Occupy May Day, As It Happens

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/occupy-wall-street-may-day-protests



Occupy Wall Street may have been written off by many Americans, but it's hoping to get a huge stimulus today from the 99 Percent. Organizers are expecting tens of thousands of middle-class workers to take to the streets for May Day, the international worker holiday on which the Occupy movement has pinned its hopes for a resurgence. Occupy groups and their allies in the labor, immigrants' rights, and environmental movements are planning coordinated protests in more than 100 American cities. "May Day will be the big kickoff of Phase 2 of Occupy," says Marissa Holmes, an early OWS organizer. "I think we will see a lot of people in the streets taking more militant actions than they had in the past."

May Day organizers have called for a general strike, urging sympathizers to skip work to attend marches and demonstrations. The biggest ones will likely be in Manhattan, where organizers say turnout will eclipse anything from last fall. (Here is a complete list of events). Activities include a pop-up occupation at Bryant Park; 99 Pickets at corporate targets around Midtown; a "free university" at Madison Square Park; and a 1,000-musician "Guitarmy" march to Union Square, where there will be a concert by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. Later in the day, the occupiers will join forces with labor and immigrants' rights allies in a massive "Solidarity March" from Union Square to "the heart of corporate corruption on Wall Street." Though organizers want May Day to demonstrate Occupy's alliances with other movements, some occupy affinity groups are planning more confrontational protests. One anonymous New York-based group, for instance, has vowed to blockade a bridge or tunnel leading into Manhattan.

In California, the International Longshoremen's Union will shut down the Port of Oakland and some 4,500 members of the California Nurses Association are expected to skip work. Occupy Oakland scuttled a plan for what might have been the most controversial May Day action, a shutdown of the Golden Gate Bridge, after a coalition of striking bridge worker unions backed out. Still, California protesters plan to unveil a squat in San Francisco, hold three simultaneous marches in Oakland, and gum up traffic in Los Angeles with a Critical Mass-style protest on bicycles. Smaller Occupy groups, of course, are also planning protests in cities from Anchorage to Tucson, and any one of them could become a flashpoint.

Among Occupy's main targets will be the five largest banks, which control a greater share of the economy today than they did on the eve of the financial crisis. With dozens of bank occupations likely to happen, May Day illustrates how the movement has become better organized. But so have the banks. In New York and Chicago, they've pooled resources to gather intelligence on protesters. One security consultant likened the cooperation to elks circling against a pack of wolves.