Occupy Tucson has arranged for our General Assembly to be held in the Green Room at the Armory Park Senior Center for the summer. The General Assembly will be held at the same time of 10:00 a.m.
May 082013
May 112013
Listen to A View From Slightly Off Center, hosted by David Yerkey, 91.3 FM, at 4:00 pm Sunday, May 12, with Billy Lolos talking about Monsanto and GMOs. And if you would like to donate to help with the May 25 March Against Monsanto, you can do so at http://www.gofundme.com/2tzbuo
The March Against Monsanto is a global event. (See http://march-against-monsanto.com for information about other March Against Monsanto events.)
Tucson’s event will start on Saturday, May 25, March Against Monsanto is hosting an event from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Reid Park, with the march itself scheduled to begin at noon. From the group’s Facebook page, “We are marching to raise the awareness and consciousness for creating our own safe and sustainable food system free of GMOs and other harmful pesticides and toxins.” More info is at http://facebook.com/pages/March-Against-Monsanto-Tucson.
May 092013
Pending Proposals – Held over to following week.
New Proposals – None
Apr 292013
Proposal for May 4 Meeting: Occupy Tucson should participate in Label GMOs Arizona, proposed by John.
Moved to May 4 Meeting: Code of Conduct proposed by Ethan.
Apr 242013
Hi Mayor & Council,
As if you didn’t have enough to read already?!?!
Well, here is an article on streetcars – and how developers love streetcars because they create locked-in routes that get those greedy capitalists just squirming in anticipation of the fixed flow of consumers to their doorstops with dollars to drop.
The City of Tucson has considered and catered to the desires of developers in myriad ways. Along with the rest of our country. The “Perpetual Growth” paradigm has been taught in our universities since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
But times are changing because of this legacy. Our planet is heating up. Our oil reserves have dropped to the bottom half of the glass and are now harder, more expensive and more dangerous to extract, transport, and refine. Our food supply is being consolidated into a few corporate hands, and genetically engineered to provide proprietary protection (and Goddess knows what else). Economies around the globe are crashing and people are rising up.
Tucson must get ahead of this curve. We have to adopt ways of powering down, reducing our carbon emissions, securing our food supply, shepherding the natural resources we have been blessed with, and building social capital.
This is your job. You campaigned for this service. I tried to, too, with dismal results. The Green Party may be too small to attract much support, but the 10 Key Values and the refusal to accept corporate donations set us apart in positive ways. I would like to invite each of you to begin to consider switching your party registration to Green and starting a movement here in Tucson. You could all jump at once. With the national attention that would garner, we could be role models in the Transition Town Movement.
Thank you for your service. Thank you for taking the heat and listening to all sides. Among your constituents are those steeped in astrology who point to the changing of ages: from the Piscean Age (based on belief) to the Age of Aquarius (remember the song? this age is based on science and reason).
Among your constituents, even though they don’t vote, are the poor, the dispossessed, and the mentally ill. We have responsibilities to the members of our society who are the most challenged. Every religion is based on our connection to the universal energies and our relationship to fellow humans. Our current religion seems to have slipped into money worship instead.
As you look for ways to cut the budget, I would suggest you quit paying those ridiculously large consulting fees. There are plenty of informed and interested people willing to consult with you for free or at vastly reduced prices. Dave Ewoldt, Tres English, our UA Professors, retirees, the list is long. Look for ways to activate existing dormant resources. Find methods to engage and uplift the impoverished. Start by protecting our open space and retaining the current location and look of the Ronstadt Transit Center.
Thank you so much for your time and attention. If you would like voter registration forms, or if you are interested in discussing this novel suggestion further, I would be delighted to meet with you. For free.
All my best,
Mary
Apr 212013
Tell the U.S. Senate “Hell NO!”
Please make the call & keep calling all day Monday.
Tell them HELL NO to CISPA!
Obama administration has to make official statement on CISPA, because the petition at whitehouse.gov petition site passed 100,000 signature mark.
Apr 202013
Join Occupy Tucson at Reid Park, west of the bandshell, April 20, 2013, at 11:00 am for fun at Earth Day. Don’t be late!
Apr 202013
Read about the American Anti-Corruption Act, which would transform how elections are financed, how lobbyists influence politics, and how political money is disclosed.
Apr 182013
The second print edition of the Occupied Tucson Citizen has just come off the presses with a print run of 10,000 copies and is now being distributed across Tucson and southern Arizona. This issue features the second of our series of irreverent profiles of Tucson’s One Percent, in this case Jim Click (“Click Here for Climate Catastrophe”). There are also articles about the Bus Riders Union mobilizing to protect the Ronstadt Transit Center against commercial development; how local activists exposed the City Council’s subversion of democracy (which they do by routinely declaring emergencies so resolutions aren’t subject to public review); a digest of important news events the Star didn’t bother covering; how the people of the land are Idle No More; an updated version of our guide to free meals in Tucson; our digest of global resistance; and much more, including art, poetry and, even, fashion. Find a copy in a cafe, occupied newspaper bin, community college or university near you. Or stop by our office at the Historic Y to pick up a copy. To help with distribution please contact us at contact@occupiedtucsoncitizen.org.
Apr 102013
Hi Karin,
Last night after I addressed the Mayor & Council during the call to the audience, I went to the annual Campus Farms Neighborhood Association meeting. We have just one annual meeting in my new neighborhood.
Bonnie Poulos does a great job. She said that 4,500 invitations to attend the annual meeting were mailed out. But only 1%, or about 45 people, attended though. That’s dismal. How we expect our communities to thrive when there are so few resources devoted to the health and well-being of democratic involvement is a mystery to me. Cara Curtis was there to tell us how the police were protecting us, though, and what to do when we are burglarized and how to call in the choppers.
This morning, I got up early to report to my 6-9am volunteer shift as a survey administrator for the Ronstadt Transit Center. There were 15 people at the training session I went to for this event on Monday night. Most of those were paid employees of the Downtown Partnership, Sun Tran, and Imagine Greater Tucson. The few Bus Riders Union representatives were all volunteers, giving up our time for free and swallowing associated costs (transportation, parking, lost opportunities to spend time elsewhere) because we felt it was worthwhile.
The folks I encountered at the RTC this morning were mostly poor. Many refused to participate in the survey, saying they did not trust the system, or expressing a belief that it was all window dressing and their opinions did not matter anyway. And some were clearly mentally ill and unable to engage in a civic endeavor designed to help them help themselves.
Pam Powers shared this with me, and I want to make sure you have access to it, too…
We need to strengthen our social fabric. Our planet is heating up, our economies are crashing, and our petroleum supplies are shrinking. More of our global neighbors hate and fear us all the time. Rampant consumerism has shown itself to be hollow joy that requires increasingly more of it to deliver ever decreasing rewards (like all addictions).
Please consider the needs of the least among us when you sit at the table with the well-dressed, impeccably coifed courtesans of commerce who urge you to privatize our public spaces. The people using the RTC want clean restrooms. One woman asked for hand sanitizer dispensers on the buses (since the buses are now being hosed out with water and no longer disinfected and she fears for the safety of her baby). Several asked why there is no shelter from the rain. Some pointed to the lack of water fountains in a desert environment. NOT ONE expressed a longing for Planet Hollywood, Starbucks, Nordstroms, or other corporatized commercial businesses. They don’t have the money to spend at retail establishments. Truth is, fewer people do have anything to spend after they pay their rent, cover their utility bills, buy their food, and take care of transportation costs.
At last night’s Campus Farms NA meeting, there were informational presentations by Lend A Hand and by Watershed Management Group. These are great organizations. But they do not serve the truly needed. We cannot just lock up the poor in for-profit prisons or force them out of the public spaces. Their/our numbers are growing. Panic rooms will not protect the rich when climate disasters force massive disruptions. We need more resilience in our social fabric.
I know the Mayor believes that turning college students loose with their parents’ credit cards is the answer. I respectfully disagree. Only about a quarter of our population attends college and Dr. Chris Segrin of the UA Communication Dept. has done studies on today’s students, raised by “helicopter parents” who are intimately involved in their students’ lives and finances (http://uanews.org/story/the-dangers-of-overparenting ). We are raising our future leaders to be inept, narcissistic, and disconnected. We are in deep doo-doo.
Please consider how we can pursue better alternatives. Occupy Tucson was in the public spaces to try to do that. We were branded as criminals and persecuted. My belief is that Occupiers provided remarkable public services that did not cost the City a dime (well, other than the costs incurred in squashing the movement - costs that should not have been authorized). We managed to generate beneficial outcomes by creating a conduit to channel resources from those who could afford to share with those who needed help, but who didn’t have the social connections to meet their needs.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best wishes,
Mary