Sunday, June 14, 2009

I made a comment calling Boston a war zone a few days ago here. One of my friends called ‘bullshit’ on that assertion.

OK, Boston in 2009 is not Sarajevo circa 1994 or Stalingrad circa 1942.

That said, people are fighting. People are dying. And the rest of us are trying to figure out what to do and who to believe.

The crap-storm that was Memorial Day weekend seemed to be mainly an attempt by the Federal troops (mostly Backwater mercs but I think there were some FPS, FBI, DHS, and even Army grunts) to roust the veterans (following the Colonel and including some non-vet supporters) from the Esplanade. Rumor is that Gov. Patrick and the State and City signed-off on the plan, especially since the Esplanade is a city park, not a Federal one. Tactically, it was a victory for the mercs — there are no more vets camping on those islands.

Strategically, I think the government has lost control of this city. The vets are still out there, they just aren’t staying in large groups (these guys learned urban guerrilla tactics the hard way in Baghdad and Fallujah). Meanwhile, they’ve earned the help and respect of other groups who were harassing the Feds.

The Children of Liberty are asking folks to open their homes and help the vets any way they can. Internet videos (and circulating DVDs and CDs) show the vets sabotaging Backwater vehicles and leaving CoL tags. I don’t think these two groups were communicating a month ago.

Some of the ‘insurgent’ videos show guys using some pretty-high-tech equipment too – little robots rolling under Hummvees to cut fuel lines at night. Mercenary communications suddenly blaring out “Dirty Water” instead of orders from on-high. To me it looks like the MIT hackers have entered the fight.

Governor Patrick has stepped-up his rhetoric against ‘unwarranted Federal intrusion into Massachussetts’ and Boston’s affairs.’ This is pretty two-faced if he did agree to have the mercs kick the vets of the Esplanade, but it also sounds good to folks who just want to be able to sleep through the night without hearing bull-horns, sirens, and gunshots.

The real wildcard is what I think of as the Allston Boys. There are a lot of college-age men crammed into the run-down two-family houses and apartments in Allston, just across the river from Harvard Square. They are rowdy, irreverent, and often dangerously smart. It used to be that when they organized, it was to create a new sports or bar memes – to sell “Yankees Suck” T-shirts or make “Girls-Gone-Wild” video knock-offs. When they got a little more serious, they had fights (occasionally violent) with the local slum-lords or city officials. Now they are using their brains and wit to tear-down the Feds anywhere and everywhere they can. I don’t move in Allston Boys circles, but these guys (and similar folks in Southie and East Boston) seem to be defining what it means to be a Bostonian right now.