{"id":1506,"date":"2015-01-28T15:40:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T22:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2015-02-12T17:25:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T00:25:28","slug":"the-right-to-assemble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/newsletter\/the-right-to-assemble\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right to Assemble"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;The Right to Assemble&#8221;<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><em>by Dean Stevens, President of Board of Directors<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees the right of peaceful assembly. When it comes to the Boston Fire Department, however, that legal right to assemble in any given space requires a permit. Community Church of Boston has lately found out about the hoops you have to go through to obtain that permit. And, thanks to the fire inspectors, the architect, the electrician, Rodney, our building manager, and a few other assorted contractors and trades persons, WE HAVE AN ASSEMBLY PERMIT!! Come in soon and see it framed on the wall! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first time we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had one since we started holding services at 565 Boylston St. in the late \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc80s. There was, at various times, some doubt as to whether we, as a church, needed to obtain the AP. But after our building woes in 2011 (flood, destruction, demolition, delay, followed by lengthy rehab and code upgrade and reconstruction), we decided that we needed to be in compliance in every possible way. So started a process that involved inspections, architects\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00c2\u00a0 drawings, a long list of sometimes expensive corrections to be made (we made every single one!!), upgrades to our fire and electrical systems\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the process was endless.<\/p>\n<p>We feel more assured than ever about seeking rentals for the auditorium, both one-time and regular tenants. This building will be a beehive of radical organizing activity of every kind. Spread the word about our centrally located space, available for activist groups to rent at very reasonable rates. For more information please call Helen, our office\/rentals\/publications manager.<\/p>\n<p>We hope to inhabit a building that complies with the highest safety standards. And this Assembly Permit is a milestone in achieving that. Now we want to direct our attention to energy efficiency and sustainability. We will look into revamping our HVAC systems, upgrading our old leaky drafty windows, completing the task of installing sprinklers all the way to the top floor of the building.<\/p>\n<p>A gang of bumpkin church members has slowly been learning the ins and outs of real estate stewardship. There is a learning curve\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re starting to get it, and I hope we can hand these skills to whomever follows us in this task.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we shout out our deep gratitude to Henry Putman, our RE guru, who over the last ten years has generously given endless amounts of pro-bono time to CCB, helped us through various deep crises, and coached us on the finer points of care and feeding of an old, ornery, beautiful building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The Right to Assemble&#8221; by Dean Stevens, President of Board of Directors The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees the right of peaceful assembly. When it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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