“Greed is a disease and it’s got the whole country on its knees,” activist Dave Tree said to a crowd of about 30 of his fellow protesters at Occupy Boston’s first Historical March Campaign on Thursday.
Just a few days after its one-month anniversary, Occupy Boston protesters, including Tree, walked from Dewey Square to Faneuil Hall Marketplace, chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!”
“The Historical March Campaign will consist of rally marches to historical sites,” said protester Devon Pendleton, “[The marches] will remind people of the events and link them to problems in the present day.”
Pendleton said this was the third time in two days that Occupy Boston had marched into Faneuil Hall. He said that the next Historical March might go to the site of the Boston Tea Party.
The march went through the Financial District, led by a waving, upside-down American flag and a black flag.
The marchers, some of whom held handmade signs and wore black cloths over their mouths, also shouted, “This is what democracy looks like! We are the 99 percent! So are you!”
They merged as a unit onto the street, stopped traffic and proceeded toward Faneuil Hall.
There, Occupiers stood around Tree, who was the main guest speaker.
Tree, who is a former punk rocker and Boston native, works in areas of art including music, photography and graphic arts to promote political awareness.
Tree spoke into a bullhorn as he introduced the site of the Boston Massacre. He asked for a moment of silence for those who “died for our liberty, right to be free and not to be taxed” during the Boston Massacre in 1770.
“The small minority holds the wealth,” Tree said. “They need to share the wealth. [The revolutionaries] died for liberty and will not have died in vain.”
He began singing, “This Land is Your Land” with altered lyrics about government corruption.
He said the founding fathers were the one percent, and during war, soldiers, who were considered the working class, would come home to debt and often jail time.
Tree said this is what revolutionaries died for and, still today, this “freedom” has not been achieved.
“Corporations exploit land and labor for a small majority to achieve wealth,” Tree said. “Sounds like tyranny to me.”
The protesters finished their march back to Dewey Square and said, “We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!”
The display of protesting raises awareness and gets in the government’s face in a peaceful way, said protester Mark Hoffman.
Hoffman said he comes down to stand with Occupy Boston after he is finished with class. After loosing his job at Citibank in 2008, Hoffman said he pursued a number of trades to try to maintain a standard of living and eventually settled with going back to school.
“This affects everyone, not just the twenty-something-year-olds, but also the middle class, the blue collars,” he said.
Hoffman, who attends North Bennet Street School in Boston, said he comes to hold signs and raise awareness with the little time he has.
“I want to work, but not have to work,” he said, speaking about his future.
The Historical March Campaign is expected to continue to other sites in Boston, though no date has been set for the next one.
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.
My quote “I want to work, but not have to work,” is in the context of aging and retirement. I want to be able to afford to retire but I also hope to be able to keeping working out of choice.
Thank you for visiting me at Occupy Boston.
Mark A. Hoffman