Via OccupyWallSt.:

May 20th: Day of Action

Homeowners VS. Banking Execs

Showdown at the Department of Justice

Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Jail?

Millions of underwater homeowners have paid the price for Wall Street's crimes. From mortgage fraud to predatory lending, it's time to put bankers in jail.

Join Occupy Homes, dozens of underwater homeowners, and hundreds of allies from across the country as we take action and risk arrest at the Department of Justice.

Bring Justice to Justice Rally: May 20th @ 1pm Gather: Freedom Plaza, 14th Street and Pennsylvania Ave NW – March to Department of Justice @ 1:30pm

With Occupy Homes, Home Defenders League, Campaign for a Fair Settlement, and community and faith leaders

Five years after Wall Street crashed the economy, not one banker has been prosecuted for the reckless and fraudulent practices that cost millions of Americans their jobs, threw our cities and schools into crisis, and left families and communities ravaged by a foreclosure crisis and epidemic of underwater mortgages.

Record profits are back at the bailed-out banks. Meanwhile:

Homeowners and communities have lost billions to Wall Street’s foreclosure crisis;

Millions more families face foreclosure in the coming months;

Communities of color have been impacted the most.

This March, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying before a U.S. Senate committee, admitted that big banks and their executives have escaped prosecution simply because they are too wealthy and powerful. "Too big to fail” banks are officially “too big to jail."

The time is now for Congress and the Obama administration to make Wall Street pay us back:

Prosecute Wall Street bankers for stealing our homes, savings and livelihoods;

End the foreclosure crisis;

Reset mortgages to their current value (“principal reduction”);

Restore and rebuild wealth stolen from communities of color hardest hit.

Since the crisis began, Americans from all walks of life have banded together to help each other. Working through community organizations, civil rights groups, the Occupy movement, and community and faith leaders, we have shared our stories, lobbied, petitioned, and even faced arrest for occupying our own homes and demanding justice.

During the Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23, families on the front line of the foreclosure crisis will travel from around the country to Washington, D.C., to make their voices heard. The week will include community organizing, home-defense training, and non-violence and civil-disobedience training.

On Monday, May 20, at 1:00pm, home defenders, as well as faith and community leaders will rally to Bring Justice to Justice – demanding an end to the “too big to jail” policy, and relief for families and communities devastated by the financial crisis and foreclosure epidemic.

Via Occupy Wall St.:

“This is a non-violent direct action, you are not being held in this room, you are free to exit when you please. We no longer recognize your presidency at Cooper as legitimate and in so doing we commit to re-claim this office in the interim until a suitable administrative alternative is secured."

Over 50 students have overtaken the office of Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha in response to the Administration and the Board of Trustees announcing the implementation of tuition for the incoming class of 2014- desecrating a 154 year old tradition of meritocracy and free education. "We stand together with the extended Cooper community in opposition to this decision; we reaffirm all of the previous and future actions of our fellow students and allies."

UPDATE: Cooper Union Students are calling for a Solidarity Rally Friday at 6PM outside the Foundation Building at Cooper Square Park.

The students delivered a Statement of No Confidence from the School of Art, one of the three colleges that make up Cooper Union. Similar Statements of No Confidence are currently in the process of being drafted and voted upon by the School of Architecture and the School of Engineering.

On April 23, 2013, Cooper Union’s board of trustees announced that they will begin charging tuition, ending the university’s 144-year-old mission of providing free education to all those who merited entry. The decision was met with a united uproar of dissent from nearly all sectors of the university community, including students, faculty, and alumni. While it might seem counterintuitive to get behind a relatively small struggle at one of the most exclusive universities in the country—an old-fashioned meritocracy in a world in which a young person’s “potential” is directly proportionate to their family’s economic station—Cooper Union is by far the most diverse of all elite colleges: white students are a minority here and two-thirds of the student body attended public high schools.

Institutions funded by philanthropy and real estate earnings are clearly unsustainable as foundations for a quality education, but the school’s economic problems and its board’s regressive solutions mirror the situation currently taking place at countless other universities, both public and private. From CUNY tuition hikes to the torpedoing of Medgar Evers College to NYU’s unprecedented land grab, students across the city are fighting back. As student struggles continue across the globe, Cooper Union is a flashpoint for something much larger than itself.

Peter Cooper, the school’s founder, railed against the scourge of student debt a century and a half before the streets of Montreal exploded with resistance, before New York universities faced a string of militant occupations, before students in California put their bodies on the line against tuition hikes and the commodification of higher education. The ongoing fight at Cooper Union is but one part of the broader struggle against austerity, debt, and all other symptoms of capitalism.

On May 1, a 36-page mini-zine that serves as a postscript to last year’s Why is Cooper Union Being Occupied? was produced and distributed around the city. Collecting recent articles, editorials, and primary source documents, this basic update outlines the current situation at Cooper Union, at once a eulogy and a call for new resistance.

Download the PDF here, read online here, or come down to Cooper Union and pick up a hard copy.

For Live Updates, follow Free Cooper Union on Twitter

The day before she left her family to go to jail, biologist, mother and activist Sandra Steingraber joined Bill Moyers to talk about the need to build awareness about toxins that contaminate our air, water and food — and threaten our children’s health. With government captured by the very industries it’s supposed to regulate, Steingraber said she’s lost patience with politicians and corporations, and the time for direct action is now.

Steingraber also talks to Bill about her arrest for illegally blocking the driveway of a natural gas company as part of a protest against the controversial energy extraction process known as fracking. Steingraber went to jail on April 17, and is currently serving a 15-day sentence.

“I believe, as do many of my colleagues in the sciences, that it’s not safe to compress explosive gases and store them underneath and beside a lake that serves as the drinking water for a hundred thousand people,” she tells Bill. “From my point of view as a biologist and a mother, this out-of-state company… is trespassing in our community.”

Steingraber returns often to the concept of “toxic trespass” — which “means that chemicals without our consent enter our body sometimes because we inhale them,” she explains to Bill. “You know, each of us breathes a pint of atmosphere with every breath. And so that’s one way in which toxic air pollutants then enter us, into our bloodstream.”

Watch the video to see how We Love Our Land came up with their idea on how to fight the Enbridge pipeline. It's quite clever, and the native American Indian music is beautiful.

#RLblockade Nizhawendaamin Inaakiminaan (We Love Our Land) is a group of Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, joined by blockaders and solidarity activists. The encampment is located in Northern Minnesota near the town of Leonard. Tom Poorbear, vice president of the Ogalala Sioux Nation declared, "We fully support the Red Lake Nation and its members who are opposing the Enbridge pipeline to stop the flow and remove the illegal pipeline from their land." The occupation of the Red Lake Ceded Land began Thursday, February 28. Similar action camps around the United States have been fighting the fossil fuel industry to stop the destruction of sacred lands. Red Lake tribal members demand the immediate shutdown of the flow through the pipes and intend to remain on the land until their demand is met. "I imagine everyone involved in the planetwide resistance to fossil fuel is watching them with thanks," said Bill McKibben founder of 350.org and leader of the recent Forward on Climate Rally. Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene First Nation stated, "We fully support and are inspired by the Red Lake members and their resistance as it is stated in the Mother Earth Accord; affirming our responsibility to protect and preserve for our descendents, the inherent sovereign rights of our indigenous nations, the rights of property owners, and all inherent human rights." Most band members were unaware of Enbridge's illegal activity until the encampment started. "When I was informed about the illegal trespassing of the company Enbridge on my homeland, I knew there was something I could do. I started calling as many Red Lakers as I could to try and make them aware," said Angie Palacio who initiated the encampment with the support of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

On November 25th, 112 workers burned to death in a factory fire in Bangladesh producing garments for Walmart. The Port of Newark is a major entryway for Walmart garments coming from Bangladesh. Walmart is going to profit off of the garments these workers died to make.

Unless we block the boat.

Walmart - the world's largest employer and 1% corporation - refuses to take responsibility, compensate the families, or take any action to prevent needless deaths like this from happening again. The 1% must not profit from the workers' deaths in Bangladesh!

On Tuesday December 18th, buses will be leaving at 6am from Canal and Broadway in Manhattan to head to the port.

If you’re not taking the bus, the staging ground location will be the IKEA parking lot in Elizabeth, NJ at 7am. Timing is critical.

We're calling on Occupiers near all East Coast ports to be on alert if the cargo ship is re-routed to dock at another port.

https://www.facebook.com/events/456899241034741/

#D18 #OccupyThePort #BlockTheBoat.

[Via OWS]

This is a call to unemployed and precarious people, workers, retired, students, undocumented migrants, homeless… Let us all demonstrate together on the same day all over Europe against poverty-inducing policies in order to build transnational solidarity and to move forward in the convergence of our various movements.

In the wake of the European general strike on November 14, Agora99, a European conference of social movements meeting in Madrid in November (http://99agora.net/) calls for a European day of action against precariousness on December 1 as well as to the drafting of a new charter of social rights.

What new chart can we imagine and how to defend our rights together? On December 1 let us organize public debates, popular assemblies, cacerolas, marches, direct actions, occupations, etc.

http://europeanstrike.org/1d-european-day-of-action

http://www.facebook.com/events/274694712632997

Via OccupyWallSt.org:

On July 26, 2012, members of the #YoSoy132 movement and other Mexican social movements held a siege Televisa, Mexico's largest TV broadcaster and media conglomerate. Afterward, the following statement from the Student Assembly was read (translated by OccupyWallSt.org):

Closing remarks from the siege of Televisa

The symbolic and peaceful siege of Televisa is an historic and unprecedented accomplishment, the first action directly resuming our program of struggle, particularly our number one point: the democratization and transformation of the media and dissemination of information, as our letter states: "We fight against media monopolies and oligopolies that concentrate and manipulate information, particularly in the current electoral context where collusion between political parties and media companies is evident." We note that the current model of commercial media, represented by Televisa and TV Azteca, are excluded from society and civil organizations in general. We believe that only the socialization and collective management of the media will allow for a true open media and guarantee the right to information and freedom of expression.

Summoned by shame, indignation, and suffering, we are here today at the gates of the media company which has been tasked to misinform and manipulate the Mexican people.

#YoSoy132 is a nonpartisan, nonviolent, autonomous, anti-neoliberal social, political, and student movement independent of the parties, candidates, and organizations who respond to an electoral program -- a democratic movement where decisions emanate from the local and general assemblies which has transcended the electoral situation and continues to be organized and to fight to profoundly transform Mexico, to act as a counterweight to any decision and policy that violates the rights and interests of our people.

We have taken to the streets and now surrounded the pack of lies which Televisa represents, and we are developing the cohesion and organization of the people by raising awareness and organizing to fight for: The democratization of media, information, and its dissemination; changing the education system, science, and technology; changing the neoliberal economic model, changing the national security model; promoting participatory democracy in connection with social movements; and changing the healthcare model.

Although this demonstration was entirely peaceful, as is the struggle of this movement, there was an unnecessary deployment of police elements that stopped us by surrounding the perimeter of Televisa's installations and extended the fence to the adjoining streets, impacting the roadways and the free movement of residents. After 24 hours of the massive fence, we demonstrated a high degree of organization and unity of effort between the YoSoy132 movement, the People's Front in Defense of the Earth, the EMS, the CNTE, and the other social organizations for successful completion of the first action agreed in the framework of the National Convention against Taxation, held in Atenco. This convention has the clear objective of defending democracy, preventing the imposition [of presumed President-elect Peña Nieto], and seeking profound transformation of the current state of Mexico.

The protest was sparked in large part by the"victory" of Peña Nieto, whom social movements claim was elected via fraud and manipulation, with only the vote of a tiny percentage of Mexico's total population. Peña Nieto is of the PRI, the party that ruled Mexico autocratically for 70 years. The National Commission of Human Rights has documented that Peña Nieto was directly responsible for violating the human rights of the people of Atenco in 2006 as they demonstrated for their land rights against neoliberal expansion. The events occured while he was the governor of the state of Mexico and included abuses by his security forces such as torture, illegal detentions, mass rape, and murder.

For background on #YoSoy132, who continue to draw tens of thousands to street demonstrations, see here. To support them locally, come to this event this Tuesday in New York:

Occupy Saks Fifth Avenue (Direct Action Against Carlos Slim)

Telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim is responsible for overcharging Mexico's rural poor over $129 billion. Slim owns TELMEX, a formerly public company that is now his private monopoly thanks to the neoliberal policies of the Mexican government. Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, continues to build his telecommunications empire on the backs of Mexico's poor and crippling the nation's economic development. We will not stand for such abusive practices that exploit people just so that the richest man in the world can get richer.

Join Mexico's Dos Paises Una Voz, Yo Soy 132, labor & Occupy Wall Street activists as we confront Slim at Saks Fifth Avenue, where he owns the largest private stake. We will bum rush the store, and flood it with the 99% on August 7th at 4:30 PM....

Use the hash tag #OccupySaks

Though under house arrest and about to be extradited to Sweden, Julian Assange is still producing his show for RT, "The World Tomorrow," the most recent episode of which he dedicated to the Occupy Movement. Shot in the old Deutsche Bank building in London, which is controlled by friends of Occupy, Julian enlists guests Marisa Holmes, Alexa O'Brien and David Graeber from Occupy Wall Street, and Aaron Peters and Naomi Colvin from Occupy London, to parse the future of Occupy.

The Occupy movement has united hundreds of thousands across the world in protest against economic and social injustice. In this episode, key Occupy activists talk global finance, politics, and direct action.

The roots of the movement lie in the growing outrage many felt in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. However, according to Alexa O'Brien from Occupy New York and US Day of Rage, they are also responding to a "Global Political Crisis, because our institutions no longer function." Aaron Peters from Occupy London agrees that political failure is a "global phenomenon", with power shifting to unaccountable non-democratic institutions. However, the last word goes to David Graeber from Occupy New York, who jokes "there's nothing that terrifies the American government so much as the threat of democracy breaking out in America."

In what is anticipated to become the largest protest of the year so far for the Occupy movement, Occupy Wall Street organizers are preparing for a general strike on International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, and Occupy Denver is calling for protesters, businesses and laborers to stand in solidarity with this international day of protest.

According to its website, Occupy Denver will hold a rally on May 1st at Civic Center Park and a march around Denver. In the afternoon, protesters will meet back up at Civic Center Park for activities for both adults and children, live music, food and teach-ins to round off the day.

Occupy Denver issued this statement earlier this year about the importance of May Day:

Now is the time for community, neighborhood, school and work groups to organize autonomous and direct actions. As long as we are attacked and deprived of our basic rights, we will not allow for business as usual. We will support independent efforts of people to claim control over their workplaces, schools, and community as the beginning stages of our journey towards reclaiming our lives and taking the power back.

May Day will be the beginning of a new chapter of struggle for justice and equality. As we occupy our streets, workplaces, neighborhoods, and other common spaces, we start to build a new world within the shell of this old world of injustice and inequality. Let May 1st be the beginning of a new chapter that has yet to be written.

For more information on Occupy Denver's May Day plans, visit their website here.

From Occupy Wall Street:

Guess what's just a week away? May Day! Join an unprecedented coalition of workers, immigrants, and occupiers of all kinds to step, for one day, out of work, school, stores and homes and into the struggle against an inhuman system. See you in the streets!

Ready to help now? Occupy Wall Street's Direct Action working groups could use materials and funds to help make May Day 2012 a historic day of protest and celebration.

Occupy these Upcoming Events

Thursday, April 26, 1pm
Direct Action Trainings
Union Square on the north side, & Washington Square at the center fountain
Two introductory Direct Action: 101 trainings will be held concurrently in both Union Square and Washington Square, concluding with a practice march leaving from both locations and converging.

Thursday, April 26, 4pm
People’s Assembly: Speak Out on Wall Street
Federal Hall, Wall Street side steps
We began a literal occupation of Wall Street on April 9th, which the 1%’s police proxies have brazenly attempted to suppress. The People’s Assembly goes to the true source of the suppression, Wall Street, and aims to reclaim our right to peacefully assemble at the birthplace of the Bill of Rights.

Thursday, April 26, 6pm
Occupy the Panel for Educational Policy
Prospect Heights HS, 883 Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Learn how we can help build a movement of parents, teachers, and students to stop school closings and win democratic control of our schools. Stand in solidarity with the teachers, students, and parents of the 26 “turnaround schools.”

Thursday, April 26, 8pm
Occupy Your Mind - The American Spring
Choir Loft, Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square Park South
Join us for an evening of live performances based on interviews with the Occupy Movement featuring members of The Civilians Ensemble, members of the Judson Memorial Church community and members of the Arts Diaspora NYC.

Friday, April 27th, 2pm
Weekly Wall Street Marches: Final Spring Training Day!
Liberty Square
For six consecutive weeks, we’ve trained in street tactics, learned to creatively move and communicate together, built a community of trust, and rung the People's Gong as a call to action. Join us for the final Spring Training Day!

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