Via OccupyWallStreet.net:

Date:
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 (All day)
Address:
Various Locations
New York New York 10016
United States

May Day 2013 is Almost Here!

Groups from around New York City are coming together this May Day to stand up for worker rights and immigrant rights, and fight back against the 1%. Join labor unions, the May 1st Coalition, immigrant rights groups, Occupy Wall Street and student groups as we come together and say Another World Is Possible!

See complete info at: http://maydaynyc.org/

Schedule of the Day: Tentative

9:00am – Action at Goldman Sachs & other banks.
10am-3pm – Free University – Cooper Union
11am-2pm – Immigrant worker justice march in midtown.
12-3pm – Rally and march to Save the Public Post Office. Route TBA.
2pm – Everybody Now! teach-in. Cooper Union.
1-4pm – Rally at Union Sq. sponsored by May 1st Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Worker Rights and the Alliance for Worker Rights, Immigrant Rights and Jobs For All.
4:30pm – March from Union Sq. to City Hall, with stops at ICE and other targets.
~7pm (after the march) – Issue based assemblies at Foley Square.
7:30pm – Kimani Gray Memorial Assembly, organized by Occu-Evolve. Focused on labor struggles, ending police brutality, stop and frisk, justice for victims of Hurricane Sandy, and outreach to the 99%.

All Day Events

Singing occupation with Everybody Now!
Free University at parks around the city
Occupy the Subway outreach to the 99% with Occu-Evolve
99 Picket Lines for May Day!
Protests/speak-outs against Law Day starting in SI at 8:30am

Facebook Event

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming” -- Pablo Neruda.

Spring is here and the diverse tribes of occupy are on the march. We're excited about some trends that have been accelerating over the winter: the move towards strategic planning and high impact campaigns. The OWS Strategic Action Labs is in the middle of a planned series of trainings that follow a coherent sequence, starting with goals, researching opponents, choosing targets, and making it clear up front what victory looks like.

Meanwhile, core occupy infrastructure such as InterOccupy.net, NYCGA.net, as well as various websites, blogs and social media accounts retain their power to mobilize. The next eruption of people power on Wall Street might not even carry our branding, but it will build on our experience.

This Spring we are witnessing some high profile victories: small donor empowerment in New York, important gun control legislation in Connecticut, immigration reform passed in Congress, and the historic rise of fast food worker organizing in our city. None of these are perfect, but all of them represent opportunities for building power for the 99%.

Spring is here. We can't afford to waste it.

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

Report from Strike Debt

“Medical debt is a symptom. The disease is our for-profit health care system.”

Watch a short animation illustrating the problems with for-profit medical care and follow up by reading Strike Debt’s brand new, in-depth report on for-profit health care and medical debt (or read here) and the ways the system hurts us financially and physically.

Continue reading »

Released in theaters November 4th, 2005, WAL-MART: THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE is a feature length documentary that uncovers a retail giant's assault on families and American values.

The film dives into the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to fight a goliath. A working mother is forced to turn to public assistance to provide healthcare for her two small children. A Missouri family loses its business after Wal-Mart is given over $2 million to open its doors down the road. A mayor struggles to equip his first responders after Wal-Mart pulls out and relocates just outside the city limits. A community in California unites, takes on the giant, and wins!

Producer/Director Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films take you on an extraordinary journey that will change the way you think, feel -- and shop.

If you don't already understand what's wrong with Wal-Mart, this film will fill in the blanks for you, and if you haven't already, hopefully you'll support the Wal-Mart employees as they strike on Black Friday for fair wages, and fair treatment.

The richest people in America: The owners of Wal-Mart -- six members of the Walton family -- are all on the list of Forbes 400 richest people in America. Combined, the Waltons have a net worth equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans. They are all children or children-in-law of the founders of Walmart. Six people. As much wealth as 30 percent of all the people in America. The Waltons are now collectively worth about $93 billion, according to Forbes.

Wal-Mart employs more people than any other company in the United States outside of the Federal government, yet the majority of its employees with children live below the poverty line.

Continue reading »

A special programming note from Senior Writer Michael Winship:

"As you probably have figured out by now, because Hurricane Sandy hit New York City and its surroundings with such a mighty punch, the Moyers & Company production team has been – literally, as Joe Biden would say – scattered to the winds. Many of us are still without power and light and unable to get to our studio or offices (On top of which, our offices were closed because of the building’s proximity to that high rise crane collapse you might have heard about, but that’s another story.)

As Bill said via phone earlier today, “We all live at the whim of Nature and Nature always has the last word.” And so this weekend we’re airing a repeat program as our Hurricane Sandy Special Edition: the very first of our Moyers & Company broadcasts, which initially aired in January and remains as relevant and powerful heading into Election Day as it was then.

The program spotlights the book Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class and its authors, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. Bill Moyers notes that right from this very first broadcast we said that our series would focus on income inequality, corruption and the undue influence of Corporate America on a government bought and paid for by big business. Together they’re the proverbial elephant in the room politicians refuse to acknowledge – “all but unmentioned in the presidential debates and barely discussed throughout this long and painful election campaign” – but the source of the dysfunction and inertia that paralyze Congress, the White House – and the nation.

If you‘ve missed this edition of Moyers & Company, we hope you’ll watch before you cast your ballot on Tuesday. And if you’ve already seen it, take another look and remind yourself as you prepare to enter the voting booth of how we’ve been maneuvered by Wall Street and Beltway insiders, politically engineered into a state of inequality and the disproportionate power of a very few."

In its premiere episode, Moyers & Company dives into one of the most important and controversial issues of our time: How Washington and Big Business colluded to make the super-rich richer and turn their backs on the rest of us.

Bill’s guests – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, argue that America’s vast inequality is no accident, but in fact has been politically engineered.

How, in a nation as wealthy as America, can the economy simply stop working for people at large, while super-serving those at the very top? Through exhaustive research and analysis, the political scientists Hacker and Pierson — whom Bill regards as the “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” of economics — detail important truths behind a 30-year economic assault against the middle class.

Who’s the culprit? “American politics did it– far more than we would have believed when we started this research,” Hacker explains. “What government has done and not done, and the politics that produced it, is really at the heart of the rise of an economy that has showered huge riches on the very, very, very well off.”

Bill considers their book the best he’s seen detailing “how politicians rewrote the rules to create a winner-take-all economy that favors the 1% over everyone else, putting our once and future middle class in peril.”

The show includes an essay on how Occupy Wall Street reflects a widespread belief that politics no longer works for ordinary people, including footage we took at the OWS rally from October – December 2011.

Full transcript of the show below the fold...

Continue reading »

Via Occupy Wall Street, Real Democracy Now! Paris:

To the financial institutions of the world, we have only one thing to say: we owe you NOTHING!

To our friends, families, our communities, to humanity and to the natural world that makes our lives possible, we owe you everything.

To the people of the world, we say: join the resistance, you have nothing to lose but your debts.

On O13, in the larger context of the worlwide "globalnoise" mobilisation, and within the Global Week of Action against Debt, we will mobilise against debt in several cities of the world: Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico, Paris, New York, Rome…

The governments' response to the financial and economic crisis is the same everywhere: cuts in expenditure and austerity measures under the pretext of reducing deficits and the repayment of a public debt which is the direct outcome of decades of neoliberal policies. The same neoliberal policies that have plundered economic and natural resources and exploited human lifes in Latin America, Asia and Africa for decades, are now also being imposed on the people of Europe and North America.

Governments in the service of finance are using this pretext to further reduce social spending, lower wages and pensions, privatize public utility and goods, dismantle social benefits and deregulate labour laws, and increase taxes on the majority, while social and tax giveaways are generalized for the big companies and the highest income households, the rich, the 1%.

Continue reading »

These are themed days of action in resistance to the system and in solidarity with the 99%. Individual, autonomous affinity groups welcome to plan whatever inspires them.

10/1 – SHUT DOWN K STREET day of action. Meet at 7 AM at McPherson Square to shut down the street where corporate lobbyists, bankers, and the 1% do their shady dealings with the government. Bring tents, sleeping bags, other items as needed. Individual, autonomous affinity groups welcome to plan whatever inspires them.

10/2 – Bank/economic day of action. Meet 7 AM at Bank of America, Pennsylvania & 15th St NW, to “foreclose” a bank. Meet 1 PM at same location for march to deliver “bailout money” to social services, schools, and the people.

10/3 – Lobbyists day of action. A day to stick it to the notorious lobbyists, one-percenters, and Citizens-United Super PAC campaign donors who are undermining democracy and imperiling our system.

10/4 – 99% solidarity day of action. Visiting our 99% friends in shows of solidarity, and uniting together against the oppression of the 1%.

10/5 – Earth, sustainability, and energy day of action. A day of opposing industrial agriculture, GMOs, hydro-fracking, pollution, oil, coal, and other dirty energy, and working toward a healthy, sustainable planet.

10/6 – OCCUPY DC FREEDOM PLAZA ANNIVERSARY, a day for calling for an end to wars and militarism. The Occupy DC Freedom Plaza location began on the anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan on October 6, 2001. This October 6, join Occupy DC to oppose war and militarism, and call for US troops out of Afghanistan now!

10/7 – Occupy Democracy day of action. A day for calling for a true democracy, one month prior to Election Day. Meet 5 PM in McPherson Square for a general assembly to display what a real, egalitarian, horizontal democracy might look like!

A year ago, on October 1, 2011, ecstatic that the 99% had begun occupying Wall Street, brave activists here in Washington DC began occupying McPherson Square on K Street, the corridor where corporate lobbyists, bankers, and the 1% come to wield their power. On October 6, more fearless members of the 99% began occupying Freedom Plaza in downtown DC, about ten blocks to the south. Two active camps were established with several hundred occupiers between the two of them. They survived the snow and rain of winter and persecution from the police, until the police violently raided the camps in the second week of February 2012.

There are more reasons than ever to occupy -- to dwell in the places where the 1% do their corrupt dealings, and refuse to leave. Join the 99% as we reclaim our democracy, our future, our world.

[Via]

Video and transcript via BillMoyers.com.

The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and Jamie Raskin, constitutional law professor and Maryland state senator, join Bill to discuss how the uncontested power of the Supreme Court is changing our elections, our country, and our lives.

“We wanted to bring attention to how this court has empowered the 1% at the expense of the 99%,” says vanden Heuvel. “How it is now working for big business, for corporate power against the interests of ordinary citizens in this country.”

A full transcript of the discussion follows below the fold.

Continue reading »

The Republican National Convention is taking place in Tampa starting August 27th. The Coalition to March on the RNC encourages you to join us and stand in solidarity as we march at the RNC to fight back against the political elite and the 1% agenda.

As of now, we are a Coalition uniting groups from around the country to say NO to this political system that only works for the 1% and therefore are marching at the Republican National Convention to let our voices be heard. Together we stand to march for good jobs, healthcare, affordable education, equality and peace. On top of this, we stand against all parties of the 1% and have also endorsed the March on Wall St. South, who will protest the DNC in Charlotte, NC. For too long people have suffered while the rich got richer. We say money for human needs, not on wars overseas and corporate greed. Together, we are planning a 5000 strong march at the first day of the convention on Aug 27th. We have hundreds of national and local organizations such as Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Get EQUAL, Dream defenders, United National Antiwar Coalition, Occupy Tampa, Occupy USF, Occupy Pensacola, Occupy Tallahassee and more (See here for full list) endorsing us and we would love for all Occupy Assemblies to come down to Tampa to join and/or endorse our coalition. Only through unity is there strength.

We will be encouraging people to sleep at Occupy Tampa's Voice of Freedom park or at these parks that allow camping for a nominal fee [Editor's note: Please be aware that a tropical storm system, potentially a hurricane, is expected to effect Tampa during the Convention. The RNC isn't telling people not to go to Florida, so neither are we. But you should check with organizers about alternatives in case of flooding.] We will be rallying at Perry Harvey Sr. Park, located at 1200 N. Orange Ave Tampa, FL, at 10 am and will be marching from the park through the streets of Tampa to "Protest RNC Square" at around noon. See here for the parade route.

Thanks and please e-mail us at marchonthernc@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

Also visit:
http://www.marchonthernc.com
https://twitter.com/marchonthernc
http://marchonthernc.tumblr.com/

In solidarity, -Coalition to March on the RNC-

For more info about the RNC and the Occupy movement's plans, see also: Occupy Tampa's Official Statement Regarding the RNC

[Probably not suitable for work.]

This is your Moment of Clarity #163: Once upon a time there were a couple of boys named the Brothers Koch. They had a dream of owning the United States of America. Their dream is coming true. And call me a romantic, but I love watching dreams come true.

Censored, safe for work version available here.

The Illuminator - Occupy's Bat Signal - journeyed to Midtown Manhattan earlier this week to project a film trailer on the side of Trump Tower calling out Donald Trump for the environmental atrocities he is committing on the Scottish coast, which include destroying pristine dunes and coastal land so the 1% can play golf. As Justin Wedes of the OWS Media Team narrates, Susan Forste captures the crew as they unspool the trailer for "You've Been Trumped," before a crowd of spectators.

Filmmaker: Susan Forste