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Kendall Square Cinema employees join union |
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by Pete Stidman, pstidman (nospam) yahoo.com |
 After only three months of organizing at the Kendall Square Cinema, the Landmark Theatre chain's biggest theatre, employees voted 17 to one to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 791 on July 30.
“Kendall Square cinema is now 100% union,” yelled a cinema employee as movie-goers left the theatre, “wall to wall union!”
The vote comes as a result of recent management changes, lack of full-time status even for employees who average over 35 hours per week, small and sporadic raises, and a starting wage of $7.25 that hasn't changed since 2002, according to employee and organizer Lauren Ryder. |
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31 Jul 2005
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Filed under: News / Labor : Media |
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Review: Batman Shrugged |
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by Jason Pramas, info (nospam) massglobalaction.org |
 What if Ayn Rand and Mussolini got together to write a Hollywood movie? The result would look something very like Batman Begins--the new blockbuster prequel to the Batman screen franchise.
Now, admittedly, the Batman worldview--be it in comic, graphic novel, or movie form--has never been very progressive. But its timeless noir myth about a good-but-flawed man fighting for his own kind of justice in a cruel world has resonated with people across the political spectrum for decades now. Because it's hard to argue that there aren't nasty criminals, bad cops and corrupt politicians out there in dire need of some comeupance. And I'm sure it was refreshing back in the 1930s when the original comic series was launched to see a hero comfortable enough with his sexuality to fight crime in a tight-fitting bat suit.
Still this latest Batman film outing leaves much to be desired--despite the many promising innovations that have steered the movie series away from the fantastical and towards the more recognizable, but still properly archetypal, settings and plot devices that clearly relate to viewers everyday lives. Director Christopher Nolan, famed for the 2001 cult hit, Memento, actually made realism his mantra for the movie--according to interviews on the Batman Begins website. For example, aside from a futuristic monorail system and a Dickensian paupers' quarter ("The Narrows"), Batman's hometown, Gotham, looks pretty much like any modern metropolis. It's also worth noting that, surprisingly, there was not a single recognizable "product shot" in entire film. Not a Coke (or Nokia, or Lexus) logo in sight. |
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24 Jun 2005
Modified: 27 Jun 2005 |
Filed under: Review / Media |
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'Zine Library Opens in Harvard Square |
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by h-fries, |
 A new library has opened up right in Harvard Square--The Papercut 'Zine Library. But they don't have any books. Instead, they have 'zines.
'Zines are self-published magazines that address universes of different topics. There are 'zines about being a substitute teacher, how to compost, growing up as an immigrant, animal rights and high school crushes. They're becoming increasingly popular as everyone starts to make their own 'zine.
Now there are 'zine libraries all around the country. This radio piece documents the opening of Boston's new 'zine library. |
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22 May 2005
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Filed under: News / Media |
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FBI Pressures Anarchist Internet Administrator Into Disclosing IP Addresses |
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by Jed Brandt, jedbrandt (nospam) gmail.com |
 (from the Open Newswire): It's all getting very real. The administrator of flag.blackened.net, a major anarchist internet host, has gone public with a harrowing account of FBI thuggery.
According to the report on their discussion forums, two comments were posted to subdomains hosted by the server, including Infoshop.org, which claimed responsibility for "propaganda of the deed." Although the administrator "Dave" is under some kind of government gag order, he did say this: "Both incidents involve topics which are completely out of line for consideration here at flag and really I can only view them in two ways. Either people are simply ignorant about the murderous history of the FBI, or, as is my belief in one case, they are trying to make flag vulnerable to government intrusion." |
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02 Apr 2005
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Filed under: News / Human Rights : Media |
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Become a video activist |
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by Tim Ledwith, saoirse1220 (nospam) yahoo.com |
 The Boston Indymedia video group is looking for video artists, video collectors, filmmakers, and other volunteers to help produce our television show and help get progressive political work shown to larger
audiences.
The group has had a 1 hour TV collage shown weekly for the past 4 years on award winning CCTV in Cambridge. It features local coverage of community work, struggles and demonstrations along with indymedia films from around the world and other politically smart and satirical short films.
You can watch the Boston Indymedia show on Cambridge Public Access at 8pm every Tuesday and 5pm on Wednesdays on CH 10. |
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09 Mar 2005
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Filed under: Announcement / Media |
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Interview: Naomi Klein and her new Movie "The Take" |
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by Pete Stidman, pstidman (nospam) yahoo.com |
 Naomi Klein and Indymedia go way back to our beginnings in Seattle, where she was covering the nascent globalization movement as a columnist for the Toronto Star. Both Klein and Indymedia have grown since then, and maybe the tireless Klein has paced us. She has followed her book “No Logo” in 2000 with “Fences and Windows” in 2002, all the while writing hundreds of articles in publications like The Nation, The Guardian UK, Harper’s, The Toronto Globe and Mail and many others.
Now she and her husband, Avi Lewis, have produced “The Take,” a documentary about the occupied factory movement in Argentina. The film has graduated from the film festival circuit into the theatres, and it will be playing at the Brattle all this week (see http://www.brattlefilm.org for times). In her spare time (what little is left) she has been working on a new book about the Washington consensus and it’s effects on countries that are in transition to democracy.
In between writing her new book and promoting her new film at the Brattle’s opening night, she found a good chunk of time for an old media comrade, the amorphous Indymedia network. |
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06 Feb 2005
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Filed under: Interview / Globalization : International : Media : Organizing : Politics : Race |
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Seymour Hersh Speaks in Boston, Predicts Possible Pre-election Falluja Attack |
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by Pete Stidman, pstidman (nospam) yahoo.com |
 Seymour Hersh spoke to an almost capacity crowd Friday night at the Ford Hall Forum in Faniuel Hall promoting his new book, Chain of Command. The book details the connections between Abu Ghraib and Donald Rumsfeld via the Pentagon. But the terrible actions committed at Abu Ghraib served only as a background for a speech peppered with warnings, predictions, and revelations about the current US administration. |
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01 Nov 2004
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Filed under: News / Human Rights : International : Media |
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Indymedia Strikes Back in the Newton Tab |
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by Pete Stidman, pstidman (nospam) yahoo.com |
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In an opinion piece published last week by the Newton Tab, Karla Hailer-Fidelman at once spoke in defense of free speech, which is an admirable thing, and trashed a community-based media group, which was an act of supreme ignorance. In a guest commentary also published in the Newton Tab, Indymedia defends itself. |
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