Hey, there! Log in / Register
Another protest shuts streets, subway stops, this time in Somerville and Cambridge
By adamg on Fri, 12/05/2014 - 6:25pm
Central Square die-in. Photo by Central Square.
Protesters started at Tufts University, blocked up Davis Square, where the T shut down the subway station, then moved down Mass. Ave. to Porter and onto Harvard, where a large contingent of T cops blocked the portal into the busway and then had the gates to the main pedestrian entrance to the station locked. As protesters moved down JFK Street, the entrance was re-opened.
Around 6:25 p.m., the vanguard of protesters was approaching Central Square.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Any word on current status of this one?
How badly hosed is Mass Ave in Central?
They just finished the Mountain Pose
So I suspect this outdoor yoga class is almost finished.
First time you've written a funny post!
Seriously that was funny. Good for you Swirly Girl
Glad to live in a country that allows this!
As the folks are laying down in the street, protesting the sad death of a criminal resisting arrest with health problems, they should be glad they are not being rounded up and shot by the military police / corrupt government that occurs so often in other countries. Protesting in the US may get you roughed up by the cop, but it won't get you killed, blacklisted, or your family killed.
This is the American way of life - to make mistakes, to protest these mistakes, and for the media to feed on it. Any of the folks in these protests know of another black man treated unfairly, named Wilie Bennett? How about Rodney King?
Heck, if you want to talk about blacks and the justice system, if you're someone like OJ, you can get off, or if you're Bill Cosby, just pay enough to deny and suppress.
It is the cops keeping people safe. How many lives do cops save per week? How come these protestors didn't lie down in Egeslton square, or middle of Melena Case, or Mattapan? Because they're more afraid of black areas than of 'racist cops' because if any of these dimwits ended up stuck in Roxbury, they'd need a cop's help.
A sad day when people want to make a saint out of a petty thief with an unfortunate death. It is the same as people posting photos about animal cruelty - go back to your pumpkin spice lattes, and shut up.
Also, best to just ignore Swirly - if she was really as progressive and above it all as she thought she was, she'd have moved out of Medford and into Portland years ago.
Tell it to this guy
Do you even know who he is? I bet you don't. Why don't you avail him with your wisdom?
Better yet, why don't you read what he has to say.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/serpico-wedge-driven-police-society-...
Have you heard of Kent State University?
or Jackson State, for that matter?
The best part of it was at
The best part of it was at MIT. The leader with the megaphone told everyone to yell out the name of someone they know who's been murdered by the police. Most seemed at a loss for an answer and mumbled incoherently, 1 guy repeatedly yelled, "Trayvon Martin! Trayvon Martin!".
Kinda wonder how far they made it
Cambridge cops were giving them an escort through Central. Everyone seemed relatively peaceful, although I bet they wanted to go through the Harvard busway (I've wanted to do this at 3 AM on a bike some time).
They gummed up Mass Ave by Mem Drive for half an hour but cleared out of there by 7:15. Did they go across the river? Or did it break up once CPD handed them over to the Staties for the trip to Boston?
They were allowed to enter
They were allowed to enter the Mass Ave bridge conditionally. They agreed to die one more time then disperse.
ZOMG ARREST THEM IMMEDIATELY
Most of 'em aren't in the crosswalk and they're so totally blocking the bike lane that I can't even see it in the photo! Arrest them immediately in the name of all that is holy!
This kind of stupidity and arrogance is like an unchecked cancer
It spreads and spreads.
Which "cancer" do you mean?
Apathy? Or people with trust funds complaining that they are inconvenienced by the struggles of others?
My guess would be that there
My guess would be that there are a lot more trust funds in the crowd of people who are fake dying than the communters trying to get home from working all day.
Trust funds or welfare funds?
With occutards, there were probably more EBT cards than trust funds or dorm dining cards. Whichever way, many not employed.
The radical chic people that're the younger siblings of the 60's
are the ones that're the cancer, only they're more disgusting, have more of a sense of entitlement, and they're more entitled to be willfully stupid, like you.
That being said, SwirlyGrrl, here's a suggestion: Go f**k yourself.
Such a priviliged child you are
Anyone who doesn't think a million dollars is very much money, and was born into wealth and is subsidized by inheritance/trust funds, shouldn't talk about entitlement, IMHO.
http://www.universalhub.com/2014/mark-walhberg-will-get-least-one-vote-p...
I actually said to this to
I actually said to this to some idiot there, among harsher words to try to get the fuck around them.
So, you want a police state?
You could always move to Russia.
Or Latin America, Or Afirca
Swirly Girl demonstrating her naivete as usual.
Try confronting the police in a "nation of color" in a place like Africa or Latin America. NEWSFLASH: They won't play softball with you like the hyper sensitive politically correct police in the US.
Talk about privilege.
Yawn
Snore.
Park st die-in
The Transit cops must have had a good laugh at Park street when the protestors staged their ten minute die-in on platforms where every bodily fluid known to man and germs from diseases ranging from TB to the Plague are present. I hope they all got their flu shots.
I would have paid $100
For one of those Friday night Bike Phalanx things. You know, where you get 200-plus privileged white children on bicycles, that ride en masse through parts of town intentionally ignoring basic traffic rules. (Unlike how they ride at other times, completely considerate of others and in line with all traffic rules...)
Can you imagine how much fun it would be to see Bike Phalanx meet Mass Ave Die In? An immutable force against an immutable force. The universe as we know it, torn asunder! God, that would have been the best possible street theater.
The term is "Critical Mass"
As opposed to this city-wide road-jamming event called "rush hour", when thousands of even more over-privileged white people in suburban tanks that weigh 400x what a bike does and cost 400x as much drive through every area of town intentionally ignoring basic traffic rules.
More over-privileged?
Why the assumption that anyone driving a "suburban tank" is more privileged? Not everyone lives and works within biking distance. And ignoring traffic rules? You're right - cyclists never do that.
Forgive Swirly Girl
LIfe if simpler when you over-generalize.
You get more street cred when you complain only white people form the burbs drive gas guzzlers. Guess she's never noticed the many SUVs and mini vans in Dorchester and Mattapan. But that's the key: she's never mingled with the people she claims to defend.
Show of hands, please...
...how many of you people complaining about "privileged white children" are yourselves anything BUT white. And, if you're being honest, privileged.
*crickets*
Sure, hipsters and college students make easy targets,
but I'm glad to see these protests in Boston. The dismissive tone of some of these comments suggests that some of us mistrust the motives of certain kinds of protesters (White? Rich? Young? Unwashed, hairy, and/or hipstery?) Our fair city doesn't exactly have a great reputation with racial matters. Seems to me like having protesters from a variety of backgrounds might be a good thing. *shrug*
(I'm assuming it's not the black protesters whose actions are being questioned with such casual disdain. This isn't Boston.com, after all.)
"Occupy X" fatigue?
I think a reason the public has become jaded to these protests is fallout from the various occupy protest (failures) that have not brought change any better than strongly worded letters. So, might as well hold these protests where they don't disrupt other people's lives and cost them in needless police overtime.
I think "Occupy" was a huge success
Prior to "occupy", wealth disparity and the disappearance of the middle class were topics mostly talked about by economics, in academic papers accompanied by plenty of calculus. Now, wealth disparity and the disappearance of the middle class are top-of-mind issues for many.
Your conclusion is 180
Your conclusion is 180 degrees opposite the logical conclusion, given your premise. Occupy, according to you, did nothing (questionable premise), and so the answer is to hold all protests out of sight and out of mind, so as to not inconvenience those who are wedded to the status quo. Yeah, that makes lots of sense.
Yeah, kind of dismissive
I live in Central. Last night's demo began at Tufts and ended at MIT, making its way through Harvard, Radcliffe, and Lesley. It didn't begin in Washington-Elms, or Cambridge Rindge and Latin. It was people I don't know from outside my neighborhood, "dying" on our streets in my neighborhood. When it begins here, and includes people I know, live with, and talk to every day, I'll take it more seriously. But thanks helping me prove my point.
My source
My source, who was in the march, tells me that a lot of random people along the route came out of their homes and cars and out of shops to join in. the reactionaries complaining here are not speaking for the majority of people.
Frank Serpico speaks out on police abuses
He should know a lot about that.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the...
A hero and a pariah
Serpico, a genuinely brave, principled, and moral man, risked his life to try and end corruption in the police department he belonged to. That he is still, all these years later, reviled and shunned by cops is a telling indication of their attitude problem. The crimes he worked to expose are, in their eyes, less important than his violation of their code of silence.
The same attitude leads them to close ranks with the thugs in their ranks who beat and kill people just because they can. The system that's supposed to hold them accountable is made up of people who depend on them for cooperation. That system is working fine for the cops. It isn't working for us. People are having their hard-won property and their lives taken away by the out-of-control police of this country.
The institutions that have the power to change this situation haven't been doing anything about it, but if the protests continue, those institutions might wake up and actually do something.