Health & Fitness
Singing at Occupy Boston
The Dewey Square Ad Hoc Chorus hosts a weekly "Sing In" at the Occupy Boston encampment. It's a hoot!
On Friday noon, I ventured out to the Rose Kennedy Greenway to join the Second Tenor Section of the Dewey Square Ad Hoc Chorus (DSAHC) for their weekly Hootenanny.
The DSAHC is a mixed voice group of amateur folk song enthusiasts led by Jeff Keller and his Merry Troubadours. Each Friday at noon they gather at the Occupy Boston Encampment in the shadow of South Station to show their support for the “Ninety Nine Percenters”, which I would assume would represent the vast majority of the readers of this blog as well as the residents of “my fine city."
The songs they sing are mostly familiar old folk favorites – lots of Woody Guthrie, songs by the Seegers (Pete and Peggy) as well as some lesser known ditties such as “Banks are Made of Marble” and “The Man that Waters the Workers’ Beer." It is indeed a fun experience, one you ought to try. It’s also a great excuse to find out what this “Occupy Movement” is all about.
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I was quite impressed by the organization and civility of the Occupy Boston site. The first thing you encounter as you enter is an information tent serving both campers and visitors alike. They have their own food tent and medical tent which have passed their Boston Health inspections with flying colors.
The medical team is also organizing a flu shot clinic to protect the occupiers’ health throughout the upcoming flu season. They even have their own newspaper, a broadsheet known as The Boston Occupier. It’s free, of course.
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Further along is a larger than life-sized statue of Mahatma Gandhi, donated by the good people at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, MA. You can’t help but be amused by looking up at smiling bespectacled face and then down at the small sign displaying the simple phrase: “The world holds enough for everyone’s NEED but not enough for everyone’s GREED.”
Occupy Boston also sponsors the “Free School University” featuring lectures by prominent speakers such as longtime activist and founder of Food Not Bombs, C.T. Lawrence Butler. On the agenda are lectures by Professors Juliet Schor of Boston College and Bruno Bosteels of Cornell University.
The experience will make you proud to be an American – home of the free (speech) and the land of those brave enough to exercise it.
