The aim of #OCCUPYWALLSTREET is to draw protesters to New York's financial district in a non-violent protest to spark a mass movement against corporate dominance. While the corporate media ignores the protest, Reader Supported News will continue to report on the latest developments.
A demonstrator holds a sign during an Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan. The protests moved into their third week on Monday. (photo: Reuters)
Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Together, Occupy D.C., Occupy Oakland, Occupy Chicago, Occupy Boston, Occupy San Francisco , Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Live Streams
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1 May - 31 May 12
This page is an archive. Future OWS updates will go on the new page.
30 May 12
Where does the Occupy movement turn next? Can social movements build on its momentum? Will protest and new forms of mobilization create change to transform the economy to one that works for people and the planet?
29 May 12
Over the past month, the FBI has initiated a spate of entrapment operations designed to frame anarchists as “terrorists.” Significantly, they have not targeted longtime organizers, but rather people who are relatively peripheral to anarchist communities.
In response, we’ve prepared a pamphlet suitable for a wide readership explaining how this entrapment strategy works, and an analysis exploring why the FBI has adopted it. Please circulate these widely.
31 May 12
Update: We will reoccupy the Cruz home AGAIN tomorrow at 2pm on the one month anniversary of our 24/7 eviction blockade at the Cruz family home. Freddie Mac, PNC Bank, and Mayor Rybak have a choice to make: waste more city resources arresting peaceful protesters, or work to keep the Cruz family in their home. WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED.
31 May 12
Dozens of people arrested during Occupy Wall Street protests were in New York Criminal Court yesterday awaiting trial. Most of them had been arrested during the September 24 march, when police kettled and pepper-sprayed protesters.
But as case after case came up, the prosecution told Judge Matthew Sciarrino that it was unprepared to go to trial, and requested that the cases be continued. Most defendants will now have to wait until September or October for their trial.
31 May 12
Ahead of today‘s referendum vote on whether Ireland should adopt harsh austerity measures demanded by the bankers and European financial elite, activists briefly occupied the Referendum Commission in Dublin yesterday. Here is an official statement from Occupy Dame Street:
28 May 12
Last night, May 27, that same friend and I met up with other friends at the “usual” corner on Mont-Royal near St-Denis on the Plateau West side of this Montreal neighborhood. At first a handful came, right at 8 pm, like us, and then dozens, growing quickly to hundreds. It was my second night at this intersection, near to the home of another friend, and already I recognized most of the faces, and people nodded at each other, and more of them talked to each other (and my two friends and others are busily organizing toward their first neighborhood popular assembly this coming Saturday).
As we moved from crossing with the light, to crossing at the traffic light, to finally taking the intersection, a group of young children–barely teens–among the many young children on the streets with us, decided to lead a breakaway march, skirting past the police car that had now arrived to “help” us manage the traffic. We adults quickly ran after them, laughing, as our children at the front lead us for some 15 minutes away from that cop car again and again, turning a corner at the last minute to allude the police, and when we got to a big road, the kids took over the other side too, at one point nearly encircling a second police car to ensure we could all get ahead of the police! And soon we turned a corner and that, voile, was another band of casserolers, and soon we ran across another, and then our big casserole met another huge casserole at a main intersection, and everyone raised their pots & pans in unison to joyfully greet each other. The police couldn’t keep up with us, neither children or adults, or bikes or dogs, wheelchairs or skateboards.
31 May 12
The Occupy movement came to Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday in San Ramon, California when over 150 people protested at the meeting. San Jose Mercury News reports that protesters held signs with slogans that included: “Occupy Chevron,” “Energy shouldn’t cost lives” and “1% whiners, pay your fair share.”
30 May 12
ALBANY, N.Y. — A push to raise the minimum wage despite a political stalemate brought the Occupy Albany movement to New York’s Capitol on Tuesday while dozens of clergy statewide pressured the Senate’s Republican majority and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“A living wage is possible, this movement is unstoppable!” chanted 40 demonstrators from the Capitol’s ornate Million Dollar Staircase. “It’s shameful and outrageous!”
The group chanted as they walked past the Senate’s offices and to Cuomo’s office to drop off letters pushing Cuomo to get his allies to take up a minimum-wage bill passed by the Assembly. About 1 million workers earn the current $7.25-an-hour minimum wage; the Assembly bill would raise it to $8.50 an hour.
28 May 12
Is the government unleashing the same methods of entrapment against OWS that it has used against left movements and Muslim-Americans?
28 May 12
Thank you; you are a little late to the party, and you are still missing the mark a lot of the time, but in the past few days, you have published some not entirely terrible articles and op-eds about what's happening in Quebec right now. Welcome to our movement.
Some of you have even started mentioning that when people are rounded up and arrested each night, they aren't all criminals or rioters. Some of you have admitted that perhaps limiting our freedom of speech and assembly is going a little bit too far. Some of you are no longer publishing lies about the popular support that you seemed to think our government had. Not all of you, mind you, but some of you are waking up.
28 May 12
Police arrested ten members of labor unions, faith groups, neighborhood organizations, and Occupy Portland who refused to leave the University Station post office at closing time this evening. Unfurling two ten foot banners, reading "Occupy the Post Office" and "No Closures! No Cuts!" the protesters blocked the closure of the retail window while a rally of over a hundred supporters chanted outside. Earlier a line of demonstrators had marched through the office, delivering postcards addressed to the Postmaster General.
28 May 12
Police arrested five Occupy Homes MN protesters early Friday morning after they chained themselves together in a "sleeping dragon" device inside a south house that officers were attempting to evict.
25 May 12
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Occupy Wall Street filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against New York City, claiming authorities destroyed $47,000 worth of books, computers and other equipment confiscated from the protesters' encampment in lower Manhattan last fall.
25 May 12
Montreal police have been doing whatever it takes to snuff out the nightly protests. In response, we've de-centralized. Last night, at 8pm EST, people all over the province, but mainly in Montreal, went outside and started banging on kitchen pots, making a massive noise that could be heard all over Montreal island.
25 May 12
German police said they detained 400 anti-capitalist protesters in Frankfurt on Friday for defying a ban on demonstrations against austerity policies implemented to tackle the intensifying euro zone debt crisis.
23 May 12
How about this! From Occupy Frankfurt. May 19, 2012. The German police took off their helmets and marched with the protesters- clearing the way for them.
The police coming over to serve and protect the people... Blockupy Frankfurt. Police are escorting. Reports of an estimated 20,000+ protesters. Nice to see their faces.... and their humanity coming through...
23 May 12
On Feb 21st, in protest against an 80% increase in tuition, 36,000 students, or roughly 9% of Quebec’s university system, stopped going to class. By March, nightly demonstrations began. Students started pinning red squares to their clothes because increasing tuition will land them “squarely in the red.”
Today is the 100th day of students striking and reports indicate that between 300-500,000 people are currently demonstrating in the streets of Montreal. Solidarity marches occurred in cities such as New York City and Paris.
22 May 12
While thousands of NATO protesters streamed out of Chicago following Monday’s final day of organized marches and rallies, the Chicago Tribune concluded that the summit had ended “without giving Chicago a black eye.” And, indeed, although shocking images of heads bloodied by police batons have emerged, the city did not devolve into 1968-style unbridled chaos. This weekend’s street scenes may not leave a lasting mark on the Windy City, but raids, police intimidation, protesters facing terrorism charges and reports of police entrapment leave a chilling imprint in the summit’s wake.
23 May 12
Students take to the streets again in large numbers to mark the 100th day of their fight against tuition hikes and Bill 78. Announced after the tentative deal with the province fell apart, demonstrators bussed in from all over the province and were joined by supporters like teachers, professors, parents, unions and other social movements who have rallied around their cause to express a larger social malaise. Now, with a special law attempting to impose an end to the 15-week strike, tensions are at an all-time high. Two months after a huge and peaceful demonstration brought as many as 200,000 into the streets, another massive protest makes its way through downtown Montreal. The Gazette brings you the day’s events live as they unfold.
23 May 12
You may not have heard of it, but the West African country of Mauritania has what is probably one of the most vibrant and active protest movements in the world today. Protests drawing tens of thousands of people (out of a total population of just three million) take place almost weekly in the capital Nouakchott, with many smaller protests happening on a daily basis around the vast country. The protests are overwhelmingly nonviolent — even in the face of frequent violent suppression — and have been going on since February 2011.
22 May 12
I like to compare those using Black Bloc tactics at a nonviolent protest to taking a six-year-old kid to the symphony. You'll likely find yourself constantly apologizing to those sitting in your row when the child makes fart jokes every time he hears the tympani.
No matter what you do, how nice you are, how appreciative of the music or knowledgeable of the composer you are, the crowd will only remember you for having the annoying kid with you who ruined it for everybody.
22 May 12
In 1972, writing in Rolling Stone about a looming confrontation between protesters and police in the streets in front of the Republican National Convention in Miami, Hunter S. Thompson described the moment he slipped off his watch.
"The first thing to go in a street fight is always your watch, and once you've lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know it's time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket."
22 May 12
Montreal - Quebec's student protests took a dark, angry turn over the weekend following the introduction of an emergency law aimed at restoring order in the province, while the movement gained a number of high-profile supporters on the international stage.
For the second night in a row, police clashed with protesters repeatedly into the late hours Sunday in a chaotic scene that left at least 300 arrested and 20 injured, including 11 police officers. At least one person was taken to hospital with what emergency services called "non-life threatening injuries."
22 May 12
Today, students and their allies in Quebec mark the 100th day of protest since the beginning of a student strike to defend accessible public education and oppose tuition increases. The strike has spread and become a general revolt against austerity and corrupt, illegitimate politicians. Throughout the massive demonstrations, which have reached sizes of around 300,000 people, riot police have brutally attacked marchers using clubs, grenades, rubber bullets, and chemical weapons. Two protesters have lost eyes and one has nearly died. Police have also illegally arrested entire busloads of protesters on their way to or from demos.
12 November 11
In the shadow of the NATO summit, under the watchful eyes of a phalanx of full-black-clad riot police, dozens of former servicemen and women in uniform, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, threw away their medals, with apologies.
It was one of the most moving experiences many of us had witnessed in our lives. It is hard to describe in words. I couldn't get the lump out of my throat.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a woman next to me crying. Their words, their voices, crackling under the emotion of their courageous act, breaking under the weight of the pain, the trauma, their anger, sadness, and hope - theirs was a heroic and beautiful act, a moving ceremony.
21 May 12
Tracey Pollock, a credentialed photographer for The UpTake, is attacked by police in Chicago during an anti-NATO protest on Saturday. Before the attack, police were using their bicycles as weapons to force back the crowd which was staging a march without a permit.
21 May 12
Under cover of the night around twelve police cars stopped five journalists when they were heading back to where they are staying in Chicago during the NATO summit. All five have been covering protests against the NATO summit for the past few days.
21 May 12
Chicago - Nan Wigmore brought her walker and packed her sign, "Grateful Great Grandmas Circle The Wagons, Support Occupy," and rode on a bus for some three days, sleeping in the same clothes, to make it to the NATO protests in Chicago.
The 75-year-old from Portland, Ore., says she couldn't imagine being anywhere else despite the discomfort of her journey.
20 May 12
Lawyers for three protesters arrested on terrorist-related charges ahead of the Nato summit have accused police of entrapping them and encouraging an alleged bomb-making effort.
The three were arrested on Wednesday night when members of the Chicago police department battered their way into an apartment in the Bridgeport area of the city.
According to court documents released on Saturday, the three men considered targeting Barack Obama's re-election headquarters and the home of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.
19 May 12
Three Nato protesters, arrested in a late night raid on Wednesday, have been charged on terrorism-related offences.
Police claim the charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device, are the result of a month-long investigation into a group they believe was making Molotov cocktails. They had already been pulled over by police last week and asked about their protest plans in a stop they posted on YouTube.
19 May 12
For a generation, America's political-economy has been gripped in a vicious cycle. Those at the top of the economic pile have taken an ever-growing share of the nation's income, and then leveraged that haul into ever-greater political power, which they have in turn used to rewrite the rules of "the market" in their favor. Wash, rinse and repeat.
It's the result of years of institutional investments by the corporate Right to advance a reactionary legal regime in America's courts. In the process, the richest Americans now have their hands in both our legislative and judicial branches, while working America has become a voiceless stepping stone.
18 May 12
MONTREAL (AP) — Facing the most sustained student protest in Canadian history, Quebec's provincial government weighed emergency legislation Thursday aimed at ending rallies and demonstrations against rising tuition costs.
Authorities said 122 were arrested late Wednesday as thousands of demonstrators spilled into the streets of Montreal, with some smashing bank windows and hurling objects at police. Protests have been going on for three months.
17 May 12
MONTREAL — A bid to restore order in restive Quebec was met with streets clogged with thousands of protesters, a multitude of flying projectiles, several smashed windows, and blasts of pepper spray leading to 122 arrests.
The unrest on Wednesday night followed the Quebec government’s announcement it would suspend the current academic session for striking students in an effort to calm things down.
It also hinted at more punitive measures, without sharing details
17 May 12
The Occupy movement will descend on Barack Obama's hometown intent on reasserting itself as a globally-heard voice for change. After months of setbacks and evictions - first from their spiritual home in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, then St Paul's Cathedral in London and McPherson Square at the foot of the White House - Chicago offers a massive stage, lit by the cameras of the world's media.
"The media loves the story about Occupy dwindling but the truth is we're stronger than ever," said Rachael Perrotta, an organiser with Occupy Chicago. "These protests will only make us more cohesive and more powerful."
18 May 12
To better empower travelers and Chicagoans new to Occupy Chicago, we are releasing the Occupy Chicago NATO/G8 Guide.
17 May 12
When Jeril Richardson checked out of the hospital after he was hit by a car in 2009, he returned home to find that his landlord had not been keeping up with mortgage payments and the bank was foreclosing on his Hyde Park home.
Canvassers knocking on his door told him about City Life Vida Urbana, a community organization that would help him to fight to stay in his home. Nearly three years later, Richardson still lives in the house, pays rent to the bank, and is saving to purchase the property.
17 May 12
Announcements
2pm Jackson and LaSalle - Bike Mass for Environmentally Sustainable Transportation
3pm Prudential Plaza, 180 N. Stetson Ave.- Rally outside of the Canadian Consulate
3:30pm Press conference, Prudential Plaza
Thur 5/17: Occupy Chicago Stands against NATO/G8 Member Canada's Environmental Destruction
Shouting out against the NATO war machine, Occupy Chicago is organizing a week of actions highlighting the violence and oppression of NATO, and calling for the organization to be disbanded. Thursday, May 17th Occupy Chicago will defend the environment at the Canadian Consulate, exposing the dirty oil extraction of the Alberta Tar Sands, which is destroying the local ecosystem, fueling G8/NATO’s wars to protect resources and contributing to the global climate crises
16 May 12
More protesters, mostly from the Occupy movement, are making their way to Chicago.
Groups from New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Portland boarded buses Wednesday morning and settled in for the long haul singing Walt Disney tunes and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
The groups streamed their trips online along the way, spreading the word about the Occupy movement and their Chicago plans. On a bus from L.A., riders described Occupy as "a new kind of lifestyle" and speculated close to 900 supporters ultimately would converge.
16 May 12
Occupy Wall Street reignited a movement for economic justice. Now WOW — Women Occupying Wall Street — aims to do the same for feminism. They’re bringing together a broad range of New York City feminists—and unapologetically using the word—to launch a new, inclusive activism for gender justice and against the War on Women.
The First Feminist General Assembly is Thursday, May 17 at 6:30 in Washington Square Park.
Yes, it’s a meeting—but not just any meeting. The invitation list ranges from SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Center to the Sex Workers Outreach Project, from the Granny Peace Brigade to Hollaback, a group of 20-somethings using cell phone cameras to broadcast the faces of street harassers. The conversation will be personal as well as political.
16 May 12
We are experiencing the deepest crisis of capitalism since the great depression of the 30s – and the European governments continue to pour oil on the fires! From the very beginning, some governments have prevented a solidarity-based solution to the crisis in Europe and are significantly responsible for its exacerbation. This refers particularly to the German government, which, in August 2008, blocked a substantial economic stimulus package for Europe. Hardly had the recession reached its lowest point in Germany in 2009, when the German government preached the necessity for hard austerity policies. The “debt brake” was anchored in the constitution: politics disempowered itself, shaped by neo-liberal ideology. The austerity measures taken in various EU states affected above all wage-earners, pensioners, the unemployed and the self-employed, while the wealthy, the banks and the corporations were spared.
16 May 12
Police in Frankfurt cleared hundreds of protesters who set up camp outside the European Central Bank in October as they prepare for as many as 30,000 anti-capitalist activists to besiege Germany’s banking capital.
17 May 12
Investors are fleeing Russia as demonstrators against President Vladimir Putin dig in, exacerbating the impact of Europe's debt crisis on the country's markets, money managers from Frankfurt to Moscow said.
16 May 12
My colleague Sarah Jaffe and I went down to check out the culminating action in a week of anti-austerity protests in NYC.
A group of about two hundred or so activists, occupiers, and community members arrived in the heart of billboard-blaring, lights- blinking, temple-to-money-spending Times Square, where they were greeted by a banner and a saxophonist playing the national anthem.
16 May 12
More than a hundred demonstrators, including members of the Occupy movement and union groups, held signs and blew whistles on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday to support a proposal requiring banks doing business with the city of Los Angeles to report on foreclosures, charitable giving and other activities.
16 May 12
It is a movement that landed in several cities across the nation including here in Little Rock. But at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday, the site known as Occupy Little Rock will be taken back by the city.
The parking lot at 4th and Ferry streets has been utilized as a camp for the protestors but city officials say the lot is needed for Riverfest and other summer activities. Occupy Little Rock has less than nine hours to vacate the premises.
What began at the Clinton Library last fall, will end at the corner of 4th and Ferry streets in Little Rock.
15 May 12
Noam Chomsky says the Occupy movement has helped rebuild class solidarity and communities of mutual support on a level unseen since the time of the Great Depression.
"The Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn't really exist in the country: communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion ... just people doing things and helping each other," Chomsky says.
15 May 12
A three-week-long protest on UC Berkeley agricultural research land in Albany came to a quiet close early Monday when police cleared out a small group of protesters who had set up an urban farming camp.
University police officers in riot helmets arrested nine people after giving protesters 10 minutes to leave the Gill Tract near Marin and San Pablo avenues about 6:15 a.m.
When officers fanned out across the fields, the few protesters who had not obeyed the police order scurried off the property and onto San Pablo, which authorities had closed to traffic.
15 May 12
Today is the one year anniversary of the 15-M movement in Spain, which continues to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people and inspire the world. The following text is an excerpt from 15-M: What Is The Plan? orginally published on TakeTheSquare.net in March. It is republished in part to give our readers a better understanding of the 15-M movement, who we are, what our goals and tactics are, and what we are fighting for.
Today is also a day of action against the banks that caused the global crisis and the culmination of the Another NYC Is Possible Week of Actions Against Budget Cuts And Austerity. Join us in solidarity with the indignad@s for a mass rally at Times Square at 6pm!
15 May 12
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party didn't succeed by electing candidates - it succeeded showing the limitations of the electoral system. Occupy should do the same.
15 May 12
Occupy Chicago says thousands of protesters will go to Chicago next week before the city hosts the NATO summit, May 20 and 21. While Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel views the summit as raising Chicago's profile, Occupy thinks the event will call attention to their concerns and invigorate the Occupy Wall Street movement that started last fall.
15 May 12
New Yorker Stevie Bates, 19, who had been traveling cross country with Occupy Wall Street friends to an Occupy event, stopped at a layover in Pittsburgh on April 27th on the way home to New York. She hasn't been seen since.
Bates was last observed boarding the bus in Pittsburgh bound for arrival in NY on April 28. Her mother Vivian last spoke to her on the phone when she was at the Greyhound station in Pittsburgh at 7:52 pm. She told her mother that when she got back she intended to stay with friends in Brooklyn but would be home later in the day. She never arrived.
14 May 12
Chapel Hill - While Michael Bloomberg was speaking to tens of thousands of graduates and parents Sunday, a smaller celebration held by members of Occupy UNC-Chapel Hill sought to provide a different graduation experience - one they said was more real and less pretentious.
14 May 12
Welcome to Occupy Brooklyn.
In the months after Occupy Wall Street spring to life in lower Manhattan, thousands of individual Occupations formed in cites around the world. Now, in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn, individual General Assemblies are helping transform their neighborhoods, and taking part in a larger movement.
12 November 11
Spain's "indignants" are demonstrating in cities and towns nationwide to decry economic injustice and mark the first birthday of the grassroots movement which inspired "Occupy" protests in the US and around the world.
Tens of thousands of people rallied on Saturday to mark the beginning of a four-day protest that will end on May 15, the anniversary of the movement's birth.
Several columns of protesters marched separately on Madrid's city centre from all directions to converge on central Puerta del Sol. But authorities vowed to stop them camping in the square, which became the cradle of their popular movement.
10 May 12
The NATO summit is coming to town in a few days and as members of the 99%, we won’t be invited to attend. But there’s good reason not to stay home. Occupy Chicago and numerous community groups have lined up a week of events and actions to confront the agendas of austerity and militarism and to present a vision of a better Chicago. Most events are free; some may require tickets or registration. Check out the links for details. Know of something else that should be here? Let us know at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
10 May 12
On May 19, Mayor 1% Emanuel will bring to Chicago military and civilian representatives of the 28-nation US-commanded and largely US-financed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and heads of state and finance ministers of the G-8 world economic powers.
They meet on behalf of the 1% of the world, the rich and the powerful, the bankers and generals. Their agenda is to continue to impose austerity, or poverty, by cutting social spending for workers and the poor to maintain profitability for the rich and to launch more wars to stop the rise of the poor nations of the Third World.
11 May 12
Albany CA – When University of California Police arrived at the Occupied Gill Tract yesterday morning at 6 a.m. and began barricading the gates, with some two dozen members of the Gill Tract Farmers Collective inside, word spread quickly that Occupy the Farm was being raided.
How did the Farmers react?
By planting tomatoes.
11 May 12
An international assembly made up of individuals from Occupy groups in London and New York, as well as Take the Square and social movements in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia--a total of six continents--has released a statement ahead of a global weekend of action. The assembly, held online between hundreds of activists and then including thousands more via email, worked on the statement for several months and endorsed it by consensus on May 4.
09 May 12
Well, it happened — massive protests around the world, strikes across Europe, tens of thousands in the streets of New York City, student walkouts, radical art, banners hanging everywhere, slogans stickered to walls, occupation attempts, dozens of arrests around the country. This was May Day in a post-Occupy Wall Street world, but May Day was only the beginning. Again. Winter has peeled away, and the streets are getting warm.
Between May 10 and May 15, New Yorkers — in solidarity with global calls to action from around the world — will carry out Another City is Possible, Another World is Possible, a week of actions connecting the city budget to austerity measures around the world, all culminating on May 15 at 6 p.m. in a mass convergence in Times Square.
08 May 12
In Response to Campus Security’s Use of Excessive Force on Peaceful Students, Petition to Repeal Tuition Hikes and End Securitization of CUNY.
On May 2nd, 2012, peaceful students and faculty experienced unnecessary brutality on the Brooklyn College campus. Brooklyn College President Karen Gould ordered for students to be violently removed by campus security from outside of her office in a main academic building; two students were wrongly arrested, spent a night in jail, and face unsubstantiated charges.
Over the next five years, students face a $1,500 tuition increase, and continuous cuts to student services and a continuation of increased securitization on CUNY Campuses– from the NYPD systematic spying on Muslim Student Associations, to Stop and Frisk racial profiling policies on and off our campuses, to attacks by security guards on peaceful students such as during the Board of Trustees Meeting on November 21st, 2011 at Baruch College.
We refuse to allow these to become the future of CUNY.
08 May 12
If you had followed May Day protests in New York City in the mainstream media, you might hardly have noticed that they happened at all. The stories were generally tucked away, minimalist, focused on a few arrests, and spoke of "hundreds" of protesters in the streets, or maybe, if a reporter was feeling especially generous, a vague "thousands."
I did my own rough count on the largest of the Occupy protests that day. It left Union Square in the evening heading for the Wall Street area.
I walked through the march front to back, figuring a couple of thousand loosely packed protesters to a block, and came up with a conservative estimate of 15,000 people.
08 May 12
If you had followed May Day protests in New York City in the mainstream media, you might hardly have noticed that they happened at all. The stories were generally tucked away, minimalist, focused on a few arrests, and spoke of "hundreds" of protesters in the streets, or maybe, if a reporter was feeling especially generous, a vague "thousands."
I did my own rough count on the largest of the Occupy protests that day. It left Union Square in the evening heading for the Wall Street area.
I walked through the march front to back, figuring a couple of thousand loosely packed protesters to a block, and came up with a conservative estimate of 15,000 people.
07 May 12
Retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard was arrested in Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza in New York City last Tuesday night as he participated in the May 1 Occupy demonstrations.
He and 15 other military veterans were taken into custody after they linked arms to hold the plaza against a police attempt to clear it.
There were protesters behind them who, perhaps because of confusion, perhaps because of miscommunication or perhaps they were unwilling to risk arrest, melted into the urban landscape.
07 May 12
One of Occupy Wall Street's enduring legacies is the Occupy Our Homes movement that successfully managed to protect families from evictions at a time when not even the government of the United States seemed overly concerned with an epidemic of foreclosures.
In February, Helen Bailey, the 78-year-old former civil rights activist who was threatened with foreclosure by J.P. Morgan Chase while the company trumpeted its efforts to uphold Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy, was able to stay in her home following a successful campaign by Occupy Nashville.
07 May 12
We will not stop until we achieve our objectives: the 99% will take to the streets again and again until we have a say in the world in which we live. We want global change. Let's turn the streets into the world's biggest loudspeaker on the 12th of May.
Because we are the 99%, we are not owned by politicians and bankers. Take to the streets on May 12th!
07 May 12
On 12 May people around the world will rise up again responding to the global call for action. In London we'll visit those who gambled with our futures and we'll deliver our very own personal messages to them.
07 May 12
99% solidarity is excited to participate in nonviolent direct actions in Chicago from May 18 to 22, 2012. We have secured buses to bring people to these actions from several U.S cities.
We are currently working on the travel schedule, agenda and other important details of this trip. We will be contacting you with updated information shortly. For now here are a few updates:
03 May 12
I chatted briefly with musician Justin Remer, whose Brooklyn apartment was raided by the NYPD on Monday morning in an incident that was first reported on Gawker and sure looks from all angles like a pre May Day intimidation tactic. I was curious about how the experience felt. “At around six-fifteen I was woken up. I sleep in a lofted bed, and there's a police officer standing in my bedroom shining a flashlight in my face. He woke me up and said ‘get down in the living room.," he said. Remer dressed, grabbed his ID as requested, and joined his housemates in the living room.
02 May 12
Every gate at the City University of New York's Brooklyn College had doubled security—no one was getting in without a student ID. That and the rain might have dampened turnout for a mass student day of action calling for increased access to higher education and supported by the likes of Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, but it didn't dampen the spirits of the student activists who rallied on the quad and then marched into Boylan Hall, chanting, “1, 2, 3, 4, tuition fees are class war! 5, 6, 7, 8, students will retaliate!” It took police, batons and riot cuffs to do that.
03 May 12
On May 6-9 people from across the country and world will be converging in Charlotte, NC, home of Bank of America’s Headquarters and their annual Shareholder meeting, to demand an end to their practices that are bankrupting our economy and wrecking our climate. Homeowners, students, immigrants, environmentalists, workers, women’s groups, peace activists and more will be in Charlotte, bringing their stories, hearts and communities to the fight against Bank of America and the economic inequality, racial injustice and environmental destruction they have wrought.
02 May 12
As I walked around Union Square in NYC yesterday between 4:00 and 5:30, waiting for the march down Broadway to begin, memories of Occupied Zuccotti Park came to mind. Handmade signs about a very wide range of issues were everywhere. There were drumming and musical groups doing their rhythmic things, and people dancing as they did so. There was Reverend Billy performing, and an incredibly well done colored chalk piece of artwork on the sidewalk near 17th and Broadway. People everywhere, mainly white folks but diverse, lots of young people but with a significant number of non-young people.
And a spirit of hope, a spirit that declared: "We are here, we are organized, we have not been defeated and we are not going away."
And so many of us! During the march down Broadway my wife and I stood to the side of the march for a while, holding our own handmade signs (opposing nuclear power and the Keystone pipeline) for marchers to see, and watching happily as block after block of people walked past us.
Guitarmy Highlights Occupy Resurgence
02 May 12
Midtown is a great place for chanting; your voice echoes off the tall buildings and you can hear it blocks away. Even better for marching bands, bells and whistles. There may not actually be 99 pickets, but midtown Manhattan is clogged with them in the morning, and they're inside the heads of the people on the street - I walk past a couple discussing our "cruel," unequal society as I hurry from picket to picket.
I made it to Bryant Park a few minutes after eight in a haze of rain, and found a crowd of around 100 huddled under their umbrellas or the ones at tables in the park. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra were clustered around their instruments but not playing, and Occupiers chatted with one another.
My first picket stop was at the New York Times building, where the United Auto Workers (UAW) were picketing under a lovely awning in support of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (UAW Local 2320). The lawyers and legal support staff of Legal Services NYC provide free legal aid to New York's low-income folks who need support - they help fight evictions, support the unemployed, work on benefits for the disabled, and more. They're facing cutbacks from their board, who want them to give back part of their healthcare benefits - not to mention cuts to the services they provide.
02 May 12
Oakland police used "an overwhelming military-type response" to disperse Occupy Oakland demonstrators and fired at a former Marine and Iraq war veteran who was critically injured in the clashes in October, according to a report issued on Monday.
The report by an outside monitor of the Oakland Police Department came one day before anti-Wall Street protesters plan nationwide rallies on May 1, with Occupy Oakland demonstrators vowing to take over San Francisco's iconic Golden Gate Bridge.
Oakland's police practices came under intense scrutiny last year when former Marine Scott Olsen was critically injured during a demonstration in October. Protesters said he was hit in the head by a tear gas canister.)
02 May 12
Another University is Possible. Today, May 2nd, students from across NYC will be joining together at the Brooklyn College Campus to take back our future from the 1%. Hundreds of students will be staging a continuation of May Day and the Free University by taking over the Quad at Brooklyn College with teach-ins, political theater, food, music, and events to show an alternative university. While subsidies, tax breaks, and corporate loopholes continue to exist allowing banks and corporations to make record profits, slashes to education have resulted in students paying more and more in CUNY while receiving less and less. Noon, Wednesday - May 2, 2012 Brooklyn College Quad (Next to the library and Bell Tower)
02 May 12
Tonight, at an exclusive 7pm auction, Sotheby's is expected to sell Edvard Munch's iconic painting "The Scream" for $80 million dollars. Outside, Occupy and labor allies will protest the Upper East Side art auction house in solidarity with 43 locked-out art handlers who have been replaced by Sotheby's with low wage temporary workers with no benefits.
01 May 12
The Occupy Wall Street movement has attempted to breathe new life into its campaign against inequities in the global financial system with a series of May Day protests around the United States.
Thousands of people turned out in New York for a day of action that culminated in a confident march down Broadway in the evening sunshine towards Wall Street, the crucible of the protest that began last year with an angry backlash against banking excess.
The stated aim of bringing business in the commercial capital of the US to a standstill went unfulfilled, but as rain gave way to a bright spring afternoon, traffic ground to a halt around Lower Manhattan as the Occupy movement's most anticipated day of action in months took hold.
01 May 12
Live coverage of Occupy and May Day protests in New York and other US cities, plus highlights from around the world.
01 May 12
Ocourse, most of us know what's wrong with the world. We know about the poverty, war, violence and disease. We're conscious of the injustice, but not fully conscious of it, because frankly, we have enough to worry about in our own lives.
As such, we've come to accept these injustices as simple facts of life - prepackaged side effects of the human condition, as natural and intertwined with our existence as water to a stream, beyond our capacity to effect in any significant way.
This collective sense of powerlessness and default apathy is why we're striking.
01 May 12
TODAY IS MAY DAY! INTO THE STREETS!
Find events in your city here. Before you head out, check our Last-Minute May Day Checklist. If you are in NYC, check out the full schedule. If you can only make one event, try to come to the (permitted) Solidarity March leaving from Union Square at 5:30pm ET!
01 May 12
This May Day, hundreds of thousands of workers, immigrants, students, retirees, and unemployed people across the U.S. and around world will take to the streets, many for the first time. (If you are in NYC, check here for a schedule for the full day!) For folks new to protest (and of course, everyone else) we've thrown together a last-minute May Day Checklist:
What to Bring
01 May 12
You can't arrest a song!
That's part of the idea behind one faction of a large network of demonstrations and protests planned for May Day - the day of action this Tuesday that some suspect will push Occupy Wall Street into the spotlight again in a major way.
01 May 12
The City of New York, the New York Police Department, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and several large corporations including JPMorgan Chase have repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of Occupy Wall Street protesters, according to a wide-ranging federal lawsuit filed on Monday morning.
Occupy Wall Street victims of pepper-spray cop Anthony Bologna, September 24, 2011. The NYPD made false arrests and violated free- speech rights of protestors and journalists last year, according to a complaint filed today in a Manhattan federal court.
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