Get yourself an education at Dewey Square

Down at Dewey Square, school is in session inside the tents and tarps occupied by protesters.

Members of the “Occupy Boston” movement are passing on their skills to one another and offering free educational sessions all throughout the day.

With the help of a tour guide, Metro ventured into Tent City Square to reap the benefits of free-education, “occupation-style.”

 Know Your Rights 101

Sitting inside a tent full of documents, Arania Webb teaches her fellow “occupods” all about the Bill of Rights.

“You either use it or lose it,” she says, sitting with two other students. “I am teaching people their First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.”

Students can also sign up for three-hour sessions with the National Lawyers Guild.

Basic Medicine

If you need to know how to clean your eyes in case the cops pepper-spray you, the medic tent has full-time EMT’s on hand to teach just that.

“We also have social workers and two licensed psychologists here every so often and on call,” said Haze Jayachandran, 26, a certified EMT.

Jayachandran said he is also teaching a “basic safety rundown” for occupiers.


Inner Peace for Beginners

Within a tent with faux-candles and spiritual sayings, occupods meditated in silence while cars and buses in the Financial District whizzed by. Occupiers can sign up for nightly mediation sessions, restorative yoga classes and singing of poems in prayer, all taught by pros.


Break for charged protesters

Prosecutors yesterday dropped criminal trespassing charges against 24 people who were arrested Friday when they entered the Bank of America on Federal Street as part of the Right to the City protest in Boston.

The court will treat the cases as civil infractions because of the demonstration's "peaceful nature."
Six of the protesters were assessed $50 fines because they had prior arrests.