[Street] Media Strategy: Reframing the Picture of OB
Bruce Ehrlich
occupybruce at gmail.com
Sat Nov 26 08:54:39 EST 2011
In anticipation of Sunday's media strategy summit, I submit the below idea
for consideration. It's my attempt to reframe Occupy Boston not as an
intrusion into the city but as an intrinsic part of the Boston experience.
-- Bruce
*
*
*REFRAMING THE PICTURE OF OCCUPY BOSTON*
*A Proposal for Long-Term Occupation*
*The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible
right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the
same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
-- *Samuel Adams**
* *
*The [Rose Kennedy Greenway] shall be treated as a public park and as a
traditional open public forum without limiting the right of free
speech – *M.G.L
Chapter 306
* *
*The Conservancy works to ensure that the Greenway is a thriving and
welcoming public amenity that is open to all.* -- Guiding Principles for
use of the Rose Kennedy Greenway
The Freedom Trail celebrates the history of Boston’s early revolutionary
era. But our nation’s founders, including Samuel Adams, understood that
the protection of our liberties and freedoms would be an ongoing process.
Occupy Boston fills the need, in 2011, for a new movement of Americans to
reclaim their democracy.
Situated within the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Occupy Boston also realizes the
original vision of the Greenway, which was to include a series of civic
buildings such as a botanical Garden Under Glass, a Boston history museum,
and a cultural center. While those earlier plans have floundered, Occupy
Boston has succeed in creating a new kind of civic space that brings
vibrant activity to the Greenway and serves as contemporary manifestation
of Boston’s revolutionary spirit.
Visitors can travel to Plimoth Plantation or Sturbridge Village to see how
history was lived in early America. Occupy Boston has become a new
destination for families, unions, churches and school groups, who are eager
to learn how Americans are still creating their history and how to
participate in it.
Yet all of this is at risk because the City of Boston has resisted attempts
by Occupy Boston to bring more durable structures and other needed health
and safety improvements to the site.
Occupy Boston strives to create an improved facility, one that would
enhance the health and safety of the resident occupiers, provide an
improved experience for visitors to the site, and better meet the needs of
nearby businesses, workers and residents. This would require the
installation of winter tents, semi-permanent structures, and some minor
infrastructure improvements (primarily electricity, water and waste
systems). The City of Boston has routinely allowed similar improvements
for entertainment and sporting events such as Peter Pan, the Enchanted
Village, and The Boston Marathon. Occupy Boston, an organized expression
of public participation in American democracy, deserves no less. Occupy
Boston has already most of the funding that would be required to finance
the proposed improvements.
Occupy Boston’s Garden of Democracy consists primarily of a tent city that
houses the key functions of this new political movement, including: food,
information, general assembly, media, medical, library, logistics,
spiritualism, and housing. A greenhouse that will be constructed on the
site of the current garden will extend the growing season year round and
serve as an educational center for sustainable food production – Dewey
Square will finally have a Garden Under Glass.
New structures containing the above activities will enable Occupy Boston to
better accommodate the needs of visitors and schoolchildren, while
enhancing the day-to-day functioning of the site for its primary political
purposes. Visitors will: gain hands-on experience in the use of new
social media to communicate social and political ideas; be able to connect
and communicate directly with other occupations and social movements around
the nation and the globe; observe and participate in the horizontal
democracy of the General Assembly, a contemporary analogue of the
traditional New England town meeting; and have an opportunity to spend
several night as an occupier in one of the tents set-aside for overnight
visitors.
Occupy Boston's Garden of Democracy is an innovative making history
experience where visitors are encouraged to envision the future of America
-- There's nothing quite like it!
*Media components*
Occupy Boston website: add a Visitors Page link to the top banner on the
home page.
Informational articles and advertisements for publications targeted to
church, labor, civic, and educational groups.
Letters-to-the editor of the Globe, Herald, and community papers that
describe the positive experience of visiting Occupy Boston.
Op-ed articles supporting Occupy Boston written by sympathetic civic
leaders and opinion makers.
Outreach/Visitor brochures distributed to church and schools groups,
unions, etc., inviting these groups to visit the Occupy Boston and
otherwise participate in the movement.
Visitor guides to be distributed at the Info Tent.
Occupy Boston Teachers Guide – a bibliography and collection of materials
about the financial crisis, economic inequality, the influence of money in
politics, the 99% movement in the United States, and how to get involved.
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