Five years ago, on September 30, "Occupy Boston" first pillaged Dewey Square. For 72 days its participants appeared to be darlings of left-leaning media and left-leaning office holders until the lawless occupation of public space was finally dismantled. Today, remarkably, the Occupy movement is a fast fading memory, its professed "cause" aimless and irrelevant. What happened?
The so-called "contagious protest," better known nationally as Occupy Wall Street (eventually spreading to eighty-two countries), began in New York City's financial district on September 17, 2011. It spawned mini movements across the country, including Boston, as a means to express outrage over social and economic inequality.
BOSTON — A Boston-based environmental group is joining Attorney General Maura Healey in putting the climate change screws to oil giant ExxonMobil, alleging in a 70-page federal lawsuit filed Thursday that the company is well-aware of the effects of global warming but has done nothing to protect its Mystic River facility to guard against rising sea levels.
"We started our own investigation," The Conservation Law Foundaton's Veronica Eady wrote in a brief posted to group's website in explaining the decision to go after ExxonMobil in federal court, citing media reports she says prove that the company's knowledge of climate change dates back to the 1970s. "We found that despite knowing the harm climate change could cause, ExxonMobil left its storage facility in Everett, Mass., on the Mystic vulnerable to flooding from storms and rising seas.
