The Guardian is providing live coverage of May Day protests.
ARUN GUPTA, ebrowniess at yahoo.com occupyusatoday.com
Gupta is a founding editor of the New York City-based Indypendent, co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and covers the Occupy movement for Salon. He has recently visited dozens of “occupations” around the country and just wrote “Occupy’s Other Big Test: In order to survive past May Day, the movement will have to fend off attempts at co-optation.”
JACKIE DiSALVO, [in NYC] jdisalvo at nyc.rr.com
DiSalvo is on the May Day committee of Occupy Wall Street. She said today: “We have a coalition with over 50 unions and 20 emigrant organizations. There will be a rally at Union Square which will feature a lot of musicians. We’ll then march past Zuccotti Park and to Wall Street and then Bowling Green. We’ll also march on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the march will be lead by transit workers, who are facing wage freezes and benefits cuts, like so many workers now. We’ve set up pickets in front of various companies including banks, the New York Times and ABC/Disney over the last week and a half.” See: 99picketlines.tumblr.com, maydaysolidarity2012.org, maydaynyc.org, #M1GS and occupytogether.org.
CHARLES IDELSON, cidelson at calnurses.org, LIZ JACOBS, RN, ljacobs at calnurses.org
Idelson and Jacobs are with National Nurses United, which just released a statement: “Registered nurses will mark May 1 with a one-day strike at eight hospitals that are part of the wealthy Sutter corporate chain to protest Wall Street-type demands for more than 100 sweeping reductions in patient care and nurses’ standards and workplace conditions.
“Despite making over $4 billion in profits since 2007, and paying its chief executive Pat Fry $4.7 million a year (or $2,260 per hour), Sutter is demanding big cuts for its RNs, many of which would pose risks to patient safety. The nurses … offered to call off the strike if Sutter agreed to withdraw the concession demands. Some 4,500 RNs, as well as respiratory and radiology techs, are affected by the planned walkout at some of the Bay Area’s largest hospitals in most of the counties ringing San Francisco.”
Background, see IPA release: “May Day is Coming Home,” which outlined the origins of May Day in the U.S.
