May Day in the United States

More from May Day in the USA as it happens

Occupy New Dawn? OWS re-emerges in US

In America, anti-corporate Occupy protesters are re-emerging in New York and other cities, in a bid to surge back into the headlines. RT's Marina Portnaya is across developments in the Big Apple.

NYPD Raids Activists’ Homes Before May Day Protests

A day before Occupy Wall Street hopes to shut down New York and cities across the country in massive May Day protests, the NYPD visited at least three activist homes in New York and interrogated residents about plans for tomorrow's protest.

Gawker.com,

1 May, 2012

Today "there was definitely an upswing in law enforcement activity that seemed to fit the pattern of targeting what police might view as political residences," said Gideon Oliver, the president of the New York Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which offers legal to support to Occupy Wall Street. "They were asking what are your May Day plans, do you know who the leaders are—these are classic political surveillance questions."

Oliver said the National Lawyer's Guild is aware of at least five instances of NYPD paying activists visits, including one where the FBI was involved in questioning. (He wouldn't elaborate.) We spoke to three of these activists.

In the first case: activist Zachary Dempster said that six NYPD officers broke down the door of his Bushwick, Brooklyn apartment at around 6:15am this morning. Dempster said they were armed with a warrant for the arrest of his roommate, musician Joe Crow Ryan, for a six-year-old open container violation. But Dempster believes this was an excuse to check in on him, as he'd been arrested in February at an Occupy Wall Street Party that was broken up by cops, and charged with assaulting a police office and inciting a riot.

After running his ID, a detective questioned Dempster in his bedroom for about five minutes about tomorrow's May Day protest, he said.

"They asked what I was doing tomorrow, and if I knew of any activities, any events—that was how the conversation started," Dempster said. Dempster said he's not planning doing much, as his case from February is still open. Dempster's roommate was also asked about him and May Day.

About an hour later, an activist friend of Dempster's who runs in anarchist circles said his apartment in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where he lives with a half-dozen other activists and Occupy Wall Street organizers was visited by six NYPD cops—possibly the same ones. The activist said police used arrest warrants for two men who no longer lived there as pretext for the raid. The officers ran the IDs of everyone who was in the apartment, then booked our source when they discovered he had an outstanding open container violation. Police never asked about Occupy Wall Street or May Day, but our source said the message was clear: We're watching you.

"We obviously don't think it's an accident that it happened the day before May Day, where people in the house are organizers," he said.

This afternoon, NYPD also visited the home of Greek anarchist artist Georgia Sagri, who has been part of Occupy Wall Street from the beginning and led the occupation of a SoHo art gallery last October. Turns out she was giving a press conference about May Day at Zuccotti Park at the time. Police waited for about an hour outside her home, then left.

"My roommate gave me a call and told me the NYPD was looking for me," Sagri said. "Since that time, I didn't go home. So I'm basically on the street. My May Day has already started which is fine, I don't mind." She said she has no idea why NYPD visited her.

This isn't the first time NYPD has been criticized for aggressive surveillance of protesters: The NYPD infiltrated activist groups around the country before 2004's New York Ciy Republican National Convention. And The New York Times has ably detailed the extent to which NYPD has harassed and spied on Occupy Wall Street protesters.

"The intention behind this I'm sure is to try to create fear and silence dissent," said Marina Sitrin, a lawyer and member of Occupy Wall Street's legal working group, "and to keep people from coming out into the streets."

Clashes in Oakland: Police use tear gas and batons against protesters

Oakland police used tear gas against protesters marching on the streets of the city on May 1.

RT,

1 May, 2012

According to witnesses police arrested at least two protesters and used tasers against them. Police ordered protesters out of the street after firing the tear gas and flash-bang grenades.

San Francisco Gate quotes a police spokeswoman Johanna Watson saying, "When our patrol wagon came to make arrests, they were surrounded." According to her, officers fired the tear gas and flash-bang grenades "to gain the attention of the crowd and stop them, which was effective. The officers were able to take the arrestees and to leave the area."

However the arrests didn't stop protesters. They continued marching through the streets of Oakland chanting anti-capitalism slogans. Among them was Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, who gained international attention when he was shot with a beanbag by an Oakland police officer at a protest last year. This time the former Marine, who suffered a brain injury in the Oct. 25 protest, wore a black helmet to protect his head.

"I am not 100 percent and I still have some problems, hopefully that will go away with time," he said in an interview to San Francisco Gate. "It is a shame that (the police) are reacting this way. I shouldn't have to wear a helmet to go out to this, but I do.".

The official version of May Day events

Occupy takes May Day protests to U.S. streets

Movement inspires rallies in numerous cities

Reuters,

1 May, 2012

Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered outside banks, meditated in public parks and staged anti-corporate song-and-dance routines on Tuesday in a May Day bid around the United States to revive a movement that triggered nationwide protests last year against economic injustice.

Hundreds of protesters in Oakland, California, clashed with baton-carrying police who fired flash-bang grenades and used a loudspeaker to order demonstrators to disperse from an intersection, in just one of numerous demonstrations that unfolded in U.S. cities.

Police arrested small numbers of protesters in minor clashes around New York, chasing hundreds of marchers along Broadway.

Although labor unions rejected pleas from leaders of the Occupy movement for a general strike, and demonstrators backed off a pledge to occupy San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, activists hailed the day's events as a step forward in the movement that had grown inactive and cash poor since capturing world attention last fall.

"We've been building important alliances and radicalized people in what they're willing to endorse. I mean, we never even used to celebrate May Day. Now look at this," said David Graeber, an anthropologist and author active in the movement.

May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, has long been a day on which the labor movement holds street demonstrations and marches, but less so in the United States than elsewhere around the world.

Many demonstrators wore black bandanas symbolic of an anarchist faction within the largely peaceful Occupy movement, leading to some of the confrontations with police.

About 400 New York City protesters - most of them clad in black, with black bandanas covering their faces - ran onto Broadway as police chased them on scooters. At least five were arrested.

Occupy Cleveland canceled its events "out of respect for the city" after U.S. authorities announced the arrest of five self-described anarchists in the Cleveland area on suspicion of plotting to blow up a four-lane highway bridge over a national park.

Occupy Cleveland said in a statement the men arrested were associated with their movement but that "they were in no way representing or acting on behalf of Occupy Cleveland" and that the group was committed to non-violent protest.

In Seattle, some 50 black-clad protesters marched through downtown, carrying black flags on sticks, which they used to shatter the windows of several stores including a Nike Town outlet and an HSBC bank before police moved them out of the area.

Inspired by the pro-democracy Arab Spring, the Wall Street protesters last year targeted U.S. financial policies they blamed for the yawning income gap between rich and poor - between what they called the 1 percent and the 99 percent.

TRAFFIC SNARLED

In San Francisco, a protest by unionized ferry workers worsened the morning rush-hour for Bay Area commuters. Anticipating a one-day walkout by workers, transportation officials suspended ferry service between San Francisco and Marin County to the north, forcing some 3,000 commuters to head into town over the Golden Gate Bridge instead and slowing traffic over the famed span.

"I'm a single person barely making ends meet myself. If I had kids it would be 10 times worse. It's hard enough, isn't it?" said picketing ferry deckhand Leslie Propheter, 52, from the nearby town of Novato.

Across the bay in Oakland, demonstrators painted graffiti on buildings and signs in the center of town with one protester throwing a hammer at the window of a Chase bank branch. The window did not break.

At least 500 gathered near Frank Ogawa Plaza, the heart of the Occupy movement there last fall, marching up and down various streets, closing those roads to traffic as they went, while police kept a low-profile presence nearby. One group entered a Bank of the West branch to stage a protest inside.

Occupy Chicago protesters being shadowed by police gathered outside Bank of America branches, raising a large "Chicago Spring" banner and chanting "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out."

Police blocked a State Street bank entrance, and banks along Chicago's financial spine of LaSalle Street prepared for protesters by posting extra guards and closing some entrances.

About 200 protesters in Portland, Oregon, were "moving" a woman back into her foreclosed house, chanting "welcome home" when she managed to get in through a side door.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams thanked student demonstrators who marched through town and gathered at City Hall, saying, "keep up the great work" and inviting them to use city hall restrooms.

"The Wall Street fat cats are unfairly gaming the system in a way that makes the common man upset," said Bradley Shields, 56, a freelance travel photographer from Honolulu who was visiting New York.

New York police reported 10 instances of harmless white powder being mailed to financial institutions and others, along with a note saying, "Happy May Day ... This is a reminder you are not in control."