CHRIS ERNESTO, chris at stpeteforpeace.org
Ernesto is with OccupyArrests.com which just released these findings: “With the May Day arrests of at least 116 people at Occupy protests around the country, there have now been a minimum of 7,106 Occupy arrests in 114 cities across the United States since the Occupy movement began in New York on September 17, 2011.”
See: “Arrests Exceed 7,000 As the Occupy’s Movement’s Spring Plans Unfold Across the Nation.”
HEIDI BOGHOSIAN, director at nlg.org
Director of the National Lawyers Guild and author of the forthcoming book, “Spying on Democracy, Protest and Dissent in the New Era of Government Surveillance,” Boghosian said today: “The piling on of Occupy arrests can be seen as a barometer of this government’s intolerance for the First Amendment. Aggressive policing tactics, including frequent gratuitous assaults on protesters and bystanders, are making our parks and streets hostile to the Constitution.”
JOHN KNEFEL, johnknefel at gmail.com
Knefel can address media coverage of May Day and the Occupy protests. He wrote “Bored With Occupy — and Inequality: Class issues fade along with protest coverage” in the current issue of the media watch group FAIR’s magazine Extra!
FAIR recently posted two additional pieces on May Day coverage: “May Day Media” and “Fox Host Leaps to Link Occupy to White Powder Mailings.”
MARINA SITRIN, [in NYC] marina.sitrin at gmail.com
Sitrin wrote the piece “May Day 2012 — A Success Before it Began in the U.S.,” which states: “We succeeded before we began. May Day has been retaken in the U.S. We are now again a part of the rest of the globe — where May Day is one where we celebrate our power — people’s power — that of workers, precarious and unionized, immigrants and migrants, radicals of all sorts, from the anarchist to the democratic socialist. People around the world were talking about May Day in the U.S. before May Day began. And now, those of us here in the U.S., have begun something new, something that is old, and yet has been reinvented … the future of which is still being determined, as so many things are in our new movements. But the question is again posed – as with democracy and power.”
Sitrin is co-author of the forthcoming “May Day: The Secret Rendezvous,” which is part of the “Occupied Media” pamphlet series from Zuccotti Park Press. See was on the recent IPA news release “May Day Is Coming Home.”
See video “May Day Protests Around the World Pt.1”
