Undeterred by (empty) threats of rain from New York’s best weather forecasters, the Occupy Wall Street movement reasserted itself with renewed vigor yesterday. The 99% hit the streets by the thousands in celebration of May Day and International Workers Day (or, as Reagan called May 1st, “Law Day”), a holiday in more than 80 countries (not ours, even though it began in the US) to honor workers and labor unions.
And while the New York Times couldn’t seem to find room anywhere on their website to cover the reawakening of this vital social movement (although they did find space to publish their favorite roasted asparagus recipe), the DA was on the ground with the activists as they marched from Union Square downtown towards Wall Street.
The marching multitude laid waste to the accusation that the Occupy movement did not possess any demands, calling for everything from closing American military bases abroad to protecting social security to a general re-imagining of our democracy. And despite the caricature of the Occupy movement as being controlled by window-breaking anarchists, from our perspective the march was relatively peaceful, save for one protestor who was arrested and insisted that the police had beat him).
Matthew DeLuca at the Daily Beast encapsualtes the day:
The day’s main march drew thousands of protesters by most estimates, and traveled down Broadway from Union Square toward Bowling Green, at the southern end of the city. The march was led by five taxis from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, and for most of the walk was led by a combination of union, Occupy, and immigrant-rights activists. As the crowd approached its destination, however, Occupy demonstrators began to take the lead, particularly as they passed Zuccotti Park. The march stopped entirely for several minutes as the crowd crossed the western entrance to Wall Street, as a number of protesters stopped and sat on the ground, resulting in at least one arrest.
