Weekly Round-up

The past week has brought a flurry of excitement, as the Free Cooper Union effort has led to over 50 students, faculty, and staff maintaining a sit-in occupation inside college President Jamshed Bharucha’s office on the 7th floor of the Foundation Building of the Cooper Union.

This occupation comes in response to the decision to begin charging tuition for the first time, ending a 154 year tradition of free education, as well as in the context of the broader unfolding tuition and student debt crisis across the country.

Watch Free Cooper Union on livestream and follow their live-tweets @FreeCooperUnion.

Many Occupy groups have protested outside in solidarity, The Illuminator has projected on the walls, Occupy Museums delivered sushi for dinner.

We stand in solidarity with the students, faculty, and next generation of art students who have lost this amazing gift from Peter Cooper, education which is “free as air and water.”

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

United Against Pipelines Update

This Monday, hundreds of occupiers and climate activists from dozens of groups came together to challenge President Obama on the Keystone XL Pipeline and climate change at large during a fundraiser he was holding with the 1%.

Check out photos of the action on Flickr, watch livestream footage from StopMotionSolo, and join the protest this Thursday of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his promotion of the pipeline.

Occupy in the News

• Allison Kilkenny at The Nation covers developments with Free Cooper Union, and Felix Salmon at Reuters chronicles the tragedy of Cooper Union.
• PressTV covered Obama being greeted in NY by Occupy protesters.
• The Village Voice blog covers DebtFair, an action initiated by Occupy Museums to draw attention to debt and inequality within the art world. “Turn[ing] art fairs and auctions like Frieze New York and Sotheby’s on their heads” the fairs will display art about debt at many populist venues as well as “in front of banks or ‘more arrestable actions’ inside banks...”
• At hyperallergic.com, Debtfair’s mission was described as such: “...to predicate compensation [for an artist] on their debt load, allowing patrons to make direct payments on their student loans or outstanding consumer credit. By correlating the value of an artwork with the fiscal situation of its producer, it’s an objection to capitalist exchange...”
• The Arts and Labor Working Group, along with various affected unions, has been agitating for changes in the hiring practices of the Frieze New York art fair. Letters were sent out recently asking participants to boycott over Frieze’s unfair use of non-union labor.

Occupy These Actions & Events

Wednesday, May 15th, 8:30am-4:45pm

• Justice for Ramarley Graham
• Bronx County Hall of Justice
• Join us in court and hold NYPD officer Richard Haste accountable for his actions. Ramarley Graham was an 18 year old unarmed Black male who was murdered by NYPD Officer Richard Haste in front of his grandmother and 6 year old brother in the bathroom of his family’s home on February 2, 2012. The NYPD Officer Richard Haste who executed Ramarley was charged with manslaughter, but other members of the team that were involved in the illegal entry of Graham’s apartment have not been charged.

Thursday, May 16th, 6:30pm

• May Day Debrief
• Organization of Staff Analysts, 220 E. 23rd
• Please come out and hear what happened on May Day and learn how we can all work together to make May Day more successful in 2014! Light refreshments will be served.

Saturday, May 18th, 1pm

• Occupy Dance
• Broadway and 21st Street
• Join us for a Dance Party in the street! Line-up for the parade is at 11am - parade steps off at 1pm. The cabaret law was written to stop the same sort of free association that happened at, and the social consciousness arising from, the occupation of Liberty Square. And the cabaret law is enforced in the same selective way that has been common to the policing of Occupy events. Dance should not be relegated to commodity status, an art form only to be enjoyed as spectacle for the wealthy. Occupy Dance!

Saturday, May 18th, 12pm-May 24th at 3:00pm

• Operation Green Jobs
• N. 3rd Street and W. Cumberland St., Philadelphia, PA
• What are the most dire issues we face? If you’re like most Americans, you’d probably say the climate crisis and the jobs crisis. So why is Washington so obsessed with budget cuts and fossil fuels? Don’t ask members of Congress who have been purchased by corporate lobbyists, ask the ones with the receipts: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We’re leading a march of the long-term unemployed from Philadelphia, PA to Washington, DC directly to the Chamber’s front door. Join us in person or virtually for the march.

Thursday, May 23rd, 6pm

• The Conversation
• Judson Memorial Church
• The conversation is an intentional gathering intended to be a social and safe space where activists from the nyc anarchist community, occupy and other radical campaigns can come together to engage in dialogue and understanding and reinvigorate our sense of community.

Friday, May 24th, 8:00pm

• The Freedom School Presents: "The World is My Home--the Life of Paul Robeson"
• St. Ann and the Holy Trinity
• You are cordially invited to join us for an evening rich in history and social justice struggle: Stogie Kenyatta’s acclaimed one-man Broadway show. Tickets on Sale. All proceeds will benefit the Paul Robeson Freedom School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, now in it's second year.

Saturday, May 25th

2pm

• March Against Monsanto
• Union Square
• Join us as we march through NYC and show Monsanto, Congress, the President, and the world that we, the people as a whole, united as one, have had enough. Stand beside your fellow brothers and sisters as we stand up against those who wish to do us harm so that they may rake in cash at the cost of our health, lives, and family.

3pm

• March Against Monsanto - Mickey Z. on Food Justice, GMOs, & the Vegan Option (Eat Like a Revolutionary)
• Washington Square Park
• After the march against Monsanto, join Mickey Z. for a free, wheelchair-accessible teach-in on Food Justice. Food justice means we have to re-imagine our relationship with the natural world...now. More on NYCGA.net.

June 1st, 8:00am -1st of October, 11:00am

• Re-Occupy Wall Street
• Trinity Wall Street
• We are going to Re-Occupy Wall Street this Summer and this time we are going to get it right. This is going to be a Peaceful Protest designed to speak truth to power and wake people up. Everyone is welcome regardless of your skin color, your gender, your sexual preference, your religious beliefs, or political affiliation. We are all uniting as one to Protest Corporate Greed over Human Need and Wall Street International Globalist Banksters that are robbing us blind via Quantitative Easing and Tax Payer dollars going to Banker Bailouts.

June 7th, 6:30-9:30pm

• OWS Anti-Ticket Quota
• Liberty Plaza
• This assembly and rally is to call into question the forced ticket quota system that negatively affects so many New Yorkers lives. From unfair to unnecessary parking tickets to stop and frisk we are ALL impacted in too many ways. This action is also in support of ‘The People’s Agenda’ which has been created to address the needs and help to mobilize the 99% for NYC mayoral elections in November 2013.