Sunday, December 18th - 1:30pm until 5:00pm

Foley Square

Immigrants are part of the 99% and on December 18th we will march with the Occupy Wall Street movement to demand immigrant justice including putting an end to wage theft, and stopping detentions and deportations of our beloved community members. As the Occupy Wall Street movement highlights corporate profiteering we would like to shed light on those that profit off our labor, exploit workers and refuse to pay dignified wages. We also march against the corporations who support anti-immigrant legislation so they can make billions of dollars by detaining immigrants in private detention centers and deporting nearly 400,000 people per year.

As the occupy movement goes global we also recognize the destructive role that these corporations play in exploiting resources and labor in our home countries which forces millions to migrate. December 18th is the International Day of Migrants and we stand in solidarity with those world wide who are proclaiming Immigrant Rights as Human Rights.

A protest by the OWS Health Action General Assembly will take place at St. Vincent’s hospital this Saturday to demonstrate the growing frustration with a system that values luxury condominiums over care for the sick. The OWS Health Action General Assembly is composed of patients, nurses, social workers, physicians, and regular citizens coming together to seek alternatives to the present healthcare system.

We realize that the present healthcare, housing, and food crisis can no longer be solved by the ‘experts’ and ‘professionals’ only. It requires a much broader participation of citizens in order to succeed with any long-lasting alternatives. We are living in an era of created scarcity despite the abundance of technology, resources, and production at our disposal. This inequality present in our current healthcare system serves the interest of the few while leaving millions suffering.

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<img style="margin-right:0.7em" src=//i.imgur.com/LEKpo.jpg" alt="Archbishop Tutu" align="left" />

Sisters and Brothers, I greet you in the Name of Our Lord and in the bonds of common friendship and struggle from my homeland of South Africa. I know of your own challenges and of this appeal to Trinity Church for the shelter of a new home and I am with you! May God bless this appeal of yours and may the good people of that noble parish heed your plea, if not for ease of access, then at least for a stay on any violence or arrests.

Yours is a voice for the world not just the neighborhood of Duarte Park. Injustice, unfairness, and the strangle hold of greed which has beset humanity in our times must be answered with a resounding, "No!" You are that answer. I write this to you not many miles away from the houses of the poor in my country. It pains me despite all the progress we have made. You see, the heartbeat of what you are asking for--that those who have too much must wake up to the cries of their brothers and sisters who have so little--beats in me and all South Africans who believe in justice.

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Thursday, December 15, join the OWS Hunger Strikers for a national 24-hour fast to protest the violent evictions across the country that have robbed the Occupy Movement of our right to free speech and assembly. Thursday will be the thirteenth day of the hunger strike for space.

"For us, space is not a mere necessity- a place to lay our head, to eat our meals, to congregate and assemble- it is also a symbol and a direct action," said Diego Ibanez, one of the hunger strikers. "Literally, vacant lots are voids that we fill with physical representations of our concerns, hopes, fears and dreams."

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<img style="margin-right:0.7em" src=//i.imgur.com/NPDSW.png" alt="Walmart" align="left" />

CHARAS served the low-income, activist, and artist communities of lower east side for over 20 years, providing artist's space, performance and gallery space, after school programs, workshops, English classes and meeting space for countless neighborhood organizations. In 1999, despite a community use restriction & widespread opposition, the building that housed CHARAS was auctioned off to private developer Gregg Singer, who immediately moved to evict them. After a hard fought battle, CHARAS was evicted on December 27, 2001. The building, still zoned for community use, has sat vacant and derelict ever since. This Sunday, it's time CHARAS gets their community center back! Event Page

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