Stop the Spectra Pipeline: There are daily actions happening at the construction site for the pipeline that will bring fracked gas through residential neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan and the Rockaways.. You can learn more about the issues, find actions that suit your schedule and interests more at: http://occupythepipeline.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, August 15th, 4:30pm
Mr. Wall Street Buys Washington
17 E 79th Street, Manhattan
Mayor Bloomberg is hosting a campaign fundraiser to sponsor and support Wall Street’s favorite pet senator, Scott Brown. At $1,000 to $5,000 a plate, the Mayor’s personal wealth and sway will have a disproportionate amount of clout when it comes to influencing votes for Mr. Brown. A Rally will be held in protest and continue through the end of the fundraising dinner.

Wednesday, August 15th, 6:00pm
Occupy Sunset Park Rent Strike Solidarity Vigil
553 46th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenue)
Our weekly vigil will be followed by a strategy session at La Casita (414 45th Street, btwn. 4th & 5th aves) to plot out a campaign to keep the pressure on. If needed, meeting conducted in Spanish with English translation. Read more about this struggle.

Thursday, August 16th, 4:30pm
S17 Progressive Institutions Meeting
50 Broadway, 2nd Floor Room E
Join OWS and partners and allies from across NYC at our organizing meeting to support three days of music, education, activism and direct action in support of Occupy Wall Street and a broad movement for economic and social justice.

Friday, August 17th, 6:00pm
Wake up Wall Street 4
Bryant Park
At the fourth in a series we will flood mid town with a call for Money out of Politics. We will gather and have a brief teach in, and later move on to our target: a pharmaceutical giant that costs both money and lives.

Friday, August 17th, 8:00pm
Pub Crawls for the 99%
Location changes every week: check the link for more info
Join our roving outreach party as we hit a new neighborhood every week. We’ve got music, flyers, games, wanted posters and more. Bring wigs, colorful costumes, flyers and talk trash about Wall Street.

Saturday, August 18th, 2:00pm
S17 Convergence Meeting
The Garibaldi Statue at Washington Square Park, 1 Washington Square
Join us for our third meeting for planning convergence components for September 17th and the preceding weekend (September 15-16).

Saturday, August 18th, 2:00pm
4th Feminist General Assembly
Harlem Meer, Central Park - 110th St. and 5th Avenue
Feminism is for everybody and Women Occupying Wall Street (WOWs) invites the entire community to attend our events. We as a silenced community have so much at stake! We are going to work on actions and create future ones for gender, racial and economic justice. Its all about intersectionality!

Sunday, August 19, 12:00pm-4:00pm
S17 Work Session
33 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn
Got some work to do for S17? Join teams from across OWS as we work on all the exciting stuff that needs doing for S17: websites, volunteer coordination, calendar updates, prep for the Monday Spokes meeting and anything else.

Saturday, August 25, 3:00pm-5:00pm
Debt Burn Inferno
We are coming together to refuse this system of inherited debt. Together, we refuse a life of servitude. We burn our debt.

Saturday, August 25, 12:00pm
Occupy Town Square 9: Sunset Park
Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY
Come to Sunset Park for the 9th of the Occupy Town Square series of pop-up occupations. Our Hall of Fame Tax Dodgers baseball team will be playing a game, as well as musicians, workshops, immigration lawyers, face painting for kids, food, kite making, banner making, t-shirt stenciling, and then teach ins on sustainable food, politics, and police brutality.

Midnight Every Night until September 16th
#YesWeCamp 2.0 #PACAttack
Union Square
Join for a month of tactical #SleepfulProtests starting August 16th and culminating on the eve of Occupy Wall Street’s one-year-anniversary on September 16th. Assemble at #OccupyUnionSq for Eviction Theater to connect with sleeping groups each night at Midnight.

Last September 17th, as part of a wave of global protest, people from across the country raced to the heart of New York’s financial district to occupy Wall Street. In the face of big banks foreclosing on our homes, killing our jobs, buying up our democracy, and turning our environment into just another toxic asset, you showed up, and we became the 99%.

On September 15-17th, join us in this fight for our country, our world – this fight for our lives.

For years, people all over the world have been crippled by the corporate greed of the 1%. They built their bonuses out of stolen pensions of teachers, civil servants, and our neighbors. We pay for their welfare. They bet and borrow against our future. We drown in debt. So who is really in debt to whom? Now our elected representatives want us to embrace austerity–work harder for less, retire later (if at all), and say goodbye to our fundamental labor protections. They’re betting on our obedience. They’re betting wrong.

Join us for three days of education, celebration and resistance to economic injustice with permitted convergences and assemblies, concerts, and mass civil disobedience.

Here’s what we have planned. Get creative with us—help organize.

For every crumbling aspect of our society, the cause of the ruin can be traced back to corporate greed. Follow the money. All roads lead to Wall Street. And in the days and weeks before (and long after) September 17th, we will be here, demanding a system that puts the health of our communities over the profits of the 1%. We are the 99%.

Can’t join us in NYC? It’s just as important that we Occupy Main Street. Pick a local target that embodies corporate greed—occupy your state Capitol building like the people of Wisconsin, or a chamber of commerce conference as they did in D.C. Take inspiration from revolutionary occupations worldwide, from the railroads of India to the rivers of the Amazon to the streets of Spain. Wall Street has occupied our entire planet. What do you have to say about that?

There are more of us than them and they know it,

Occupy Wall Street

editors note: as with other major days of action, several additional events are being planned for #S17 in NYC and elsewhere. Stay tuned to OccupyWallSt.org for further information.

When: Saturday, August 18, 2012, 2pm - 4pm
(Rain date: Sunday, August 19th, 4 to 6 pm)
Where: Harlem Meer, Central Park - 110th St.
RSVP on Facebook

Women Occupying Wall Street (WOWs) invites you to the 4th Feminist General Assembly (FemGA) on Saturday, August 18th at Harlem Meer from 2 - 4 pm. This month our conversation will focus on the struggles particularly important to people of color. We hope to begin the work of planning actions focused on racial, gender, and economic justice. We are committed to addressing the issues that affect us all, and we are eager to work in affinity with other groups towards common goals.

We plan to have discussions about:

• Living wage
• Domestic work
• Immigration
• Educational system
• Reproductive rights
• Incarceration
• Queer Issues

Everyone is invited! Allies are welcome! We welcome organizations sharing proposals for ongoing or new actions that promote gender justice and equality!

For more info, check out the Women Occupying Wall St Tumblr and Facebook pages.

via StudentPower2012

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Students from across the country marched from Ohio State University Student Union to President Obama’s campaign office to hold a press conference yesterday, calling into question the injustices of our current economic and political system. In an era where our political process is gridlocked by the influence of money and corporate power, our society has systematically diverted resources from the bottom to the top to fund a frenzy of profit seeking.

The demonstration highlighted how our electoral system and politicians have failed our youth on the critical issues of education, gender equality, racial justice, environmental sustainability, and basic respect for human rights. Neither party has the audacity to confront these injustices, nor do they attempt to facilitate any type of connection with us on these issues, which disproportionately affect women, LGBTQ people, youth, and people of color.

Akin Olla, an organizer from New Jersey, states: “It is important to recognize that not only are racism and discrimination against people of color still present in the United States, but they are playing a huge factor in the future for the youth of color by limiting our access to education, personal liberty and the right to feel safe in our own communities.”

Although women and LGBTQ people have won notable gains in recent years, Raquel Valesquez of Arizona gets to the heart of how the current system is one of structural inequality: “As we speak, women and LGBTQ people are refusing to accept the old idea of what our rights should be and are demanding change towards the true needs of our communities. As we are denied security in the workplace and safety in the streets; as our survivors of violence are blamed for their traumas while perpetrators are excused; while the state tightens its grip on our bodies through criminalization, incarceration, and abortion bans, we demand more than the right to military and marriage.”

Along with gender and sexuality injustice, we have learned that no matter who we vote for, we cannot avoid the controlling interests of corporations such as Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil dominating our political process. The corporate framework dictates infinite growth and accumulation of profit no matter what the environmental and human costs are. Tabitha Skervin of Michigan State University sums it up by saying, “You can preach economic growth all day but there are no jobs on a dying planet."

The United States currently maintains a massive military machine responsible for the inhuman attempt to maintain and increase domination over the planet. We are outraged that more than $1 trillion of the annual federal budget is allocated towards sustaining the military-industrial complex instead of socially beneficial services such as accessible education. Within our borders, youth are growing up in a militarized society. The United States military targets low income and youth of color with manipulative promises of enlistment being the doorway to education and enrichment. We do not condemn individual soldiers whose bodies becomes tools of the state, used and then discarded to suffer untreated from the traumatic consequences of their service. Aislinn Bauer from New York City states, “We believe that the massive expenditures of taxpayer money should be redirected towards enhancing socially beneficial services like accessible education rather than furthering the interests of multinational corporations such as Big Oil and agribusiness and monitoring and criminalizing our own population. Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!”

We are now raising our voices to join the rallying cry of student movements across the world, addressing common global grievances, and resisting a system that does not serve the majority of us. Noting that access to higher education has become increasingly out of reach for much of the population due to skyrocketing tuition and burdensome loans, Lainie Rini of Ohio State University compares our education system to a factory: “Our current education system denies anyone but the privileged access to quality education. It is farming students for profit rather than being a space for inquiry and thought.”

The current situation has demonstrated that we cannot passively depend upon our leaders to save our society. We call for American youth to take action much like students across the globe in places like Quebec, Mexico, Chile, Spain, and Puerto Rico, who are mobilizing to demand their rights. Democracy cannot exist without demonstration and debate in public spaces. This fall, regardless of where we lie on the political spectrum, it is crucial that we come together on campuses across the country to reclaim our future before it’s too late. Join us November 14th-21st as part of a global week of student action, demonstrating that we in the U.S. are committed to global justice and the international student movement. Here. Us. Now.

WEB: www.studentpower2012.org
TWITTER: @studentpower12 #HereUsNow
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/StudentPower2012

via Occupy the Pipeline. Construction on the Spectra Pipeline is supposed to begin this week; a small group of activists has been on site this morning to keep an eye on the situation. For more information and photos of yesterday's action, check out Occupy the Pipeline!

Yesterday about 150 people showed up to give Spectra Energy a vibrant Un-Welcoming Party to NYC. The Spectra Men were walking the site, pointing and surveying, planning the pipeline construction that could result in 30,000 more cases of lung cancer & thousands of lost lives, homes, and businesses if their pipeline explodes. We think it's not an "if" but a "when;" the inevitability of a terrible accident looms over their public relations campaign claiming an increase of jobs into the area. We don't think that is worth the risk to life their project presents to NYC, not to mention the increased demand for Fracking in Pennsylvania, NJ and NYS switching NYC over to Fracked Gas would create. We are 100% opposed to Hydro-Fracking practices.

We had a visit from the NYPD who told us to take our banner down from between two trees. Official statement from the NYPD from yesterday: "Finally You Guys have a Good Cause." You know something is up when even the thugs at the NYPD realize the very real and present dangers from this pipeline. It endangers them as well, along with the good men and woman at the FDNY. They would be forced to risk their lives to put out the fires from the blast. Exploded pipelines have been known to burn for a week at a time. We don't want to make them suffer to save NYC. This is a preemptive intervention.

Our aim is to save lives. We are willing to put our lives in the way to do so. When the government fails to protect us, we need to take our lives into our own hands. Non-Violent Resistance is one tool we have to use.