Open Media Boston Staff Photographer Diana Mai attended two labor pickets at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Cambridge in February and produced the following photo essay.

BOSTON/Fenway - President Obama spoke at Northeastern University's Cabot Gym on Sunday in the hopes of galvanizing people to vote for Martha Coakley for senator. The line of those waiting outside the gym stretched down from Cabot along Huntington Ave and wrapped around Matthews Arena, circling back to Krentzman Quad.

In the Bourne neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, Andrée Zaleska and Ken Ward, with their 3 boys, Simon 8, Eli 9, and Kuba 11, are rehabbing a 100 year old, abandoned, former corner store to serve as their new home, a demonstration of sustainable living & passivhaus design, community center and climate campaigning "hub" for Bill McKibben's 350.org. As the project nears completion of the first phase, Ken does a video walk-through with Simon Hare and Declan Keefe, of the design/build firm Placetailor, pointing out unique materials, design and passivhaus construction techniques that will reduce energy use by >90%.

BOSTON/Downtown Crossing - A photo essay of a candlelight vigil called by labor and community organizations on 11/11/09 in support of 100 housekeepers fired from 3 area Hyatt hotels in August after being forced to train their replacements from a subcontracting company. The event was attended by fired workers and their families, members of UNITEHERE Local 26, the Greater Boston Labor Council, and supporters from several religious, community, and labor organizations.

On October 24, Bostonians went down to Christopher Columbus Park on the waterfront to participate in mass street theater on the theme of "Boston Under Water." The idea of the event - being held in cities around the world - was to draw attention to the fact that unless we can keep CO2 levels at or below 350 parts per million, then global warming will accelerate and sea levels will rise. Organizers of the event included: Greenpeace USA, JP Green House, Massachusetts Council of Churches, Massachusetts Power Shift, Somerville Climate Action Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston, and The Williams Agency. Co-Sponsors included: Boston Climate Action Network, Cambridge Green Decade, Greenport, Home Energy Efficiency Team, Living Structures, Inc., Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, Massachusetts Sierra Club, Medford Climate Action, Mystic River Watershed Association. For more information on the event, check out http://www.350.org/node/5998/.

On Saturday, September 19th from 12pm-5pm, over 500 Black Boston-area undergraduate and graduate students will gather at MIT’s Johnson Athletic Center for the 7th annual HollaDay. HollaDay, hosted by the Boston Black Student Network, Inc. (BBSN), is a networking extravaganza that provides an arena for area Black college students to connect and realize the professional, community, and political opportunities in the Boston area.

BOSTON/Jamaica Plain - On the third floor of Building L at the Brewery Complex in Jamaica Plain, staffers with the Institute for Policy Studies, the Forum Organizing Project, and the Jamaica Plain Forum, are laboring over a critical question for our times: how to pull people out of the quicksand that is the U.S. economy.

Andree Zaleska, Director of the Forum Organizing Project and Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies Senior Scholar, and their partners with the Grassroots Policy Project and On The Commons, think they have a pretty good answer: "common security clubs."

Cambridge, MA - The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) is expecting 1,000 men and women to participate in its 4th Annual Walk for Change on Sunday, April 5. Survivors, friends, families, community members and local agencies will walk to increase community awareness and involvement in preventing sexual violence and to raise much-needed funds for BARCC. The goal for the 2009 Walk is $100,000.

Proceeds from the Walk for Change will support BARCC, the only provider of comprehensive rape crisis services in the greater Boston area. Services include a 24-hour hotline, 24-hour ER accompaniment, counseling, legal assistance and community awareness and prevention programs. In the last year alone, BARCC helped over 4,000 survivors and another 10,000 people through prevention education, training and outreach.

Cambridge, MA - Prof. Pardis Sabeti of the Center for Systems Biology and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University gave a fascinating lecture on Evolution in the Post-Genomic Age on February 26, 2009, at the Geological Lecture Hall at the Harvard University Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States to a full house of over 150 people. The event was part of Harvard University's celebration of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.

The accompanying 56 minute audio recording of the lecture can be played below or downloaded from the Sound Lantern audio service in the free software Ogg Vorbis format. Download the free software VLC Player to play Ogg Vorbis files on your own computer.

Cambridge, MA - Dr. Andrew Berry, research associate at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, was amusing and informative in the role of Charles Darwin, in "An Afternoon with Charles Darwin" on Sunday at the Geological Lecture Hall at the Harvard University Museum of Natural History. The performance was part of Harvard University's celebration of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Over 150 people of all ages were in attendance.

The accompanying 1 hour 18 minute audio recording of the performance can be played below or downloaded from the Sound Lantern audio service in the free software Ogg Vorbis format. Download the free software VLC Player to play Ogg Vorbis files on your own computer.