Boston

Court Protest Aims At Boston Covid Housing Crisis

October 30, 2020 Unicorn Riot. Resist! Boston, COVID-19, Evictions, Foreclosures

Boston, MA - Thousands of families in eastern Massachusetts face renewed risk of eviction. Governor Charlie Baker opted on October 17 to cease emergency measures to protect shelter that have been in effect throughout most of 2020, triggering a huge surge in “notices to quit” from landlords. A rally downtown outside the Eastern Housing Court near Haymarket on a rainy Thursday morning called for an alternative program at the state legislature, among other policies that have been proposed including a rent freeze.

Black Workers Protest Union-Busting Boston Gentrifier

July 1, 2020 Boston Bureau, Workers World. Resist! Black Working Class, Boston, Gentrification, Recession

A June 16 action for eight laid-off workers — organized just four days after the announcement they had been fired — drew about 100 people. They were protesting at their place of work, College Bound Dorchester/Boston Uncornered, on a quiet residential street on Tuesday morning. With these latest layoffs, CEO Mark Culliton targeted one-third of the remaining youth services employees working for his company, College Bound, after workers declared their intention to unionize as Uncornered United-Service Employees (SEIU) Local 888 on June 2. College Bound is a “further education” preparation program, while Boston Uncornered hires neighborhood leaders impacted by violence to be mentors in the program. The company website advertises the programs as “opportunities to turn away from the ‘street corners’ for good.” The UU mentors are Black and Brown neighborhood leaders who have demonstrated social influence and skill at developing young people by drawing on their own challenges and experiences. These workers are demanding that Culliton recognize the union and that he reinstate those illegally fired.

Boston School Bus Drivers Win Emergency Full Pay During School Closure

March 25, 2020 By Steve Gillis, Workers.org Resist! Boston, Bus Driver, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Workers

On March 16, elected officers of United Steelworkers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, conducted mass meetings in the bus yards over loudspeakers with hundreds of drivers, monitors, dispatchers and support staff. They presented a multipart agreement reached with Transdev — a division of the Paris-based transnational conglomerate Veolia, which employs over 170,000 workers in 104 countries and specializes in contracting with neoliberal governments to privatize water, waste, energy and transportation.

Iranian Student Deported From Boston Despite Court Order; Federal Judge Dismisses Case

January 23, 2020 By Shannon Dooling, Wbur.org Educate! Boston, Courts, Deportations, Iran, Students

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at Logan International Airport denied entry to an Iranian national who was set to study economics this spring at Northeastern University. Despite a federal court order to delay the man's removal, CBP placed him on a plane Monday night. Kerry Doyle, an attorney for Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, said the 24-year-old was traveling to the U.S. with a valid F1 student visa before he was held for secondary questioning by CBP at the Boston airport.

Protests Target A ‘Carbon Bomb’ Linking Two Major Pipelines Outside Boston

January 20, 2020 Phil McKenna, Insideclimatenews.org Resist! Boston, Pipelines, Protests

WEYMOUTH, Massachusetts — After endless public hearings, drawn-out government appeals and fruitless legal proceedings, a band of community and climate activists was left to this: Sitting in the path of a concrete truck at the site where a large natural gas compressor is being built outside Boston. They were five years on in their bid to block a facility that would play a crucial role in completing a pipeline project that seeks to ship hydraulically fractured gas from New Jersey to Canada.

How One Boston Hospital Is Feeding Patients Through Its Rooftop Farm

September 12, 2019 Lindsay Campbell, Modernfarmer.com Create! Boston, Farming, Food and Agriculture, Health Care

Carrie Golden believes the only reason she’s diabetes free is that she has access to fresh, locally grown food. A few years after the Boston resident was diagnosed with prediabetes, she was referred to Boston Medical Center’s Preventative Food Pantry as someone who was food insecure. The food pantry is a free food resource for low-income patients. “You become diabetic because when you don’t have good food to eat, you eat whatever you can to survive,” Golden says. “Because of the healthy food I get from the pantry… I’ve learned how to eat.”

Movement To Build National Support For Green New Deal Starts In Boston, ‘City Of Revolutions’

April 27, 2019 By Zach Roberts, Desmogblog.com Create! Boston, Green New Deal, Reform

The past two years, 2017 and 2018, brought the U.S. two major youth-led movements. The first was borne out of the March for Our Lives, which saw hundreds of thousands rallying for gun violence prevention in D.C. and across the country. The second was the Sunrise Movement. While founded in 2017, the Sunrise Movement came to prominence in late 2018 with its news-grabbing protests demanding climate action on Capitol Hill. But rather than railing against Congress’s many climate science deniers, this environmental group gained attention with a sit-in of the office of Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, where dozens of youth, joined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for a Green New Deal to rise to the challenge of climate change.

Victory! Boston Challenges Corporate Control Of Our Food System

March 22, 2019 By Alexa Kaczmarski, Corporateaccountability.org Create! Boston, Corporations, Food and Agriculture, New Economy

Boston has taken a critical step forward to rebuild our broken food system and advance food justice across the city. On March 20, the city became the first on the East Coast to adopt a city-wide Good Food Purchasing Policy (GFPP) — a groundbreaking policy that helps build an equitable, local, sustainable food system. The policy directs the city to purchase food that meets robust labor, health, and environmental standards. This includes Boston Public Schools (BPS), one of the largest purchasers of food in the city — meaning that 56,000 schoolchildren in Boston will have healthier, more nutritious food available to them at school each day.

The Boston Ujima Project Is Working To Create Economic Equity For Artists

November 2, 2018 By Nicole Rupersburg, Springboardexchange.org Create! Arts, Boston, Equity, New Economy

The Boston Ujima Project is a community-led organization with a mission of growing a people’s economy in Greater Boston, one that is controlled by the community with neighbors, workers, business owners, and investors all working together on a shared vision of collective work and responsibility. From Ujima’s citywide assembly “Old Roots, New Rules,” October 2018. The idea is to challenge poverty and develop local neighborhoods by organizing individual savings, businesses, and customers to grow their own wealth and meet their own needs. The word ujima is a Swahili word that refers to the Kwanzaa principle of collective wealth and responsibility.

8 Boston Jews Arrested As They Shut Down Israeli Consulate To Protest Violence On Gaza

April 4, 2018 Yonah Lieberman, Ifnotnowmovement.org Resist! Boston, Gaza, Jews, Nationalism, Occupation, Palestine, Protests

BOSTON, MA: This morning, on the fourth day of Passover, Boston Jewish Millennials locked themselves to the Israeli Consulate of New England and called for an end to Israeli violence against Palestinian protesters in Gaza, which resulted in the death of 17 protesters while injuring more than 1,000 others last week — the deadliest day in Israel/Palestine since the 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge. “At the Passover Seder, my family and I talk about our community’s journey toward freedom as part of an ancient ritual done in Jewish households across the world. After over a decade of the Israeli blockade and three bombardments, that is exactly what Palestinians in Gaza want: freedom,” said Sarah O’Connor, who was one of eight IfNotNow members that chained themselves to the doors of the Israeli consulate.

The Boston Climate Trial That Might Have Been

March 30, 2018 Wen Stephenson, Commonwealthmagazine.org Strategize! Boston, Climate Change

“THE IDEA THAT natural gas combats climate change is a sleight of hand,” writes Bill McKibben in a recent essay that pulls no punches. “No one wants to hear this,” he observes, not Republicans or the oil and gas industry, not Democrats (especially the Obama alums now working in the industry)—and not journalists, who “don’t much want to hear about methane because it muddies up the simple story line.” That is, no one wants to hear that the inevitable methane leakage from fracking wells and pipelines, together with the economic displacement of renewables, all but guarantees that gas is no better for the climate than coal—i.e., that it is not a “bridge fuel.” Or about the catastrophic consequences of pretending that it is.

Fight Supremacy Protest, Women Of Color Shine As Leaders Of Resistance

August 23, 2017 Eddie Cepeda, www.bustle.com Resist! Boston, Protests, Racism, White Supremacy, Women of Color

By Eddie Cepeda for Bustle - On Saturday morning, Natalie Sanchez arrived at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston well before counter-protesters started trickling in. The morning fog dissipated as Sanchez readied herself, eagerly setting up two cardboard boxes filled with t-shirts commemorating the Fight Supremacy march she volunteered for. Sanchez distributed branded shirts to organizers and activists as they arrived who — overwhelmingly — were women of color, like her. To be in Boston, as an estimated 40,000 counter-protesters marched against white supremacy, was to bear witness to the fact that the leadership of the resistance in the U.S. is female and Black and Brown. The protesters aimed to silence the alt-right “Free Speech Rally” that saw various planned speakers pull out — including anti-semitic Senate candidate Agustus Invictus, “Proud Boys” leader Gavin McInnes, and Russian state-funded newscaster Cassandra Fairbanks. In the end, only Kyle Chapman (a white supremacist agitator who was recently charged with a felony for allegedly beating counter-protesters with a stick) and Dr. Shiva Ayadurai (a right-wing Senate candidate who claims to have invented email) spoke for less than an hour before the chants of the counter-protesters who were already at Boston Common drowned them out.

Thousands Of Boston Counter-Protesters Swarm Right Wing Rally

August 19, 2017 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Boston, Counter protest, Racism, Right-Wing

By Popular Resistance. Boston, MA - Today's rally, organized by the Boston Free Speech Coalition, in Boston Commons was overwhelmed by counter protesters opposed to racism and bigotry. About a dozen free speech rally participants held their event in a heavily barricaded gazebo in the commons and left early under police escort as they were surrounded by thousands of counter protesters. Happening just a week after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which one counter protester, Heather Heyer, was killed and dozens were injured, the response to the right wing rally was markedly different this time. For starters, organizers of the free speech rally tried to distance themselves from white supremacy and violence this time around, issuing a warning to attendees. And the response by counter protesters has been swift and massive.

Renter Nation Assemblies 2015

August 15, 2017 Staff, www.homesforall.org Organize! Affordable Housing, Boston, Housing, Rent, renter's rights

By Staff of Homes for All - Hundreds gathered and gave direct testimony about the citywide displacement crisis. Grassroots activists also planned strategies and tactics for passing Just Cause Eviction, breaking down by city council district, and they shared a variety of organizing approaches to the displacement crisis through interactive and cultural presentations. Topics included inclusionary development policy, community land trusts and community control of public land, creation of neighborhood stabilization zones, and struggles for local hiring and community benefit standards. The Right to Remain Assembly culminated in a massive citywide action cosponsored by Boston Tenant Coalition, Right to the City Boston, Alternatives for Community & Environment, Boston Workers Alliance, Chinatown Resident Association, Chinese Progressive Association, City Life/Vida Urbana, Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation, Dominican Development Center, Dorchester People for Peace, Fairmount Indigo Community Development Collaborative, Jamaica Plain Progressives, Neighbors United for a Better East Boston, New England United for Justice, SEIU 32BJ.

DAPL Profiteer TD Bank Shut Down In Boston

November 14, 2016 Steve Ahlquist, www.rifuture.org Resist! #NoDAPL, Banks, Boston, Dakota Access Pipeline

By Steve Ahlquist for RI Future - The FANG Collective targeted a TD Bank branch in downtown Boston early Thursday, shutting down operations there for over two hours. Two activists used bike locks to lock their necks to the door handles at the entrance of the bank, while two other people connected to them with lock boxes. Police, swat teams and fire fighters arrived at the scene and spent hours cutting through the lock-boxes and bicycle locks. All four people were eventually extracted and arrested.

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