Occupy Boston movement members have set up a WePay site asking people to donate money to restore the Dewey Square portion of the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway, where protesters have set up their encampment.
The link to the online WePay site for the Greenway Restoration Fund is on Occupy Boston’s website. So far, the fund has raised nearly $685, which is less than 5 percent of its $15,000 goal.
The Greenway is covered with blue tarps and tents of all colors and sizes. Blocks of wood from picket signs litter the ground and hay is strewn in various places. Cardboard posters line the streets, and voices can be heard across the square for more supplies. Occupy Boston has formed its own community with kitchen, library and media tents.
Since the movement’s beginning, the grass has withered into a mud floor, and many of the bushes have been mangled by the surplus of tents. The branches of the bare trees are being used to support tents and tarps. The activity has been harsh on the environment in the Greenway, but Occupy Boston officials said they have plans to clean up after themselves once they leave.
“Cleaning up after ourselves and repairing what we damage is an important part of modeling how we want our governments and corporations to behave!” the Occupy Boston Greenway Restoration Fund’s website said.
Nawontah Waters, who works in the logistics tent of the camp, said that the group has plans for restoration.
“It will be a complete overhaul,” Waters said. “Once we leave, we’re planning on putting down new grass and repairing the shrubs that have been damaged.”
He said that the fund is raising money for supplies, and the Occupy protesters plan to volunteer to come back to the site to work on the cleanup. He said they plan to do all major replanting with the proceeds from the fund and to make a donation to the Greenway fund.
“We’ll definitely redo the grass, because as you can see, there isn’t any left,” Waters said.
Devon Pendleton, an Occupy Boston spokesman, said that it might take $12,000 to restore the site.
“I’ve been here for nearly three and a half weeks and we try to do little cleanups every so often,” he said. “Everyone grabs a trash bag and gets to it.”
Pendleton works in the camp’s media tent. He said that the overwhelming support of neighboring colleges was exhibited in the outcome of the general assemblies of Colleges Occupy Boston.
Members of the Occupy Boston team said they are not discouraged about the movement’s progress. For now, they said they are focused on raising supplies for the fast-approaching winter because they have no plans to leave yet, and are concentrating their efforts on obtaining donations to their General Fund.
When protesters pack up, they said they are prepared to leave Dewey Square looking better than ever to commemorate their cause.
“We’re going to leave this place nicer than we found it,” said a man, who wished to remain anonymous, as he wandered through the masses of tents currently occupying Dewey Square. “It’s going to put the rest of the Greenway to shame.”
On the Occupy Boston Greenway Restoration Fund website, people could leave comments.
“If government can clean up Wall Street’s mess, why not Occupy Boston’s mess,” said Edmond Hatfield in a comment on the website. “O[h] wait a minute, Occupy Boston might want to take responsibility for their own action.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
