Occupy Boston unites workers, students

WW photo: Stevan Kirschbaum

An estimated 1,000 workers, students and activists marched from Occupy Boston/Dewey Square on Nov. 2 in a strong show of solidarity with Occupy Oakland. Many of the marchers were among the 141 arrested three weeks ago by Boston riot police for expanding Occupy Boston onto the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a patch of land adjacent to its current site. Occupy coverage in Workers World newspaper was well received, as were “Occupy for Jobs” placards carried by Bail Out the People participants. The protesters marched through downtown Boston, stopping at the Hyatt Hotel to hear Ed Childs, chief shop steward of UNITE-HERE Local 26, condemn the dismissal last year of 98 immigrant housekeeping workers. Childs told the crowd, “Hyatt’s greed is what oppression by the 1 percent is all about.” He led the crowd in chanting, “Union! Union! Union!” and “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” The march proceeded to the State House to protest state budget cuts and then marched on to the Boston School Committee headquarters to support hundreds of Fenway High School students and teachers, who had marched there to protest the moving and merging of their school with another one having inferior facilities. Earlier in the day, after having walked out of several area colleges, hundreds of students marched from Dewey Square through the financial district protesting exorbitant student debt burdens. Many returned to Northeastern University at the end of the march to support students facing school suspension discipline for having been arrested in the Boston police crackdown on the attempted expansion of Occupy Boston.

— Gerry Scoppettuolo and Frank Neisser