Occupied in Boston

This posting is a bit out of chronological sequence.  I wanted to come up with something insightful to say about Occupy Boston that we visited on Saturday.  But, in truth, I don’t really have much to add to the discussion.

Trudi and I took the commuter rail to North Station where we met Jolie and the three of us proceeded on bikes rented for $5/day from the Hubway bikesharing program to the Occupy Boston site.  We found the Hubway to be a terrific way to get around Beantown, despite a few technical glitches with the bike docking mechanisms when we wanted to return the bikes.

What we found was a collection of tents pitched elbow to elbow on a patch of hardscape called Dewey Square—outside South Station in the heart of Boston’s Financial District.   The encampment smelled like you’d expect it would.  A small rock band played some not very good covers on an elevated stage at one end of the square, interrupted at times by announcements of an administrative sort which reminded me of the infamous Woodstock warning to stay away from the brown acid.  

On further inspection we discovered that there was order to the tent layout, with sleeping areas, a kitchen preparing largely donated food, a commissary for organizing supplies, a medical tent, and even a library.  There are activities planned on the stage throughout the day.  An activist friend of Jolie’s was speaking in the afternoon on the economy and the US military budget.

There wasn’t much of anything happening at about 1pm when we were there, and we didn’t feel ambitious enough to try to start a discussion with residents.  The ubiquitous signage told the story… the greed of a small number of powerful financiers is threatening to bring our democracy down, and we aren’t going to take it any more.

What are my feelings about the Occupy movement?  I applaud these folks in their efforts to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble.  As the movement has spread to over 100 cities around the US, it certainly has given focus and voice to the frustration and anger a lot of people, including myself,  feel over lost jobs, slashed public services,  and evaporation of hard earned retirement savings.  I fear that the effort will be derailed by inevitable clashes with police enforcing city ordinances that will turn media coverage and public attention away from economic and social issues and  toward instances of “lawlessness”. 

But hooray for the Occupiers for being brave enough to try.  As Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times last week:

“You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.”

As for us, we ate some terrific vegan sandwiches from the Clover food truck, and then retrieved bikes from the South Station Hubway dock and pedaled to the Institute of Contemporary Art.  The exhibits were enlightening and the building was way neat, especially the water view.