Occupy Wall Street May Day Protests Aim To Breathe Life Back Into Movement

* Organized labor rejects call for general strike

* Protests in Chicago, San Francisco

* New York police report white powder found in mail

By Edith Honan

NEW YORK, May 1 (Reuters) - Occupy Wall Street sought to breathe fresh life into the movement that sparked a wave of nationwide protests against economic injustice eight months ago with May Day events across the United States on Tuesday and a call for a general strike that went unheeded.

By mid-morning May 1, about 500 activists had gathered at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan for a "pop-up encampment" emblematic of the movement's early days in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park near the Wall Street financial district.

On the Williamsburg Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, about 350 demonstrators marched on the pedestrian crossing with signs reading "Capitalism Kills Fun" and "Strike!" Several dozen police accompanied them on foot and on scooters.

In San Francisco, the May Day protests began early on Monday night, when a group of demonstrators walking through the city's Mission District smashed windows and splashed paint on buildings and vehicles near a police sub-station, said police spokesman Sergeant Daryl Fong. Officers arrested one of the protesters.

Occupy Chicago protesters, shadowed by police, gathered outside Bank of America branches, raising a large "Chicago Spring" banner and chanting "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out."

Police blocked a State Street bank entrance, and banks in Chicago's banking center on LaSalle Street prepared for protesters by posting extra guards and closing some entrances.

Other plans for May Day included a march with organized labor starting from New York City's Union Square in the afternoon. In Washington, there were plans to march to the White House.

A text message broadcast late Monday from an Occupy Wall Street address said: "All civilians stand by for GENERAL STRIKE at 08:00. No Work, School, or Shopping. All out in the streets!"

Labor unions rejected pleas for a general strike.

Police in New York declined to say if any unusual security precautions were planned but the city's financial community was making preparations. At the Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan, the atrium used for much of the winter as an Occupy meeting spot was closed to the public.

Directly across the street from Bryant Park at the Bank of America tower, about a dozen police blocked access to the building. One person was arrested in the middle of 6th Avenue in front of the skyscraper.

They also targeted the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp with a group chanting "Fox News: Pay your share!" and demanding Murdoch's arrest.

"The Wall Street fat cats are unfairly gaming the system in a way that makes the common man upset," said Bradley Shields, 56, a freelance travel photographer visiting from Honolulu.

New York police reported 10 instances of white powder being mailed to financial institutions and City Hall on Monday and Tuesday in which a harmless substance was sent along with a note saying, "Happy May Day ... This is a reminder you are not in control."

TARGET: U.S. FINANCIAL POLICIES

Inspired by the pro-democracy Arab Spring, the Wall Street protesters last year targeted U.S. financial policies they blamed for the yawning income gap between rich and poor - between what they called the 1 percent and the 99 percent.

"We have to show the 1 percent what democracy looks like," said Joycelyn Gill-Campbell, an outreach coordinator with Domestic Workers United. "The domestic workers take care of their children, their homes, and they're treated like less than human beings."

It was unclear whether the event would feed a resurgence of Occupy after a winter hiatus.

In New York, the Occupy movement lost significant momentum in November when a pre-dawn sweep broke up the encampment at Zuccotti Park. Occupy protests in Oakland, California, in January led to police firing tear gas into crowds of protesters and more than 200 people were arrested.

Since last fall, when scores of demonstrators set up a vigil in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park and Occupy boasted it had $500,000 in the bank, donations have slowed to a point where Occupy was left in a cash crunch earlier this year.

In recent weeks, small groups of New York protesters have taken to camping out in different locations, including across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.

 

Comments

[timpoleman]

08:17 PM on 05/03/2012

Why are these folks not protesting the White House? Obama came out and 'showed support' for the OWS folks then turned his back on them, NEVER intending to do anything for them and continuing to help his biggest contributors with bailouts and 0% interest loans w/ no strings attached. You love Obama and yet he has nothing but disdain for you. You are crazy if you vote for him to stay for 4 more years.

[blizzard man robot voice]

08:17 PM on 05/03/2012

Has anyone seen Samuel Lee? He was a Vancouver resident visiting Seattle with his family when OWS protesters smashed the windows of his car, harassed him, and then told him to go back to Canada.

http://www.komonews.com/news/offbeat/Do-you-know-Sam-149951085.html

[timpoleman]

07:56 PM on 05/03/2012

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance.

Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others.

Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.

[meyer390]

12:19 PM on 05/06/2012

You are preaching to the wrong crowd...but you aren't bright enough to understand that...go back to your Bush/Cheney friends and discuss the "good old days", when for the first time in the history of this country, they started a war against a nation that did not do one thing to this country which resulted in trillions of dollars and cost American families thousands of their sons lives. Good old Bush signed every unfunded spending bill that was put in front of him resulting in the largest debt in the history of the world...oh yes..and how can we forget the new policies that allowed the greatest exporting of USA workers jobs in the history of this country...and that is only part of the massive damage they did to this country.....and Romney is working out of the same play book that George and Dick did....

[timpoleman]

01:51 PM on 05/08/2012

Ahhh Meyer390, how quickly the little liberal mind starts to wander. You seem kinda dim when it comes to history.

Do you remember when Clinton said "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions." Bill Clinton, July 22, 2003. Sad that Kitty's like you want us to sit by and do nothing.

January 3rd, 2007, Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.

The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!

Thank Congress for dumping 6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from OUR Fannie and Freddie!

BTW: Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie - starting in 2001. And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? Obama.

[Andrew Nutra]

11:00 AM on 05/07/2012

Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Give some white kids a copy of Adbusters, they'll grow dreadlocks, form drum circles, create theater to beat boredom and middle class guilt in the guise of helping the poor.

Long live the Percussion Revolution!!

[ftworth texan]

03:50 PM on 05/03/2012

Still cracks me up..... OWS never had UNIFYING GOALS. Everybody was there for their own reasons. You couldn't put leaders in charge to declare GOALS. It was destined to fail from the start because you had no ORGANIZATION w/RECOGNIZED LEADERS.

You had fools that were passionately committed. Bless their little hearts.

[EHenry]

09:47 AM on 05/03/2012

The past is prologue. To sustain a successful movement there must by a unifying issue to coalesce the energy necessary to effect change. And the issue must be fully understood to focus on like an everlasting laser beam of enlightenment.

I first wrote about the gravitas of OWS in my Huffington blog of 10/12/11. As an activist from the 60s I know from personal experience as a marcher how an understanding of the root cause of prejudice as it was applied to the Black Experience in America finally forced Congress to address such crippling and unfair inequalities. Prejudiced has certainly not been eradicated, look at why the wrong wingers have fought so hard to get rid of Obama from the beginning of his presidency.

But now OWS must understand and acknowledge that the return of Social Darwinism metastasized into Financial Darwinism is the root cause our critical economic disaster and vast chasm of income inequality. OWS must fight against the root cause, and rally around a profound understanding about what is fundamentally wrong. How We Got Swindled by Wall Street Godfathers, Greed & Financial Darwinism ~ The 30-Year War Against the American Dream is the only book exposing the real root cause and the only book to call for the establishment of - The Doctrine of Fairness.

Swindled arms the 99% with all the information required to fight back effectively. If you want to know what Congress and Wall St do not want you to know: www.howwegotswindled.com

[EHenry]

09:51 AM on 05/03/2012

Keep in mind a Liberal believes in: flexibility of thought, humanity, and is against prejudice.

what do you believe in?

[williamina]

12:33 AM on 05/04/2012

crispy baby

[Ladder 1]

06:55 PM on 05/02/2012

OWS Its like watching the fans try to get the wave going when they are down by 2 touchdowns and less than a minute to go and on defense...

[Cultureternal]

11:09 PM on 05/02/2012

Reading your comment is like being dead and hovering above fat guys watching football and screaming. You wish you could tell them how wrong they are. But it won't get through to them until they come to the other side.

[Bootinureye]

06:54 PM on 05/02/2012

owsfail

[The Great Intellectual]

06:47 PM on 05/02/2012

Funny no mention on HP about all Occupiers trying to blow up a bridge with people on it. I am quite sure if that was the Tea Party it would be front page everywhere. But of course not since it is Occupy and backed by the Democrats and Unions.

[timpoleman]

08:10 PM on 05/03/2012

Funny, I made the same observation yesterday and got about 10 Libs jumping my shi* that there was no connection between the OWS Cleveland Bridge Bombers and OWS. Funny I don't see any of them here today. Howsbout that?! And you are 100% right about " if that was the Tea Party it would be front page everywhere". Funny too how the lib/democrat never see's themselves as a hypocrite only as always being right! I just wish that one of them would have the bal*s to fess up when they are wrong about something, instead of hiding like children.

[Steve Hartman]

06:32 PM on 05/02/2012

Sorry...but when I see dressed-in-black hooded thugs causing mayhem and damage I don't see them as protestors any more. I see them as terrorists. And terrorists should be shot on sight if in the act. And if it was dressed-in-white hooded thugs causing mayhem and damage I would feel exactly the same way.

[Cultureternal]

06:04 PM on 05/02/2012

"Labor unions rejected pleas for a general strike."

What?! Where were you? There were union representatives at the event.

You also mention the morning gathering numbers in the hundreds. But you fail to mention that when the main March from Union Square in NYC happened at 5:30 PM that marchers were in the Tens of Thousands.

Can we get an honest perspective from a journalist who was there?

[tmm77625]

05:47 PM on 05/02/2012

Wow, literally scores of people showed up to protest! I'm underwhelmed.

[Cultureternal]

06:15 PM on 05/02/2012

Hundreds of thousands world wide. Tens of thousands here in the USA. If you don't care, you're living in isolation.

[tmm77625]

09:47 PM on 05/02/2012

You're confusing the OWS protests with the previously scheduled May Day marches that have been held for years. If you don't know that, you're living in ignorance.

[LilBunnyNC]

04:16 PM on 05/02/2012

OWS protester hit a lady in the head " From Behind " . And Liberals call Republicans " War On Women " !?!? OMG . Pathetic

[Ryan Ramlow]

11:38 AM on 05/03/2012

I witnessed an NYPD officer hit a woman in the FACE from the FRONT. And Neocons call protesters "Thugs" and "Terrorists"!?!? OMG

FYI: The officer tried to grab her arm and pull her onto the sidewalk so he could have a "legal" excuse to arrest her while she was legally and peacefully protesting police brutality that had occurred seconds prior on an over-crowded side street downtown where an officer seized and arrested with excessive force a man whose foot slipped off the curb due to sidewalk crowding. When she shook him off and pushed his arm away and yelled at him to leave her alone, he cold-cocked her in the face. Who was the thug? Who was the terrorist?

[Christopher Koulouris]

03:23 PM on 05/02/2012

It is openly understood that it is every citizen’s right/fairy tale to become well off, well endowed, and living off the fat of the land but what is not being courted publicly is the fact that most of the fat off the land has been long cordoned off and marked the preferred payola of entrenched interests whose job it is to ensure that only those who belong in the club and pay their dues are accorded the dividends.

Then again should we as a society be surprised at this behavior as we 'blissfully' champions the individual, the victor, the glamorous and our collective stampede to become that too when the reality of the situation, and current economic dialectics suggest that only certain players in the barn can only be assured of certain niceties that at one stage before social tampering and ‘deregulation’ was the trumpeted payoff for playing along with the system?

http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2012/05/occupation-wall-street-protests-resume-on-may-day-as-pundits-wonder-if-the-movement-still-has-legs/

[ftworth texan]

01:45 PM on 05/02/2012

The movement may be dead but the smell remains..........

LOL

[noahmarder]

03:38 PM on 05/02/2012

If you find that "joke" LOL worthy, then your standards for humor are quite low.

[anniesez455]

06:48 PM on 05/02/2012

I rather thought it was LOL

[ftworth texan]

01:29 PM on 05/03/2012

Funny because so many people (OWS), have no direction or goals but by sitting there, they think they are "winning".
Still cracks me up..... ROFL. Nothing has changed on WS or in Washington. Yup, that's funny.