Issue #3 of the Project List is out! The OWS Project list is a bi-monthly listing of NYC-wide Occupy projects. With descriptions of each project and contact info, this is the perfect place to start if you have yet to find your Occu-niche. View the new Project List online here.

And speaking of projects – this is the 14th issue of Your Inbox: Occupied and we are looking for some new people to join our team. Whether you are already entrenched in Occupy projects or are looking for a way in, we would love to meet you this Friday. The newsletter crew will be getting together June 22nd at 5PM: 33 Flatbush, Brooklyn, near the 2/3/4/5 trains, Nevins St. subway stop. If you can’t make it this time around, shoot us an email at: newsletter (at) occupywallstreet (dot) net.

Occupy These Upcoming Events

Thursday, June 21st, 12:45pm
Solidarity Event: Bank Error leads to Foreclosure of Minnesota activists’ home
340 Madison Avenue, PNC Bank NYC Headquarters
Alejandra and David Cruz are two Two DREAM Act activists in Minneapolis who have spent years fighting for educational equality. In 2011 a bank error pushed their family’s home into foreclosure. PNC Bank acknowledged its mistake, but instead of fixing the situation, it has ordered five costly raids on the house, resulting in 23 arrests of neighbors and supporters from Occupy Homes Minneapolis. On Thursday, people from around the country will gather in more than a dozen cities for a Solidarity Action to demand that the Cruz family gets their home back and that banks stop displacing families in need for Wall Street's greed.

Thursday, June 21st, 6:00pm
Occupy Catholics General Assembly on Freedoms
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 460 Madison Ave, NYC
The US Catholic bishops have called a "Fortnight for Freedom" for the two weeks between June 21 and July 4. Occupy Catholics NYC has decided to answer that call by hosting an open-air General Assembly on Freedoms, on the steps of our cathedral, with the purpose of fostering an open community dialogue about what freedom means for us and for our faith.

Thursday, June 21st, 10:00pm
A Midsummer Night’s Dance Party
Big Snow Buffalo Lodge, 89 Varet St. Brooklyn, NY The OWS Bike Coalition is hosting a dance party! Prepare to ride, eat, drink, dance, and have a great time with friends, comrades, and midsummer woodland bike fairies. This event will moonlight as a (by donation) fundraiser and bike/part drive for OWSBC, so bring a (spare) bike!

Friday, June 22nd, 7:30pm
Night of the Living Debt
Washington Square Park
Get ready for a zombie-walk for the the fourth weekly Casseroles event in NYC! This is the time for NYC students to rise from the DEBT, in a night of undead mischief. If they will not give us free education, we will be forced to eat brains. Bring your pots and pans and come zombified!

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via Allied Media Projects:

AMC2012: Media Strategies for a More Just & Creative World
14th annual
ALLIED MEDIA CONFERENCE
JUNE 28 - JULY 1, 2012 • DETROIT, MI
alliedmedia.org/amc2012

The Allied Media Conference advances our visions for a more just and creative world. It is a laboratory for media-based solutions to the problems our communities face. Since our founding in 1999, we have evolved our definition of media, and the role it can play in our lives – from zines to video-blogging to breakdancing, to building radio transmitters and designing open-source software. Each conference builds off the previous one and plants the seeds for the next. Ideas and relationships evolve year-round, incorporating new networks of media-makers, technologists and social justice organizers. We draw strength from our converging movements to face the challenges and opportunities of our current moment. We are ready to create, connect and transform.

Keep reading for more information, or go register now at
www.alliedmedia.org/amc2012

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NEW YORK EDUCATION ACTIVISTS TO STAGE “NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEBT”

Action meant to raise awareness of out-of-control student debt and prompt nationwide protest

NEW YORK - Relentless tuition hikes, even at public institutions, have contributed to an astonishing student debt burden of more than $1 trillion. Inspired by student movements over the last month in Canada, Mexico, Chile, and across the world, education activists in cities around the U.S. have been organizing rallies and marches to raise awareness about the education crisis in this country. All in the Red, a New York-based activist collective, is declaring this Friday, June 22 to be the “Night of the Living Debt.” At 7 p.m. in Washington Square Park, performance artists/activists Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping will exorcise the demons of student debt, after which costumed zombies will march with pots and pans in hand through the streets of Manhattan, kicking off a summer of nationwide actions.

All in the Red emerged as a series of marches expressing our solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of students striking in Quebec against tuition hikes. Lack of affordable education and suffocating debt are even more glaring in the United States, and similar displays of protest and outrage are becoming increasingly common. All in the Red calls for a nationwide network to spread awareness and organize around the issue of student debt through direct action, political theatre, and spreading the visual imagery of the red square, which has come to symbolize this struggle worldwide.

Along with our colleagues in Occupy Wall Street, student activist organizations, and other public interest groups, we are concerned in particular with the pernicious relationship between education and debt. The predicament is compounded, both by seeming disregard from the government for the welfare of student debtors, despite overwhelming public support for student debt relief -- a petition to forgive student loans recently reached one million signatures -- and also by the predatory practices of financial services firms. We can no longer allow the shackles of debt bondage to be a source of shame. The student debt crisis must be placed at the center of our conversation about the public good.

On the “Night of the Living Debt,” Friday evening, June 22, we will rise from the grave of debt and join the struggle to end the ties that bind our education to a decadent financial system. We will call for a nationwide conversation about how we can transcend an obsolete system that enriches a few by mortgaging the futures of the many.

For additional information, contact allinthered@gmail.com

Twitter: @NYCStrike Facebook: NYC Infinite Strike Website: www.allinthered.org

“Occupy might just be the name we’ve put on a great groundswell of popular outrage and a rebirth of civil society too deep, too broad, to be a movement. A movement is an ocean wave: this is the whole tide turning from Cairo to Moscow to Athens to Santiago to Chicago.”</em> —Rebecca Solnit, February 21, 2012

Article via Toward Freedom

On May 22nd, the day after the NATO summit concluded, the Chicago Tribune’s leading headline read: “Chicago keeps its cool.” Reading these four words at the airport before flying back to the east coast, I couldn’t help but laugh in disgust. Images of police repression from the past week raced through my mind; of unwarranted house raids and arrests, infiltration of activist groups, and violence against protesters in the streets. With the ghost of 1968 occupying the city’s collective consciousness throughout the month of May, NATO certainly could have been worse. But even if it is true that Chicago did not completely devolve into the chaotic melee of the Democratic National Convention over four decades before, suggesting that the militarized “Global Crossroads” managed to “keep its cool” still seemed dishonest.

Standing there in the airport terminal trying to put this whole experience into perspective, I also thought of the dozens of military veterans who courageously returned their medals of honor from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. In opposition to NATO policies that have devastated these two countries, each of the veterans took turns hurling these medals toward McCormick Place where the delegates were meeting. Then I thought about the 17 busloads of Occupiers from the east and west coasts who traveled countless hours and miles just to have their voices heard in Chicago. Not all of those who traveled from out of town, though, were able to have their voices heard during the NATO summit; some of whom remain imprisoned to this day. Mostly I was thinking about the current state and trajectory of this movement of movements known as Occupy, which had such a strong presence there all weekend, and throughout the month. I thought about its vast challenges, as well as its unknown, but seemingly infinite possibilities ahead.

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via SilentMarchNYC.org:

The Silent March to End Stop and Frisk

Join Civil Rights, Faith, Labor and Community groups in a silent march against NYC’s “Stop and Frisk” Policy! On Father’s Day, let’s stand together to show that New Yorkers refuse to let our children be victimized by racial profiling.

Father's Day
Sunday, June 17th - march begins at 3 pm
Assemble on West 110th St. between Central Park West/8th Ave. and Fifth Ave.

• Enter the assembly area from the west or from the north, NOT from the east!
• You can begin gathering as early as 1pm, but remember - the march starts at 3 pm!
• Closest subway stops: Cathedral Parkway (110 St) on the B and C trains, Central Park North (110 St.) on the and 3 trains.
• Please check subway schedules for any changes.
• Contingents are being assigned locations within the assembly area. Please check back here in a few days for details.

March route

• The march begins at 110th St. and Fifth Ave.
• We will march south on Fifth Ave. to 78th Street.
• Mayor Bloomberg's mansion is on 79th St., just east of Fifth Ave.

REMINDER: this will be a silent march for the entire route!

What to Bring

• Wear comfortable walking shoes.
• Put on sun screen and/or wear a hat, especially if it is a sunny day.
• Carry a bottle of water.
• Posters, signs, banners - but remember that you cannot use wooden or metal sticks!

What Not to Bring

• Do not bring any noise makers or musical instruments!

In contrast to previous demonstrations, we will march in silence as an illustration of both the tragedy and serious threat that stop and frisk and other forms of racial profiling present to our society. The silent march was first used in 1917 by the NAACP—then just eight years old—to draw attention to race riots that tore through communities in East St. Louis, Illinois, and build national opposition to lynching.

Now, 95 years later, you can join us in powerful protest to help end this great injustice and begin rebuilding national opposition to racial profiling.

If you're outraged that police, security guards and even community watch volunteers in so many neighborhoods continue to treat young people of color differently, or if you're concerned for your children, or your neighbors' and friends' children, then channel these emotions into action by joining thousands in calling for an end to racial profiling and the abuse of New York's stop and frisk laws.

Silence is a powerful force that, like other forms of non-violent protest, holds a mirror to the brutality of one's opponents. On June 17, we will hold up a mirror to New York City's stop-and-frisk policy. It is not only discriminatory, it actively seeks to humiliate innocent citizens—particularly African American and Latino men—and criminalize otherwise legal behavior.

The Facts about Stop and Frisk

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