Our reporter sets out to see the revolution — five Occupations in five days
By CHRIS FARAONE | October 12, 2011
Zuccotti Park was first. Dewey Square followed. By the time the Phoenix staff showed up at Occupy Boston to hold our weekly editorial meeting last Wednesday, the Boston squatters were no longer the new kids on America's occupied block — and the protest was escalating before our eyes. Occupiers were facing off with cops wielding fistfuls of plastic cuffs, busloads of union nurses were arriving, and Cornel West parachuted in to lay down some throwback Civil Rights vocals.
I looked at my editors. They looked at me. This thing was live and spreading up and down the coast like red tide. I knew there was only one thing to say: "I'll leave in the morning."
>> OCCUPY BOSTON: follow our coverage at thephoenix.com/occupyboston <<
I would fly down to Washington immediately, and train and bus my way back toward the heart of the outbreak in Manhattan, stopping every place along the way where the 99 percent has taken hold. I wanted to see where it all might be headed — if, in three weeks, Occupy Boston might look like Occupy Wall Street, and if the other mass actions spawning in the Hub's wake might come to resemble the scene unfolding here.
Related:
C.T. Butler is back on the front lines, Inside the Occupy Boston media struggle, Photos: Occupy Boston celebrates one-month anniversary at Dewey Square, More 
- C.T. Butler is back on the front lines
C.T. Lawrence Butler hasn't been to Boston in nearly a decade.
- Inside the Occupy Boston media struggle
It's a familiar scene outside the Occupy Boston media tent: a local television news reporter and her cameraman approach cautiously, looking for a clue.
- Photos: Occupy Boston celebrates one-month anniversary at Dewey Square
Occupy Boston celebrates the one-month anniversary of their protest at Dewey Square on October 30, 2011.
- Are cities trying to freeze the Occupy movement to death?
As New York City police scrubbed Occupy Wall Street clean of its inhabitants and their belongings Tuesday morning, emotions ran high back in Boston .
- Evicting Occupy
At some point during the online reaction to the New York Police Department's eviction of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park, someone wrote: "Knock over the hive and even more bees will swarm."
- After the occupation
From Oakland to New York, city police departments and their elected overlords are crushing lawful Occupy movements in their midst.
- Photos: Occupy Boston on the National Day of Action
On November 17, 2011, hundreds of Occupy Boston and MassUniting marchers (labor unions, community organizers; SEUI, Local Ironworkers, Jobs for Justice, and more) took to the city streets again in solidarity with another global day of action.
- Photos: Scenes from Before and After the Raid of Zuccotti Park
Three photographic takes on the Occupy movement, in Boston and NYC.
- Photos: Before and after the raid of Zuccotti Park
Plus, OWS protesters invade the Upper East Side.
- The Right To Occupy
Occupy Boston and the City of Boston face each other in state superior court next week, for a hearing on the city's right to remove the protesters' encampment on Dewey Square .
- With support among police quietly growing, can Occupy cross over the thin blue line?
As Occupy camps from coast to coast face evictions — and in many cases have already been pushed out of parks and plazas like so much human trash — it's clear that the institutional response to the movement is escalating dangerously.
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Topics:
News Features
, Occupy Boston, Occupy DC, Occupy Baltimore
