Chicago

Last night saw protests erupt around 130 cities across the world in during the second Casseroles Night in Canada. Protesters banged pots and pans in solidarity with the Quebec student movement and their on-going student strike, the longest in Canadian history, that is redefining what is possible for social movements in an age of austerity. The unlimited general strike (grève générale illimitée in French) continues to astound politicians and the media; the State's attempt to destroy the movement by declaring it illegal merely produced the largest act of civil disobedience ever in Canada and helped carry the spark of revolt across the globe.

Students, Occupiers, indignad@s, and social movements across the world have taken to the streets to show our support not only for our comrades in Quebec, but for a free, libertatory education system for all. We are rising up to resist a debt-based society and an economy built on exploitation. More than ever, our diverse and local movements are connecting in a massive network of global solidarity. And we are just getting started.

Oakland

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As student debt surpasses trillion dollar mark, students express frustration with not so bright future ahead of them

NEW YORK, NY (June 5, 2012) - Burdened by debt and silenced by the media, graduating students will exeunt the college stage with a silent, but firm expression of their angst and frustration. Some students will wear blow up ball-and-chain shackles to symbolize their financial distress, while others will write the amount of college loans they owe on top of their caps at their graduation ceremonies.

On April 25, 2012, the debt of American students surpassed the trillion-dollar mark. It is for this reason that students at small and large colleges and universities across the nation will bear symbolic props and statements that reflects what lays ahead for them. Institutions signed up to participate in this nationwide demonstration include, George Washington University (graduation ceremony - Thursday, May 17), CU Boulder (Friday, May 11), and the University of North Carolina (Sunday, May 13), where New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will conduct the commencement speech honors. We have recently added the University of Washington and Ohio University (Saturday, June 9), and, Oregon State University (Sunday, June 17). We expect many more schools to sign up in the coming weeks.

Occupy Graduation was an idea formed by the collective voices and initiatives of OccupyWallSt.org, Occupy Colleges, Occupy Student Debt, Occupy Together, Ben Cohen, from Ben and Jerry’s ice cream; “Default: The Student Loan Documentary,” Backbone Campaign, EDU Debtors Union, Forgive Student Loan Debt and Wear Your Debt.

Occupy Graduation urges students to participate. Signing up is as easy as organizing a group of 10 or more students and then visiting the Occupy Graduation website at http://occupygraduation.org/. Please note, this demonstration is a way to express student frustration without destroying graduation or disrespecting the meaning of this event for classmates and parents.

Organizing students interested in more ideas on how to effectively and respectfully be “heard” on graduation are encouraged to visit the website. In addition, students interested in purchasing the staple ball-and-chain props, but unable to do so for financial reasons, can contact Occupy Graduation for a reduced rate.

Press Contacts:
Natalia Abrams, Occupy Colleges
(323) 642-8102 info@occupycolleges.org

Kyle McCarthy, Occupy Student Debt
(415) 483-9191 Kyle@OccupyStudentDebt.org

Today, Occupy Wall Street activists and members of New York's 99% will deliver giant bags of cash to Governor Cuomo, hoping that a two million-dollar bribe will secure a long-awaited increase in New York State's minimum wage. Following the successful example set by the gambling industry, OWS and members of local community organizations have decided to try bribery, since overwhelming public support and peaceful protest have thus far failed to work. Scores of protesters will gather at the Governor's Manhattan office to deliver the bags of cash, with the hope that this bribe will buy the Governor's support for a living wage, in the same way that he became a staunch advocate for gambling interests after outlays of cash by the industry.

"While Occupy Wall Street activists and members of New York's 99% admitted that their bags of cash contained play money, they pledged to raise the necessary bribe, if that's what it would take to secure Governor Cuomo's support for a living wage. "Frankly, it's a great return on investment, providing a raise for 700,000 New Yorkers, and giving a boost to the economy that helps us all," said Jackie DiSalvo of Occupy Wall Street. "We don't have deep pockets like the gambling industry has but we'll start passing the hat today."

OWS activists, New York workers, and their supporters will gather at 42nd Street and 3rd avenue at 12 noon today. At 12:30pm, they will walk to Governor Cuomo's Manhattan office at 633 3rd Avenue to deliver the money, in large cartoonish sacks.

A new Yorker working full-time at minimum wage earns $290 a week, or just $15,080 annually. Supporters of a living wage point out that it's nearly impossible to pay for rent, food, transportation, health care and everything else on such a meager wage.

"It’s indefensible that someone who works 40 hours a week would be unable to feed her family," said Disalvo "It's time for Governor Cuomo to stand up for working New Yorkers and not just pay-to-play interests like the gambling industry."

Like many community organizations across the state, the OWS activists are demanding that Governor Cuomo act to raise the minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $8.50, and index it to inflation so that low-wage workers don’t continue to get left behind. Polls consistently show overwhelming public support for the increase.

Egyptians occupy Tahir Square on June 2, 2012 to demand a new revolution in the wake of the Mubarak trials

Today in San Francisco, Egyptians, Arabs, and Occupiers in the Bay Area are marching in solidarity with the Egyptian Revolution. Gather at Union Square (SF) at 6:30pm Pacific time! More info.

You may remember “To the Occupy Movement” a letter of solidarity from Egyptian revolutionaries calling themselves ‘Comrades from Cairo’. A new letter has emerged bearing this signature, this one attacking the fraudulent and reactionary practice of elections. Down with all elections! Solidarity to all who struggle against the capitalist states whose preferred method of stealing agency is electoral freedom of choice. Might we add, Solidarity means attack! - via strikeisaverb.net

by Comrades from Cairo

To you at whose side we struggle,

From the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, the powers that be have launched a vicious counter-revolution to contain our struggle and subsume it by drowning the people’s voices in a process of meaningless, piecemeal political reforms. This process aimed at deflecting the path of revolution and the Egyptian people’s demands for “bread, freedom and social justice.” Only 18 days into our revolution, and since we forced Mubarak out of power, the discourse of the political classes and the infrastructure of the elites, including both state and private media, continues to privilege discussions of rotating Ministers, cabinet reshuffles, referendums, committees, constitutions and most glaringly, parliamentary and now presidential elections.

Our choice from the very beginning was to reject in their entirety the regime’s attempts to drag the people’s revolution into a farcical dialogue with the counter-revolution shrouded in the discourse of a “democratic process” which neither promotes the demands of the revolution nor represents any substantial, real democracy. Thus our revolution continues, and must continue.

Egyptians now find themselves in a vulnerable moment. Official political discourse would have the world believe that the technologies of democracy presently spell a choice between ‘two evils’. These are: Ahmed Shafiq, who guarantees the consolidation of the outgoing regime and its return with a vengeance, openly promising a criminal assault on the revolution under the fascist spectres of ‘security’ and ‘stability’, and the false promise of protection for religious minorities (against whom the regime systematically stages assault and isolation as part of its fear-mongering campaigns); and Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood whom we are expected to imagine might ‘save’ us from the ‘old regime’ through the myths of cultural renaissance — all while consolidating its financial stronghold and the regional capitalist hegemony that fosters and depends on it for a climate of rampant exploitation of Egypt’s people and their resources. This consolidation, we are certain, will be accompanied by the subsequent marshalling of the military apparatus to protect the emboldened ruling class of the Muslim Brotherhood from the wrath and revolt of its victims: the multitude whom the leaders of the organization have historically fought by condemning and outlawing our struggles for livelihood, dignity and equality.

According to election officials, most voters themselves (75%) have chosen neither Shafiq nor Morsi in the first round of elections. We refuse to recognize the choice of “lesser of two evils” when these evils masquerade in equal measure for the same regime. We believe there is another choice. And in times where perceived common sense is as far from the truth as can be, we find the need to speak out once again.

We perceive the affair of presidential elections in Egypt as an attempt by the as yet prevailing military junta and its counter-revolutionary forces to garner international legitimacy to cement the existing regime and deliver more lethal blows to the Egyptian revolution. We ask you to join us in resisting the logic of this process that seeks to further entrench the counter-revolution.

Our struggle does not exist in isolation from yours.

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photo of Blockupy Frankfurt

via Blockupy Düsseldorf Facebook event (with German translation and full schedule)
for background, see here and here

Transnational call to action in Düsseldorf, June 06.-09.
International solidarity in our common struggle

We are calling for massive protests in Düsseldorf this June against the crisis regime of the European Union. We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs and livelihoods that have become fiercely intensified in the global crisis. We have joined together and shared our struggles and experiences, and we have realized that in a multitude of local forms, we are fighting the same fight. Like never before, our movements are starting to strengthen each other: a truly transnational opposition is beginning to emerge.

The metropolis of Düsseldorf after Frankfurt am Main ist the second most important city for banking and stock exchange in Germany. Around 170 banks have their headquarters or offices in Düsseldorf. Also, many companies are seated here: Monsanto Germany, L’Oréal Germany, Vodafone Germany, Metro AG, E.ON, Rheinmetall, Henkel, E-Plus and the ERGO Insurance Group. We resist the attempt to play the employees, the unemployed and the precarious in Germany, Greece, Italy, France or other countries off against each other with nationalistic slogans. We set a sign for solidarity with all people and movements which defend themselves against attacks on their lives and future for months. We will demonstrate against the policies of EU and the Troika, we will blockade the banks and occupy public places in Düsseldorf – we are BLOCKUPY!

We are protesting the widespread impoverishment and denial of democratic rights occurring in the Eurozone as part of a global systemic crisis. In the periphery of the EU we are experiencing the extreme effects of politics pushed for by the governments of Germany and France and enacted by institutions representative of global capitalism: the ECB, IMF, EU, and their imposed technocratic governments. Millions of us have been impoverished and driven to misery by austerity and structural adjustment programs, the denial of labor rights and the slashing and privatization of public services, such as education, healthcare and welfare. We are experiencing the looting of human and natural resources by supposedly democratic institutions!

Yet these processes are only the most evident sign of the precarization of working and living conditions experienced in all of Europe and beyond. Our social uprisings, traversing the internal borders of the EU, are the expression of indignation acting outside every form of political representation. As representative democracy fails, we leave it behind, creating our own democratic practices in everyday struggles against exploitation.

We are experiencing global migration as another clear sign of the refusal of this transnational system of exploitation, its border regimes and violent wars. It is devastating our earth and basic livelihood. The situation is urgent: we are facing a human-made climate disaster!

Yet in Europe and beyond, we are also experiencing the emergence of political movements that are challenging the everyday exploitation of people and the earth, the social fragmentation, precarization and racism that pretend to divide and then weaken us. By creating connections among these movements and making ourselves visible and powerful, we are attempting to practice a real democracy right now. In Frankfurt, we have the opportunity to make these connections real, and to empower local struggles on a transnational level. We will blockade a crucial center of global capitalism, learning from what we watched in Oakland and the Occupy movement in the United States, who in turn learned from the revolutions across North Africa, the Middle East and the Indignados of Southern Europe. Let us bring our movements together in solidarity to continue the fight! Let us not miss this opportunity to set the agenda to reinvent our common future!

Wednesday, 06.06. arrival and night-dance-demonstration
Thursday, 06.07. take the squares, assambleys, actions, walks
Friday, 06.08. shut down the system for a day ;-)
Saturday, 06.09. final demonstration

FOR A TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO END PRECARITY AND IMPOVERISHMENT!
FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY, FREEDOM and REAL DEMOCRACY NOW!