www.bostonoccupier.comIssue No. 5 February 2012
FREE PRESS
By Jay Jubilee
A festive yet defiant crowd spilled overand off the steps of the Boston PublicLibrary Monday, as hundreds gatheredto protest the MBTA’s proposed plan tobalance its budget by cutting T servicesand raising fares. Expressing a diversity of personal concerns and experiences, rally attendees from all over Boston showedunity in their opposition to the MBTA plan, objecting to it as an attack on themost vulnerable, oppressed, impoverished,and otherwise marginalized members of the community.Chants echoed over the congestion of the evening commute: “Big Banks GetBailed Out, T-riders get sold out!” “Whatdo we do when banks attack? Stand up!Fight back!” The feel in the air was notsimply one of complaint, but of a will toresist. It was the largest protest to date inopposition to proposed MBTA plans.Following the rally, five hundredT-riders and concerned community members crowded inside for a publichearing. Seventy of them would take themicrophone to address the MBTA offi-cials. (Around one hundred people werelocked out, however, as even the spill-overroom was quickly full.) The diversity of Boston’s 99% was on display, with deaf and blind individuals, seriously disabledpersons, elderly, students, people in work clothes, and many people of color speakingout. High school youth played an espe-cially impressive role.
The Plan vs. the People
Both proposed MBTA plans call for acombination of rate hikes and service cuts.“Scenario 1” calls for 35-40% fare increasesfor all riders, 75-175% increases for seniorsand student passes, and the elimination of 10% of all bus routes. “Scenario 2” callsfor general fare increases of roughly 20%,an 85% increase for seniors, and the elimi-nation of 58% of all bus routes.Both plans also call for the eliminationof Commuter rail services on weekendsand after 10 pm on weekdays, as well asthe elimination of ferry service. Eachplan further calls for the elimination of the Mattapan-Ashmont trolley and the Ebranch of the Green Line on weekends.The plans are predicted to eliminatebetween 200 and 500 T worker jobs, costthe average T-rider hundreds of dollars peryear, and increase air pollution and auto-mobile traffic across the city.The emotions of T riders in the roomcould barely be restrained. Attendeesheckled Mark Boyle, assistant generalmanager of the MBTA, as he laid outthe MBTA’s rationale. Following hispresentation, as if to quell a storm, MayorThomas Menino took the podium, himself testifying against the cuts. Describing theMBTA plan as a “band-aid” on a deeperillness, Menino called for the State to findnew sources of revenue to sustain T services.Many in the crowd applauded. A more militant spirit was present,however, as audience members interruptedMenino with calls of “Tax the Rich!” and“Tax the Billionaires!” Menino avoided thequestion of how to raise the needed funds,Telling ‘protesters’ to “take it outside,”Menino avoided the question of how toraise needed funds saying several times that“we [rich and poor] are all in this together.”Many in the room did not feel like the richand poor were “in it together,” but spoke of the cuts frankly as an attack on poor peopleby the rich. Some of the loudest applausecame for those who demanded that ratherthan “making the poor pay more,” the
National:
Anti-War March highlightsconcerns over U.S.-IranTensions - Page 5
Local/Regional:
The Greenway Conservancy and the shrinking of public space - Page 3
Opinion:
Privatizing Public Prisonsin the USA - Page 6
“Education, Not aCorporation”
By D.J. Buschini“Education, Not a Corporation”Students at the University of Massachusetts Boston began theirspring semester with peaceful direct action on Monday, January 23,occupying a portion of their school’s Campus Center. Four tents, aninfo table, pro-democracy signs, and a chessboard welcome all thoseen route to the building’s food court. Afforded this prominent free-speech zone at the city’s only publicfour-year university, Occupy UMass Boston (#OUMB) aims toempower the 99% as budget cuts and ever-rising fees jeopardize fairaccess to education.“Since 2006,” an official statement from the group reads, “in-statetuition and fees have increased 38%, and the administration isproposing continued increases by a rate of 8% annually.” This isattributed to “both state and federal government policies defundingpublic higher education” and “campus administration actions toconvert UMass Boston into a privatized university.”The group expressed solidarity with the greater Occupy Movementand the student movement, citing “Occupy UC Davis, Occupy Berkeley, and the student revolt in Chile and those at hundreds of other universities” as inspiration for their own occupation.Students object to the Board of Trustees’ status as “an unelectedbody appointed by the Governor of Massachusetts to manage theentire UMass system,” in which each campus––Amherst, Lowell,Dartmouth, Boston, Worcester––“has one elected student represen-tative, and of those five, only two have any voting power.” Havingschool policy governed by “corporate executives and politicians” is notcharacteristic of a social democracy, students reason.True to tent-city form, signs aim to unite passersby to the cause:“What do you want to see at UMass?” asks one, leaving space forreaders to write in their wishes. “We want education not a corpo-ration,” asserts another. “Join us!” urges a third. “Total student debt:$950 billion,” informs a fourth. “Fire the board of trustees,” demandsa fifth.
“Infinitely Refreshing”
Administrators have tolerated the group’s exercise of First Amendment rights, despite having issued a letter on January 26requesting compliance with policies prohibiting overnight stay inbuildings on campus. A contingent of travelers from Occupy WallStreet came by to support OUMB when it appeared as though campuspolice might move to evict them. The tents remained. Administratorsmet with OUMB representatives the following Tuesday and courte-ously asked that the area be kept tidy, safe, and free of minors andnon-students.University workers and faculty have broadly supported the activists.The UMass Boston Professional Staff Union endorsed the occupationon January 25, while professors have both visited the site and invitedOUMB representatives to speak to their classes.Political Science professor Dr. Thomas Ferguson voiced support forhis students. Ferguson has researched, written, and taught about theinfluence of money on politics for decades. His “investment theory of party competition” outlines how, across American history, affluentinvestors have merged together within political parties to, as he writes,“adjust the public to the parties’ views rather than vice versa.”
Boston T-ridersRally to Rejectthe MBTA’s“Band-Aid” Plan
Continued on Page 3
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“Article” by Kip Lyall -Page 6
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Students Occupy
Occupy Boston and theReturn of the Christian Left
By Dan Schneider
There was a time when the backdrop for Occupy Boston’s General Assemblies was a mosaic of movement-related imagery, spread acrossthe wall of a Big Dig ventilation building. In the months since thegroup’s eviction from Dewey Square, you’d be more likely to see agolden cross. Absent of a physical encampment, occupiers have turned to Boston’schurches for space to hold their numerous assemblies, gatherings andcommunity events. Those that the group frequents most include Arlington Street Church, Emmanuel Church, Community Church of Boston, and St. Paul’s Church. All four are within a mile of each otherin downtown Boston, and are either Unitarian Universalist (ArlingtonStreet, Community Church) or Episcopalian (Emmanuel, St. Paul’s). When Occupy Boston was evicted from Dewey Square in early December, staff of St. Paul’s Cathedral implored the dean, the Very Reverend Jep Strait, to let the group meet in the Church. “There wasa suggestion of letting them hold General Assemblies in the church…I was a little nervous, because I wondered if they’d occupy the churchand never leave,” Rev. Strait explained with a laugh. Ultimately, hesays Occupy Boston has been incredibly respectful of the church andthat he’s come to “admire their process for including everyone’s voice.”“I hope that by giving them space, we help to in some small way bear witness to whatever they want to do,” Strait said. Since December, St.Paul’s Cathedral has been host to a number of ‘community gatherings’,discussion nights hosted each weeks by one of Occupy Boston’s many working groups.Neighborhood-based Occupy groups have also moved many of their planning meetings and events to church basements and meetingspaces. Occupy Somerville has been meeting at the 1st Church of Somerville UCC and Occupy Jamaica Plain has found refuge at HopeCentral Church. In some cases, space has been provided with the sameindifference as open mic nights; but a growing number of pastors,congregations (and congregants) are moving from being mere hosts tobeing active participants. At a protest of Bank of America organized by Occupy Somerville, the Associate Pastor at 1st Church of Somerville, Jeff Mansfield, was one of five people who stepped forward to close hispersonal account at the bank.
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UMass Boston Campus Center
A sign posted at Occupy UMass-Boston (#OUMB),which began its occupation o the school’s campuscenter on January 23 (Photo: Chase Carter)
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February 2012
LOCAL / REGIONAL
bostonoccupier.com | The Boston Occupier - Free Press
OBTV Hits theAirwaves
The studio goes dark as the countdownhits zero and the opening theme of RomanRiot plays to a mosaic of image of Occupy protests. Once the screen flashes “FightBack,” the camera shifts to the host LindaCarmichael. “Welcome to Occupy BostonLive.”Occupy Boston has recently startedproducing live shows. OBTV [Occupy Boston TV] started as a couple of community meetings in Dewey Square and SouthStation on December 4th. The OBTV groupcoalesced just after the eviction of Occupy Boston from Dewey Square and was formally announced at Occupy Boston’s General Assembly on the day after the raid.By early January 2012, Occupy Boston Livehad produced at least 5 shows. The crew hasshot long-form interviews with Green Party member Grace Ross, the Housing Crisis Working Group and the Street WorkingGroup, among others.Some members of OBTV produce at leasttwo live shows a month, which tend to runfrom 15 up to 40 minutes, and are conductedin a talk show format. OBTV’s style is notsimilar tothat of mainstream media outlets such asCNN or Fox News, which tend to reduceinformation into easily digested sound-bites.Guests are interviewed by one of the crew members, who also serves as a host.OBTV’s latest show was produced on January 14, which was a live teach-in thatdealt with the ramifications of the CitizensUnited Supreme Court case. The guests,State Representative Cory Atkins and Suffolk Law Professor Donna Palermino laid out thehistory of the Citizens United case as wellas the steps that ordinary people can take tobegin overturning the ruling.Some membersof OBTV, such as Jess Schumann, went toschool for television and video production while others have experience as writers andactors. However, anyone is welcome to joinregardless of having no previous televisionexperience or training. Proper trainingin equipment operation can be providedby current members of OBTV. As Nick Volkron, a volunteer, says “we need bodieshere.”OBTV produces their shows at Brookline Access TV which allows for community andnon-profit groups to use their equipmentfor free. Schumann says that “Access TV is aserious resource. Anyone can put a show ontheir local channel. Video classes are usually very affordable, and once you are certified,you can borrow pro video gear to shoot andedit your story. Access stations don’t censormaterial, which means that all politicalspeech is welcomed.”Members of OBTV are very insistent ongetting information out in as many ways aspossible. The TV crew has hopes of bringOBTV to all towns in MA. All of OBTV’sshows air first on Livestream, then areuploaded to Occupy Boston Youtube page.TV production is typically of a top-downnature with a producer or showrunner givingorders. However, like the rest of the Occupy Movement, OBTV is working to overcomethe vertical and authoritarian structuresin society; in this case, by attempting toproduce television horizontally. This processis aided by the fact that members decide what their roles are before production andone person could potentially fill several roles.During January 14th’s shoot, Schumann waspulling duty working the camera and movingequipment back to the studio to help coor-dinate production. Volunteer Julian Finesays, “working on set is a fluid thing. Peoplemove around.”For the future, OBTV sees themselves as anevolving project, like the Occupy movementat large. Richard says that “after Occupy Boston camp at Dewey ended, the ideals arestill there. We need to translate them to anew phase.”For those wanting to become involved,Occupy Boston TV can be contacted viaemail at tv@occupyboston.org. For pastprogramming, all shows are archived under‘Occupy Boston’ at http://www.pegmedia.org, where they can be downloaded for airingon local cable access stations.
From Occupy to WorkersControl: ProfessorsElaine Bernard andImmanuel Ness
By Doug Greene
On Friday, January 20, Professors Elaine Bernard andImmanuel Ness spoke at Encuentro Cinco, a community organizing space in Chinatown, as part of the Howard ZinnMemorial Lecture Series. The series is coordinated by FreeSchool University – a working group of Occupy Boston –and has featured professors from universities across the EastCoast in the last four months, including Noam Chomsky andBruno Bosteels among many others. Bernard and Ness cameto discuss the possibility of the Occupy Movement movingfrom encampments to workers taking power.Immanuel Ness, a political science teacher at BrooklynCollege, is a longtime labor organizer and activist. Heco-edited the book Ours to Master and to Own: WorkersCouncils from the Commune to the Present with Dario Azzellini, which covers 22 instances of workers’ factory occu-pations and councils since the Paris Commune of 1871.Elaine Bernard is the executive director of the Laborand Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Bernardcontributed to Ours to Master and to Own with a chapterthat details her experience and research as a part of the largely women’s British Columbia’s Telephone Workers’ Occupationof 1981.Ness discussed workplace activism in the United States andhow “occupying workplaces and enterprises is a much largertask than occupying a public place,” referring to the ideaof a worker council where workers are able to manage andproduce democratically at the point of production, withoutbosses. Ness explained that the aspiration for workers councilsin the United States has its roots in a long tradition of work-place autonomy from the nineteenth century “where workersdemanded certain respect and were producers on their own.” Workers were able to have such power because their unions were able to dictate wages to bosses. However, workers losttheir autonomy with the rise of mass production industries by the early 1920s that cheapened their labor, simplified work,and allowed for easier control by capital.In response, unions such as the Congress of IndustrialOrganizations sought to organize everyone in a factory inorder to build working class power. The mass strikes of the1930s were an example of what workers’ direct action couldaccomplish, and Ness explained howthe Flint Sitdown Strikeof 1937 for union recognition by the automobile industry showed the power of workers who sit down and take over afactory.Bernard discussed the Telephone Workers’ Occupationseizure of phone exchanges which arose as part of a longstruggle between the company and workers over automationand the contracting out of work which weakened the power of the union. As the workers fought to sustain their job security,they questioned the right of the company to determine thechoices of equipment and the nature of work.She discussed how the telephone workers were able to get onthe public’s side. The workers wanted to provide good phoneservice to the wider community and felt that “automation was removing the human factor.” The union talked withthe public and took their side by acting as a whistle-blower..For example, when the company planned to increase phonefees, the union urged for no rate increase while the company provided poor service.Bernard contrasted the workers before the occupation, who were subdivided into different job categories based on gender.Once the occupation began, the workers went around to theexchanges and learned what their coworkers did. The workersran the exchanges cooperatively with better service and lessstress. Bernard said that “workers began to see themselves as whole people, who were thinking very differently about them-selves, their communities and their rights.”Bernard finished her talk by saying that worker occupationsand the Occupy Movement show “things can happen very quickly and we can dream the impossible.”During the discussion period, Ness discussed the strengthsand weaknesses of worker cooperatives. Although cooperativesshow a different way to organize production, Ness warned“cooperatives don’t challenge capitalist logic since they are working within the logic of profit.”Many in the audience stressed the value of direct action andself-organization rather than waiting for a union to come andhelp them. Some of those in the audience advocated movingtowards workplace takeovers as the next stage of the Occupy movement.government should get the needed money from the rich, thebillionaires, the banks, the “1%.” While only a few speakers at the microphone identifiedthemselves as members of Occupy, the language of themovement was much in evidence, with many peopleexpressing their grievances through the lens of the “99%”and the “1%.” The last speaker of the night gave a rousingspeech in Chinese (via interpreter), demanding that the wealthy “1%” be made to pay, and vowing to fight againstthe MBTA plan. As occupier and rally attendee Dean Samuels put it, “Theowners, the 1%, they need workers to go to work so they can make their profits. Why shouldn’t they have to pay thetransport costs?” A 1% wealth tax on the richest 1% wouldyield funds sufficient not only to eliminate the current Tcrisis, but to completely fund free public transportation,according to recent accounting estimates.Several speakers argued that public transit should beexpanded, not cut back. Others pointed out the hypocrisy of a government that spends trillions on wars and bank bailoutsbut then pleads poverty when it comes to funding publictransportation.High school students were out in force. Several called intoquestion the legitimacy of the MBTA and the Legislature, which they characterized as not being “of the people and by the people.” Two youth speakers asked the MBTA officialsto prove they actually rode the T by showing their Charliecards to the crowd. Other youth speakers, donning masks,openly mocked Governor Deval Patrick for “ducking” theissue at the State Level, staging public “apologies” for hisnegligence. While the official MBTA narrative tends to focus narrowly on the immediate $160 million budget shortfall, T ridersshowed that they are growing wise to the historical and struc-tural causes of the current crisis.
The Making of a Crisis
The origins of this crisis can be traced to the passage of the 2000 Enabling Act (also known as “Forward Funding”).This state law limited financial support for the MBTA to20% of state sales tax, while simultaneously dumping $3.8billion in state debt, much of which stemmed from the BigDig, onto the MBTA. This Big Dig debt itself stemmed inturn from the cost overruns of corporate contractor Bechtel,as well as the failure of the Federal government to follow through with billions of dollars in promised transportationfunding. With the sales tax failing to meet the T’s needs, the MBTA was pulled into borrowing, making complex financial deals with private banks and other investors. The end result of these transactions has been a ballooning of the MBTA’s debtto the point that nearly 25% of the T’s overall operatingbudget goes just to servicing the interest on the debt, at theexpense of much needed service improvements, albeit to theprofit of the T’s private creditors. As Matt McGlaughlin of Occupy Somerville put it, ridingthe rails to Copley with other occupiers, “Every time you usethe bus or train, that money goes towards paying interestto banks like JP Morgan, banks that received billions of taxpayer dollars in bailouts.” Some have called for cancelingthis debt altogether, arguing that private profits should becut before needed public services.Others argue that the State Legislature remains respon-sible for keeping the T in its current dire straits. T-Riderrallies have been called for Feb. 25 at the MassachusettsState House. There is another major “Wisconsin Style”State House T action being planned for April 4th when theMBTA Board plans to issue its decision.
For more information visit “Occupy the T” or “Occupy the MBTA” on Facebook. A schedule of the remaining MBTA public meetings can be found at www.mbta.com.
Continued: Boston T-riders Rally to Rejectthe MBTA’s “Band-Aid” PlanAbout the Boston Occupier
The Boston Occupier is an independentsource of news on Occupy Boston and theOccupy movement. We report on the day-to-day happenings from Occupy Boston, as well as local and national news pertainingto issues raised by the movement. Wealso publish opinions and other pieces inthe service of fostering an articulate, opendiscourse on a range of subjects.
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February 2012
bostonoccupier.com | The Boston Occupier - Free Press | LOCAL/REGIONAL
Public-PrivatePartners SellOut the PublicRealm
By Shirley Kressel
Thanks to the Occupy movement, we are snapping out of our “AmericanDream” and realizing that the system isthoroughly and mercilessly rigged. Bigcorporations and a financial elite havebought our politicians, Democrat andRepublican alike, collaborated to stealour economy, and broke our society by manipulating the laws of the land.The widespread crack-down onOccupiers reveals that the perpetratorstook care to include, among the laws they subverted, the free speech and assembly rights we’d need when we woke up totheir malfaesance.These civic keystones of democracy have been eroded by an ever-expandingcollection of “time, place and manner”regulations on park use includingrequirements for permits, fees andinsurance; prohibitions on sleeping;banning of microphones and tents, etc.Closing times - even in the iconic BostonCommon, America’s first public park - have confined democracy to “officehours.” These rules let politicians andtheir police squads throw out anyonethey deem “undesirable” and arrest “tres-passers” as outlaws.Cloaked in the language of “publicsafety,” these restrictions have mainly targeted the growing ranks of homelesspeople, whose ubiquitous presence is anindictment of our failed economy. Butthe rules are being invoked even morezealously against civic protesters, whothreaten the very foundations of thiscorrupt system. In 1984, the SupremeCourt, supporting restrictions in thename of “government interests,” ruledagainst activists who were highlightingthe problem of homelessness by tentingin a park; but dissenting JusticesThurgood Marshall and William J.Brennan denounced “a bureaucracy thatover the years has shown an implacablehostility toward citizens’ exercise of First Amendment rights.” They warnedthat “government agencies by theirvery nature are driven to over-regulatepublic forums to the detriment of First Amendment rights.”Everyone knows about governmentpark ordinances, but few people realizethat public officials are finding a way to evade their obligations for civicrights altogether, abdicating respon-sibility for parks as unaffordable frillsand shifting management and controlto private parties who promise to pay for the upkeep. These include abuttingproperty owners, conservancies, “friends-of” groups, corporate sponsors, and realestate developers who create open spacesin return for permitting favors, likeZuccotti Park, the original site of Occupy Wall Street in New York City. Theseprivate “benefactors,” who gain controlby using philanthropy as a Trojan horse,havedeliberately defined parks as socialand decorative rather than civic places.They usually seek to impose barriers,through regulations, by more subtledesign or psychological strategies, all toexclude people who don’t fit in with thischarming ornamental imagery.Such public-private partnershipsprovide the political and economicelite with a virtually unlimited array of control over the public realm, blurringthe boundaries between public versusprivate and obfuscating their specificroles in violating Constitutional rights.The Rose Kennedy Greenway, thesiteof the Occupy Boston’s encampmentfrom September 30 through December10 of last year, exemplifies the dangersof this trend. The Greenway is a state-owned park, but management has beenassigned to a private non-profit corpo-ration that calls itself the “Greenway Conservancy.” This group managedto wrangle a lease for the land and asubstantial amount of public funding(which it is squandering, as the BostonHerald has reported, on salaries for a self-serving bureacracy, a bevy of consultantsand media flacks). The Conservancy presents itself as the steward of the park,making rules and permitting events.Small wonder, then, that many people,including the Boston police department,think that the Greenway is Conservancy property.The Conservancy, in reality, is nothingmore than a private group of downtowncorporations interested in keeping theirfront yard—which happens to be a publicspace—full of pretty landscaping and“nice” people. The Conservancy operatesunder an explicit legal requirement totreat the Greenway “as a public park and a traditional open public forum without limiting free speech.” Yet theConservancy’s Executive Director, Nancy Brennan (ironically, the daughter of theabove-mentioned free-speech advocate Justice William J. Brennan) gave MayorThomas Menino and MassachusettsGovernor Deval Patrick (both notoriouscorporate allies) an excuse to unleashhundreds of city, state, and county policeofficers on Occupy Boston - supposedly to protect the landscaping.In New York, the Central Park Conservancy similarly uses its preciouslawn to give Mayor Michael Bloombergcover in denying protest permits.Zuccotti Park is one of New York’sprivately owned “public” spaces. Theowner, Brookfield Properties, simply changed the rules, without any publicsay, when they decided to drive outOccupy Wall Street protesters - and thecity police were sent by Bloomberg toenforce the new rules. This regulatory ambiguity allows for a confusing flurry of charges as grounds for arrest andsuppression, supplying ammunition toconservatives of all stripes while diffusingthe issue of First Amendment rights.Public parks serve important recre-ational, environmental, and aestheticfunctions. But a healthy democracy demands that public enjoyment of First Amendment rights be enshrined asthe foremost and paramount purposeof public spaces, because, unlike land-scaping and leisure activity, free speechhas no other home. As a society, we havetoo long stood by as our laws—and our values—have beenmanipulated to shrink our democraticpublic domains, both physical, politicaland legal. Our Constitutional rights arebeing extinguished as we eliminate theplaces available to exercise them.Occupy the public realm—or lose it.Shirley Kressel is a landscape architectand urban designer.To many people, a connection between mainstream religion- especially Christianity - and the Occupy movement mightseem to be out of the question. Those folks probably haven’theard of the Protest Chaplains.
Protesting in the Name of the God
The relationship between Occupy movement and sympa-thetic Christians dates back to just about a week before thefirst sleeping bags hit the ground at Zuccotti Park in New York City. A small group of students from Harvard Divinity School and a few members of the Christian organization TheCrossing decided to take part in the action they had readabout in Adbusters that summer.Heather Pritchard, a member of the original group thatventured to Occupy Wall Street, recalls that “we wanted tobring an explicitly Christian voice to the protest.” Dressedin full Albs and carrying a cardboard cross through lowerManhattan, the Protest Chaplains were born amidst the sameburst of activist energy that would find its way to Boston justa week and a half later. Five of the Protest Chaplains came toOccupy Boston’s first General Assembly on September 27th, where they immediately formed the Faith and Spirituality Working Group. As Occupy Boston grew in size and diversity, so did theChaplains. In the face of the inclusive and egalitarian ethosof the Occupy movement itself, the group decided to acceptother faiths into their group: Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, andanyone whose drive to protest inequality came from a spiritualconviction. Yet the original, singularly Christian intent of the group is what makes them so unique within this movement. As a resultof the Chaplain’s efforts, many congregants who otherwise would have never approached the protests came down to see what was going on. Many of them ended up coming back;some for the Vespers services held at the encampment’s mainstage, and others to just sit and talk with the protesters.“A lot of individuals at Occupy Boston came to themovement wanting to promote secular things. They’re nottrying to make this a religious movement,” Pritchard explains,“but a lot of people bring their faith. They believe in thingslike equality and human rights because of their faith.”Speaking of her fellow protest chaplains, she added, “Westrongly believe that Christ came to this earth to liberate thepoor and the oppressed. That’s why he specifically spent histime with the beggars and the prostitutes and the lepers.”
The Altar on the Left
Since the 1980s, the Christian Right has been a politicalpowerhouse, able to mobilize droves of supporters at the dropof a hat and strong enough, in some areas of the country, tomake or break the candidacy of those vying for elected office.Their focus has been on a handful of divisive areas of domesticsocial policy: abortion, gay marriage and prayer in schools, toname a few. Generally speaking, the Christian Right has novoice of its own on matters of economic policy; the grouplargely follows in lock step with traditional conservativeRepublicans. All the more reason, it seems, to reconsider of a term notfrequently used: the Christian Left.“It’s not a phrase I’d use naturally,” said Dan McKanan, aprofessor at Harvard Divinity School and author of the book Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American RadicalTradition. McKanan describes the Christian Left as a groupfocused on those parts of Jesus’ teachings which advocate for acompassionate economic system, from the story of the GoodSamaritan to the Beatitudes (“blessed are the poor in spirit”,for example).He also describes them as a group that, despite havingthese strong faith-based convictions about the need for socialand economic justice, isn’t nearly as organized or culturally relevant as the Christian Right.“Part of the reason that left Christian organizations don’thave the same muscle as, say, Focus on the Family, is that alot of religious leftists are putting their time and energy intoorganizations that aren’t specifically religious in character,”McKanan says. The Occupy movement is just one example.That the Occupy movement could conceivably partner with mainline Christianity would be no surprise to McKanan.He points to a long history of radical Christian activism tosupport this, from labor-rallying Catholics Dorothy Day andCésar Chávez, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference.Both at the national and local level, the stage appears tobe set for a revival of this strain of Christian thought. Whenthe battle over Wisconsin’s state budget came to a fever pitchlast year, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki issued astatement in support of the state’s public unions, quoting atlength from Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 encyclical.“The repeated calls issued within the Church’s socialdoctrine…for the promotion of workers’ associations thatcan defend their rights must therefore be honored today evenmore than in the past,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote.Here in Massachusetts, the Unitarian Church, the Black Ministerial Alliance and a number of other faith-based orga-nizations have come out against the state’s new “three strikes”bill, which would require mandatory maximum sentences forrepeat felons. Churches have partnered with and community organizations (including Occupy the Hood) to build a grass-roots campaign against the bill.In collaborations like this one, activists are taking up themessage that legendary Boston activist Mel King delivered atOccupy Boston’s Martin Luther King Day community gath-ering in Arlington St. Church last month. King, a long-timeBoston community activist and political leader, urged thegathering to make the churches and their congregants theirallies.On one hand, Mel King is challenging Occupy activists toorganize outside of their comfort zones. On the other, he ischallenging Christian congregations to answer and act on thisquestion: “Which side are you on?” As groups like the Protest Chaplains and others maketheir way through Boston’s houses of God, America’s oftenoverlooked Christian Left seems poised to grow, and perhapsanswer King’s question. If so, money lenders – among others- may once again have to worry about their tables gettingturned over.
Continued:Return of the ChristianLeft
The Occupy movementfocuses directly on the“pivotal issue of our time,”Ferguson asserts, “whichis whether democracy in America can survive.” Helauds the movement’s“culture of non-violence,tolerance, and respectfor individual persons,”remarking “the contrast”borne between this and “thecults of violence growingup elsewhere in the systemis obvious and infinitely refreshing.” American studiesprofessor Paul Atwoodreasoned that, as a publicuniversity, UMass oughtto care for the poverty inits backyard––Dorchester,Roxbury and Mattapan––rather than transform itself into another expensive,hi-tech research institution.“We have enough of thosein Boston,” he told theHarvard Crimson. “Weneed an institution of highereducation for people whodon’t have the privilege of being born into the elite.”Though the studentbody has generally receivedOccupy with passivesupport or indifference,there has been opposition.Unsympathetic studentshave admonished activiststo “get a job,” or to “getout of the campus center.” An online petition titled“Umass Boston Students Against Occupy” boasts 55signatures. Eleven refer tothemselves as “anonymous,”five express sympathy withthe movement’s values butdeem its manifestationa futile nuisance, whilethree names—HassanSajjad, Peter Dimas, KevinMojica––appear on the listtwice. By contrast, a change.org petition in support of the occupiers has yielded460 signatures.On the morning of Tuesday February 7,students protested theUMass Board of Trusteesmeeting held at the CampusCenter Alumni Room. Junior psychology majorKyle Forrester describedhow he and several otherprotesters arrived early at the board meetingand briefly occupied thetrustee’s seats in a symbolicact before holding up a signin a less disruptive sectionof the room. Toward theconclusion of the meeting,students––joined in unisonby 20 or so supportersoutside the room––mic-checked the board: “Nocuts, no fees; educationshould be free.”Forrester suspects thatmost administrators “know in their hearts [OUMB]is right,” yet “have theirhands tied in a culture of bureaucratic indifference.”It’s tricky, he suggests,as the aggression doesn’tmanifest on the personallevel––where policy decidersbehave politely––but ratherin “the policies they enact.” Join Us!Though admittedly few in number, a core group of OUMB students has never-theless committed itself toempowering newcomersto share their voice.“Democracy is about you!”occupiers say. And thoughthey remain mindful thatstudents have busy classschedules, jobs, and liveson the side, still they believethat volunteering in small ways to reach out, listen to,and connect with each other will pay off somewherealong the road.
Occupy UMass Boston’s General Assemblies are scheduled for Mondays,Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 3pm
Continued:Occupy UMass
Several o the Protest Chaplains pose with their ellow Occupy Wall Streetsupporters on September 17th, 2011. (Photo: ProtestChaplains, via ickr)
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