To give you just a taste of what transpired, many Occupiers helped organize and took part in a Free University in Cooper Square Park, outside of Cooper Union, the art school besieged by their greedy and inept Trustees who have decided to charge tuition for the first time since its founding, against the express conditions under which Peter Cooper set up the school. Courses included “Organizing a NYC Student Movement,” “Understanding Basic Economics and Finance,” “Imagining a Student-Worker Run University,” “Climate Debt/Climate Justice,” and “Building a Commons in NYC.”

The OWS Screenprinters Coop were busy at work in Union Square during the May Day rally, screenprinting t-shirts and upcycled materials brought by the public. The design, from the 1968 French student riots - “Beauty is in the Street.”

Want more May Day coverage?

Check out this piece on the Guitarmy with video and songs to play in your community, and read on below!

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

Watch these ‘Vines’ for Visuals of OWS at #MayDayNYC

A taste of OWS May Day activities in Union Square

https://vine.co/v/bQmQLMwFewV

Sandy Survivors and Occupy Sandy leading a chant

https://vine.co/v/bQm0wDV79O9

The People’s Puppets march down Broadway

https://vine.co/v/bQKptAOKiig

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Forty-three years after the campus shooting at Kent State University in Ohio that left four students dead, shot by US soldiers during an anti-war demonstration, the controversy has not died, and the site has become a listed historic place. A look at how the Kent State shooting impacted the course of the Vietnam war.

"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio."

Good morning! Crowds gathered around Hong Kong's harbor this week to watch the arrival of a giant inflatable rubber duck. Created by a Dutch artist to transport a message of peace and harmony to all, it has been sailing the seas since 2007.

Your morning open thread begins below.

In February, David and Francine Wheeler, the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook tragedy, joined notable musicians including Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary and the folksinger Dar Williams to perform a concert for the community. The Wheelers and Yarrow joined Bill on Moyers & Company to discuss the path forward for gun control advocates and the power of music to bring about both healing and social change.

Yarrow said the concert was about “restoring the heart and soul of a caring community.” Watch two of the songs they performed.

The Wheelers, Peter Yarrow and others sing “Blowing in the Wind“:

[Via BillMoyers.com]

After weather ruined Monday's attempt, the Port Authority has raised the final piece of 1 World Trade Center's spire into place. The 408-foot spire will make the building 1,776 feet, how's that for symbolism, America?

Above, NBC New York has live video of the spire-ing.

An otherwise peaceful day of protest was marred by a spate of violence at a Seattle May Day protest. Protesters dressed in "Black-Bloc" clothing smashed windows on Capitol Hill, bottles were thrown at police officers who in turn used pepper spray, and blast balls -- a small firework-like device that creates a flash and a modest dose of pepper spray when they would not disperse.

A total of 11 adults and two juveniles were arrested for assault or property damage.

It’s official: Rhode Island became the 10th state to legalize same-sex marriage Thursday evening. The legislation passed the Rhode Island House of Representatives, with 56 votes in favor, to applause from the galleries and House floor. Legislators even broke into a rendition of “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” The bill, which was later signed by Gov. Lincoln Chafee, allows same-sex weddings beginning August 1, and gives couples already in civil unions the right to change their status to married. “At long last, you are free to marry the person you love,” Chafee said.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs in April, which caused the unemployment rate to fall to a 4-year low at 7.5 percent.

Forbes:

More significant, perhaps, are the revisions to March’s gains (up 50,000) to 138,000 and February’s gains (up 64,000) to 332,000. Together, those upwardly revised numbers takes the sting away from March’s dismal numbers and helps to reduce some of the unevenness in job growth.

Meantime, joblessness continues to slowly tick lower. The unemployment rate dropped to 7.5% last month, compared to 7.6% in March. It has fallen from by 40 basis points since January.

Stocks rose following the better-than-expected jobs data. Dow Jones industrial futures gained 103.42 points to 14,767.58. Nasdaq composite futures increased 20.6 points to 2,903.94. S&P 500 futures was up 11.4 points to 1,592.62.

Still the economy is far from completely healed. The labor-force participation rate remains dismally low–remaining at 63.3% in April–at levels unseen since the 1970s, a period when an entire portion of the U.S. population (women) was less likely to work. And despite the upside surprise for the April data, the 165,000 jobs are woefully beneath the point at which the economy needs to reach to hasten the recovery. Economists say the nation must add nearly double that number, closer to 250,000 to 300,000.

The government is now the biggest drag on the job market. Overall, federal, state and local governments cut 11,000 jobs in April.

The death toll in the deadly Bangladesh building collapse topped 500 on Thursday, while the country’s Finance minister tried to downplay the tragedy, calling it “not really serious.” “These are individual cases of ... accidents,” Finance Minister Abud Maal Abdul Muhith said Friday. “It happens everywhere.” Muhith insisted that the disaster would not harm Bangladesh’s garment industry, the country’s biggest export industry. But he may have his work cut out for him: last month Disney decided to pull its factories from Bangladesh. Although Disney represented less than 1 percent of Bangladesh’s garment industry, others could follow the entertainment giant’s lead.

The owner of the building, Sohel Rana, who is under investigation in the worker's deaths has had his assets seized. Protesters have called for him to be hanged.

Bangladeshi police on Thursday arrested the engineer who warned a day before the disaster that the building was unsafe.

NYT:

The arrest of the engineer, Abdur Razzaque Khan, was a surprise twist since he was regarded as something of a hero for trying to avert the April 24 disaster. A day before the building collapsed, Mr. Khan had been summoned because cracks had suddenly appeared in the structure, forcing an evacuation. He concluded that the building had become dangerous and should be closed until experts could conduct a more thorough investigation — advice that turned out to be grimly prescient.

His comments appeared the next morning in at least one national newspaper. But the police say that the building’s owner, Sohel Rana, and the factory owners are blaming Mr. Khan, saying he told them the cracks were just a small problem. A police official said that Mr. Khan is being interrogated to determine who is telling the truth.

Authorities also suspended the mayor of the city, Savar, for his part in the tragedy. He stands accused of improperly granting building permits to Mr. Rana, who is a political ally, and of failure to take appropriate action to close the building when the structural cracks appeared.

In yet another disgusting episode of "Too Big to Fail," this time from the NYT:

"Government investigators have found that JPMorgan Chase devised “manipulative schemes” that transformed “money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers,” and that one of its most senior executives gave “false and misleading statements” under oath."

Yes, we're all shocked...again.

"The findings appear in a confidential government document, reviewed by The New York Times, that was sent to the bank in March, warning of a potential crackdown by the regulator of the nation’s energy markets."

What's with the secrecy? As if we don't know that we're being screwed by the banks.

"The possible action comes amid showdowns with other agencies. One of the bank’s chief regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is weighing new enforcement actions against JPMorgan over the way the bank collected credit card debt and its possible failure to alert authorities to suspicions about Bernard L. Madoff, according to people who were not authorized to discuss the cases publicly."

Suuuure they are.

"In a meeting last month at the bank’s Park Avenue headquarters, the comptroller’s office delivered an unusually stark message to Jamie Dimon, the chief executive and chairman: the nation’s biggest bank was quickly losing credibility in Washington. The bank’s top lawyers, including Stephen M. Cutler, the general counsel, have also cautioned executives about the bank’s regulatory problems, employees say."

Good Lord. A banker losing credibility in Washington! I'm shocked that Jamie Dimon has any credibility left to lose.

So, what exactly is the Big Bank in trouble for this time?

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