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Comments
Everyone's drinking Kool-Aid
including Carroll. "Environmental impacts", "health risks"- a lot of exaggeration and baloney, including the ridiculously inflated landscaping estimate. Somebody call City Year- I bet they'll do it for something close to free. And Occcupy was collecting donations for the restoration- does anybody know how much they ended up taking in?
Occupy Boston raised $3,000
and offered their labor, last time I looked.
$4,159.52 raised so far
the OB people asked the Greenway Conservancy what it would cost to restore Dewey (on multiple occasions.) They said $12-15K.
Now the city, which brought in bulldozers (to demolish tents), trashed the sprinkler system. They say the cost will be $60K.
If I was OB, I'd pay for the re-sodding and let the city pay for the sprinkler system.
Yeah
I was wondering about this, then saw pictures of the aftermath with the dozes and trash trucks right on the lawn.
It's amazing in the end that the city did more damage to the greenway then the people occupying it for 2 months...
My office is right next to
My office is right next to Dewey Square. I've been walking past or through the camp every day since it started, and seeing it out the window multiple times per day. And I honestly have no idea what planet the Herald is on. Constant fretting about stench and destroyed property! No, really there wasn't.
Among other things, this patch was never landscaped like the ones further north, with paths and hills. It was flat grass (which will need to be re-seeded or sodded, yes), flanked by two thin strips of plantings. In one of those two strips, there were delicate-looking trellises where edible plants were grown in the summer. Last week, I noticed that ONE of the trellises was slightly askew. I was always impressed with how careful the whole group was being.
Foreboding area
Although I was no fan of the Occupiers, they really did very little damage. That area of the Greenway was a little used, unattractive and barren expanse at best. Surrounded by heavy traffic on both sides, and housing that foreboding looking generator building bunker thing. I have to laugh at any reference to such wasteland as "a park". Even though it could not be closer to the center of things, it always gave off the feeling of being "remote".
I don't remember hearing NFL
reporters bring up 'the bad smell' in the locker room. if you're ever been in football team locker room after a practice or game, you know it smells. I question the "bad smell" meme as an obligatory element in reports about Occupy Boston at Dewey. When I went down, about half a dozen times, I didn't catch a whiff of what seems to have been attached to them.
Occupee-pee
I was down there a number of times and I'd say about half the time (actually earlier on) I got a pretty strong odor of urine. As time went on I think they must have managed to stop the public urination thing, because I didn't really notice it.
The impact of "the occupation" on that strip of lawn really seems minimal. And as some people have mentioned, there was some sort of fund set up to reseed the thing (it appears the sod was brought in rapidly and I doubt if those funds, if they exist, were used for it).
Greenway is no worse off for it and the conversations and debates started are well worth it, if it means folks feel motivated to change things in some way -- whether that means direct actions in their communities, more strategic protests or just demanding more of the candidates (and actually voting). No need to inflate this thing that much nor to slag it off so harshly.
Who needs two newspapers when
Who needs two newspapers when you have Gelzinis calling Howie Carr a "media blowhard?"