Tweet
Dewey Park, 10:00 a.m. December 10, 2011: Nobody lives here now (Photo: Fara1)
A few days back, Boston Mayor Menino told the media/public (and indirectly the court considering an injunction) that he had no immediate plans to evict the Occupy Boston folks from Dewey Park. He just wanted the ability to do so if necessary for health/safety reasons. He was lying, of course, or we’ve just witnessed the fastest landscape planning and permitting exercise in the history of Boston.
A mere 5 hours after a few hundred police showed up at 5:00 a.m. Saturday morning to clear all remaining Boston occupiers — arresting about 46 — and their possessions from Dewey Park, a well organized crew of about a dozen landscapers, dump trucks with new soil, a back hoe with grader and air-driven soil aerators showed up to re do the landscaping from the now totally barren park. By the time I saw this about noon, the crew had completely regraded the area, spread new soil and were raking on piles of soil conditioners. The back hoe filed the dump truck with excess/displaced soil.
By Monday morning or so, Dewey Park will likely be resodded with new grass, and all evidence that there was once a thriving community of people living here will have been wiped from the motorists’ view and the city’s list of things to fix.
I say motorists because Dewey Park, which lies at the end of the Rose Kennedy [Greenway], is not a place where you’re likely to see lots of people gathered, like families with kids out on a picnic or a nice walk. People mostly don’t live there, because this is the financial district, towered over on one side by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and on the other side by an eclectic collection of banks (including the ugliest Bank of America building ever) and other financial towers whose well heeled occupants and corporate owners were bailed out with trillions in Federal Reserve loans and tax payer guarantees.
Oh, thousands of people walk by there every day, moving to/from the district and South Station, the city’s central public transportation hub, but almost nobody lives there or comes there to see or use the park. You know that because just across the park, on the block in front of the financial district (extreme left in the picture), you see abandoned, shuttered storefronts that once served a neighborhood. This isn’t a neighborhood any more.
Like many contrived but little used public spaces, the main role of this parkway is to separate the dual auto expressways on each side of the strip that now covers the underground freeway buried by the Big Dig — the most expensive public works program Massachusetts ever had. Now there was a stimulus.
The fact is Occupy Boston’s use of Dewey Park really wasn’t a serious problem for anyone except those who tried to live there. The occupiers provided shelter, protection, food and caring not only for themselves but for all the problems experienced by the least fortunate who live in America’s cities. And so anyone who needed those essential services naturally gravitated to the occupation for what its community could provide.
So it was no surprise that the mostly young, idealistic and courageous occupiers were forced from day 1 to recreate government, to develop mechanisms to deal, face to face with drug abuse, violent/uncontrolled behavior, unemployment, homelessness, hunger and poor health. It wasn’t all just marches and demonstrations and rallies and teach ins; it was also a daily struggle for human and humane survival. And the fact this was happening was also a daily embarrassment to the city and a reminder of how badly our cities fail for so many of their citizens.
The occupation movement did not create these people or their problems — those who received the trillions in bailouts were far more responsible — nor did they exacerbate any of their conditions. Homeless, suffering people and conditions came to the occupation, and the movement did its best to deal with them.
None of those conditions are gone merely because tents will now be replaced with freshly mowed grass that almost no one will see or walk on. The problems and the people who struggle with them are still there, dispersed to who knows where, mostly out of sight and hence mostly out of mind. And that was probably the unacknowledged plan that compelled the good Mayor to lie.
10:10 AM Heartwrenching tweets on the homeless. Reports indicate they were crying as police raided the camp.
Officials and daily commuters won’t have that uncomfortable reminder, now, and that will take the pressure off government at all levels to “do something.” Oh, I’ll get the usual letters in my mailbox asking for charitable contributions to this or that, but its pretty easy to just toss those pleas and the people they represent into the trash.
This morning, the city pretended to clean up a “park” that almost nobody uses. But in reality they tossed the most visible reminders that these vulnerable people are real, their problems are real and are still there, into huge truck-bins of trash compactors and hauled them away. And by Monday morning, everything will look just fine again, and it will be safe to drive by or walk to work and not worry about it.
65 Comments
Unfortunately, a great post.
Wouldn’t it be nice to figure out a way to occupy the abandoned storefronts of the old neighborhood? But I guess that’s wishing for too much.
Years from now, Occupy will be looked back on like the early warning-sign demonstrations that led to other major revolutions, in the American colonies, France, Russia (more than once), etc.
Let’s hope so.
They sure have us be the balls/ovaries now.
Mahalo, Scarecrow, for the awesome post and all your efforts…! *g*
Maybe it’s only half the story. There’s already the acknowledgement that this has dramatically changed the narrative, and even bad politicians are having to say different things.
There’s an argument that the difficulties of physical occupations were holding the movement back, and that being evicted may be a blessing, liberating the movement to focus on actions and issue outside trying to defend all the stuff that necessarily comes with physical occupation. We’ll see. My post just focuses on how delusional the authorities are that evictions somehow solve a real problem. There are other ways to bring the issues to their door steps.
Damn!
How can anyone think that a bare park looks better than one that is vibrant and joyous? Some people just exist, they don’t really experience life.
Scarecrow…
I’m trying to find out who the original people are who started OWS. Do you know or does anyone know who they are?
No, sorry I don’t know. Assume you don’t mean the Algonquin.
Do you know who would know…?
Whats the Algonquin?
I detest my birth City’s So Called leaders… They are nothing but fucking heartless bought and paid for shills of the 1% and they sure have proved it by their dastardly actions against peaceful protesters… they have abandoned the spirit that was born of the early citizens of Boston… May each and every one of them rot in hell…
Get off my lawn!
I think Scarecrow might mean some Occupiers like these Algonquins.
Home of the Brave but not Land of the Free…
And no… I’m not refering to the Indian tribe.
Wasn’t it the Ad Busters crew that spearheaded the first actual Occupy Wall Street…?
*heh* The original crew that sold Manhattan for mere baubles…! ;-)
Well, so the alleged buyers say …
It’s called “Rewriting History”. When you burn the old books and the only historical record left is word of mouth it isn’t long before everyone is referring to the “new” history written by those who burned the old history. It is a time-tested technique of controlling the people, and it works. The winners get to write the new history books and the losers disappear from memory. And, the fascist forces have gotten pretty good about controlling both the message and the media in the past couple of months. They seem to even be on the way to perfecting methods for controlling on-the-scene reporting of the evictions while they film the actions so that selective editing can only show the scene from their perspective. Who would have thought that police forces would actively obscure officer’s identities by not wearing name tags and badges? Effectively, they’ve given the police carte-blanche to anonymously do whatever they feel like doing to helpless protestors, and there is nothing that can be done about it (I think the recording and identifying of the cop that threw the concussion grenade in Oakland directly resulted in the cops making all riot officers anonymous, now). Really, I think we are screwed.
The Democratic mayors who are caving in to the pressure to crack down on the encampments are not scoring popularity points with the rank-and-file who helped elect them to office. Not only that, their willingness to oppress those peacefully assembling diminishes them as human beings. Recovering their humanity, should they one day regret their actions, will not come easily.
OK… well it appears that the founder of Ad Busters and his top editor are the ones responsible for OWS.
I started out as a HUGE supporter of the organization… then became a doubter when secrecy issues came to light… but if these guys are the ones who started it then I’m leaning back towards support.
I’m a total supporter of an Alternative [third-fourth-fifth party] to the corrupt Democrats and corrupt Republicans… hopefully this will help to get the ball rolling… I mean as in REALLY hopeful.
Where’s the Garden part of the Rose Kennedy Memorial Garden? Looks like pavers to me. What were the Occupiers supposedly destroying by their mere presence? That little portion that can barely be seen in the pic? That is not how I imagined the site at all(based on the fuss over the “plantings” that were being jeopardized by the “public” actually using a “public” space).
Good point about the police. Several weeks ago they were citizen law enforcement officers with unique identities. Now they’ve been transformed into anonymous Myrmidons. How does that affect their self image?
I don’t give a shit about their humanity. I just want them to not have power any more.
To the best of my understanding…
AdBusters was the one that “put out the call” so to speak for the idea of setting up a protest at Wall Street.
The original nucleus of the General Assembly and a bunch of the local NYers who came at first were I think from the group “New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts” that during the summer of 2011 held the “Bloombergville” demonstrations.
http://bloombergvillenow.org/
Later on the hacktivist group Anonymous also spread the word and encouraged people to show up.
And then on September 17th people started showing up.
(I can’t help but thinking that if they had only been allowed to protest on Wall Street itself, the long-term occupation of Liberty would never have happened and the whole movement might have been stillborn. So in a way I guess we can thank Bloomberg and his banker buddies for fortifying Wall Street and forcing a change of plans.)
The guys from Ad Busters names are Kalle Lasn and Micah White… and they are saying the same thing ny40 is saying… that Bloombergs actions was a catalyst.
I really like Kalle Lasn and his magazine. He seems to be the real deal.
I am hoping with everything I have… that they will take the next step and organize and get as many candidates on the ballot for 2012 to take on the Corrupt Democrats and Corrupt Republicans. Those two corrpt organizations cannot be allowed to continue to run the country.
As a lifelong liberal proressive and a registered Independent I WILL vote for Third Party candidates and Independents.
An astounding 78% of Independents poll as wanting Third Party candidates… and because we are the largest voting block in the country… thats no small matter.
Also… thanks for your timeline ny40… and your knowledge about the issue.
It looks like another major revolution may be beginning in Russia now, with the massive protests against election fraud there. These protests around the world are synergistic.
Looks like the actual name is the “Rose Kennedy Greenway” (not Garden) and there is a Greenway Conservancy responsible for overseeing it. Parts of it are highly used — see the link — I don’t think the end part near the south Station, where the occupation, is used that much, because its not a residential neighborhood.
http://www.rosekennedygreenway.org/
It’s really not an exaggeration to say that the Dewey Square “park” is a median strip with grass. Until Occupy Boston most people had never even heard of Dewey Square and certainly weren’t visiting it. When Occupy was there, in fact, it drew people there for the first time–as Scarecrow so eloquently explains, they transformed it into a public space rather than the grassy median strip it was in the past. I’ve heard it said that this area is something like 2 or 3% of the mile-long Greenway, and certainly people were not clamoring to use this space.
That was part of the beauty of Occupy Boston. It turned a useless space into a vibrant living community, in the shadow of the looming Federal Reserve Bank building. The choice of this spot was pure genious.
Which gives me hope: these folks are as creative and resourceful a group as I’ve ever seen. Even though it’s heartbreaking to see the end of Occupy Boston in Dewey Square, this is not the end.
Tonight there was a packed GA at the bandstand on Boston Common. And there was a great banner that read: “We’re Not Going Away.” Tomorrow is the launch of the Occupy Boston internet radio station and they’re planning their local access TV show.
A friend of ours took a picture of a chalk statement scrawled on the wall in front of the Federal Reserve. It read,
“This is just the beginning.”
I believe it is.
This is what the cops intend. If you haven’t read it yet, do so now.
http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-occupy-la-arrest-by-patrick-meighan.html
The grass would lie to the right of the picture past the barricades.
That banner was first unfurled at the Mayor’s press conference this afternoon dealing with the camp eviction. At which the protestors stood silently for an hour a la Katehi.
They have achieved the anonymity of the Brown Shirts, and are demonstrating the same sense of morality. We got hard times ahead, friends.
Mr. Meighan is a much more forgiving person than I could ever be.
We here in Massachusetts take great pride in our revolutionary history. We have the Old North Bridge where the first shot in the Revolutionary War was fired. We have Lexington and Concord. We have the Old North Church where Paul Revere was signaled by lanterns (“one if by land; two if by sea”). We have the Freedom Trail and the USS Constitution. We have Boston Harbor where the real Tea Party occurred.
What we’ve lost, though, is the spirit of the revolution. All that remains are statues and old buildings and the yellowing pages of history. What really counts, keeping the eternal struggle for human liberation and justice alive, has died… except in the hearts of a precious few. But they, friends, will make all the difference.
I mentioned this in a post earlier on Saturday, but this still gets me each time I read it. Nancy Brennan is the Executive Director of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy which, at the higher board level (as opposed to the Conservancy members on the ground) instrumental in pushing for removal of the tent city. Keep in mind that Nancy Brennan is the daughter of the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan:
from http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/12/boston-police-say-strategy-trust-building-with-occupy-boston-led-peaceful-end/U3cJClEGu137W35cBCRigN/index.html
Here’s the youtube of Nancy Brennan that I linked to earlier on Saturday. She summarizes her father’s legacy of which she is so proud–an ironic thing, given Saturday’s raid on Occupy Boston in Dewey Square:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAYsaa0C13U
Kassandra,
By no means do they have us by our genitals, although what they will to do those in prison a few years down the line if the pressure continues to mount is a scary thought.
I have been involved in planning the port action on Monday here in Portland and I can tell you, we have an amazing number of fully committed activists here and nothing has slowed down post-occupation.
Frankly, I don’t like to talk about tactics on the other side because they don’t really know anything but to go back to the same old fascist playbook of repressing opposition. But I think their decision to evict the camps was tremendously poor. Winter was doing it’s damage, and even though the authorities’ claims of unhealthy, unsanitary conditions are absurdly standard and began the very moment the Occupations began, the truth is the Occupations did become something different over time, did lose some energy, and the forceful, gratuitous, and unnecessary brutality that accompanied the evictions spurred the movement again.
Now, all that being said, the movement isn’t over, it’s just beginning, and there are tons of tactics we can use. What’s most important is getting organized, pounding the pavement locally and tapping into all of the popular but still somewhat unmotivated support for the movement and getting everyone who can be mustered off of the couch and into the planning rooms, the streets, and if necessary the jails. That is happening, and it could not have happened without the public spectacle that was the original Occupations.
It’s fine if people still want to Occupy, it is a completely legitimate tactic, and we cannot forget that there are people on the street who need food, housing, education, child services, healthcare, and so on, and that these are the most obvious victims of pervasive economic injustice and corporate crime. But we are playing a huge game here, and we must remain strong, organized, and hopeful and use that energy to effect real change.
This is probably the end of the Occupations, but it is still the very beginning of this movement.
“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
–Edmund Burke
No revolutionary, he. But it’s still a good point, if gender-incorrect by today’s standards. OWS was the start of good people doing something.
To paraphrase Churchill: This is not the end, this is not the beginning of the end, it is not even the end of the beginning. But it is the beginning of something new, and only time will tell what that something is.
Great post Scarecrow. The tweets are heart-wrenching.
Amen.
Yep.
It’s kind of ironic that we Americans needed a crew of Canadians to save us from ourselves.
Gotta love those crazy Canuks.
welshTerrier2, you don’t take that much pride in your revolutionary history if you think the first shot in the Revolutionary War was fired at the Old North Bridge. Try the Battle Green in Lexington.
The Rose Kennedy Greenway sits on the site of Boston’s “Big Dig,” a 20 year privatization nightmare that put the central arterial highways in underground tunnels. Federal and state money paid for that dig, and for the resulting park. The land itself is owned by the state. It’s public land. But because the state turned it over to be “overseen” by a corporate “non-profit,” it’s become, like Zucotti, a private-public space. Even though it’s public land, because of privatization, private corporations can dictate the public’s use of their own land.
When the Occupation was forcibly removed from public land, Mayor Tom Menino, in his response, told Nancy Brennan, “Nancy, you have your land back.” That should tell you something about how Mumbles views the public, and Nancy Brennan.
Did you know that Nancy Brennan draws a $223,000/year salary as the Executive Director of a “non-profit”? The Conservancy is a racket, paying its employees literally twice to administer public land what actual public employees are paid to do the same job. And all at the expense of the Massachusetts taxpayer. Small wonder Nancy Brennan wanted the Occupation out. She wasn’t concerned about the actual condition of what is, essentially, an ugly highway median strip separating Atlantic Avenue and Purchase Street, and housing a DOT maintenance building. She was just put off by actual working-class people using the space as the public square it is.
As a point of information (see what I did thar?), the Occupation elected by consensus representatives to negotiate with the Greenway at the very beginning. The Greenway Board of Directors was initially supportive of the action, to the point that they sent maintenance crews in to break the locks on the generators at the site to allow us access to a power source. In return, Occupy Boston made a good-faith negotiation that we would return in the spring to clean, re-sod, and re-plant the grounds at Dewey Square. The Conservancy quoted us a cost estimate of $12,000. We established a wepay donation account with the goal of raising $15,000 to do so, and were on the way to making that happen. After all, we believe in cleaning up our own mess, unlike corporations and governments. Instead, the city has bulldozed over the site and planted flowers (in December) so that Monday morning commuters can pretend that nothing ever happened there.
For those of us who actually give a damn about accountability and transparency in government, and the increasing theft of public spaces by corporate entities in “privatization” schemes, the forcible eviction of peaceful protesters from public land should be a red flag. By taking away public spaces, it will become increasingly more difficult to exercise our First Amendment rights to peaceably petition the government for a redress of grievances. Rights are only rights if you have the money to exercise them. There’s a war going on, and it’s being waged by the rich against the rest of us.
David Degraw’s perspective.
http://daviddegraw.org/2011/09/report-from-the-frontlines-the-long-road-to-occupywallstreet-and-the-origins-of-the-99-movement/
It seems that way, but consider that all revolutions seem weak initially, hopeless in fact, but the historical trend in the whole of human history has been that people will relentlessly resist attempts to control them. The more they try to control this movement, the more it will grow and prosper. It takes time. I’m seeing a change for the better already after all the outcry from the responsible press about police brutality. Now in some places at least police have abandoned riot gear for normal police attire and brutal tactics for civilized ones. Small victories lead to big ones eventually. And keep in mind things are going to get worse, much worse, so more people will be in the ranks of the totally disgusted, furious, feeling that they have nothing to lose.
Right, I’m not sure physical occupation is necessary for this movement to succeed. It’s a good way to get the message out, but beyond this, gathering at the right places to protest and obstruct may be equally or more effective. Occupy bankers’ homes, offices, restaurants, shopping venues, occupy Congress and K street may be even better. I loved seeing the gathering on Fifth Avenue on Black Friday. Go OWS! Here’s another one I’m longing to see, occupy golf courses…
Thank you, Scarecrow. Unlike what was on the telly this morning, this is real news.
The photograph of the empty square reminded me vividly of the photographs posted on one of the early accounts of OWS, by someone just happening by and giving us the ‘lay of the land’ views of the place. And I remember that one view showed not very far away was Ground Zero, the empty sacred space on which memorial edifices were being constructed.
And here we have again an empty sacred space to join the other empty sacred spaces: OWS itself, Oakland, Denver, Los Angeles (my apologies for not listing them all) even little Occupy Davis. Communities eradicated at their peaceful inception but ever present in our hearts and minds. It is, as we say, only the beginning.
With apologies and request for forebearance, here’s what I sang in my chapel this morning (I go with whatever comes to mind)
In thy kingdom remember us, O lord,
When thou comest into they kingdom.
Blessed are the poor in spirit
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn
For they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek
For they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness
For they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful
for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart
For they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers
For they shall be called the sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you
And shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.
Rejoice and be exceedingly glad
For great is your reward in heaven.
(To which I just add, the kingdom of heaven, granted here both to the poor and to those persecuted for righteousness’s sake, is within you and me.)
The Occupy movement has built its memorable sacred spaces which remain in our hearts and are beautiful there. Blessed are you.
Waste of money resodding in the winter. But they really don’t care do they.
I agree… and I would add…
The last poll numbers I saw showed that OWS had a approval rate of around 36%… those are huge numbers. AND those apporval numbers are 3 times the approval numbers of our ENTIRE corrupt Democratic and Republican congesss… at only 13%.
In addition… Independents are now the largest voting block in the country and Independents are 78% in favor of Independent and Third Party challengers to the D’s and R’s.
The time has come. Take the next step OWS. Organize and promote candidates to take on the corrupt Democrats and corrupt Republicans. Until we have alternatives to those corupt organizations… nothing will change. Nothing will change as long as we have the same corrupt politicians running our government.
I do so love to see your fonts, dear juliania. They always hold the promise of a high-quality comment.
Bless you, Scarecrow for a marvelous, heart warming, saddening, maddening epistle from your heart.
I finally got all the PC requirements so I could participate in the Sunday webinar as a listener just as you were ending your report; so sorry I didn’t get to hear that. The other reports were fascinating and I shall make an effort to always be there for webinars. Bless you for your work in Boston and for the Supply effort, and all else you do for the Lake.
Blessed are the quietly passionate prophets who speak the words and heart of God.
Grace and peace,
I go to school very close to Dewey park. People use it. It’s the location of a busy farmer’s market and the very popular clover vegetarian food truck. People used to eat lunch there. Lots of people live around the park, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many residents only parking spaces. It’s also the location of a pedestrian mall. They had plants other than grass. I recall sunflowers and such. Protestors don’t protest in an area where nobody will pay attention. If Dewey park were obscure and unused it would have never become the site of occupy Boston. This area gets traffic from sources other than bank employees. It’s right in between the aquarium and the children’s museum, and right in between many other things as well, such as a thriving artists’s community, chinatown, ect.
LindsayGravina @6:45 pm “It’s right in between the aquarium and the children’s museum.”
LindsayGravina, you have better eyesight than I, or stand much taller.
The New England Aquarium is almost 1 mile away from Dewey Square.
The Boston Children’s Museum is not visible either. To get there, you would need to walk a block north of Dewey Square, bang a right, and then march across a long bridge over Fort Point Channel.
Dewey Square, the name, was almost unknown until OccupyBoston occupied it for more than 2 months. OccupyBoston ate lunch there all the time, so that activity never ceased. Farmers Markets were not crowded out by the occupiers. Their traditional space was preserved–even after the cold weather set in and harvest time was long passed.
The few people who live in apartments near Dewey Square also live right next to tall SKYSCRAPERS full of bank workers and right next to SOUTH STATION (trains/buses/subway) and have only a few streets to choose from as they are surrounded by the Turnpike, highway exits/entrances, and tunnels.
Those few parking spots would be constantly used by commuters trying to get to skyscrapers and to the South Station transportation hub–not by people driving in to Boston to use “Dewey Park.” [And it is "Dewey Square" not "Dewey park", contrary to what you right in your comment above. It is true that while OccupyBoston was occupying Dewey Square, it did take on the feeling of a park].
LindsayGravina says, “They had plants other than grass. I recall sunflowers and such.”
You are correct LindayGravina, and, as you go to school “very close” to Dewey Square (not park)–and as you have better eyesight and/or stand taller than I–you no doubt have taken note that OccupyBoston preserved the Conservancy’s plantings, even after the frost had killed the sunflowers.
This was a brilliant write-up that just gets it. The faux-outrage over the loss of a “park” no one ever used was absurd. Despite how much I’m greatful we had the big dig in Boston, the Greenway’s just never really ‘worked’ as a park, and only serves to divide the city, much like a highway would. Dewey Square is even worse, in that respect, than most of the rest of the park.
Part of the reason for why it fails at being what it could was because, originally, the Greenway was to have a number of cultural centers and nonprofit buildings on it, things that would have brought more people to it. With those people, the parks would have felt more like parks and less like glorified traffic islands.
But the other aspect is it’s just not a well designed park, and clearly they aren’t all that interested with having people use it as an area to congregate on.
The ‘tent city’ was the most exciting thing to happen anywhere on the Greenway since it’s been opened, and especially given the fact that Occupy was all the way over to one end of it, in one of the least-used parts of it, it truly harmed no one being there and provided a ton of resources to entire communities the city was failing at delivering for.
This hurts the city to lose the Occupy tent city, no doubt, but I know the movement won’t die and won’t forget about all the people it was helping. And we’ll find other ways of forcing people to be reminded about just how much we fail at delivering basic necessities to so many in our population.
I’ll amend my square vs. park comment.
Officially the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy refers to it as “Dewey Square Park.”
Pdaly,
I think you’ve exaggerated. The area in and around Dewey Square, while home to quite a few tall buildings, is not “full of bank workers”. In a half a mile radius, you have hundreds of small businesses leasing in these bigger buildings. In fact, my own building only half a mile away from Dewey Square is home to over 300 employees, none of which are bankers.
I am a software developer working in the area – one with quite a bit of student loans and personal debt. I had my work day interrupted on a regular basis to the noise of the Occupiers marching through the streets and, while I don’t begrudge them the opportunity to do so, it did become quite the distraction.
Prior to the Occupy settlement, the square was used by the public on a regular basis, especially in the summer. My best friend even took her wedding photos in the park just this past summer. In fact, I would sit there for lunch many times myself before the Occupy Boston movement moved in, only to turn it into this:
http://cbsboston.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/deweysqcleanup.jpg?w=300
I look at more pictures of the cleanup and recall my own experience in walking through the campsite a month ago and recognize that it was a mud pit, a trash heap. It was not sanitary. Trash cans were overflowing, litter filled the spaces between the tents. Many of the end of business (4PM, 5PM) marches caused minor disruption to commuters (vehicle and public transit alike).
It is safe to say that the square did become unsanitary unless your definition of sanitation is extremely stretched. When it comes to a space that the public pays to upkeep, that is not right.
Continue to protest. By all means. I agree with your message. But do it where it will make more of a difference. At the federal reserve. At the state house. At the Boston offices for federal representatives. Do what other political activist groups have done and secure permits and stage protests and rallies in full cooperation with the law. Now that it is December and it is becoming colder outside, hold your protests and go home at the end of the day rather than run the risk of having hundreds of people camping out when the temperatures become too cold to maintain healthy living and someone gets seriously sick or dies from exposure.
I do want to say one positive thing about the protesters in Boston: Thank you for keeping it civil and peaceful and for not giving the Boston PD a hard time.
Better than leaving open soil all winter so that it turns into a mud pit come March/April.
I should clarify something, pdaly. The OWS movement has the nation’s attention (still). This would be the perfect time to transform this from a shanty town movement into a true, political movement. Already, the Occupy camps are losing media attention.
In order to mean something in the end, it has to change and begin targeting politicians directly and holding them accountable, rather than simply holding rallies every day.
RJS wrote, “I had my work day interrupted on a regular basis to the noise of the Occupiers marching through the streets and, while I don’t begrudge them the opportunity to do so, it did become quite the distraction.”
It’s a good thing back-room deals and wealth extraction from the middle class are normally silent processes. If those processes emitted noise, I imagine that would be quite the distraction, too.
I never saw any trash between tents and I’m reviewing photographs I took of the camp a month ago. Do you have any proof? I saw meticulously clean pathways and spoke to courteous, well informed and well-educated protesters making the most with restrictions imposed on them by the city officials.
Overflowing trashcans?
Doesn’t this suggest Occupiers were trying to do the right thing and place any trash in the bins? That they didn’t own a trash compacter shouldn’t be held against them.
What you are really saying is that city trash collection is the problem–who in the city is in charge of trash collection? Don’t we hand over public dollars to the Greenway Conservancy to take care of our parks?
And make up your mind.
Is Dewey Square trash solely from the Occupiers (because no one else passes through that area?) or are you ignoring the thousands of commuters who might also be passing by to get to South Station, banks, and yes to other businesses?
And aren’t you really impugning the Greenway Conservancy to which we hand over our public dollars to to take care of our public land, including Dewey Square Park? Maybe you are against public-private enterprise.
RJS writes, “Continue to protest. By all means. I agree with your message. But do it where it will make more of a difference. At the federal reserve. ”
I agree with this suggestion if only to illustrate, once the police come to arrest occupiers, that the Federal Reserve Bank is “PRIVATE PROPERTY” and not public property.
And since Dewey Square Park is literally in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, OccupyBoston was for all intents and purposes doing what you suggest.
But you already knew that Dewey Square Park is right in front of the entrance to the Federal Reserve Bank, because you use Dewey Square Park.
Pdaly,
Thanks so much for your comments, defending Occupy Boston’s community at Dewey Square. After reading Scarecrow’s post, it couldn’t be clearer how amazing this encampment was and how it benefited our community.
I particularly wanted to thank you for your comments about Nancy Brennan. As I type this, I’m drafting the exam for my Civil Liberties class, which I consider, in part, to be an hommage to the immortal William Brennan. To read his daughter’s remarks is just maddening and heart-breaking.
Here is a shot of the grassy area. If you were to turn to the right in the picture up top, that is what you would see. Tents in the foreground. GA/speakers area against the building in the distance.
http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/20111212/c31597_occ_12122011.jpg
I see that I am disoriented 90 degrees. The grassy area is in the distance of the picture up top. I think you can see how small it is compared to the paved plaza. The barricades are parallel to Atlantic Avenue.
Thanks, dlp.
I came across a BostonHerald editorial (November 19, 2011) that indicated Georgia Murray, the Greenway Conservancy Board Chair who signed the letter to Mayor Menino asking him to rid the Dewey Square Park of OccupyBoston protesters was the moving force for the eviction.
I’ll quote the anti-OB Herald editorial here:
“Those rules prohibit — not surprisingly — sleeping in the park overnight and require permits for tents. All of that seems to have been lost on the Conservancy’s executive director, Nancy Brennan, who insisted earlier on making nice with the Occupiers, asking merely that they respect certain boundaries.
Murray on the other hand gave the mayor a real piece of the board’s mind, citing incidents of drug dealing, deteriorating sanitary conditions, a loss of income to vendors and to the farmer’s market.”
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view/2011_1119occupiers_must_go/
Below is a bio of Conservancy Board Chair Georgia Murray, but it comes from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) website where she is also a board member. http://www.icic.org/about/board-of-directors
Nevertheless, looks like Nancy Brennan, even in October 2011 (just before the first raid on OccupyBoston), cared more about her commitment to plants than to real people. http://dollarsandsense.org/blog/2011/10/ob-crackdown-more-teach-ins-etc.html
Keori, I meant to thank you for this informative comment.
Well said.