A poster advertising the Occupy movement’s call for a general strike (Imnop/Occuprint)
A poster advertising the Occupy movement’s call for a general strike (Imnop/Occuprint)It’s May Day–international workers day. And a big day of actions planned by the Occupy movement in the US, protesting economic inequality, has already gotten off to a start.
In addition to a “pop-up occupation” in Bryant Park, picket lines outside of banks and more, a large march from Union Square to Wall Street is set to take place in the afternoon. And a leading Palestine solidarity group in New York City, Adalah, has called for activists to join them and the Occupy Wall Street Global Justice Working Group at the march.
The call from the OWS Global Justice Working Group, which works on issues like Bahrain and Palestine solidarity, reads:
MAY DAY March + Celebrate with the OWS Global Justice Working Group
• No poverty • No mass incarceration • No racial profiling • No detentions •
• No wars • No bombs • No drones • No xenophobia • No state repression •The 1% crashed our economy, foreclosed our homes, destroyed jobs, and waged wars for profit. We, the 99%, declare our commitment to resist and to end wars at home and abroad. We join with immigrants, workers, students, the unemployed and all people of conscience, united in a global picket against austerity, repression, and the theft of our lives, creativity, and a sustainable future.
On May 1, The Global Justice working group at Occupy Wall Street and friends will march together as a decolonize / antiwar / solidarity block. Bring signs representing your group!
Rally, 4 PM: Meet at the Gandhi statue in Union Square (southwest side, nr. W 15th St).
March, 5:30 PM: We’ll join the permitted march from Union Square to Wall Street with a coalition of labor, immigrant, OWS, student, and faith organizations.
Celebrate + connect, from end of march til the break of dawn: Dakota Roadhouse, 43 Park Place (nr. Church St). If not otherwise engaged in the event of unlawful actions by Bloomberg’s private army during this permitted march, we’ll eat, drink, and connect with likeminded grassroots organizers at the Global Justice working group’s inaugural happy hour.
Toast-off! Last September, the 1% once mocked us with champagne toasts from the balcony of a private Wall Street hotel. On May Day, we toast back! Tear gas profiteers, PR slobs, imperial thieves, vampire squids, and their government lackeys are no match for the people’s wit. Come with a “toast” to your own target in the 1%.
And at 2 pm, as part of a “free university” action in Madison Square Park, a teach-in on Palestine will be held. Led by two researchers working in the West Bank, the teach-in will be about the “contemporary situation in Palestine” and “issues of infrastructure and the state, settler colonialism and the law, and privatization and the statist project.”
For more information on the Occupy Wall Street Global Justice Working Group, check out their blog. And here’s the Facebook event for today’s march.
Seems like London Stock Exchange has been “Occupied”!
Mayday Mayday, 1%!
On Univ of Colorado’s campus Boulder. Not one May Day occupier protesting anywhere on campus. One of the most apathetic campuses I have been on in a long long time. Just recently Obama came to the campus. The CU administration now has a “free speech zone” where they herd any protesters so that students, visitor to campus can not see the protesters. Just recently happened during Obama’s visit. I think about the Ward Churchill dismissal, the recent shut down of 4/20, the herding of protesters into areas so others can not see them. Some high high control taking place on this campus. Shut down dissent or keep it where no one can see it.
— giving final exams at UAA in Anchorage today. Probably would make UC Boulder seem like a hotbed of activism in comparison.