Today, Monday May 13th, New Yorkers from Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, and over twenty partner groups will march and rally to greet President Obama when he attends a fundraiser with members of the 1% at the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue.
Carbon dioxide levels have now surpassed 400 parts per million, a long-feared milestone. We must act now.
Gather in Bryant Park starting at 5 (meet near the fountain off 6th avenue at 41st Street). Reverend Billy and his choir will lead us off with a rousing blessing and song. We'll begin to march at 5:30, then rally in front of the Waldorf Astoria at 6:30. Please wear yellow and orange to demonstrate your support for a clean energy future.
Event Partners: 350 NYC, 350 NJ, 350.org, 99Rise, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition Against the Rockaway Pipeline (CARP), CREDO, CUNY Divest, Food & Water Watch, Global Kids Inc., Green Party of NY, Human Impacts Institute, NYC Friends of Clearwater, NYU Divest, Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, Restore the Rock, Sane Energy Project, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Sierra Club National, United for Action, World Can't Wait, WESPAC, YANA (You Are Never Alone).
The May Day celebrations here in NYC were full of joy!
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.”
It's May Day, and Occupy Wall Street will be acting in force across New York City.
Join us on this day of celebration and agitation for the struggles of workers the world over. As the May Day music video "We Stand For Justice" depicts.
"We stand for justice. We know what it feels like. We stand together, for justice we will fight!"
Indeed, the most important way you can show your support is by joining us in the streets on May Day. But we also need financial and material resources to spread the word and to support actions.
We begin the day early in 2 groups: Uptown (meeting in Bryant Park at 10am) and Downtown (meeting in Union Sq at 11am). After marching with different groups, we’ll meet back at Union Square for more performances, especially game time at 4pm!
The Free University of NYC invites neighborhood organizations, schools, unions, spiritual centers, and other community education-oriented groups to create your own Free Universities this May 1st. The impetus behind this May Day call to education is to encourage local communities to host your own gatherings of free education to ensure they’re directly relevant and empowering on a ground level.
Join immigrants and workers this May Day as we highlight the daily struggles facing immigrants and workers in New York City. We will visit several workplaces in midtown to demand an end to exploitation of immigrant workers, ending at Schumer's office for a speak-out on what real immigration reform looks like.
Join 99 Pickets, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and allies as we march on employers around Union Square to demand fair pay and justice for all workers. We'll be visiting the offices of Frieze Art Fair to call for a fairer art world, Wendy's to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Travel Channel to support members of the Writers Guild. Gather at 2:30pm in the NE corner of Union Square; we'll leave at 3pm. Look for Rude Mechanical Orchestra!
Everybody Now! is a choir that you join as soon as you start to sing (or whisper or hum). On May Day, we will be sharing this song, "We Stand For Justice", at the beginning of the rally at Union Square, and we would love to you to lift your voice and sing with us! Our goal is to make it as resonant and contagious as possible - ideally everyone at the rally will feel empowered and excited to sing along! Listen to a demo of the song and meet us at the SE corner of Union Square (14th St between Broadway and Lafayette, right across from the Duane Reade) AND THEN SING WITH US IN THE RALLY AT 4 PM!!
Joint rally with the May 1st Coalition; the Alliance for Labor Rights, Immigrant Rights and Jobs for All; immigrant rights groups; and Occupy Wall Street. The rally will be a mix of speakers and entertainment drawing attention to the struggles and victories of labor unions, workers, immigrants and the 99%. Followed by a march down Broadway to City Hall.
This Assembly will be the first in a series of monthly People's Assemblies that will take place on the first Wednesday of each month. What do we have in common, how do our experiences vary, and what can we build together? As the march ends, gather in Foley Square starting at 7pm. We will split into multiple groups based on the struggles, campaigns and people present.
Emphasis on current labor struggles, ending Police Murder and Brutality, stop & frisk, mass incarceration and the War on Black and Brown People, justice for victims of Hurricane Sandy and building Occupy Wall Street to truly reflect and fight for all of the people in New York City.
PANDA (People Against the NDAA) Oregon protests against indefinite military detention, the application of the laws of war on U.S. soil, and secret arrests.
Recently they held a "Orange Jumpsuit March." Hundreds of people saw the group, one in Military garb, two in prison jumpsuits, and several others handing out information and getting people signed up to help.
Our Mission is to nonviolently nullify, strike down, repeal, stop, void and fight the indefinite detention provisions, Sections 1021 and 1022, of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2012, to fight for American civil liberties, to combat laws restricting liberty in the interest of National Security, to support current government officials that are doing so and to engage a younger generation in the politics of the United States so this cannot happen again.
A day after the funeral of 16-year-old Kimani Gray, about a hundred people turned out to once again protest his shooting by the NYPD.
Gray was shot by two officers in East Flatbush on March 9 after police said he pulled a gun on them. But Gray's family and supporters have argued that no witnesses saw Gray with a gun.
Marchers at Sunday's rally began at the location where Gray was killed and walked to the 67th precinct, where the two plainclothes officers who shot Gray are stationed. The protesters are demanding that those officers be charged with a crime.
The rally and march was organized by members from a number of community activist groups, including Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Parents Against Police Brutality. Participants from pro-worker organizations and Occupy Wall Street were also in attendance.
The teen's funeral, at a Roman Catholic church not far from where he was killed, drew relatives, friends, and many mourners who had no connection to the teen or his family except a shared sadness over his death. Many mourners wore clothing or carried laminated cards bearing Gray's picture.
"He was funny. And he always knew how to put a smile on my face," said Sidonie Smith, a childhood friend. "Anytime somebody was in a bad mood, he always knew how to make them happy."
The emotion of the service was too much for Gray's father, who fled the church as the choir sang "Amazing Grace." Gray's mother sobbed during the memorial.
The NYPD deployed a large security force to the area around the church during the service, but there was no repeat of the disturbances that came in the days after the shooting.
The Gothamistreported that the NYPD used an "LRAD X" device during the march:
Groups protesting police brutality staged a rally at the vigil site for Kimani Gray on Sunday afternoon, followed by a march that wound through East Flatbush and eventually to the 67th Precinct. Throughout the march, the 200 or so demonstrators were accompanied by an astounding number of police, one of whom brandished a megaphone designed as a non-lethal deterrent. At times police appeared to outnumber protesters by three or four to one. One protester was detained after stepping off of the sidewalk, but an NYPD spokesman could not confirm that any arrests were made.
An officer from the NYPD's Disorder Control Unit carried the suitcase-sized "LRAD X," a super megaphone of sorts that the company's website describes as capable of issuing a "warning tone [that] provides a non-lethal deterrent, [and] shapes behavior." The LRAD X was not used in any kind of weaponized way. “Just knowing it's here makes me nervous,” protester Libor Von Schonau said. The company is primarily known for its larger LRAD product, a powerful sound cannon that can cause severe injuries not only to those targeted for its use, but also to bystanders.
This reporter has covered countless marches and demonstrations accompanied by a heavy police presence and has never seen that device. The officer carrying the "LRAD X" refused to respond to questions.
Kimani Gray was buried Saturday at the St. Catherine of Genoa Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn.
Thousands of environmentalists marched outside the White House on Sunday, armed with banners and signs, chanting and voicing their opposition against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
The rally, organized by 350.org, calls for U.S. President Barack Obama to show his commitment to the environment by rejecting the pipeline project, which would run from Alberta to Texas.The demonstration followed a “Do the Math” climate event at Washington, DC’s historic Warner Theater earlier in the day.
"Do The Math" is a 21-city nationwide tour by 350.org, headlined by 350 co-founder Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein, and is designed to galvanize the climate justice movement in the wake of the election. The tour is helping to launch an unprecedented campaign to cut off the fossil fuel industry’s financial and political support by divesting our schools, churches and government from fossil fuels.
Daniel Kessler with 350.org told CTV News on Sunday that the White House rally was one of a number of stops on a tour across the U.S., talking about climate change and environmental concerns.
“We broke 17,000 temperature records around the globe this year. What we’re seeing is really extreme weather and really extreme temperature. “We’re seeing what the scientists are predicting around climate change,” Kessler said.
“The pipeline would lead to huge amounts of emissions and make the situation worse.”
The "Do the Math" tour picks up where Bill McKibben’s landmark Rolling Stone article left off, and everyone who comes will be asked to join a growing movement that is strong enough to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.
Occupy Oakland will begin gathering today at 3:00 p.m. PST outside City Hall on Oscar Grant Plaza in preparation for a march marking the anniversary of their eviction from the park last year. After the announced 7:00 p.m. march, they plan to return to the plaza where they intend to re-establish their encampment.
The announcement urged supporters to bring "tents, warm clothes, shields, a defensive attitude and hella friends."
A few hundred protesters are expected to participate.
The city released a statement Tuesday pledging to protect free-speech rights, while also expressing zero tolerance for overnight camping at the plaza or vandalism, which has marred several prior Occupy protests.
Downtown businesses and restaurants, including frequent vandal targets Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe and Sears, said they would not close early on Thursday. The most notable exception is the Downtown Oakland YMCA, which will close at 6 p.m. instead of 10 p.m.
Sources already in Oakland tell me that there is a very large police presence already today outside the plaza ahead of the Occupy gathering. Hopefully OPD will not continue their policy of placing officers with histories of using deadly force on the frontlines during Occupy Oakland protests.
I'll have a live stream up later, and will update as more information becomes available.
The video above shows police as they close in on Occupy San Francisco protesters on Saturday, but San Francisco police say what may not be widely available on video is the protesters' actions beforehand.
In the video, San Francisco police arrest protesters on California and Battery streets. It was shot by Jacob Crawford, a filmmaker who documents police action. The group was protesting the war in Afghanistan as it marks 11 years of bombs and bloodshed.
"The cops were hitting people with batons and shoving batons into people and slamming people around," Crawford said.
San Francisco police admit there were "a few incidents" in which officers used batons or police holds to make arrests.
Police circled and detained the protestors in the roadway at California and Battery streets, and the protestors allegedly threw flares and bags of paint at officers, some of which contained rocks.
Some protestors also fled to Pine and Sansome streets, and were detained there.
In total, police made 22 arrests, on charges including conspiracy, riot, refusing to obey a lawful order from a peace officer and resisting delaying and obstructing a police officer, and assault and battery on a police officer.
Searches of the protestors' backpacks turned up items including hammers, an ice pick, flares and other weapons and bags of paint containing rocks.
No word yet on injured protesters, or if those arrested have been released from jail yet. Updates as they become available.
Approximately 1,000 protesters, including a large group of musicians, left Zuccotti Park today at 4pm EST, and was cut in half by a group of helmeted NYPD officers at Williams and Pine Streets. Violent arrests ensued, with journalist John Knefel among those detained.
After leaving the Spectra Pipeline Blast Zone, the Occupy Guitarmy will lead a musical march through the village to Foley Square. At Foley Square there will be a giant celebration for and by Occupy Wall Street, including an educational and community-oriented Occupy Town Square and a concert, which will feature Tom Morello, Jello Biafra, Das Racist, Rebel Diaz, Michelle Shocked, and many others.
Occupy Guitarmy will open the concert will a massive sing-along version of “Wall Street, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” leading into “Frack You.” We will end the concert with a massive singalong and guest verses of “Which Side Are You On?”
Bring your instruments, noisemakers, and voices.
12-1pm March leaves from Specra to Foley Square
1pm-6pm Occupy Town Square at Foley Square (Center Street and Worth Street)
