awolfinthecity:

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. “special rapporteur” for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

“If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights.”

Occupy Broadway is happening right now at the Paramount Plaza on 50th and Broadway. It’s a 24 performance showcasing various occupiers/allies/awesomeness, they’ve also set up  kitchen and comfort station. NYPD presence is currently minimal.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/

The NYC Central Labor Council has called for a march of all NYC and some regional AFL-CIO unions for Thursday, Dec 1 at 4PM. The CLC is reaching out widely and encouraging all workers, STUDENTS, Occupy Wall Street, and community groups to join the march. The general CLC demand is for Jobs & Economic Fairness, but groups are expected to raise their own slogans, signs and chants.

Marchers will gather first on 31^st then on 32^nd streets between 5^th Ave. & Broadway and will march down Broadway to Union Square. OWS will meet at the SW corner of 30th St & 5th Ave.

We told them that we intend to lead a further march of OWS and all who wish to join us from Union Square to Zucotti Park, especially to support OWS and current struggles. AtZucotti Park we will have a Speak Out with a People’s Mic in which students, rank & file workers and members of OWS can share stories about their struggles and establish their solidarity with each other.  

We will be making signs Wed. 6PM; at the PSC, 61 Broadway, 16^th floor; if you are coming, contact Doug Ferrari.

Horrifying: Police UV Tagging.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150964676845543.767297.792405542&type=3

Begin quotation:

‎****** IMPORTANT for all those who were arrested at occupy Montreal to read ********

When I was arrested at Occupy Montreal on the 25th of November 2011 They were taking my information. They wrote on my hand with a permanent marker and then after I felt something pointy and metallic scraping across my skin. I immediately asked “What are you doing” and they simply said we wrote on you with a pen and showed me a bunch of various pens in her hand.

I didn’t argue about it and I was unable to look at my hands as they were tied behind my back with zipties. As soon as I was released I looked at my hands and there was no ink on them from a pen.

I began to worry and wonder what exactly did they do to me that prompted them to lie to me… it really was not a fun feeling. when I spoke about what happened a few hours later to a friend and my partner, the idea came about that perhaps it was something they used as a way to identify me.

This morning we tested my hands under a black light and sure enough there was a number 2! The freaky thing is this is IN my skin, washing my hands and scrubbing with abrasives will not get this off…. perhaps in several months of my skin cells renewing themselves if will eventually fade. 

What ever ink that is in there is irritating my skin slightly and its a very terrible feeling that they put a substance in my body with out my consent and then later lied about it. This is a semi permanent alteration they did to me, if I go anywhere now with a black light this will show!
——————————
I called the SPVM today and after being on hold for over 10 minutes I explained what happened to me to the officer on the line.

I was calm and explained I was concerned for my health because I was having a reaction to whatever it was they used… He told me he had no idea what I was talking about, that he never heard of that before … 

I asked if it was possible to speak to some one who might know more and he said that there was no one … he then said he needed to answer the other line and hung up ……

occupywallstreet:

Today, more than two million public sector workers across the United Kingdom are on the picket lines, protesting planned cuts to their pensions and austerity measures. The strike includes transport workers, teachers, health workers and other government employees. Protests and occupations are taking place in cities across the country, which have closed the majority of schools and impacted health and transport services. This is being hailed as the largest strike for many sectors in more than thirty years.

We express solidarity with the workers of the United Kingdom. Anywhere the interests of the few are crushing the hard-work of the many, our struggle is the same, and we stand united calling for justice.

occupywallstreet:

This just came in regarding the un-American NDAA: “The Senate voted Tuesday to keep a controversial provision to let the military detain terrorism suspects on U.S. soil and hold them indefinitely without trial — prompting White House officials to reissue a veto threat. The measure, part of the…

occupyonline:

UPDATE ON OCCUPY PHILLY

zhounder:

If you haven’t heard, Occupy Philly was evicted last night. This is just 10 of the over 1000 images I took last night. You can see about 100 images at  http://www.michaelalbany.com/occupy-philadelphia-eviction/

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

From Joe Piette:

Hundreds of cops, some on horses, evicted Occupy Philly from City Hall after midnight, then surrounded supporters.  Some police violence occurred, with 50 arrested. Video can be seen here:http://occupyphillymedia.org/video/police-attack-occupy-philly

Jail solidarity taking place today at the Roundhouse. Prearranged plan to converge on Rittenhouse Square, in Center City’s wealthiest neighborhood, at 4pm today will be next flash point.

A View from Inside the Overnight Raid and Arrests of Occupy Philly:

“Both sides taunted. When the group was barricaded by bike cops from Dilworth Plaza to the south, an Occupier repeated a common meme throughout the night: “The police are the 99 Percent,” “They should join us,” (and when that doesn’t work) “Our tax dollars pay your salary.”

“You don’t pay taxes,” said one officer to a protester.

“Yeah, I do,” he retorted.

“You have a job?”

“I have two jobs!” the protester yelled back.

The cop bluntly said he didn’t believe the protester, and insisted while the protester did not pay taxes, he, the police officer, does.”

(via joeross)

“Liberty is like the morning. There are those who sleep and wait for it to arrive, and those that stay awake and walk through the night to reach it.” - Words of the Zapatistas

An Invitation from Movement for Justice in El Barrio:

To members and families of organizations, community members, and people of good heart, who are resisting in their communities.

To Occupy Wall Street and their supporters

To those who fight for humanity.

NYC Encuentro

for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism

An Encuentro is a space for people to come together; it is a gathering. An Encuentro is not a meeting, a panel or a conference, it is a way of sharing developed by the Zapatistas as another form of doing politics: from below and to the left. It is a place where we can all speak, we will all listen, and we can all learn. It is a place where we can share the many different struggles that make us one.

EL BARRIO, NYC

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4TH, 3:00 PM

We are here. We are a community in resistance. Here in the streets of East Harlem we have fought multinational corporations who try to take away our homes and destroy our community. We have fought the politicians who try to buy our dignity and sell our community. We have fought by exercising our autonomy and building a democratic space without hierarchy where we make decisions through community-wide consultation and direct democratic participation. We continue to fight.

We fight against the capitalist system and all politicians, both Democrat and Republican, that tend and maintain the system in order to reap its benefits for themselves. We refuse to be bound and gagged by politicians who betray us and we will build something outside of the boxes they build to contain us.

In our first three Encuentros, we connected our stories and our resistance with other rumblings of resistance from across the city and across the world. We have joined our voices with our other compañer@s who have been ignored, forgotten and marginalized by the neoliberal capitalist system throughout history and into the present. We have stood together as people of color, as women, as transgender people, gays and lesbians, as youth, as the elderly, as workers, as immigrants. We have made each other’s struggles our own.

We have stood together with communities who reject the assistance of those from above, from those that speak of democracy with their lips and try to crush and silence us with their hands.

We are a river, boiling underground, making our path and growing everyday, connecting with others. Those from above seek to ignore our rumblings, seek to ignore our voices, seek to ignore our existence. But we have found ways to make our voices heard and let our voices echo with the voices of other marginalized people resisting across the world.

Now, we hear new rumblings, new shouts and new dreams. A new moment has arrived. The capitalist system is being revealed to more eyes as the destruction that it is. The tide is rising rapidly and more people are drowning or struggling to stay afloat. More are looking with clear eyes on a system that has been dismantling communities, crushing spirits and destroying lives for years. The mask is being lifted slowly but surely.

Here we stand in resistance in our corner of the world and we welcome the rest of the 99%.

Together we will build a world where many worlds fit.

Un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos.

So once again we invite to our corner of the world those who are struggling for housing, for education, for health, for freedom, for justice, for love, for a voice, for a space to exist, for peace, for respect, for themselves, for their community, for dignity…for humanity.

We invite those who will build something new and beautiful out of the rubble of a failed neoliberal capitalist system.

Groups fighting for humanity across New York will share our struggles and use this gathering to find ways to mutually support each other. We will share whatever form of expression we choose, whether it be verbally, through song, poetry or rhyme, through a video, through artwork or however people can best express their struggle.

Please RSVP by Monday, November 28th  

P.S. Children are especially invited to come break open the “Neoliberal” Piñata!

We will provide dinner, childcare and Spanish/English translation.

PLEASE RSVP BY Monday, November 28th 

Please RSVP by with the number of adults and children that will be attending, their names and an address at which you would like to receive your tickets.

Once you have RSVP’d you will receive your tickets and more details on the Encuentro.

For more info or to RSVP please contact us at movementforjusticeinelbarrio@gmail.com

Who We Are

Below is a letter to university chancellors and presidents protesting recent violence and askng them to declare their campuses safe protest zones.

***

Open Letter to Chancellors and Presidents of American Universities and Colleges From Your Faculty

We have witnessed, over the past two months, police departments using significant amounts of force against individuals peacefully participating in the Occupy movement. But during the week of November 13 – November 19, there was an astonishing escalation of the violence used by municipal police departments against non-violent protesters. 

We hoped that even as politicians and municipal police violently responded to the Occupy movement, college and university campuses would remain safe locations for non-violent political dissent. But that has not been the case. In fact, universities and colleges appear to be using the same tactics in their interactions with unarmed, non-violent members of the university community as we have seen municipal police use against the broader Occupy movement.

 In particular, we are concerned with the actions by police associated with two University of California campuses. At UC Berkeley, police beat faculty and students who were peacefully attempting to establish an Occupy camp on Sproul Plaza. At UC Davis, police casually pepper sprayed protesting students who were peacefully sitting with their arms linked. The message sent by university officials is clear: if you engage in non-violent political protest on the university campus, you run the risk of being assaulted by university police. 

                 We condemn this and any deployment of violence by university officials against members of the university community who are non-violently expressing their political views. 

               We condemn university officials using violence or the threat of violence in order to limit political dissent to the narrow confines of print and university-sanctioned events. 

           We condemn university officials using violence and the threat of violence to prevent members of the university community from peacefully assembling. 

For more than three generations, American university and college campuses have been crucial locations in which inspiring and important political activity has occurred. From the founding of SNCC at Shaw University and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 1960’s, to the divestment movements across American college campuses in the 1980s, to the establishment of student labor alliances in the 1990’s, American college campuses have pulsed with hopeful and positive forms of dissent and visions of alternatives. This admirable tradition is being threatened by the use of violence by university officials against their own students and faculty who are acting within this tradition.

        We therefore call on chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges throughout the United States to declare publicly that their campuses are Safe Protest Zones, where non- violent, public political dissent and protest will be protected by university police and will never be attacked by the university police. 

       We call on these chancellors and presidents to commit publicly to making their campuses safe locations for peaceful public assembly. 

       We call on these chancellors and presidents to institute immediately policies that reflect these commitments, and to instruct their police and security forces that they must abide by these policies. 


We believe that this action is necessary for the protection of one of the principal virtues of our higher education system, namely that it is an environment that cultivates an active and engaged political imagination. We call on the leaders of America’s universities and colleges to stand with us.

Friday, December 2

Low Steps

12:30pm – CU rally on Low Steps (then leave at 2pm for Pace Univ)

This Friday, all of NYC is mobilizing. Join the fight against the illegitimate, unconstitutional policy of ‘Stop & Frisk’ by participating in the City-Wide Day of Student Action. We will rally on Low Steps at 12:30, then unite with schools from around the city at Pace University at 3pm. Together, we will all march to 1 Police Plaza. Stop ‘Stop and Frisk’ has hit precincts in Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens, and now it’s time to send this message to the headquarters. We can NOT remain silent while police persecute our youth!

For contact information, message us or email our listserv!