in about equal proportion; Harvard employees seem less apt to approach the desk.  The vast majority of these are sympathetic to the demonstrators, although many have specific reservations or questions about the movement’s methods and goals.  Those opening their mouths in opposition to Occupy Harvard invariably complain about having to show ID at the gate (although investigation revealed less than a minute wait during the busiest time of day).

An Abercrombie-ish jock came by one afternoon, waving a petition for stop the University to crush the protest and open the gates.  And there’s a Hugh Grant-esque grad student and self-identified member of the 1% who has come by several times on his bicycle to troll the undergrads.  When told stopping a war with a million casualties was more important than not inconveniencing people at the gates he sniped “that’s your opinion.” Another time, he advised a Haitian freshman his people should be better cab drivers.  This comment from “Go home” left at OccupyHarvard.net is a good example of criticisms made against Occupy Harvard.  Minus the f word, it’s similar to gripes heard in the Yard itself:

Seriously just get the fuck out of Harvard Yard. The only thing you’ve done is taken a space that used to belong to ALL Harvard students and made it the property of the 1 percent of them that are dumb enough to think that this is actually making a difference…Stop pretending like you’re not eating in the dining halls, sneaking back to your dorms for hot showers and sleep, and attending classes. If you don’t like this place, leave. There are plenty of other students who would be happy to be here without disrupting everyone else.  Stop ruining the rest of the ’1 percent’s semester, go home.

Occupy Harvard members say publicly and privately that the closing of the gates seems like a university ploy to turn opinion against the occupiers.  “What Are They Afraid Of?” they ask on the website, “Occupy Harvard has repeatedly reached out to the administration to end its absurd lock down of the Yard, but has been continually rebuffed. We want the lockdown ended.” But there are dozens of homeless people in and around Harvard Square.  Homeless people – or “houseless people” in the lingo of some who call Dewey Square “home” – are a big part of many occupations in the United States.  The Harvard occupiers and their supporters can’t deny that opening the gates would, at least, change the character of Occupy Harvard overnight.

Open letters

Befitting a place of letters, much of the most important dialogue surrounding Occupy Harvard is done in writing.  Approaching the Info Tent, one might be offered a slip of paper that says:

We are here in solidarity with the Occupy Movement to protest the corporatization of higher education, epitomized by Harvard University.  We see injustice in the 180:1 ratio between the compensation of Harvard’s highest paid employee—the head of internal investments at Harvard management Company—and the lowest paid employee, an entry-level custodial worker.  We see injustice in Harvard adoption of corporate efficiency measures such as job outsourcing.  We see injustice in African land grabs that displace local farmers and devastate the environment.  We see injustice in Harvard’s investment in private equity firms such as HEI Hotels and Resorts, which profits off the backbreaking labor of a non-union immigrant workforce.  We see injustice in Harvard’s lack of financial transparency and its prevention of student and community voice in these investments

The letter goes on to suggest that “a university for the 99 percent would offer academic opportunities to assess responses to socioeconomic inequality outside the scope of mainstream economics.” While visitors from Occupy Wall Street sometimes note Occupy Boston has a academic, “college-town” flavor to it, precise and relatively complex language like this characterizes Occupy Harvard to an even greater degree.

Drew Faust , President of Harvard, released an open letter on Monday to “to share more fully some of the principles and realities that have informed our decisions and actions.” She wrote, “As President, I am deeply committed to freedom of expression: it is a fundamental university value, defining our most essential purposes.” But Faust also justified the lockdown saying:

Our concern about the safety of our students has been greatly influenced by our observations of the behavior of outsiders who participated in the demonstrations on Wednesday, November 9, as well as by web postings from individuals outside Harvard urging confrontation and disruption on our campus.  Several hundred people converged on the Harvard campus that night.  The conduct of many of them was deeply troubling.  Some attempted to enter the Yard by force, assaulted at least one Harvard police officer, grabbing his gun belt and stealing his radio.  The crowd included individuals who, according to external law enforcement agencies, have engaged in violent behavior elsewhere with the explicit goal of causing disruption and with little connection to any particular cause.  Incidents of violence–including shootings and sexual assaults–have occurred at other Occupy sites…Sustaining both freedom and security always requires difficult and nuanced judgments, both in a university and in the wider world.

The next day, in an “Open Letter to Drew Faust from Harvard Faculty,” faculty from several departments (Romance Languages and Literatures,  Comparative Literature, Linguistics) and the Committee on Degrees in the study of Women, Gender and Sexuality expressed their opposition to the decision to lock the gates of Harvard Yard.  The academics politely explained to Faust:

We sympathize with your difficult position, but all of us agree that locking the gates is contrary to the principle of open inquiry for which the university stands. Historically, Harvard has never locked its gates (at least, not in recent memory), and we believe that security issues can be addressed differently.  We do not share the perception that the Occupy movement constitutes a threat to Harvard. To the contrary, we are in sympathy with protests against increasing inequality in the United States and believe that Harvard should welcome discussions of the issue.

Wednesday brought another open letter to Faust, this one from Francis X. Clooney, a Jesuit priest at Harvard Divinity School who is Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology and Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions.  In it, Clooney writes, “Dear Drew…I’ve had occasion a number of times in the past few days to walk through the Yard, most recently tonight at 7pm, and observe our students and colleagues in their ‘occupy’ activity – which I might think is better called a Vigil of concern and for justice. Just a few comments.” He continues to refer to the occupation as a “Vigil” throughout the letter and said:

I realize that one of your responsibilities is to maintain order and security at the university, and care for the well-being particularly of those who reside in the Yard. Some security is therefore necessary, and I appreciate your care for this matter, as the Vigil proceeds. But even to me as a member of the Harvard community, who knows much of what is happening, the security seems unduly strict, disproportionate, unnecessary. Indeed, it would not be appropriate to allow everyone and anyone to camp out in the Yard, but nevertheless it is also for the well-being of the university to make clear, as I stated above, that those keeping Vigil are dear and welcome members of the community, some of our best, and not a security challenge. Monitor the site yes, but soon enough, please re-open the gates.

Clooney’s suggestion, that the gates be open but “it would not be appropriate to allow everyone and anyone to camp out in the Yard” might be a unique one.  He doesn’t indicate any details of this idea, such as who would be allowed to occupy a tent in Harvard Yard and who would only be allowed to visit.

The greater good

Occupy Harvard members tend to be especially concerned with two specific things.  The first is a desire for a better relationship between Harvard and its workers.  The second is a call for Harvard’s $32 billion endowment to be managed with more transparency and social responsibility.  In the first area, this well-focused protest already claims one victory – the previously mentioned janitors’ contract.  If Occupy Harvard influences how the endowment is handled, they could credibly claim victory and voluntarily decamp with their heads held high.

But labor and the endowment aren’t the only issues.  Occupiers everywhere have a tendency to want to change the world, and 375-year old Harvard is a world unto itself.  Camille, the post-doc and occupier mentioned above, wants to “make the Harvard Corporation a more ethical and socially responsible institution…an even better teaching institution that is committed to the greater good.” She says the “goal is to reaffirm Harvard as a marketplace of ideas where all viewpoints are discussed and analyzed without regard to the amount of money supporting the different ideas.” Camille explains that occupiers “are cognizant of the role that ideas at Harvard had on the economic collapse” and remain committed to the idea that Harvard “can and should generate solutions that promote social justice and equality for all.”

“We stand in support of the global Occupy movement,” she adds, but doesn’t speculate if Harvard Yard will remain occupied as long as the movement itself.  “After Thanksgiving, the future of the camp is in discussion so we have nothing to say yet about what will happen after next week.”

NEW YORK — I stand behind the tenets of Occupy Wall Street. But, Thursday night’s assembly at Foley Square and subsequent march across the Brooklyn Bridge was an exercise in futility and misguided sloganism. Commiseration does not equate consequence and without consequence for the targets of this movement, I fear it is quickly going the way of the Dodo.

I arrived at Foley Square just before 5pm and the park was abuzz. Rude Mechanical Orchestra could be heard above the din of cheers and chants. Entering the pool of my fellow Americans, I steeled myself for what I thought would be an emotional convergence of like-minded and like-hearted citizens. Instead what I got was a lesson in framing. And a headache, caused by excessive eye-rolling.

The microphone passed among the unseen faces of musical acts, union leaders, members of clergy and the assembly, projected songs and speeches made up of iterative clips and phrases about the 99 percent movement, meant to electrify the crowd. We were informed that Wall Street is corrupt we’re not going to take it anymore! We were told that “this is what democracy looks like” and “we are unstoppable, a new world is possible.” The commiserating stories shared by our fellow 99 percent-ers were meant to inspire solidarity and strengthen our resolve to keep going, but therein lies the crux of the problem. Aside from from our plans to successfully march across “our” Brooklyn Bridge, where were we supposed to go?

Occupy Wall Street is at an impasse right now. It has the spotlight, but the movement is lacking in both leadership and a clear message. An epitomizing example of this void came when the NYPD stopped half of the assembly from moving forward toward the bridge. An ensuing mic-check (a whisper-down-the-lane style of disseminating announcements among the crowds) informed those of us near the front that “50 percent of the assembly has been barricaded back at the square. What do we do?” True to form of an OWS mic-check, the crowd repeated the announcement. As the masses around me dutifully, if not robotically, repeated – for the second time – “what do we do?” I found myself stifling a growl of frustration. The crowd fell silent in response to this question and it became clear that no one really knows what to do next.

The highlight of the evening came in the way of a rogue bat-signal shining its beam of movement rhetoric onto the Verizon building. As the projection ran through the list of subsequent occupations around the globe, I remembered why I came to Foley Square in the first place – we are 99 percent strong and there are more than enough of us to truly revolutionize the way America does business. Unfortunately, until the movement outlines some clearer goals, I’m not sure I can stomach going back. What can I say? I just didn’t have the same ethereal experience as one Gothamist-quoted protester who said he could “literally feel the ground shaking.” Don’t get me wrong, I felt the ground shake too, but it wasn’t so much the energy of the crowd as it was the movement of the subways, directly below the park.

As I have said, I stand behind the tenets of Occupy Wall Street. I would like to see this movement make strides in the democratic process of America, but the pace of this movement has me so worried that I would like to humbly make the following suggestions to my sisters and brothers on the front line:

1. Occupy Wall Street needs to hone its message so that it resonates with more than just a handful of the 99 percent. OWS must do for the word “revolution” what Obama did for the word “hope” and Charlie Sheen did for the word “winning.”

2. When using the microphones to communicate with the crowd and it’s loud enough to be heard by everyone in a five-block radius, Occupy Wall Street should not employ the mic-check system. It is a painfully redundant waste of time. Furthermore, precious time on said microphones should be used to disseminate worthwhile information, not useless rhetoric. Fine, “this is just the beginning,” but it’s been two months. Can we please start talking about the middle?

3. Everyone should do their best to be vigilant with the truth when it comes to reporting about Occupy Wall Street, particularly about rally head counts and police brutality. Someone erroneously reported that there were over 32,000 people present at Thursday night’s march, which was just an absurd estimate that ran through the crowd like wildfire. NYPD reports the numbers were closer to 5,000. I surmise it was somewhere in between.

4. Yes, police brutality has occurred and excessive forced has been used, but not as much as the media glorification of these incidents would have us believe. These stories are being used to incite distrust and hatred and serve only to further the “us versus them” mentality the movement is trying to overcome. A general discourse among protestors and the NYPD needs to be met with clear and cool heads. We the people of Occupy Wall Street should start by refraining from antagonizing officers so that when brutality does happen there is no doubt as to who is to blame. Recent events at UC Davis are a perfect example.

5. Finally, please, for the love of all that is sacred, STOP LITTERING and shame those who do. Every once in a while, OWS should use a mic-check to have protesters take a moment and check their surrounding area for litter. It’s pretty difficult to buy the movement’s love of the land when we’re shitting all over it. If we clean up our streets while we clean up Wall Street, maybe we can have it all.

All photos by Sarah Berman for Blast Magazine.

CAMBRIDGE — Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House (R-GA) and current Republican candidate for president, appeared at Harvard University last night to introduce a documentary he helped create, “A City upon a Hill: The Spirit of American Exceptionalism,” at John F. Kennedy School of Government. But was soon interrupted by members of Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard using the “mic check” call and response popular throughout the Occupy Movement.

The conservative non-profit organization Citizens United Productions is producer of this documentary and was the lead plaintiff in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” the 2009 Supreme Court case which resulted in unions and corporations being allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on political ads. Citizens United produces a variety of media – from television ads to feature-length documentaries – and describes itself as being dedicated to “…American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security.”

The protestors interrupting Gingrich used sarcastic mockery and said, in part, “Mic check / mic check / we love you Newt / thank you for standing up for corporations / they have rights too / thank you for understanding / that simple point / we are / the ninety-nine percent…”

Gingrich is the latest in a line of Right Wing figures (including Karl Rove, Michelle Bachmann and Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin) who have been “mic checked” by members of the Occupy protest in recent weeks. The male demonstrator leading the mic check in Cambridge, whose words were repeated by fellow protestors, seems to have been ad libbing his lines. This stands in contrast to interruptions in other states where protestors seem to have been reading prepared statements. Gingrich, standing with his wife, Callista, remained smiling and composed throughout the interruption but another person in attendance admonished the demonstrators by yelling “go back to your tents.”

Harvard security guards quickly removed the protestors. No arrests were made. Newt and Callista Gingrich where scheduled to sign copies of his book about American exceptionalism, “A Nation Like No Other,” at the Harvard Square Coop following his appearance at the Kennedy School. The cancellation of this appearance was celebrated on Twitter for several hours by Occupy supporters who tweeted messages such as “rare yellow-bellied newt sighting in Boston” and “@newtgingrich enjoy this while it lasts- you’ll never be this popular again!”

Nancy Brennan, Executive Director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy (seen at right), appeared at the occupiers' General Assembly on October 10 hours before 141 early-morning arrests were made. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Up to now, there has been a good relationship between Occupy Boston and the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, the non-profit organization that stewards the publicly-owned Dewey Square Park.

Although crowded and desirous of more space, the occupiers have stayed off the strip of land along the gravel path since the Conservancy indicated the plants there are delicate and could easily be damaged. And when Nancy Brennan, Executive Director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, appeared at the occupiers’ General Assembly a few hours before 141 arrests were made on October 11, her address ended with the words “…another thing that the Greenway stands for is freedom of speech and I ask, for as long as you are on this land, would you please help us take care of it?” Her smile beamed as the crowd chanted her name in appreciation.

Last week, however, the Conservancy sent Mayor Thomas M. Menino a letter saying, in part, “we respectfully request that the City of Boston act to enforce our regulations and City permitting regulations.” The letter cites noise, sanitary conditions and crime among the reasons to evict the tent city.

On Tuesday, a day after the New York Police Department leveled the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park, plaintiffs representing Occupy Boston showed up at Suffolk Superior Court where Judge Frances McIntyre granted a temporarily injunction preventing police from raiding Dewey Square Park and removing the occupiers. The order, however, does allow police to act in case of fire, health issues, and violent outbreaks. McIntyre also ordered occupiers meet with city officials for a mediation session, and there is a hearing on a preliminary injunction scheduled for December 1.

According to text on the Occupy Boston website: “Some are saying that no police crackdown is immanent because the letter is over a week old and was written before a Boston judge recently granted an injunction barring the city and police from removing the occupiers. Others are arguing that injunctions will not prevent a crackdown because mayor Bloomberg disregarded a similar injunction to remove the occupiers from Liberty Plaza in NYC, and then got a judge to over-rule an injunction that was to pave the way for the protestors return to the plaza.”

Click here for a transcription of the letter sent to Menino by the Greenway Conservancy.

November 8, 2011

The Honorable Thomas M. Menino
Boston City Hall, 5th Floor
One City Hall Square
Boston, MA 02201

Dear Mr. Mayor,

The Board of Directors of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy finds itself in an increasingly difficult situation with regard to current events affecting public use of the Greenway. We take very seriously our role to welcome all park users as we oversee this wonderful public space in the heart of Boston and we honor the long tradition of free speech in our city and our country. However, our Park Use Guidelines expressly describe a goal of offering beautiful, well maintained spaces where people can relax and enjoy a variety of activities and celebrations of all sorts. We recognize that the Greenway may be used for a multitude of purposes, including use by individuals to gather together and express opinions about important issues of the day. Indeed, our Guidelines expressly provide that “[p]rotests and free speech…and allowed so long as such protest is disruptive to the public,” and that “[r]ules for public assembly established by the City of Boston will apply.” After much thought and discussion, we have come to the conclusion that, as fiduciaries for public use of the Greenway, we must request that you enforce our regulations and remove the occupiers from the Greenway.

We believe that the current use by Occupy Boston is not compatible with our obligation to ensure that everyone may enjoy the Greenway, and with the spirit and letter of the rules governing use of the space. The footprint of the encampment has literally taken over the Dewey Square Park and a portion of the plaza, preventing: a) passive enjoyment by the public; and b) other permitted activities for the public. Although we have not sought until now to have the Boston Police Department enforce our rules with regard to Occupy Boston, we have always taken the position that the current use of Dewey Square Parks a violation of our rules. Our rules prohibit overnight sleeping in the park and have specified general operating hours between 7:00am to 11:00pm. Like city parks, we also require that uses that necessitate set ups, like tents and amplified sound, seek a permit from the City of Boston. The Conservancy depends on the Boston Police Department to enforce those rules.

We have experienced the following specific problems:

• The Conservancy abandoned plans to have a food festival on October 15 on Dewey Square Park (a permitted event) from public safety concerns. We anticipated large crowds of attendees and there was inadequate space due to Occupy Boston. Fifteen small businesses lost income they were counting on.
• On our Farmer’s Market days, the farmers are experiencing a real reduction in income due to the noise, odors, and interference by the members of Occupy Boston and other protest groups.
• Our neighbors are buffeted by noise and wary of aggressive confrontation when they are passing through Dewey Square Park.
• There are disturbing incidents of drug dealing.
• Sanitary conditions are deteriorating significantly over time. Although we do not currently have a rat infestation problem, it is only a matter of time given the current conditions.

The Conservancy must also ensure that park rules are implemented equitably. Any use of the park that requires set ups and anticipates crowds requires a permit. Numerous groups have abided by this process, and the Conservancy and the City have been pleased to assist and accommodate them. Occupy Boston has not sought a permit, and its continued presence created a dangerous precedent for future groups that the Board — as stewards of the Greenway — cannot support.

In recognition of our responsibilities as members of the Greenway Conservancy Board, we respectfully request that the City of Boston act to enforce our regulations and City permitting regulations. We note that officers of the Boston Police Department have been present, conciliatory, and, all in all, done a tremendous job in keeping this peace in this difficult situation. We are confident that the end to this use of Dewey Square Park can be accomplished in a way that ensures respect for the rights of everyone.

Sincerely,

(signature)

Georgia Murray

Chair — Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy

cc: Peter O’Connor, Deputy Secretary of Transportation for Real Estate and Development

William Sinnott, Corporation Counsel

Edward Davis, Commissioner, Boston Police Department

CAMBRIDGE — Occupy Harvard, the latest local manifestation of the Occupy Movement, started with almost 30 tents last night in the Old Yard directly in front of the iconic statue of John Harvard. Police kept those without Harvard ID out of the Yard. Some protesters have complained about treatment by police, but no reports arrests or injures have been reported. Once the encampment was created, between 50 and 100 stayed there peacefully through the first night.

In the tense first moments of occupation, protestors scramble to erect tents in the middle of a protective circle of their comrades. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

This encampment took form after weeks of planning and appeared seven days after 70 Harvard students walked out of Greg Mankiw’s lecture after delivering an open letter that said “Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, the University and our greater society.”

Closing of the gates

Hours before the encampment was put in place, a reported 500 protestors assembled in Harvard Square but were prevented from entering Harvard Yard by police and security people who locked most of the university’s wrought-iron gates. Police and security positioned themselves at the few gates that were not padlocked and intermittently allowed either no one at all or only those possessing Harvard ID to enter. Several graduate students and a faculty member said they couldn’t recollect any time in the past when the university experienced such a severe lock down of the campus.

During one point in the night, a mass of people tried to force their way into the Yard as police pushed the gate closed, making for a chaotic scene. Hannah Hofheinz, 32, a student at Harvard Divinity School later described the police “slamming the gates on us and crushing people – a very violent response.”

More accounts of roughness emerged later including a Facebook post by Taras Dreszer that said “as we were trying to enter Harvard Yard, a Police officer grabbed me by my collar and forcibly stopped me from moving forward. I showed him my ID and he said ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ He then said ‘I want to sock you in the face but I decided not to.’”

While some students with ID had to wait before getting in, throughout the night there were a few people with no Harvard ID who successfully made it inside the Yard by climbing over (or, at one specific spot, under) the fence without being observed. It was reported that one move obvious fence climber was seized by police but was released without being arrested as protestors chanted the questions “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” to the uniformed law-enforcers. Security also prevented media from entering the Yard, but Blast was able to get inside.

Assembly at the Law School

“Adrenaline was present for a good portion of the night,” Hannah Hofheinz later described, “we heard that Harvard was closing the gates at around 5:30…the question was ‘What do we do? Only Harvard people can come inside, but occupations are about openness.’” After meeting inside the gates the group decided to move. “The choice was made to gather outside the gates where we could all talk. So we did so, and we started to march in order to get out, then they closed all the gates,”said Hofheinz, “but we were able to go out, and we walked up the street, and ended up over at the Law School.”

Around 8 p.m., with hundreds of protestors in attendance, Occupy Harvard held a General Assembly at Harvard Law School (which stands near but outside the university’s iron gates). The meeting was heavily Tweeted about and was broadcast over a live feed creating interest and drawing more supporters to Harvard Square as the night went on. The General Assembly discussed the idea of erecting tents at Harvard Law School but the group ultimately remained committed to occupying the Old Yard location that had been previously discussed and decided upon during a series of meetings over past weeks.

Occupying the Old Yard

Those protestors who made it inside the Yard assembled in front of the statue of John Harvard. This group was mostly made up of those with Harvard ID (student, faculty or staff) but did include a few people who gained entry to Harvard Yard by stealth. One woman, who asked not to be identified but is associated with the Direct Action working group at Occupy Boston, said “Harvard police seemed to have some issue with our right to assemble. I’m not sure what that is. That’s their issue. But we got in. We managed it.”

Around 10:30, as if on cue, about a dozen people suddenly and hastily began erecting tents in front of the statue while protected by a circle of about 100 of their fellow protestors. The people in this human barrier were initially tense and stood with their arms locked but they relaxed when it seemed apparent that police and security would not interfere with their efforts. They also got assurance from the presence of Suzy M. Nelson, Dean of Student Life and overseer of the Harvard College residential system (Harvard College is the division within Harvard University in which full time undergraduates are matriculated).

Nelson participated in the General Assembly that then took place. The dean, like all who spoke, used the repetitive call-and-response technique of the “people’s mic” so as to be better heard by the circle. Expressing a desire to minimize the negative impact on students’ efforts to sleep and study, Nelson asked the protestors to move their tents from the Old Yard to Tercentenary Theater, an adjacent area (framed by Widener Library and Memorial Church) that is not so closely surrounded by student residences. Some questioned the validity of the noise concern. Through consensus, the General Assembly decided not to comply with Nelson’s request but will discuss it again when it meets today, at 5 pm, with more of the student body in attendance. Nelson promised to help publicize this assembly so that as many students as possible might participate.

By the time the General Assembly finished after 11 p.m., almost 200 people (perhaps a dozen of them bystanders) were gathered in a wide ring around more than two dozen tents. An ad hoc group made mostly of Harvard College students gathered on the stairs to the left of the John Harvard statue to compose a press release while the last few tents were being set in place. Later, some students took a sign that said “Welcome, we’re glad you’re here,” propped it on John Harvard’s lap, and took pictures with him.

Response and reaction

While the above events were unfolding, Harvard University released a statement that said, in part, “speech and the free exchange of ideas are hallmarks of the Harvard experience, and important values for the university community to uphold…(but) it is important that we assure the safety and security of our students, particularly those who live in the Yard.’’

However many members of the Harvard community expressed displeasure at the way in which the situation was handled. Rick Heller, an alumnus of Harvard Kennedy School of Government, microblogged “where you stand depends on where you sit…In other words, the office you hold biases your perspective. I believe this accounts for the defensive and bureaucratic decision of supposedly progressive Harvard leaders to lock its students out of the Yard…Harvard is mostly progressive on social issues. On economic issues, it promotes the theories and behaviors that caused the crash of 2008.”

While the campus was under lock down, some students not involved with the protest complained about Occupy Harvard subjecting them to inconvenince. Most protestors, conversely, place that blame squarely on the actions of law-enforcement.

The ninety-nine percent

Hannah Hofheinz, when asked about what Occupy Harvard might accomplish, said “I think occupations are not about demands…My guess is this occupation will be like the many others in which various voices will raise various concerns and expect that they’re answered. And there will be actions that spin out from this site. But I think the main point is…to set up tents here and say ‘the ninety-nine percent are here, and we’re living together – we’re really human.’ She added, “what I care about is people realizing how deeply our system is hurting, and how deeply people are hurting, even here, at Harvard….at this point Harvard is admitting a good number of people that come from everywhere, and anywhere, and all kinds of backgrounds, whose families may not have homes anymore and that’s a hard reality…the Harvard population is part of the ninety-nine percent.”

Gabriel Bayard, 18, one of 70 students who walked out of Greg Mankiw’s Economics class last Wednesday, agreed that Occupy Harvard should address society-wide concerns. But he also expressed keen interest in the occupation addressing Harvard-specific issues such as labor contracts and said “I definitely think this occupation has the ability to make an impact directly on the ninety-nine percent. Theoretical issues are important, but we here can make a difference in the next week in the lives of hundreds of janitors. I think that immediate impact is really important. I think we should keep that in mind as we go forward.”

Another student who participated in the class walkout, Rachel Sandalow-Ash, 18, added, “I would agree that union contracts are very important, especially since they don’t come up for negotiation very often and this is a real, immediate and pressing issue. I also think that Harvard’s use of its 32 billion dollar endowment – that makes it the largest university endowment and the second richest non-profit in the world after the Vatican – is important because where Harvard puts its money has a huge effect. Right now Harvard invests in [HEI Hospitality] hotels, which are basically the worst places for labor. They invest in land grabs in Africa, denying people’s basic human rights…Harvard, like many other very rich corporations, does a lot of harm to people in the ninety-nine percent in the United States and around the world. I think we have the power to change that, here.”

Gates still guarded

As of this morning, only about three of Harvard’s gate were unlocked and each of these was guarded by a group of police and security people. A Harvard cop guarding the gate from Quincy Street told Blast that this state of security would be in affect indefinitely. When asked how they would deal with Harvard Extension school students (who take evening classes but don’t have Harvard ID unless in a degree program) the officer laughed and said “I won’t deal with it. I’ll be home in bed then so it isn’t my problem.”

Friday, September 30 — After meeting for a few days in encuentro5 (a space in Chinatown for community and progressive groups), the pioneers of Occupy Boston reached consensus to occupy Dewey Square a week earlier than was initially planned.  Before setting up tents, they joined a protest of 2000-3000 people organized by Right to the City (RTTC) and local unions.  The presence of the Raw Mechanical Orchestra, visiting from NYC for the Honk! Festival in Cambridge and Somerville that weekend, added a cheerful atmosphere despite 24 people being arrested for refusing to leave the lobby of Bank of America headquarters.  Reacting quickly, corporate spokesperson T.J. Crawford called the protest “aggressive public-relations stunts” and asserted that “Bank of America has a lot to be proud of.” Despite the protestors’ refusal to seek permits (“we’re protesting, not camping”), Mayor Menino instructed Boston Police to allow  Occupy Boston to set up their encampment without interference.

Monday, October 3 — After just one weekend, tents devoted to special functions such as medical, logistics, food, sign-making and media were already in place, giving the Occupy Boston encampment a basic form similar to what it has now.  Over the next four weeks, however, many improvements were made as flimsy bowers and makeshift tents were replaced with sturdier, more weather resistant alternatives and the route bisecting camp, called “Main Street” by inhabitants, went from a path of cardboard to a wooden walkway of pallets and plywood elevated inches above the ground.  On October 3, as people bustled around the camp improving things, Ariana Webb, 47, described  “We will stay here as long as necessary. We will stay here through the snows. We’ve started to acquire warm weather gear already. We will be here as long as it takes.”

Saturday, October 8 — Returning from a large march through the city, about two dozen Occupy Boston protestors sat in the doorway of the Federal Reserve with a wall of police and motorcycles separating them from several hundred more supporters in attendance.  At one point, Jeff Nunes, 17, involved with Occupy Boston since its initial meetings at encuentro5, climbed atop the building entrance and waved a homemade flag with an anarchist “A” and the words “no government…true freedom and equality” painted in white on black material.  Tara, a much older woman involved with the protests, began yelling for him to get down but Nunes’ climb was defended by several others as an “autonomous action” in support of the movement.  After several minutes, the smiling Nunes hopped down anyway.  Realizing that there are other ways in and out of the building, and blocking the door indefinitely might not accomplish much, protestors negotiated with police to move their motorcycles and allow them to leave as a group.  Demonstrators then made their first trip to Fanuel Hall and Quincy Market, marching loudly through the interior of both while police and baffled tourists watched passively.

Monday, October 10 — An Occupy Boston protest that began on Boston Common ended with thousands of demonstrators blocking the North Washington Street Bridge that leads from the North End to Charlestown.  One middle-aged man was arrested almost immediately, but police prevented the bulk of the protestors from moving onto the bridge.  After a stand off of over an hour, protestors seemed to accept the police claim that bridge might not support their weight, and left.  The “Battle of the Bridge,” was later viewed as a diversionary tactic, however, as occupiers back at Dewey Square expanded their encampment while police attention was on the bridge.  From there, the mass of protestors rushed back to Dewey Square and formed human chains to protect their tents in both the new camp and the original one.  Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis warned if Occupy Boston didn’t return to its original footprint by midnight, police would act to remove the tents in the new area.

Tuesday, October 11 — Hundreds of law enforcement officials (including Boston, transit and State Police, as well as members of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s department) descended upon the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.  They began making arrests around 1:20 a.m. as protestors sang “God Bless America” or chanted slogans such as “this is a peaceful protest” and “the whole world is watching.” Among the 141 people arrested was a Rachel McNeill, an Iraq War vet there with fellow Veterans for Peace members.  She describes, “I was holding the American flag. The rest of the veterans were carrying Veterans for Peace flags. I was standing with arms locked in the center of the line of Iraq and Vietnam veterans. We were the first targeted, knocked down, and dragged away for arrest by police…I saw [the American flag] hit the ground in one video…I am told it was thoroughly trampled by police and it was not returned. It is either now a trophy for some policeman or it is in the trash.”

Friday, October 14 — John Carlos, an athlete much-remembered for displaying a black power salute from the podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics, visited Occupy Boston to speak and sign some books before heading to another engagement at Northeastern University.  Moments later, in one of countless tense moments this month between occupiers and police, two patrolmen prevented men from bringing a wooden pallet onto the site.  The protestors explained the pallet was needed in order to build a safe passage along “Main Street” so people wouldn’t slip in the mud, while the obviously perturbed patrolmen said they wouldn’t allow any more building materials into the campsite (this remains an ongoing conflict).  The following Saturday morning, after rain had subsided, Gov. Deval Patrick visited the Occupy Boston and told Boston Phoenix “…it was fascinating. I met with a couple of the organizers — very thoughtful, responsible people. It’s incredibly well organized…I saw the library and the media tent and the food distribution and logistics — really beautifully organized.”

Friday, October 21 — As many demonstrators were en route to Roxbury to rally with Occupy the Hood, police arrested Issac Bell, 34, and Charlene Dumont, 31 for allegedly selling heroin to an undercover cop in Dewey Square.  After dismantling and searching their tent, police tossed it in a vehicle and removed it from the scene.  Monday, noting Bell’s prior conviction on a drug distribution charge, Assistant DA Matthew Fitzgerald requested his bail be set at $25,000 and Dumont’s at $1,000. Judge Michael Coyne released both on personal recognizance and ordered them to stay away from Occupy Boston.  Bell, who used the nickname “Shorty,” allegedly told the undercover officers that he sold “dope, not crack”   when they tried to buy cocaine from him on Thursday.  The arrest of Bell and Dumont came amid a week of headlines about crime in Dewey Square and fueled a false rumor that someone in camp had lethally overdosed from heroin sold by the pair.

Saturday, October 22 — MIT professor Noam Chomsky, having been rained out of his scheduled appearance on Wednesday, arrived at twilight and was greeted by 1,000 or more people.  Chomsky lectured for about a half hour and answered questions for approximately as long.  While he saw many failures in the modern system, Chomsky identified two — nuclear proliferation and environmental destruction — as the most urgent and warned “everything else won’t matter in a generation or two.” While many close to the front seemed ecstatic to be hearing Chomsky speak, at least half those present couldn’t hear Chomsky despite his use of two hand held microphones.  Acknowledging this difficulty, Chomsky told the audience, “you can see why I’m not a public speaker.  Later in the night, about 100 protestors returned from a march, assembled in the same spot as the October 11 arrests, and held an impromptu general assembly to discuss whether or not to make a stand.  After discussion, however, they retreated back to the established camp.

Sunday, October 23 — About 50 protestors from Occupy Boston took a meandering route from their encampment to “the Pit,” an area in Harvard Square associated with various countercultures over the decades.  En route they stopped to flip the bird at what may be the Beacon Hill townhouse of local Bank of America president Robert E. Gallery, temporarily hung a “We are the 99%” banner from a footbridge over Storrow Drive, blocked traffic one-way on the Mass Ave bridge, and paraded through the Head of the Charles Regatta chanting slogans such as “we got sold out, banks got bailed out” and “this is what democracy looks like.” In Harvard Square, they held a rally where they used the people’s mic to explain the purposes of their protest before talking to people one-on-one.  Deeming their first trip beyond Boston city limits a great success, the group took the Red Line from Harvard Square back to South Station, each person paying their fare.

Tuesday, October 25 — Paul Carnes (a.k.a. Paul Fetch) defended his reputation during one of the most drama-filled General Assemblies of the month.  Previous to this, Occupy Boston’s Financial Accountability Working Group (FAWG) voted unanimously to remove Carnes and Sidney Sherrel “due to their lack of accountability and transparency, as well as their failure to provide information to both the FAWG and Occupy Boston’s General Assembly…[they] also repeatedly failed to follow established procedures for financial expenditures.” At one point, Carnes appeared to be leaving the camp, causing people to sprint after him.  Later, when he sought shelter inside the Info Tent, a few people outside mockingly chanted “who’s peacoat?  Our peacoat!” in reference to a garment thought to be purchased with donations to Occupy Boston.  While maintaining his innocence, Carnes, who has also attracted unfavorable attention at other occupations on the East Coast, remains a subject of derision within the Occupy Boston community.

Thursday, October 27 — A group of supporters left Occupy Boston and walked in the early morning rain to US District Court where Tarek Mehanna, of Sudbury, accused of supporting Al-Qaeda, was starting trial (this photo is from the previous day). Jacob Dinklage, 22, said via the Boston Anarchists Against Militarism (BAAM) announcement list, “The FBI and the Massachusetts US Attorney are accusing Dr. Mehanna of ‘material support for terrorism’ and related charges. His real offense in the eyes of the US government was his courage as a Muslim and a man of conscience: his opposition to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; his vocal support for other Muslims falsely imprisoned by the US government and; his refusal to work as an informant for the FBI in the Muslim community. For these stands he now faces the possibility of life in prison.” Occupy Boston participants had previously shown support for Mehanna in an October 9 rally which drew national criticism from the Far Right.

Sunday, October 30 — Days before, when an unseasonal nor’easter was predicted to hit New England, winterization efforts at Occupy Boston were kicked into high gear.  While Boston didn’t receive as much precipitation as some other parts of Massachusetts, the storm made for a cold and miserable night.  The wet slush  caused a few structures in camp to collapse, but no one froze to death despite the most malicious wishes expressed online by Occupy Boston’s detractors.  The occupation’s supporters, on the other hand, poured out their support for Occupy Boston as it survived the first of what promises to be many “Valley Forge moments.” Those who weathered this slushy snowstorm in the encampment were especially grateful to the woman who got up early and (according to a Facebook post) “donated over $270 worth of hot coffee and a lot, we mean a lot, of pastries/bagels.” Later, Occupy Boston devoted a few midday hours to celebrating its one month anniversary and renewing participants’ commitment to remain encamped (as a movement motto says) “as long as it takes.”

Rachel McNeill (center, holding American flag) locks arms with fellow Veterans for Peace members moments before she was arrested in Boston on October 11. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Rachel McNeill is one of 141 people arrested on October 11 when Occupy Boston briefly expand its encampment. This soft-spoken Wisconsin native is a veteran of the Iraq War who joined the Army Reserve shortly after 9/11. She was 17 years old. McNeill spent a year in Iraq, much of it in the so-called “Sunni Triangle,” and drove vehicles along a route that was called “the most dangerous road in the world.”

Now McNeill is a member of Veterans for Peace (Smedley Butler Brigade), Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and American Women Veterans. McNeill also does work in support of “Operation Recovery: A Campaign to End the Deployment of Traumatized Troops,” a project working to assure service members with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and Military Sexual Trauma (MST) receive immediate support instead of being deployed back into the same situations in which trauma was inflicted. In 2008, McNeill helped organize the “Winter Soldier” event in Madison, WI. That same year she testified before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee regarding “Contractor Misconduct and the Electrocution Deaths of American Soldiers in Iraq.”

McNeill talked to Blast about the occupation, her arrest, and her reaction the injury received by USMC veteran Scott Olsen during police action against Occupy Oakland earlier this week.

BLAST: Rachel, you and Scott Olsen are both members of Veterans for Peace. How did you feel when you saw those graphic pictures of the injuries he sustained in Oakland on October 25?

RACHEL MCNEILL: I was appalled…It’s a very unfortunate situation and should never have happened. It’s really sad to see something like this…But, it’s not the first time. Another veteran who is active in various veteran’s organizations, including Warrior Writers, was seriously injured at Hofstra University outside of a presidential debate when he was trampled by a police horse. Nick Morgan’s injuries required reconstructive surgery. The most recent event has received considerable coverage, though the incident at Hofstra University went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media.

BLAST: Jean Quan, Mayor of Oakland, just announced they won’t be trying to remove Occupy Oakland again anytime soon. Is this a minor victory for the movement?

RM: I’m not sure this is something to be discussed in terms of victory. Jean Quan approved of clearing the protests. But what that would actually look like in practice…maybe that wasn’t a consideration. Now that it has played out and led to the serious injury of a veteran and the injury of other peaceful protesters, Jean Quan has had a change of heart in light of the unfortunate actions by police in carrying out an action which she approved without meaningful consideration of the consequences.

BLAST: You mentioned “Warrior Writers,” the project that brings together veterans and current service members to express themselves through artistic media. What’s your involvement with that?

RM: I am part of the Steering Committee, which was recently formed to help guide and develop the organization as programming and participation increases. I’m part of the editorial collective and am the layout/type designer for the third anthology…someone I am working with on the next Warrior Writers anthology lives near the hospital [Scott Olsen is in] and she is busy dealing with and providing space for media and other veterans to congregate. One of the members of our editorial collective is fairly involved, so we are being flexible with that as we continue working hard to release the next anthology of veterans writing out.

BLAST: Veterans for Peace is a very visible presence within Occupy Boston. What led you to become a member of an anti-war group.

Veterans For Peace describe the 10/11/2011 Police Raid on #OccupyBoston from Closed Loop-Films on Vimeo.

RM: This is not an “anti-war” group. It is a peace group, which is I why I was drawn to it. Peace is not an abstract goal goal for me. It is action. I am not reacting to war or a particular war, I am just doing what I can to be peace. Peace is healing and reconciliation, liberation, love. It is the way I try to live my life.

“Veterans are the light at the tip of the candle, illuminating the way for the whole nation. If veterans can achieve awareness, transformation, understanding, and peace, they can share with the rest of society the realities of war. And they can teach us how to make peace with ourselves and each other, so we never have to use violence to resolve conflicts again” – Thich Nhat Hahn.

I joined Veterans for Peace in March at the Saint Patty’s Day parade in Southie after learning that they had been denied a permit by the Allied War Veterans Council on the grounds that they did not want the word “peace” associated with the word “veterans.” Most veterans I know want peace…within themselves, within society, within the world. Have you read the edicts of Asoka? King Asoka conquered a neighboring kingdom by war, leading to the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of people. He realized that even those who did not participate in war were impacted by it because of their connection and love for people who suffered in its grasp. He renounced war and for the rest of his reign, he conquered by Dharma, by compassion, by upholding and embodying basic principals of respect. A lot of people realize what war is in practice after experiencing it. Anyone who has not experienced it can only speak about it and theorize in abstract terms.

BLAST: And at what point did you become involved with Occupy Boston?

RM: I was there on September 30 and have spent as much time as I can there ever since…I’ve never had a bird’s eye view because I have been a part of creating it. But whenever I walk into the camp, for the first time since I came home from combat in Ramadi in December 2006, I feel home.

BLAST: When Occupy Boston expanded the protest site on October 10, Veterans for Peace arrived in support. What happened that night and early Tuesday morning?

RM: I was at OB all day and beyond the original nightfall deadline given by police. I left to go to the VFP meeting in Cambridge After another member received a text from someone at OB that the police still planned to come, I looked at twitter on my phone and read a few of the tweets coming through on #OccupyBoston to the group. After a vote on it, we headed to OB to provide mutual support and encouragement. After arriving, we were warmly welcomed and the morale of the group seemed to improve. I suggested to the other veterans that we recite our oath and they asked me to lead it. We walked in a line around the group and I said the oath with the people’s mic. We went to the original encampment and did the same thing. When we returned to the second encampment anticipating police, the people were saying together, “We have a permit. It’s called the Constitution.” Not long after 1 a.m., the police arrived and we took our place between them and the people, continuing to sound off with our oath mixed in with the people’s mic regarding our Constitutional permit.

Demonstrators hang their banner off a footbridge over Storrow Drive (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

This week, the fourth since setting up camp on September 30, Occupy Boston has increased its visibility through a series of marches including a trip to Harvard Square (by way of the Head of the Charles Regatta), several hostile visits to FOX News and the home of a Bank of America president, angry protests against the police response to Occupy Oakland, and a somber, rainy morning walk to the trial of Tarek Mehanna, 28, a Sudbury man accused of being a propagandist for Al-Queda.

March to Cambridge 

On October 23, about 50 protestors from Occupy Boston took a meandering route from their tent city in front of South Station to “the Pit,” an area in Harvard Square associated with various countercultures over the decades.  En route they temporarily hung a “We are the 99%” banner from a footbridge over Storrow Drive and blocked traffic one-way on the Mass Ave bridge.  They also paraded through the Head of the Charles Regatta chanting slogans such as “we got sold out, banks got bailed out” and “this is what democracy looks like” as a few people gave them thumbs up.

While certain previous marches – boosted by the support of labor unions and student groups from local colleges – have swelled into the thousands, this smaller protest was notable as Occupy Boston’s first excursion outside the city.  Dozens of people along the route showed their approval of the demonstrators; no detractors were obvious.  The protest, though small by Occupy Boston standards, had style.  Marching to a drum beat, they followed three masked flagbearers with the America flag flanked by a “don’t tread on me” flag on each side.  The demonstrators stopped along the route as often as necessary to regroup behind their banner or, even, sit down and decide where to go next.

These protestors, some active within the Direct Action working group, wear masks and hold a sign. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Despite many of the participants being masked or otherwise dressed in a way that might intimidate, the flag-waving march was oddly reminiscent of a patriotic scene from Boston’s historic  past.  A few onlookers seem frightened by this loud group of people unaccompanied by uniformed police.  Some clutched their children or scurried to give the marchers a wide birth.  Most merely gaped.  Plenty took pictures or video.  A few punched their fists in the air to the beat of the protestors’ drum.

Among Sunday’s masked marchers, several are associated with Direct Action, a close-knit cadre of young people within Occupy Boston that plans protest marches and, more rarely, bolder acts of civil disobedience.  But the demonstration also included parents, young children and at least one grandmother, Mary Andriotakis, 53, who came in from Sudbury with her husband, Chuck Andriotakis, 62, and grandsons Levi, Sam and Joe (ages 5, 6 and 11). 

“I come into Occupy Boston whenever I can, and I bring whoever I can,” Mary Andriotakis said. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to go today because I have my grandchildren.  But it’s a beautiful day and I brought them.  It’s great for them to be able to be a part of this.”

John Murphy, 24, of Falmouth, speaks to people in Harvard Square while wearing a shirt he made back at the Sign Tent at the Occupy Boston campground. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Her grandsons held signs and obviously enjoyed chanting “We are the 99 percent” along with demonstrators drawn from local colleges, towns, and the streets.  At one point, the boys shyly tried out the people’s mic, a movement phenomenon through which a crowd repeats and amplifies a speaker’s words.  Andriotakis, having two children who volunteer at the Medic Tent in the campground, later said “I asked [my grandsons] which they like better, Occupy Boston or the Children’s Museum and they said ‘Occupy Boston, Occupy Boston!’”

After going through Downtown Crossing and cutting through Boston Common, the march turned left at the State House and headed down Beacon Street. They stopped to jeer and flip the bird at what may be the Beacon Hill townhouse of Robert E. Gallery, a local Bank of America president.  Reaching a footbridge to the Charles River, the protestors ran onto it quickly and suspended a banner over Storrow Drive for several minutes on each side.  The banner, the same one they march behind, reads “we are the 99%” and is decorated with white hands on a pink background. Less legibly, “occupyboston.com” is printed above the motto and “and so are you and you and you and you and me” is written in cursive writing below.

When they finally arrived in Harvard Square, protestors held a rally where they used the people’s mic to explain the purposes of their protest.  They also answered questions and talked to people one-on-one.  At the end of the day, the demonstration left the marchers in high spirits.  One elated woman said, “We’ve had marches much bigger than this, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen so much positive attention.  The movement is definitely growing.  People are becoming more aware.”

The group took the Red Line from Harvard Square back to South Station, each person paying their fare.  They re-entered the tent city just as a group of smiling Sikhs was serving hot tea and warm food they had prepared off-site.  By this hour, Occupy Boston was teeming with people who jostled shoulder-to-shoulder to pass along the narrow paths.

Chomsky and an almost-confrontation 

Protestors young and older are visible as Occupy Boston parades through the 47th edition of the Head of the Charles Regatta. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Last weekend, Occupy Boston showed signs of losing momentum as the majority settled into activities that didn’t bring them into contact with those outside the camp.  A march was planned for 6 pm on Saturday night, but when Noam Chomsky was rained out on Wednesday he moved his lecture to that time instead.

An estimated 1,000 people were present but Chomsky, 82, spoke at conversational volume and didn’t use the people’s mic.  Despite him holding two microphones, at least half those assembled couldn’t hear him.  Many occupiers and visitors, happily anticipating Chomsky’s visit for days, had their spirits dashed.

An impromptu march took place when Chomsky finished and culminated in about 100 protestors assembled on the same spot of Rose Kennedy Greenway where 141 people were arrested on October 11.  A tight cluster of Boston Police stood by, frowning and talking into radios.  Using the method of direct democracy popular across the Occupation Movement, the protestors held a General Assembly.  People spoke from atop the gray pumpkin statue that makes a good soapbox.

Despite tough talk about taking that park again, it didn’t happen.  Some didn’t like the idea of doing something so important without the consensus of the whole Occupy Boston community.  Some argued the park should be seized during the day so people working in the surrounding office buildings could see whatever ensued.  Some, it was clear, simply didn’t have the nerve.

Out of the park and into the streets 

With the Boston skyline visible beyond crew teams on the Charles River, demonstrators use a hand signal to indicate approval during discussion. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

The next day, Sunday, the Occupy Boston encampment seemed to be under a lull.  Certain tents designed for communal functions had lost their identifying signs days before or otherwise appeared closed for business.  A few busy volunteers complained too many people were holed up in their tents avoiding the gritty realities of life in Dewey Square.  Positive energy at the campsite seemed in short supply; even the mellow people at the Sacred Space were getting cranky from the struggle to prevent it from becoming another messy public dormitory.

At 1 p.m., only a dozen people assembled for a march planned by Direct Action (“DA”).  Members of DA, who tend to be younger than the camp as a whole, were livid at the low turn out.  Young men and women clenched their fists and snarled in frustration, “people need to get the fuck out of their tents!” Rather than cancel the march, DA members led their small contingent four times around and through the Occupy Boston camp chanting “out of the park and into the streets” and, specially for this occasion, “out of your tents and into the streets.”

Some habitués of the drum circle agreed to go to the march when confronted by DA members but soon sneaked back into camp.  In the end, about 50 people accompanied Occupy Boston all the way to Cambridge.

Joan Prum, 85, is a supporter of Occupy Boston who wanted to discuss the protest at her local senior center but was told, “Oh, we couldn't do that, people would get excited!” (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Earlier this month, 85 year old Joan Prum took a stroll down “Main Street,” a precarious pathway of pallets and muddy plywood that divides the main area of Occupied Boston into some 40 tents on one side and about 50 on the other. Although 60 or more years the senior of many protestors, Joan, a retired Social Security claims representative from Watertown, was a typical visitor in that she heard about Occupy Boston through the media and came from a neighboring town to show support by dropping off supplies. She was accompanied by Valerie Fullum, 59, a social worker from Cambridge and longtime friend.

Joan explained, “I was brought up to believe in justice. When a particular situation makes it clear justice is being imperiled?” She finished her thought with just a hand gesture as if the conclusion was too obvious to state. Joan added that one of her first jobs after college was at the New York World-Telegram where she participated in the newspaper guild strike of 1953. She describes it as a “searing experience.”

She remained interested in social justice while raising a family and boasts, “I have 5 children, and 8 grandchildren, and when I get home I am going to send them an email to tell them I was here and why I was here…[Occupy Boston] may be hopeless, it may be fruitless, but I still want to be here.”

Valerie Fullum, 59, is a social worker who is “enraged by the Wall Street bail out” and felt she needed to visit Occupy Boston “and help in some way.” (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

As for herself, Valerie said, “I have a history of doing social activism. I saw Occupy Boston march in support of the health care workers’ union and that was wonderful. As someone who is self-employed, I have growing concern and worry about the health insurance dilemma. I see clients every day who have to make some very tough decisions…I’m enraged by the Wall Street bail out…I felt like I had to come see [Occupy Boston] and help in some way.”

Valerie was bothered by the fact that local figures such as Governor Deval Patrick, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Senator John Kerry and Seán Cardinal O’Malley hadn’t yet made an appearance at Occupy Boston but considered it, in part, their loss saying, “I’m reminded of the fact there isn’t anyone here I couldn’t have an interesting conversation with.” (Governor Patrick did stop in last Saturday morning and was given a tour by Gregg Housh, 34, one of the occupation’s most prominent faces.)

Jumping back into the conversation, Joan described how her enthusiasm for the Occupy Movement made her interested in discussing it with peers in her own age group. “So I asked at the senior center if they have a group for currents events,” she says with laughter, “but was told, ‘Oh, we couldn’t do that, people would get excited!’”

Except when the weather is really bad, thousands of people a day visit the Occupy Boston shantytown that turns 3-weeks old today. Ranging from babes-in-arms to (at least one person) over 100 years old, the vast majority of these visitors are – like Joan and Valerie – sympathetic to the occupiers and the values they seem to represent.

Editor’s note: Blast writer John Stephen Dwyer has been staying with Occupy Boston protesters since the beginning of the protest. He has been filing longer stories every few days with breaking news when it happens.

Main Street, Occupied Boston (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Two weeks ago, 300 people illegally seized a portion of the Rose Kennedy Greenway and set up tents. The mayor told the police not to stop them, and today the tent city still stands.

More than a campsite, it’s a well-managed shantytown complete with its own reflections of what you’d find in most communities — police, government, restaurant, hospital, school, theater, church and even a home goods store. Groups of grade school and middle school students take field trips here, and thousands of people of all descriptions visit daily. Many drop off donations of food or other supplies. Some stop to ask questions.

Many come just to tell at least one person “I think what you’re doing is great.”

This ragged community occasional fields groups of protestors to march around the city or, as they did earlier this week, engage in acts of civil disobedience such as blocking the bridge to Charlestown and stampeding through the interior of Faneuil Hall screaming for justice as both police and baffled tourists watched passively. This is Occupy Boston.

Part of something bigger

Occupy Boston is part of a movement that exploded in New York City on September 17 as a protest called “Occupy Wall Street.” It has since spread to dozens of cities across the U.S. CNN reports more than two dozen cities around the world, “stretching from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires, Dublin to Madrid,” will be joining the protest today, on what’s already being called “a global day of revolution.”

In a historical context, the Occupy Movement will be remembered as a response to worldwide economic problems that became obvious in December 2007 as well as a protest against a increasing disparity of wealth and a civil rights battle.

Like anything of its size, the movement includes people that don’t agree with each other about a lot of things. Some of its most devoted members are young radicals, whose ideas might shock the soccer moms and dads who stop their SUV’s on Atlantic Avenue to drop off food and blankets to the Occupy Boston community.

But one small sign perched on the curbstone at Occupied Boston says “it’s not radical to want love, equality and compassion for our fellow humans.” From the unbathed Maoist on day eight of an occupation, to the millions of apolitical people whose only affiliation with the movement is through social media, almost all people aligning themselves with the group seem to believe three very broad notions. First, they insist that hurting innocent people is bad. Second, they believe powerful corporations exert too much power on government and have hurt innocent people in numerous ways. Third, they think everyone should get involved in correcting that problem.

It does take some skilled organizers to strike the spark of protest and fan the fires in the desired, non-violent direction, but the Occupy Movement is still intensely grassroots. A handsomely-written and well-circulated text, “Open letter and warning from former tea partier to the OWS movement” is posted on the Occupy Wall Street website and describes how the Tea Party began as a diverse, well-intentioned populist movement before being hijacked by the Christan Right, the GOP and, ultimately corporations. It warns how the media will assist in a similar take over of this new movement and advises ways to navigate these issues.

Whatever its origin, the text reflects a general sentiment among the Greenway occupiers that donations from companies are suspicious, the media can’t be trusted, and both the Republican and Democratic parties can go to hell.

Close Quarters

There’s a pathway lined with metal barriers separating Occupy Boston from the paved area around the entrance to the Red Line. It’s been called “Music Row” and even “Tin Pan Alley” as it’s a popular place for people to gather, sit on the wide benches, and play musical instruments. Someone has set up a few tiki-like wood carvings here, and an immense statue of Ganhdi, made of relatively lightweight materials and property of the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, facing South Station.

“Main Street,” a path of wooded pallets bisecting the grassy area, starts here. It’s a precarious route, and the mud on either side gets to be several inches deep when it rains. It’s been muddy often these past few weeks, as the occupiers have endured days of light rain and several downpours. About 90 tents squat on either side of Main Street, 40 tents on the side bordered by Atlantic Avenue and 50 on the side where sparrows have been raiding a wilted sunflower garden.

A path runs past the sunflowers, connecting the welcome tent at one end of the park with the media tent at the other. This route was in place before the occupation, but only recently has someone erected a simple sign naming it “Sacco and Vanzetti Avenue.” As part of the effort to keep their community clean, volunteers have been combing though the gravel with rakes on a regular basis.

Occupy Boston is overcrowded and has been for at least a week. Tents are tightly packed, and there’s no room for more. Even finding a place to lie down in a sleeping bag is a challenge. There’s plenty of empty space around the park, but the Occupy Boston protest — while illegal because participants refused to seek permits — is an un-choreographed dance between the city and the protestors, as each tries not to overly piss off the other.

The paved area of the park (the end of it nearest South Station where at least two police officers are standing at all times) is therefore understood to be off limits. Nevertheless, Occupied Boston recently annexed a little sliver of it first occupied by ten tents that formed a sort of “student village” of protestors from local universities. At the opposite corner of the park, almost a dozen tents have spilled out along Atlantic Avenue along another strip of glass declared off limits by the mayor and the commissioner. While apparently no more or less interesting that any other part of the camp, this strip was named “Weird Street” over a week ago and the name has stuck. Weird Street has been an ongoing point of contention with the police from the start. The message conveyed to the police a week ago is that the protestors, as a community, can’t force the owners of those tents to remove them, and individuals in the community are likely to come to those people’s defense if it appears they are threatened.

According to patrolmen who spoke to Blast Magazine last weekend, police were planning on clearing Weird Street on Tuesday. Instead, they ended up turning their attention to a more significant expansion of the tent city that sprung up suddenly as police attention was diverted by hundreds of protestors blocking the bridge to Charlestown. As police demanded protestors leave the new site, Greg Housh, a 34-year old father serving in the center of many conversations between the occupiers and the city, explained “This place is full. We need to expand this site if we’re going to expand the movement. Other cities have expanded, we need to expand as well.”

During the six-hour standoff that followed, Occupy Boston received a visit from Nancy Brennan, Executive Director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. Addressing the crowd with the call-and-response of the “people’s mic,” Brennan reminded protestors that the Conservancy had asked them not to expand onto a new portion of the park because of special concerns regarding a new irrigation system put into place and works on loan by various artists. But she ended her comments saying “…another thing that the Greenway stands for…is freedom of speech…and I ask, for as long as you are on this land, would you please help us take care of it?” Her smile beamed as the crowd chanted “Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!” in appreciation.

Despite these words of support from the director of the Greenway, hundreds of police marched into the area around 1 a.m. Tuesday. More than 160 people locked arms in a tight circle around their tent city annex and chanted slogans such as “the whole world is watching” and “this is a peaceful demonstration.” Starting about 20 minutes later, the police made 141 arrests and tore down all tents pitched in the new area. In the aftermath, protestors generally expressed the position that the police were just doing their jobs, but they could have done so less roughly. Many report cell phones, cameras, medication and the flags held by a veterans group were thrown away.

One woman, around 60 years old, said “the sight of the American flag being thrown in the trash will haunt me forever…if something like that happened to the Tea Party three years ago FOX News would still be showing footage of it.”

In the wake of the 141 arrests, Occupy Boston made international headlines and Weird Street was left untouched.

Missing the message

Most people passing through Occupied Boston are there because they support what they believe the protest stands for. Many can’t help expressing their solidarity to any stranger who will listen. There are also some, including many who meander in from the surrounding skyscrapers around lunchtime each day, who come just to gawk at the people and their signs. A few visitors — especially business school graduates in neckties — come to tell occupiers how they should be better getting their message across. The community isn’t very receptive to people broadcasting on this frequency as they insist there are multiple interrelated messages that shouldn’t be oversimplified for the benefit of the half-interested. More than one occupier said “either you get this or you don’t.”

Around 11 p.m. last Friday, a very well-groomed young woman with blonde hair stood near the Gandhi statue in a tense argument with several other people. No matter how broadly or how narrowly the small crowd tried to explain the purpose of their efforts, she continued to insist “I just don’t get it…I read the things online, like that thing from New York or whatever, and it doesn’t even make sense!” In sheer volume, hers was the loudest voice in the conversation as she claimed a genuine desire to understand. But it was clear that no useful communication was going back and forth between her and the others.

During the day, when traffic is heavy, beeps of support from cars passing on Atlantic Avenue get as frequent as three or four per minute. At night, this tapers off to a few honks an hour. There’s also the occasional jeer such as the “get a job, you fucking bums” yelled from a truck around 3 p.m. or the “cocksucking douchebag faggots” shouted from a car full of young men just after 2:30 a.m. last Saturday.

Occupy Boston, like many other occupation groups, has not released anything resembling a manifesto or list of demands. Participants don’t seem to care if this frustrates the mainstream media or confuses many of the people whose rights they say they’re fighting for. They’re acutely alert to anything that might serve as a wedge within the movement, and see decisions arrived at too hastily as the perfect example of this. As such, when it comes to defining their message, prioritizing their concerns and (eventually) proposing solutions, occupiers seem determined to proceed carefully even if it takes them a long time. Although individual protestors might be impatient, or frustrated about the lack of this or that, the overall spirit of the movement seems to be a that of patient resolve. “How long? As long as it takes!” is becoming one of the group’s many informal mottoes.

A protester is arrested during the bridge rally (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Yesterday, thousands of people swelled the ranks of Occupy Boston in a march that began at the Boston Common and snaked through various Boston neighborhoods to protest — among other complaints — high unemployment, government malfeasance and corporate greed.

Student groups and representatives from local labor unions were well-represented.

The throng stopped at several points, sitting in the streets and blocking traffic in an act of non-violent civil disobedience. Then, in what one local commentator has since called the “battle of old North Washington bridge,” the protestors blocked the bridge to Charlestown for over an hour but were prevented from advancing onto the expanse itself. One protestor, a gray-haired man in a baseball cap, was arrested.

According to many within the Occupy Boston movement, the “battle of the bridge” was a diversionary tactic enabling protestors to expand their protest community in front of South Station to a part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway that Mayor Thomas Menino and Boston Police had declared to be off-limits. Protestors, arguing that their camp is too overcrowded to accommodate the number of people who arrived daily to join their cause, see physical expansion as vital to the success of their mission. They note that similar protests in other US cities have been allowed to expand and unsuccessfully implored Boston to afford them the same opportunity.

"Medics" stand by on the Greenway during the protests (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

By early evening, police and protestors were at a standoff. Tents had been pitched in the new area and some of the infrastructure of the main camp, such as the protest group’s logistics and medical tents, were in place as well.

Gregg Housh, a 34-year old father of two serving as liaison between Occupy Boston and the city, reported having been given conflicting information. Word from the mayor was that the new site had to be surrendered by midnight or it would be cleared by force, while Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis threatened to tear down both areas if the new site wasn’t vacated by midnight.

Boston police, in an official statement later, said this was not true and that police only wanted the protesters to vacate the Greenway expansion.

The new encampment held a general assembly meeting to decide if they should stay or go. Nancy Brennan, Executive Director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, stood up to address the crowd and, like all speakers, used the call-and-response of the “people’s mic” being used in occupy protests across the country.

The “people’s mic” involves the crowd simply repeating what the speaker is saying so that the message carries across a large group.

Police form a line during the bridge protest (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Brennan reminded everyone that the Conservancy had asked protestors not to expand onto the other portion of the park because of special concerns regarding a new irrigation system put into place and works on loan by various artists. But she ended her comments saying “…another thing that the Greenway stands for…is freedom of speech…and I ask…for as long as you are on this land…would you please help us take care of it?” Her smile beamed as the crowd chanted “Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!” in appreciation.

After the meeting, she said that the lawn planted in the space in question is deep-rooted, grown without chemicals, and was likely to survive the occupation, “If not,” she explained, “they’ve promised to replace it…and I have no doubt they will.”

As midnight approached, protestors locked arms and formed a human barrier to protect their occupation sites. A tight circle of more than 160 people surrounded the new campground while a ragged line of more than 220 people protected the original site. Legal advisers went around dispensing pamphlets and legal aid phone numbers, helping people write a contact number on their bare skin should they be arrested.

Medical volunteers were also present, most of them equipped with bottled cocktails of Maalox and water to neutralize pepper spray should it be used.

Jason Lydon, a Unitarian Universalist minister with the Community Church in Boston’s Back Bay, offered comforting words to the largely young and frightened protestors.

“Remember to relax and to breathe … remember that whatever happens, if you get arrested or whatever, this community will not abandon you,” Lydon said. “We will take care of you.”

Shorly after 1 a.m., hundreds of law enforcement officials, including Boston, transit and State Police, as well as members of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s department descended upon the scene.

They began making arrests around 1:20 am as protestors sang “God Bless America” or chanted slogans such as “this is a peaceful demonstration” and “the whole world is watching.”

A contingent of gray-haired war veterans and one young female Iraqi war vet, from the group Veterans for Peace had their own chant: “We have a permit. It’s called the Constitution.”

The police gave several warnings by bullhorn for the crowd to leave or face arrest. Those who stayed were quickly taken into custody. Just minutes after the first protester was cable tied, 141 arrests had been made.

Some protestors complained about what they saw as excessive use of police force.

A member of the veterans group said they were prepared to come along peacefully, “they didn’t have to rough us up and walk all over the American flags we fought overseas to defend.”

Protestors were also upset that police may not have seen the difference between the protestors who locked arms in resistance and the medical and legal advisers, identified by their clothes, who stood close by to help.

Protestors also claimed that phones, cameras and other valuables belonging to the protestors were thrown into the trash along with the mangled remains of their tents that were taken down.

Blast recorded footage of a woman being arrested on a sidewalk adjacent to the park after she yelled at police.

A statement at the Occupy Boston website objected to both the way the arrests had been conducted and the way the protestors had been characterized saying:

“…hundreds of police in full riot gear brutally attacked Occupy Boston, which had peacefully gathered on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Boston Police Department made no distinction between protesters, medics, or legal observers, arresting legal observer Urszula Masny-Latos, who serves as the Executive Director for the National Lawyers Guild, as well as four medics attempting to care for the injured….Following the raid, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis made no mention of veterans, organized labor, students, or families, nor did he issue an apology for his department’s aggressive tactics. Since the beginning of its occupation, Occupy Boston has worked tirelessly and successfully to maintain a positive working relationship with city officials. Today’s reprehensible attack by the Boston Police Department against a movement that enjoys the broad support of the American people represents a sad and disturbing shift away from dialogue and towards violent repression…Despite the city’s attempt to silence us, Occupy Boston remains, and bears no ill-will towards the men and women of the Boston Police Department who were simply following orders.”

In the wake of the arrests this morning, Mayor Menino maintained that he has a certain degree of sympathy with the protestors and told the Boston Globe, “I understand they have freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but we have a city to manage…I’m open to suggestions, but civil disobedience will not be tolerated.”

Talking to NECN, Menino expressed his mistaken belief that anarchists – a minority contingent within the Occupy Boston community since day one – had recently entered the movement and had changed its character.

Charged with unlawful assembly and aided with bail money donated by supporters, most of those arrested were released today but are due to be back in court later in the week.

The original Occupy Boston encampment, set up on September 30, remained in place this afternoon.

(Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

A few hundred people in Boston — 200 to 600 depending on the time of day and the weather — are illegally occupying Dewey Square Park, the portion of the Rose Kennedy Greenway directly in front of South Station. They’ve built a colorful community of about 60 tents in the shadow of the Federal Reserve Building, the skyscraper owned by Bank of America, and other symbols of financial power. During the day, they line Atlantic Ave with signs denouncing corporate greed. At night, they train each other in useful skills or gather for assembly, a sort of egalitarian legislature in which anyone can have a say and everyone gets a vote. They call what they are doing “Occupy Boston.”

It’s a diverse group with long lists of complaints about the way society is run, especially in regards to corporations and the power they yield. While members tend to be well left of center politically, most insist that what they are doing isn’t about Left or Right, Democrat or Republican. Noting the game-changing wealth the richest 1% of families have under their control, many like to call themselves “the other 99%” and insist that anyone within that same wide percentile is who they are fighting for.

Even in countries where no declared war is being fought, 2011 hasn’t been a peaceful year. The Arab Spring toppled regimes. In summer, parts of London burned. And in New York City, exactly three years after the especially sharp economic plummet of September 2008, thousands of people physically took themselves and their anger to the doors of Wall Street itself.

Who are the people “occupying” Boston and what do they want? What connection – if any – does this peaceful gathering on the Rose Kennedy Greenway have to do with the overthrow of leaders like Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi? This is a story of Boston’s newest and smallest “neighborhood,” a small patch of dirt and grass some are calling “Occupied Boston,” and the story starts in Canada.

Origins of Occupation

(Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Adbusters, an anti-corporate activist group registered in British Columbia way back in 1989, has been clamoring for social change ever since. But it wasn’t until this year, in the wake of the Arab Spring, that the idea for Occupy Wall Street started to really come together. On July 4, 2011, they registered the domain name “occupywallst.org.” Nine days later, a group of hackers devoted to civil disobedience via the Internet and calling themselves Anonymous, asked its members to join the demonstrations soon to follow. After two more months of planning, Occupy Wall Street exploded into a protest of more than 1,000 people on Monday, September 17, in New York City.

On day eight of this extended protest, many of those involved headed uptown, forcing the closure of several streets. At least 80 arrests were made that day, some of them roughly, and video of a New York City police officer chemical macing a group of young women intensified world attention on the event. On day 13, in front of South Station during Friday rush hour, Boston became among the first of many cities to field its own version of that same protest.

Occupying Boston

(Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Compared to their compatriots in NYC, the men and women of Occupy Boston received a warm welcome from the city. Word came down from Mayor Menino that tents pitched outside South Station would be allowed despite lack of permits. Before hitting the streets, some Boston cops received reminders about what holds are less painful for the person being restrained. Whatever else Boston’s powers-that-be might think of the protestors and their complaints, it’s clear they wished to avoid a replay of the public relations fiasco caused by the violent arrests in NYC just two days earlier.

Folks gathered at the State House and then marched towards the Financial District. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a NYC marching band scheduled to be in town anyway for the HONK! Festival taking place in Cambridge and Somerville that weekend, was a conspicuous presence at the moment of Occupy Boston’s actual birth. Dressed in trademark black and green, bedecked with sequins and playing exuberantly sloppy Dixieland, they made what was happening seem more like a holiday parade that the wild-eyed images we received of Arab Spring protestors. It helped set the tenor for what was to follow.

The cops, apparently in a non-confrontational mood, seemed amused by the marching band and a few folks in costumes. As people flocked into Dewey Square Park, police and protestors exchanged nonthreatening looks and polite words. “Hello…hiya…hello…howyadoing?” Even “welcome.” According to one police officer, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Boston Police Department who spoke on condition of anonymity, “What they’re doing here? It doesn’t bother us…(but) a few people barged into the bank and were trying to get arrested. So we helped ‘em out.” At least two dozen people, largely middle aged folks who had lost their homes, were gently taken into custody.

Emerging from their workplaces, waves of people stopped to gawk at the spectacle or tap their toes to the sound of horns and drums before catching the next train home. Widely circulated estimates that this first night drew about 1,000 people don’t seem to take into account the number of individuals and groups coming and going during these first hours. Two thousand plus seems more accurate.

It almost didn’t happen. Local organizers were targeting the following Friday, October 7, to hit the streets. But planning went surprising well and consensus was reached on numerous issues earlier than expected. The Occupy Boston movement was able to mobilize on September 30 instead, the same day that local groups were showing up on Beacon Hill – each with its own specific grievances regarding housing, labor or other issues. Most left with the sunset, but a few hundred people now firmly identifying themselves with the “Occupy Movement” encamped for the first night of the protest. Even torrential downpours during the night couldn’t dampen their impression that Occupy Boston had gotten off to a very auspicious start.

Teyvan Lowe

Teyvan Lowe (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

People came and went from the event throughout the weekend. By Monday, day four of the Boston protest, it looked like those in the camp were enjoying a decent level of comfort. Good planning meant that such essentials as the medical tent were in place from the start. People of various descriptions had dropped off carloads of food through the weekend, meaning a surplus had begun to be stockpiled. What had been a patch of turf was now a bustling shantytown of colorful tents in the gray shadow of America’s financial colossi. Some of its inhabitants – especially those with no roof over their heads before joining the protest – were already calling it “home.”

Teyvan Lowe, 18, was one of them. During the evening rush hour, as people held up various messages for the benefit of motorists, Lowe stood alongside them playing his guitar, dressed like a sort of bandito in a mask and stocking cap. Pulling down the bandana that covered the bottom of his face, he said “This is basically where I live. The streets.” He explained that trouble with his family and the lack of a job had given him no other choice. Lowe, who had arrived at the protest on Friday, said “I’m here mostly on behalf of the homeless population. As a community of homeless people, no one is going to take us seriously. It’s hard enough to find a job if you haven’t showered in three weeks and have dirty clothes.”

Arania Webb

Arania Webb, 47, of Wakefield, wasn’t much better off. “I was in investment bank law. I was in the legal profession for twenty-five years. I was good at what I did. I was laid off in 2008…when our clients went under, so did we.” Since then, she’s done everything she can to survive, “temp work, housecleaning, dog-walking, you name it. People who mock the unemployed by saying ‘get off your ass and get a job?’ There are no jobs. I have zero income. I used all my savings. I had to liquidate my 401K…now I am sleeping on the floor of my friend’s home office.”

Seeing a chance to again put her professional skills to good use, Webb joined Occupy Boston’s legal team six days earlier. “Where else could I be?” she asked. She then referred to those outside the top 1% saying, “if you were in any way touched by the market crash, you are the 99 percent…if you are one illness or hospital stay away from bankruptcy, you are the 99%…this is a nationwide movement turning into a worldwide movement.”

Some at Occupy Boston found it difficult to articulate their topmost demands, while others said that capitalism itself must be forced out of existence. Webb fell into neither category, and her demands were surprisingly simple and modest: single-payer health care, FDR-esque work programs, and “some kind of campaign finance reform.” When asked how long she’d tough it outdoors, Webb said “We will stay here as long as necessary. We will stay here through the snows. We’ve started to acquire warm weather gear already. We will be here as long as it takes.”

Bank of America plans to cut 3,500 jobs company-wide in the current quarter in an effort to cut expenses.  This totals to more than one percent of its worldwide workforce.

The bank is the largest nationwide and in Massachusetts, The Boston Globe reports.  Bank of America has confirmed that it will continue to review the necessity of jobs at the company, which could result in many more jobs cut.

“The company regularly assesses the efficiencies of its operations and will make adjustments,” said Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri, according to The Globe.

 This round of cuts comes on the heels of the 2,500 jobs eliminated at Bank of America earlier this year in order to boost profits.

Massachusetts will likely feel the effects of the cuts because it is one of the company’s largest areas, behind North Carolina and New York.  The bank also plans to close a printing company in Malden next spring, which will get rid of 150 jobs.

Bank of America has incurred billion of dollars in losses because of the troubled economy.  In the second quarter, they reported $8.8 billion in losses, mainly due to an $8.5 billion settlement with investors who wanted the bank to buy back toxic mortgages handled by Countrywide Financial Corp., who the company had bought out in 2008.

Central Falls, R.I. is declaring bankruptcy and claims “the current situation is dire,” according to state officials.

“Despite its proud past, the reality of the present is that Central Falls is no longer a boom town,” Governor Lincoln Chafee said, according to the Boston Globe. “The city has for years had liabilities outweighing its means.”

This will be the first city in Rhode Island to declare bankruptcy. The petition has been filed with the US Bankruptcy Court in Boston.

Robert G. Flanders, the city receiver, said that officials have revoked the contracts of police, firefighters, and municipal workers. The state also plans to ask unions to cut labor costs.

City pensioners are expected to see up to a 50 percent cut in their next pension check as a result of the bankruptcy, according to Flanders.

The city put its self under receivership, the municipal equivalent of bankruptcy, last year in hopes of fixing its financial woes, but it was to no avail. The city has been suffering for a while now, with no plausible way out.

The Boston Globe reports that the city would have built up a deficit of $5.6 million by June 30, 2012, with revenues at about $16.4 million and expenses at $22 million, if they hadn’t started making changes.

CORK, Ireland — For more than a decade, a shady troika of bankers, developers and government ministers stood watching the simmering cauldron of the Irish economy, and stirred it very deliberately. So, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, it shuddered across the Atlantic and knocked the rickety legs from under our economy, proving the saying that when America sneezes, Ireland catches a cold. Maybe it’s a little dramatic to say this, but watching the news reports of the country’s downfall over the last three years has been a bit like watching the collapse of the World Trade Center in slow-mo. You’re stunned, you know it’s bad, you know it’s going to happen. You watch the whole thing crash and there’s nothing you can do about it: Unemployment. Downgraded credit ratings. Nationalizations. Guarantees. Loans from the European Central Bank. Scramble budgets. And then, after all that, the International Monetary Fund steps in with $120 billion to bail us out. Bang. Rock bottom—we hope.

Ireland's standardized unemployment rate by percentage. (Source: Eurostat, via European Central Bank Statistical Data Warehouse)

The nation seems to be holding its breath today while a stress test of the banking system is undertaken. The way it’s being covered in the media makes it seem like the sort of thing that could yet transform every depositor into Jane and Michael Banks demanding their tuppence. The whole thing has been such an exhausting marathon of twists, turns and revelations that many of the nasty by-products of financial ruin have gone under the radar.

With so much talk of the numbers, cuts and taxes, you start to forget what it means in human terms. You forget that a slashed health budget means fewer beds or fewer nurses. You forget that unemployment means emigration. After three years of a bruising recession, you’re so frazzled by the terminology and the growing number of zeros that we owe to Germany that you simply don’t have the wherewithal to remember why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Given that this is the nation’s third time sending large swarms of Irish people packing, you could say we’re getting used to it now. Granted, it’s not as acute now as it was during the Great Famine of 1845, which resulted in 2.1 million people leaving the country by 1855, according to the Irish Times. But the statistics now are about to equal the bleak era of the 1980s, a decade that saw an 18 percent unemployment rate by 1989 and the exodus of 500,000 people, according to the Irish Times. In 2010, 65,000 people left the country, compared to 70,600 in 1989. And now, with Eurostat data reporting unemployment at 15 percent, the Economic Social Research Institute predicts a net outflow of 50,000 more people over the next year. Year-for-year across the decades, that figure puts us just about on-course to repeat our statistical feats.

We’re getting used to it now, reverting to the “Paddy Irish” type, I suppose. “Poor but happy,” some people like to say, as if economic success were a suit that never really fit and we are now returning to the familiar rags of our national upbringing. But I’m not buying it. I untangle the mess of earphone and Webcam wires, and yawn off the tiredness of the idle day. What am I doing again? Why am I doing it?

Ah, yes. With the help of three albums’ worth of Iron and Wine, I’m whiling away the five-hour time difference between Ireland and D.C. My best friend is interning there. She commutes, I type. Maybe we both hum along to “Southern Anthem” and whittle the clock down. A narrow window of opportunity in the 3,000-mile distance is about to make itself available; that rare time when she is not working and I am not sleeping or vice versa. This is the stuff that gets lost. I’m not so desperate that this recession is making me lonely. But with most of my friends more likely to be making a living in Uganda than Ireland, I have to admit that it’s getting a little barren and boring for me here. I feel like I’m the only one left. I don’t laugh anymore when I see the “Will the last graduate left in Ireland please turn off the light” Facebook page pop up on my news feed. I admit, I’m not the most gregarious of individuals and this probably hasn’t helped my case. In Ireland, shyness and sobriety do not a social network make.

Nevertheless, I feel slightly robbed. We were the first generation of Irish people who grew up with the warm and unwavering promise that we would never have to leave. And so we grew up, unprepared, only to get smacked mid-degree with a hefty layer cake of governmental corruption, incompetence and economic failure.

This is not a whinge for the country’s 20-somethings. We know it could be a lot worse. We know we could be 30-something, unemployed, with a rake of kids and a sub-prime mortgage. Or worse still, employed and footing the lengthy bill. And we know that emigration in 2011 is not the sobering and unglamorous affair that it was in the ‘80s. It’s not busloads of pasty Irish whelps queuing forlornly for boats to Holyhead, North Wales or flights to Boston’s Logan Airport. We arrive on foreign shores pre-Fitch’d and almost tanned enough to blend in. We’re globalised enough to shut our eyes, ride it out, and label it a bit of “craic.” Still, it goes against the grain to leave your home. My friend summed it up succinctly when she said, “You know, I always knew I would have to travel to pursue my ambitions. But I hate that it wasn’t on my own terms.” And right she is. There is a severe enough distinction between leaving your home and being evicted from it because you can’t pay the rent—and no amount of Abercrombie sweaters or bottles of St. Tropez can stifle that particular sting.

And so, here we are; bleary eyed and more tired for our age than we would truly like to admit. I look at my watch. The narrow window of opportunity opens and through Google Voice I converse with my friend for nearly two hours. We laugh about friends and sex. And then we talk about jobs. How is the internship going? What do things look like at home? Who is where? They’re in Seattle, Vancouver, Sydney, London. Certainly not Ireland. We lament the situation we have been shoehorned into.

The choices for emerging graduates are stark. You can stay and fill out the long application forms for social welfare payments and paper the streets with your resumé in the hope that something sticks. Or you can leave. Because the biggest problem is not the lack of jobs (although it’s hardly a reason to celebrate), it’s the lack of anything. Last September, I moved to Manhattan to do a three-month unpaid internship. It was an incredible experience and I gained so much from it, both professionally and personally. But the sheer insanity of borrowing money to work for nothing epitomises the sort of outlandish rabbit-hole that the Irish people have been pushed into.

And that’s why people are emigrating. Not only is it nigh on impossible to get a salaried job, it’s also impossible to get work experience or internships. Facing a future of meagre state payments and the slow rot of their academic skills, graduates turn instead to visa applications. They uproot their whole lives just to feel what it might be like to have a career. I read New York Times articles about 28-year-old law students who are “stuck” doing yet another internship, and I envy them. There is no such innovation on this side of the pond.

You could’ve knocked out George Foreman with the accumulated volume of newspaper reports and television programmes that have gleefully attacked the government and senior bank officials since this crisis began. I wouldn’t for one moment relent in pointing the finger at those gluttonous fat-cats who landed us in this endless mess, but there is a distinct failure of industry too, particularly in the media.

Let’s not forget that during the property boom, most national newspapers in Ireland fed into the fever pitch with large property supplements. And now that it has gone bust and they are busy playing the blame game, they are happy to ignore the thousands of graduates who come knocking on the door seeking not jobs, just the opportunity to learn and contribute. Here I am, the case in point, more likely to write for a publication located 3,000 miles away than I am to write for one located just three miles away. Ireland’s small publishing industry makes no effort to accommodate the youth that might yet keep it going. There are swathes of state and semi-state bodies that largely seem to snub our language students at a time when their skills might be most advantageous, especially when you consider how much we must parlay with Sarkozy, Merkel, et al. And what about those pharma companies who have had to make staff redundant to reduce their costs? Wouldn’t they benefit from a couple of chemical engineering interns? We score poorly in mathematics compared to our European colleagues. Is there an opportunity there for some unemployed graduates with the requisite qualification? Do we give our artists a strong network? A forum for aspiring writers? No.

And I’m not convinced by the new coalition’s guff about reinventing Ireland and creating opportunities for young people. They, too, are so entranced by the debt clock that the billions of euros that were invested in education are continuing to trickle steadily out of the country. Implementing some sort of short-term stopgap is simply not on the top of anyone’s list. It’s ironic because when national debt is weighing in at the euro equivalent of nearly $140 billion in such a small country, or about $31,000 per citizen, it seems like you might want to hang on to as many people as possible to help shoulder the deficit in the long term. Right?

The World Bank has been widely criticized for funding numerous environmentally damaging projects around the globe. Pictured: Construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, a controversial World Bank-funded project on the River Narmada, India that flooded thousands of acres of land and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. (Media credit/International Rivers via Flickr)

Originally created to finance the rebuilding of Europe after World War II, the World Bank later took on a larger mandate to try to alleviate poverty around the world. Unfortunately, many of the Bank’s policies and practices in intervening years clashed with conservation priorities. But the more recent onslaught of global warming threats, along with greater overall public environmental awareness, has forced the World Bank to factor sustainability concerns into how it encourages development moving forward.

According to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a non-profit think tank, the World Bank has been widely criticized for funding a series of environmentally damaging projects in the 1980s, including the building of dams on the Narmada River in India, road building into the Brazilian Amazon and transmigration (re-settlement) efforts in Indonesia. “These projects have led to a variety of adverse impacts in borrower countries, including deforestation and displacement of indigenous peoples,” reports the group.

In response to the criticism, the World Bank adopted a set of policies and procedures in the late 1980s to better assess the potential adverse environmental impacts of its projects. The Bank further developed a series of polices to guide investment in such areas as forestry and energy. “For example, the bank’s forestry policy prohibits the institution from financing logging in primary tropical forests,” adds IPS.

Other highlights of the Bank’s first round of greening included the creation of a special unit to oversee environmentally and socially sustainable development, and the recruitment of staff with technical environmental credentials to supplement its professional core of economists. IPS reports that with these changes in place, the bank has been able to start developing a portfolio of environment-sector projects “ranging from support for national environmental agencies to investments in national parks.”

But an independent internal review of the World Bank’s sustainability impacts between 1990 and 2007 found that even these new sustainability-oriented policies fell flat. Researchers found that the bank’s private-sector funding arm, the International Finance Corporation, was still promoting the expansion of livestock herds, soybean fields and palm oil plantations—all which accelerated deforestation in the tropics, hastening the pace of climate change for the rest of us.

“They need to begin to see the inextricable link between sustaining environment and reducing poverty,” said Vinod Thomas, director of the World Bank group that performed the review. “It is clear now from the Amazon to India that if environmental sustainability is not raised as a priority, then all bets are off.”

The World Bank tried to address many of these concerns with the release of a beefed up Environment Strategy in 2001, but analysts remain critical of the organization’s performance and general commitment to sustainability. In June 2011 the World Bank will release a new Environment Strategy which it will use as a sustainability roadmap for its projects over the coming decade. The focus of the Bank’s sustainability work will be mitigating climate change through the promotion of clean energy technologies.

It is no secret that today’s job market is struggling. Some of those lucky enough to have a decent job are finding that their work load is going up while their salaries are staying the same, and bonuses are disappearing. With a 12 percent unemployment rate in Florida, according to the US Department of Labor, those out of work are lining up to step in and fill your job if you decide to make a fuss and start proclaiming that it’s “unfair” and posting quotes from Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” in the break room. As companies streamline their bottom line by cutting budgets and leaning heavily on their bases, it is no surprise that many people are hitting the classifieds and online job postings in search of their dream job and a little reprieve. However, after the first couple days on the hunt, it is clear that many leads are dead ends or some form of a bait and switch. Disillusion creeps in and that dream job landing in your lap starts to feel further out of reach.

I moved to south Florida to work in the event production industry and, over the past four years, have worked for some great companies and done some exciting events. Miami is known for its great weather and outdoor lifestyle, so it is a good bet that any given weekend will provide a number of events, both local and national. Beaches, venues, parks, amphitheaters and other attractions bring plenty of action our way and also support many local jobs. Although I have always enjoyed my work, it does carry the same frustrations and glass ceiling found in any other industry. Maybe I am just impatient and my “show your worth through your work” attitude has not set me up for the slow and steady pace of the corporate ladder, but I find myself longing for something exciting and new, a company poised atop a unique niche within the industry. It is, after all, human nature to strive for the next level and seek out the “best of the best.” For me, that dream job is with a company bold enough to take risks and nurture fresh ideas. And guess what? Last fall one such company fell in my lap.

A friend in Chicago tipped me off to a company his law firm had worked with called Red Frog Events. They are relatively young, currently entering their fourth year, and produce some of the fastest growing events around. In my last article I wrote about one of their events called The Great Urban Race, a traveling urban scavenger hunt hitting cities nationwide, and coming to Miami this March. Their other two events, Beach Palooza and Warrior Dash, round off a trio of home-run productions, putting them in a position of quick and exponential growth worldwide. After checking out the Red Frog Events website, I was drawn to the “world’s best benefits” tab. Red Froggers are privy to a number of perks: amazing health, dental, life and vision insurance, unlimited vacation days, $100 monthly cell phone reimbursement, free food, drinks and beer, a fully paid four week vacation for you and a friend to Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia, a free birthday massage, a $1,000 match to your favorite charity, and more. It was instantly clear that a job with them would be both rewarding and fun. So, after taking all this in, I was smitten to learn that they are hiring! Every three to four months they bring on a group of interns known as event coordinators to dive right in to their day-to-day activities and learn the ins and outs of event production at their very own Camp Red Frog in Chicago. The only way to get a full-time gig with them is by completing this internship, so I had found my “in” and got right to work getting my foot in the door.

Last October, I sent in my resume, cover letter, and even a YouTube video I made (the position is very sought after so bringing your A-game is a must!) and held my breath. A week later I got a call from their office to set up a phone interview. They receive over 100 applications a day, so this is a big accomplishment. After that goes well, I am informed that I made it to the two percent of people who are offered an in-person interview. A quick call to an old roommate who lives two miles away from their downtown Chicago office confirms that there is a spare bedroom at her place I could use if need be. I book my flight, call my family and try to tame my excitement as I wait for my big day.

The morning of my interview starts with some strong coffee and a glance over my notes before heading up to the fifth floor of their office. My feeling at this moment is comparable to the type of awe you see in the eyes of a child. Standing there off the elevator I felt like Charlie gripping his golden ticket at the gates of the chocolate factory. I was beckoned through a pair of double glass doors complete with hand-carved red frog handles and immediately start to take in the ambiance of the office. Straight ahead are a couple of cubicles with RipStik boards and Nerf guns strewn across the daily calendars. The intern work space is shaded by two giant trees sprouting from the wood floors to the high ceiling amongst lily pad-shaped light fixtures. Past the trees is the centerpiece of Camp Red Frog: the tree house. Complete with rope ladders, a slide, and Fatboy bean bag chairs, the tree house serves as a conference room.

Before the interview I am led on a short tour. As we start, I am led past a projected image of a map listing all their upcoming events. Recently added to their lineup are events in London and Australia. I am led passed a rock climbing wall, a fire pit and a giant stuffed bear; but don’t worry animal lovers, it’s not a real bear. Last stop before my interview is the kitchen, complete with a soda fountain, free cans of Red Bull, a beer keg (yes, you can enjoy a beer while working!) and tons of snacks for the taking.

Finally I arrive at a corner room complete with a conference table made entirely out of Lego bricks with a big Red Frog logo in the center. I am greeted by both Ryan Kunkel and Joe Reynolds, the founder and vice president of the company. Their titles are of course more unique: Joe is the architect of adventure and Ryan is the master of monkey business. Although I have many years of experience in event production and have the personality that seems to fit the company culture, I am quietly reflecting on the weight this interview will have on me. I am thinking about my frustrations with trying to navigate through a barren job market and how gratifying this job would be for me. In the few seconds it takes me to sit down and greet them both, I find myself envisioning the life of a Red Frogger. I can see myself as a well accomplished and valued member of this smart and innovative company, spending my days hard at work in this beautiful office as I sip draft beer and watch other fresh faced applicants make their pilgrimage from all over the United States to those double glass doors as I did so many years ago. I pull my head out the clouds and dive right into securing my place here by acing this interview.

I don’t want to give away the questions asked inside that room, but I will mention that some of them were unusual. This is no surprise, nor is it a problem. While preparing for the interview, I did not saturate my notes with the cut-and-paste answers you might find in a “How to get through an interview for dummies” book. I wanted to stay loose and expect the unexpected. However, after a while I can’t help but notice an inner dialogue threatening to shake my focus. Will not getting this job mean I failed? What about the friends who know how badly I want this? If I don’t get it, what will I say to my family and loved ones whom I so desperately want to make proud? I start to change strategy mid-interview and second-guess all my answers. I am thinking mid-question about what might be the answer they want to hear instead of being myself. It is a classic mistake, and I found my nerves sabotaging my original plan of attack. Those little cracks in the foundation can really shake your resolution if you let them, which I did. I shifted to auto-pilot and did not shine the way I had anticipated.

I am answering the question, “What sets you apart from the other applicants?” and I can’t even remember what I just said. Instead, I am watching their reactions, wondering what they are writing down in their folders. Do they see the real me behind this semi-formal shell? Can’t we just grab a couple beers and spend an hour at the corner pub where I can display my infectious charm and wit? I’m wondering how I would judge me if I were them. Did I misjudge what to wear? Am I coming across as desperate? Am I desperate? Are they putting big check marks and smiley faces next to my name or a big, fat X?

The interview ends and we exchange firm handshakes, gracious smiles and warm wishes for the upcoming New Year. I leave the conference room strong, hoping my facade did not give away any signs of the subconscious mutiny I had just endured.  As I gather my things and prepare to head back into the cold Chicago air, I pause to take stock of myself.  I want to run back there, tell them all the things that I forgot, re-answering the questions with the home run responses that have instantly popped in my head. Instead, I pass back through the double glass doors and down towards the ground floor, wondering how many others applicants will share the same anxiety and lament in this very elevator.

A week later I received an email letting me know they chose another candidate for the position. Bummer, but I was kind of expecting it. I thanked them for the opportunity and wished them well, with a postscript that I would love to be considered for future positions if and when they open up. In retrospect, it kind of felt like offering my number to the girl who had turned it down the night before. At this point I am back in Miami getting back into the swing of things with work and preparing for the night’s New Years Eve party. The year 2010 is just hours away from being behind me and, surprisingly, I feel great. As the ball drops I am at a house party at the Cloisters in coconut grove, standing on the roof of a condo and watching the fireworks shimmer over Biscayne Bay. All around me are people I love, people who love me for being the person always there to cheer them up with humor or a good story. I realize that the tragedy I thought I had endured was no more than a noble shot in the dark with a company that gave me a great interview experience and an optimistic perspective for the new year.

Two weeks after hearing about the company, I had secured an interview granted to only the top two percent of applicants. If I can get such a positive response from seeking out my own job prospects instead of wading though the same old job posts I find only semi-worthwhile, then perhaps sitting around and waiting for opportunity to find me was not the right approach. With a little refinement and leg work, I am sure 2011 will be the year I utilize this seek-and-employ attitude with other great companies.

The job hunt is a race not unlike those put on by Red Frog Events. You must challenge yourself, take some risks, put on your best warrior face and aim for the finish line. As the last of the fireworks explode across the water, I raise a glass to my fellow Miamians and drink to high hopes, broad perspectives and endurance on the battlefield.

You could win this Jockey No Panty Line Promise Luxe set (in your size, of course!)

Jockey has spent the past few weeks surprising 250 lucky ladies at 13 spas in six cities across the country as part of their Random Acts of Luxe campaign. Winners were given free spa and salon treatments, free beauty products, and Jockey Luxe gift bags.

Now, Jockey wants to give one of our Blast readers a Jockey No Panty Line Promise Luxe gift set! 

Mo Moorman, director of public relations at Jockey International, said that the idea for the campaign came from a survey conducted by Jockey earlier this year. The survey found that 57 percent of American women have been struggling financially to purchase new apparel items, and that 40 percent of American women admit that the economy has made it more difficult for them to get their favorite beauty treatments.

“With so many women cutting back on life’s little luxuries, the survey also showed us that most would like to be surprised with a pampering gift,” said Moorman. “At Jockey, we understand that every woman deserves to be pampered but can’t always afford to do so.”

How to enter

Become a registered Blast user (it’s free!) and leave a comment below about how the economy has affected your beauty routine.

Comments must be posted by Nov. 18. A winner will be chosen on Nov. 19.

Gaga is the most exciting thing to hit Dallas this summer (Dallas Morning News)

Arizona — a history of racial profiling (azcentral.com)

Texas exports may fix the economy (Dallas Morning News)

Undocumented ASU grads arrested (abc15.com)

Colorado man wants to become president of Nigeria (Denverpost.com)

Selling lemonade to cure cancer (Myfoxphoenix.com)

Dear EarthTalk: I always thought eating fish was healthy, but now I’m concerned about mercury in tuna and other fish. Are there any fish that are still safe to eat? – Brit Brundage, Fairfield, CT

The Environmental Defense Fund recommends minimizing consumption of albacore (white) tuna, a large fish that accumulates moderate amounts of mercury in its fatty tissue. But other kinds of (smaller) tuna, such as skipjack (usually canned as "light"), which accumulates a third the amount of mercury as albacore, are OK to eat in moderation, though consumption by those under age seven should be limited. (Media credit/Mark H. Anbinder, courtesy Flickr)

To further complicate the issue, some canned light tuna may contain yellowfin tuna, which has mercury levels similar to those of albacore; these products are sometimes but not always labeled as "gourmet" or "tonno"—and their consumption should be limited, even by adults.

Mercury, a known "neurotoxin" (a poison that affects the nervous system), is particularly insidious because it is widespread in our oceans, primarily due to emissions from coal-burning power plants. These smokestacks deposit mercury into waterways, which carry it to the ocean where bacteria convert it into methylmercury. Fish then ingest it with their food and from water passing over their gills.

Generally speaking, bigger, older and large predatory fish (such as sharks, swordfish, tilefish, king mackerel and some tuna) near the top of marine food chains are more likely to have high levels of mercury than fish lower in the marine food chain. People exposed to high levels or frequent doses of mercury can suffer nervous system disorders, impaired mental development and other health problems.

An April 2003 study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that 89 percent of study subjects, chosen because they ate a significant amount of fish, had blood mercury levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) safety threshold of five micrograms per liter. Even though there are health benefits to eating fish (including the intake of healthy omega-3 fatty acids), the EPA advises that young children, pregnant women, nursing mothers and women of childbearing age limit their intake of high-mercury fish to one serving per week at most, while limiting their overall intake of any fish or shellfish to no more than two to three servings, or 12 ounces total, per week.

Mercury isn’t the only harsh pollutant lurking in the ocean. Industrial chemicals like PCBs and pesticides like DDT are awash in marine food chains around the world. According to EDF, it can take five years or more for women of childbearing age to rid their bodies of PCBs, and 12-18 months to appreciably reduce their mercury levels. EDF adds that moms who eat toxic fish before becoming pregnant may have children who are slower to develop and learn because fetuses are exposed to stored toxins through the placenta.

To learn more, visit the EPA’s Fish Advisories website. It includes links to individual state advisories, which have details on what fish should or shouldn’t be eaten from nearby lakes or coastal areas. Catfish, Pollock, salmon, shrimp and canned light tuna are currently on the EPA’s safe list, as they feed toward the bottom of the food chain and thus have less opportunity to accumulate mercury and other contaminants.

CONTACTS: EDF, www.edf.org; EPA Fish Advisories, www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish.

Dear EarthTalk: What does it mean when one uses the phrase, "building a green economy?" I’ve heard it repeated a few times lately and would like to have a better understanding of the concept. – Rosie Chang, Islip, NY

The phrase "building a green economy" means different things to different people, but in general it refers to encouraging economic development that prioritizes sustainability—that is, working with nature and not against it in the quest to meet peoples’ needs and wants—instead of disregarding environmental concerns in the process of growing the economy. The primary way governments around the world are trying to "green" their own economies today is by increasing investment in—and, by extension, creating jobs in—industries on the cutting edge of non-polluting renewable forms of energy, such as solar and wind power.

President Obama has repeatedly invoked his vision of a green economy as a tool for helping the U.S. lift itself out of recession and position itself as an economic powerhouse in a carbon-constrained future. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the $787.2 billion stimulus package that Congress signed into law in 2009, was chock full of provisions to boost renewable energy, energy efficiency and environmental restoration initiatives. Examples include $4.5 billion to convert government buildings into high-performance green buildings, $8.4 billion for investments in public transportation, and tens of billions of dollars more for research into new technologies to amplify existing efforts. ARRA also earmark $11 billion for the implementation of the "smart grid," a new approach to power distribution that will bring more clean energy sources into the mix and promote energy efficiency.

Infusing such huge amounts of cash into sustainability-oriented projects is one way the Obama administration hopes to "green" the U.S. economy while simultaneously pulling the country out of recession. "To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Obama told Congress a few months ago.

Of course, Americans aren’t the only ones bent on building a green economy. During the 1980s and 1990s, while the American government was largely asleep at the wheel on environmental issues, countries such as Denmark, Germany, Spain and Japan were already busy investing in wind and solar research and implementation. And while these nations’ ongoing efforts are nothing to sneeze at, economists point out that what is most needed is action on the part of the world’s fastest growing economies—China and India.

A recent report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that China—which surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest generator of greenhouse gases three years ago—has great potential for building a green economy over the coming decades. According to McKinsey, by 2030 China could reduce its oil and coal imports by up to 40 percent and its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by investing upwards of 1.5 trillion yuan ($220 billion in U.S. dollars) per year in both existing and new green technologies. China has begun to see the light with regard to reducing emissions, increasing energy efficiency and embracing renewable alternative energy, but it has yet to make significant financial commitments, which will be key to both warding off catastrophic climate change and building a truly global green economy.

CONTACTS: ARRA, www.recovery.gov; McKinsey & Company, www.McKinsey.com.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E — The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

The Great Recession has had many repercussions, but the biggest may have been unemployment. Luckily, Waltham-based ZoomInfo’s FreshContacts is the next big tool to help those looking for a job the best chance to not only find a job, but stick there.

The deficiency of many employment tools like Monster is that only about 20 percent of jobs are found through online postings. The other 80 percent of jobs are found through networking, personal introductions, and referrals. FreshContacts is the answer to this fundamental problem for the 15 million jobseekers who have currently been unemployed for over a year. The tool is not one for posting but rather a substitute for knowing the right people and getting lucky, allowing more qualified job candidates to be placed in open jobs.

FreshContacts is in essence the job market’s first effective social networking tool, especially for unemployed executives. A plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, it connects users with 45 million executives for 5 million companies, with in-depth reports on each company so potential employees can connect with the correct executive for the job, and bypass the HR gatekeepers for a company. Users can also target specific companies in their area of expertise, track past colleagues that have recently been hired (the referral process in a more automated, though solicitous form), and prepare for interviews, because the job hunt isn’t over when until you’ve aced the interview.

FreshContacts takes the quality of the information they present to both job hunters and those looking to hire, as well. The software immediately disregards any consumer email addresses like Yahoo and Gmail to ensure that any information in their database is pertinent to the job search. Though it sounds a little sketchy, anyone who contributes information about contacts remain anonymous, so you don’t have to worry about getting caught for writing about how your boss favors certain qualities in a candidate more than others. Anyone not willing to be included in FreshContact’s database can opt-out at any time, thanks to our handy CAN-Spam laws.

ZoomInfo uses web crawl technology to gather publicly available information on businesses so you don’t have to, and does so at a prolific rate, adding about 20,000 company profiles a month.

ZoomInfo says that FreshContacts is used by sales and marketing professionals to find leads. This may be a huge problem in the future, as it may cause businesses to opt-out of the service if it means being constantly contacted by salesmen who use FreshContacts to aggregate information about possible leads. Use of FreshContacts in this way could be a major problem in the future, and something to watch for new users.

However, FreshContacts will certainly make the job market a more efficient place to be, as it compiles information in a way that could drastically cut down on the research phase of the job hunt and place executive-level professionals in better jobs, faster.

The 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy was a massive letdown. Personally, I didn’t expect much more. The G8 operates under the guise of real leadership, when really the summit has become nothing more than a glorified vacation for the world’s most powerful leaders. But as we’ve seen in the past and present, power does not equal intelligence.

Empty threats were issued toward political powers in Iran. The very foundation of democracy is threatened in the divided country, but the world’s “saviors” offered nothing.

The strong foundation of the worldwide economic recession shook not one bit; no economic plans were laid out. In the worst economic crisis in about 80 years, the richest offered no solutions.

In perhaps the largest disappointment of the summit the leaders made such a wavering, uncommitted “commitment” to climate change, simply declaring that the eight superpowers had agreed to “substantially reducing global emissions by 2050.” Weak. Those who have been lambasted and forced to be environmentally-friendly were flipped off by their own leaders.

The plan drafted in L’Aquila, according to the LA Times, specifies no real interim targets either, just that global emissions reduction progress will be reviewed every so often.

Sadly enough, the recession will hinder climate control progress as well as the ability of developing countries to adapt to changes that have already occurred. Some groups predict that as much as $150 billion is needed every year to aid regions in developing countries that have already been affected by climate change. No one has that money, and may not any time soon since no solid economic revisions were drafted.

Other countries have demanded the G8 dramatically reduce their emissions by as much as 40 per cent. From these eight leaders however, there was no urgency. No commitment. No sense.

In 2010, the leaders meet in Muskoka, Ontario. By then, even more criticism will be launched their way. Hopefully it knocks some sense into them.

President Obama ordered treasury secretary Timothy Geithner Monday to take all legal action needed to stop the payment of nearly $165 million in bonuses handed out by AIG to its executives, according to IHT.

AIG, a company that is currently staying afloat only because of federal bailouts, announced the bonuses on Sunday. President Obama, CNN reports, called the action an “outrage” because AIG “is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed.”

Over the past six months, AIG has received nearly $173 billion in government bailout money, which is provided by taxpayers. Obama spared AIG’s new CEO Edward Liddy of criticism, saying the contracts that led to these bonuses were drafted last year. Nevertheless, they should have been shredded.

Obama was visibly dismayed and angry at the press conference. “All across the country, there are people who are working hard and meeting their responsibilities every single day, without the benefit of government bailouts or multimillion-dollar bonuses. You’ve got a bunch of small-business people here who are struggling just to keep their credit line open,” he said, referencing the tough times faced by many working Americans.

Obama’s words have garnered support from other democrats as well. Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd noted in a written statement that other companies receiving federal bailouts have been ordered to forgo bonuses, and there is no reason that AIG should view themselves above this rule.

Obama also told reporters that he would work with Congress to change laws in an effort to ensure this would never occur again.

Currently, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is trying to work with Liddy to find out who was set to receive these bonuses and if any of them have been paid. Cuomo ordered Liddy to surrender a list of potential bonus receivers by 4 p.m. Monday, saying that if he failed to receive them he would seize them by order of subpoenas.

“Covering up the details of these payments breeds further cynicism and distrust in our already shaken financial system,” said Cuomo, CNN reports.

If one was to judge by the calendar alone, the 21st century started eight years ago this week. Although, when people refer to the 21^st century in conversation, often they aren’t talking about the specific time period between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2099, but the attitude, philosophy, and technological savvy that is becoming a requirement in the modern world. Unfortunately for us, while individuals in the United States might be existing in the 21^st century, our government’s attitudes and actions over the past eight years have been stuck squarely in the 20^th.

When history is written, George W. Bush’s worst critics will accuse him of everything from willful negligence in handling 2008′s economic crisis to war crimes in the context of the catastrophic mistake that is the war in Iraq. In the end, they very well may be correct, but it is possible that all of his mistakes were not of the completely sinister nature like they’re sometimes characterized, but rather can be traced back to overall tragedy that he was simply a president stuck in the wrong century. Bush’s core beliefs “" that the free market could police itself, that oil is always our answer, and that we can bomb and kill others into submission without chain reactions of consequences “" were dying an eventual death around the time of Y2K, but Bush made sure to keep them on life support much longer than they ever should have survived.

There is no bigger example of The Past sucking the blood out of The Future than GM, Ford, and Chrysler begging for money from the U.S. Government yet again. This past month, we saw the Big Three auto companies fly in their private jets to Washington to request billions of dollars because for the past 25 years they have steadfastly refused to look at the calendar. They defiantly rejected efforts to increase their fuel efficiency standards as every country”"even China”"passed us in their mandatory requirements. Because executives lobbyied Congressmen to vote against everyone’s interests but theirs, their companies made short term profits that both crippled them and damaged the country. After all, only a 7.6 mile per gallon increase in our collective car efficiency would be enough to completely free ourselves from Middle East oil, while saving the individual American consumer critical pocket money. Instead, these companies marketed trucks that could pull airplanes down a runway and consumed oil at a breakneck pace. But why would they care about those details? They could just shove SUVs down Americans’ throats by luring them through tax breaks into a choice so obviously against their interests.

This is just the most blatant example of our chronic sickness of holding onto the past. It illustrates that the worst flaw of George Bush, and in turn of the corporations he represents, may be that he simply did not realize what century we lived in. The banking crisis, car company meltdown, and failed fight against Islamist extremism can be boiled down to using 20^th century policies in a 21^st century world.

———

As tears were streaming down the faces of millions of Americans on the night of November 4, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama said, in words that would ring loudly far after the last piece of confetti had fallen, “The time for change has come.” It was a beautiful sight for more reasons than one. Many were crying because the sight of a black man winning the American presidency was possibly the most powerful symbol of American exceptionalism anyone had ever seen. But those words were much more than a symbol of tolerance and the triumph of ability. They were a prologue to the tangible changes that will dramatically alter this country in the coming months”"much more change than has ever happened in our lifetime.

Obama has spent his transition months putting together what has been almost universally lauded as a cabinet filled with experience, pragmatism, and overall excellence. It is a cabinet based solely on achievement, without regard for partisanship or political and financial connections.

While all of Obama’s cabinet picks have been praised for their qualifications and temperance, none exemplifies the stark realities of the new way of doing things better than Obama’s pick for Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu. Chu is a Nobel Prize winning physicist who is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a global warming research center whose primary goal is “to develop methods to “store” solar energy in the form of renewable transportation fuel.” There is a reason Al Gore is planning a Green Inaugural. It’s because The Age of Oil is coming to a close and Obama plans to kick it out the door.<!–nextpage–>

Bush’s pick for Energy Secretary, on the other hand, was Spencer Abraham, a Michigan senator most famous for taking more campaign donations from those same dinosaurs in the American Auto Industry than any other senator, and led the fight against corporate average fuel efficiency standards in automobiles. Change indeed.

But this is not just a Liberal president replacing Conservatives with more of the same from the other side. It’s a complete change in a philosophy that has run our government since its inception. Obama, when asked what he would do to help his “friends” in Springfield, Illinois to stem their State’s budget shortfalls,‚  challenged the very nature of the question.

“Part of the charge [of the budget team] is to make sure that we are proceeding on projects and investments based on national priorities and not based on politics,” he said. “Now you mentioned, sort of, ‘my friends.’ I want to be clear friendship doesn’t come into this. That’s part of the old way of doing business.

“The new way of doing business is, let’s figure out what projects, what investments are going to give the American economy the most bang for the buck. How can we protect taxpayer dollars so this money is not wasted; restore a sense of confidence among taxpayers that when we spend their money, it’s on things that are actually gonna improve their quality of life; create the jobs that are so desperately needed; help to spur on economic growth and business creation in the private sector? That’s all part of the new way of doing business.”

Being friends with the President is no longer a means to an end in any sense. Just ask John Kerry, one of Obama’s biggest and earliest supporters. He was passed over for Secretary of State in favor of Hillary Clinton, a person many accused of secretly rooting for Obama’s political destruction only months ago. While Kerry was certainly qualified, Obama’s decision underscored the notion that the age of cronyism is over. No more “Heckuva Job” Brownies or “I do not recall” Alberto Gonzaleses.

This Cult of Competence has been put in place to help Obama alter our policies as smoothly as possible, and the cornerstone to this change will come in the form of a massive stimulus package that Obama plans to sign perhaps as early as Inauguration Day, every single element of which is designed take take us out of the antiquated 20^th Century once and for all.

For a month now, Obama’s economic team has been crafting this new package, not aimed at Wall Street Banks or the crumbling car companies, but for Middle Class Americans. And it starts with the Internet. The money will be spent on laying broadband across the country, with the goal of giving every American free Internet access, a move that’s been on the FCC’s desk for years but which the Bush Administration has stubbornly tabled. As Obama has said, “we are the nation that invented the Internet, yet we are 15^th in the world in broadband adoption. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online.”

But that is just the start of what may come to be known as America 2.0. Every goal of the stimulus bill is designed to put Americans to work immediately, but even more importantly, set us up for the future. A nationwide high-tech power grid that will allow states to share solar and wind power will accelerate our ability to get off our dependence on foreign oil. Along with that universal access to the Web, a transfer of all hospital records to an electronic broadband system will eventually save the country billions of savings in administrative costs annually. Moreover, massive construction efforts to modernize public schools will encourage young Americans to learn and save massive amounts of money by making the buildings more energy efficient with new lighting and insulation.

As Obama often said during the campaign, the money that we spent on the Iraq War could have been used to rebuild every road, bridge, and school in our country “" an intriguing thought that some might say is farfetched. Not anymore. This stimulus package could reach as high as $800 billion, actually approaching the number we have fiddled away in Iraq.

With all of this new technology helping the lives of people in the United States, Obama’s foreign policy will be aimed at change for everyone that lives outside of the country. He is in the midst of planning a major foreign policy speech to be given in an Islamic country in his first 100 days, through which he hopes to win the hearts and minds of everyone looking for an end to the seemingly never ending violence in the Middle East and beyond. This has never taken on greater importance than now as Israel’s War against Hamas threatens to put the region and the world on an even greater imbalance. The 20th Century was filled with religious wars and intolerance on a global scale, and as the leader of the Free World, the weight of moving not only our country, but the world in a new direction has fallen squarely on Obama’s shoulders

Our new president will face tough questions about how to bring the Iraq War to an end and how to fix a war in Afghanistan that now includes Pakistan, India, and even complications with Iran”"a daunting challenge. But if we learned anything from Barack Obama on that historic November night, while the path to the future may be tough, there is only one answer to the question as to whether this country and the world can succeed. Yes We Can.

(ARA) — The days of frivolous spending habits have passed. We’ve managed to admit we’re in a recession, but how exactly do we shop — both for pleasure and for necessities — during these hard economic times?

The ways to save money these days are countless and living on a tight budget is not as difficult as it seems. Here are some tips to stay budget-friendly and become a recession-style shopper:

Make a List

The luxury of roaming around a department store or strolling through a mall is wonderful, but that can only lead to unnecessary purchases. Before you set out on your shopping trip, decide what exactly it is you want or need. No matter how large or small the item, making a list will keep your shopping fixed and focused.

Cut back on driving

Once you’ve established what you need to buy, plan a driving route for your shopping outing. Establish where you’re going, in what order and do a little research to find out the quickest way to get there. Gas prices may be on the decline for now, but who knows what will happen in the future. Be strategic with your transportation and better yet, ask a friend to carpool.

Purchase online

Everything found in brick and mortar stores can be bought online, often for less.

Never shop hungry

When it comes to grocery shopping, shopping on an empty stomach can empty your wallet pretty fast. Make sure to have a snack before heading out. Roaming up and down food aisles will lead to impulse grocery spends. Not only will having a snack make your tummy a little more full, you’re sure to be saving a few calories as well by skipping the pint of ice cream. It’s always a good idea to keep a box of granola bars (or an alternative healthy snack) in the car for emergency situations.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

North Pole “" On an early weekday morning in the Arctic, Santa Claus sits at the head of a large conference table, surrounded by perhaps a dozen of his associates.

Claus, 145, is holding his annual Christmas preparation meeting, which takes place every Dec. 1.

Among those flanking Claus are his director of transportation, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as well as several veteran elves who head his manufacturing team. They look anxious as Claus begins the meeting.

The annual meeting is typically a festive “" if dizzying “" affair, as key Christmas officials plan for their busy season. It is, after all, almost Christmas: a multibillion-dollar, worldwide project that not only brings joy to millions of families, but may also be the most ambitious commercial enterprise in modern history.

But this year is different. Faced with the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, this year’s meeting is absent the yuletide giddiness that Christmas executives often exude as they enter the home stretch of the holiday season.

While the North Pole may be, from a geographical standpoint, the most isolated place to work in the entire world, Claus and his staff of more than 1,000 now find themselves in the thick of the global recession.

And, as is always the case when standing at the North Pole, all directions are pointing south.

“My friends, I cannot mince words. The global economic downturn has turned our financial structure on its head, and we must find a way to make ends meet” said Claus, whose bright red nose contrasted mightily with the look of abject fear in his eyes. “Nothing is off the table “" layoffs, cuts in services, government aid, increased fundraising “" we must act now to remain sustainable, or there may be no Christmas this year.”

“ËœPerfect storm’

Indeed, the finances are not pretty. While Claus maintains that he kept impeccable records of all his expenses, he said the current crisis constitutes a perfect storm of economic trouble.

In July, facing record-high oil prices, Claus feared that, if the cost of heating fuel rose any further, he would struggle to heat his headquarters, which are located in a region where winter temperatures range from 45 below zero to minus 15. So Claus locked in on a contract for heating oil at about $5 per gallon; since then, the price of crude oil has plummeted from its peak of $147 at a barrel to around $40 now, and heating oil is now selling for less than $3 a gallon.

“It is so frustrating” he said. “I thought it was going to keep going up. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

And that is just the start of the problems facing the Christmas industry this year. Claus’ elves, who live together in a large housing complex, foolishly bought into an adjustable-rate subprime mortgage in 2006, before the housing bubble had burst. Now, unable to make their monthly payments and still send the kids through Elf School, they are 23 days into a foreclosure process.

Further, Claus has been disproportionately affected by the rising costs of health care. Elves, which make up the bulk of Santa’s work force, are thought to be immortal, meaning their pensions and health-care benefits never stop. Further, they are also thought to be “gods of fertility” according to Germanic mythology, and reproduce more often than humans.

“My labor costs are through the roof. If I hired elves overseas, they could work for 8 cents an hour” Claus said, who noted that massive elf layoffs are possible if they are not willing to make concessions.

The Elves Union has publicly cautioned Santa to rule out layoffs.

“Elves are the lifeblood of Christmas, even if they may not get the recognition that Santa Claus gets” said one representative of the Elves Union. “Besides, maybe Santa ought to consider ways to cut his own health-care costs. I have heard of him eating thousands of cookies in a single night, and he has a body mass index of 34.9, which makes him morbidly obese.”

Too big to fail

“I don’t want to see anyone lose his or her job” Claus said, and layoffs will be used only as a last resort.

Claus has sent formal letters to President-elect Barack Obama; Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; and Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Finance Committee, asking for a government loan of $39 billion.

“AIG gets a bailout. Citigroup gets a bailout” said a disheveled-looking Claus as his sipped his third cup of eggnog. “I bring Christmas cheer to millions of people all over the globe and singlehandedly keep the retail sector afloat for months at a time. Where is my bailout?”

According to The Economist, American retailers make 25 percent of their yearly sales and 60 percent of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“Christmas is simply too big to fail” Claus said.

Frank, the Massachusetts congressman, said he’s aware of how important Christmas is to the national economy, and his committee will look at a Christmas bailout. But, he warned, any package would include far more intrusive regulations than Claus has been subject to in the past.

“We want coal and wood to be placed in each stocking, so we can help needy families who are struggling with heating their homes” Frank said. “And we will make sure that Claus is investing in green technology as well.”

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has also come out in favor of a Christmas bailout.

“Darn right Santa needs a bailout. He is crucial to U.S. economic stability and bringing good jobs” she said. “I should know; I can see the North Pole from my home in Alaska.”

Santa Claus and an Elf leave the Capitol Building after testifying before the House Finance Committee; Claus is asking for money from U.S. taxpayers to help fund Christmas this year

If Claus is unable to secure a bailout, he said he will have to make painful cuts.

He has already raised his standards for children to be put on his “nice” list, and as a result more than 27,000 children who were eligible for Christmas services in 2008 will be placed on the “naughty list.” That saved Claus more than $3 million, but he said it is still not nearly enough.

Christmas officials have suggested other controversial ideas, such as having Claus send e-cards to cut down on shipping and administrative costs, basing eligibility for services on income, and even selling some treasures from his headquarters.

“Did you know that I, St. Nick, am the “Ëœpatron saint of pawnbroking’?” Claus joked. “It is true. So maybe we will start liquidating some of our items. There must be a museum or two out there that would want a titanium sled with NORAD tracking capabilities.”

But above all else, Claus said, he is concerned about the children and how they may be affected this Christmas.

“I want children to know that, just because there may not be as many gifts under the tree this year, that does not mean it cannot be a great Christmas” Claus said. “It is just a tough year for a lot of parents, and for Santa. But we will get through it.”

Photo Credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images