BOSTON/Chinatown - The #OccupyBoston General Assembly held its third, 5-hour meeting Thursday night at the encuentro5 movement space in Chinatown to plan logistics for Friday’s 6 p.m. occupation of Boston’s Dewey Square Park. 90 people filled rows of folding chairs and lined up along the floor.

BOSTON/Chinatown – A driving rain couldn’t prevent about one hundred activists, government, union, and business leaders, and curious passersby on Tuesday November 9th from attending a kick-off ceremony in front of the Chinatown Gate launching the first in a series of home weatherization pilot programs for cities and towns around Massachusetts.

BOSTON/Chinatown - Student Immigrant Movement organizers and supporters held a press conference at the encuentro 5 movement space last Wednesday to announce their participation in a national campaign to push for passage of the DREAM Act - a bipartisan bill that would grant some undocumented immigrant students conditional legal status and a path to citizenship. Currently, students of undocumented immigrant parents in many states - including Massachusetts - are not eligible for government financial aid or in-state tuition rates at state colleges. Even if they excelled in public K-12 schools.

BOSTON/Chinatown - Sunshine Travel Services bus drivers took to the streets of Chinatown again on Monday to get the word out about poor labor and safety conditions they have endured on the job. This after Sunshine brought a lawsuit against the Chinese Progressive Association - the community organization that has been assisting the workers - charging the non-profit with defamation. The company also tried to get an injunction to attempt to stop the drivers from publicizing their grievances. The judge in the case issued an injunction that forced CPA to remove the Sunshine corporate logo from the leaflets they have been distributing with the drivers, but the 1st Amendment prevented any order that might stop CPA from leafleting Sunshine or engaging in any other activities that are considered protected speech.

BOSTON/Chinatown - After a raucous start that saw reporters, the owner of local bus company Sunshine Travel Services, and her entourage locked out of a press conference at the offices of the community activist group Chinese Progressive Association for about 20 minutes last Friday while CPA staff convinced the Boston Police officers they had called to the scene to keep the peace, things finally got under way when the police agreed to keep Sunshine employees off of CPA's property for the duration of the event and to only allow access to the media.

Advocates and several journalists then packed into a small conference room and spent over an hour listening to testimony from Sunshine bus drivers.

At issue is an attempt by a group of 10 of the drivers to win over $100,000 in back wages they say are owed to them by Sunshine owner Lorraine Tse for a variety of infractions. The workers are also asking for better pay and a host of reforms in the workplace - which they point out would merely be putting the company in compliance with existing labor law.