"Festive, Righteous Anger": Occupy Makes a May Day Comeback With Massive Demonstrations

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/story/155240/%22festive%2C_righteous_anger%22%3A_occupy_makes_a_may_day_comeback_with_massive_demonstrations?akid=8693.277129.VZBUUO&rd=1&t=2

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Photo Credit: Occupy Wall Street Aerial Shot, NYC

All over the world, May 1st is celebrated as International Workers Day. Yesterday, May Day also marked the reemergence of the Occupy movement, with events in cities all over America. AlterNet's reporters were in the field -- here are their dispatches from New York and the Bay Area.

Midtown NYC, morning

-- Sarah Jaffe

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 a hundred 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. And 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. "We make next to nothing," a legal services worker told me, pointing out that her benefits allow her to do a low-paid service job and take care of herself and her family. Meanwhile, none of the cuts have hit management. Their target for the day's picket was Michael Young, the vice chair of the Board of Directors at Legal Services NYC, who has been the point person in negotiating with the union.

[KG]

1. DURec

[ProfessionalLeftist]

2. And the U.S. still whitewashes/ignores May Day and...

... calls them a bunch of "anarchists".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-hogarth/may-day_b_1467485.html

[FailureToCommunicate]

3. Dreary May Day, but sunny crowd here in Boston...

http://o4.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/PATCH/resize/273x203/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/patch/247e4352da73010a42bf129afeca256b

[xchrom]

4. ...

[JDPriestly]

5. The Alternet articles are well written -- readable and informative.

Good job, Alternet!

[kenfrequed]

6. It is good to see that we are still at it.

It is annoying that the tea-partiers have permanent credentialed status for the corporate media while it is so bloody hard for the Occupy movement to maintain the spotlight.