Post via Occupy Together. As of June 4th, fifty-seven Occupies have already endorsed!

The Occupy National Gathering is a nationally coordinated event which will take place from June 30th to July 4th in Philadelphia. The Occupy movement will convene the Occupy National Gathering in the vicinity of Philadelphia’s Independence Mall for a week of direct actions, movement building and the creation of a vision for a democratic future. The National Gathering will kick off with a massive march with Healthcare-Now! and will conclude on July 5th when attendees will join the Guitarmy for a 99 mile march from Philadelphia to Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.

Perhaps the highlight of the gathering will be the crafting of a Vision of a Democratic Future. On July 4th the National Gathering (#natgat) will facilitate a visioning process designed to allow all voices to be heard while allowing repeat visions to organically rise to the top. Together, by all those who choose to participate, a Vision of a Democratic Future will be conceived. Learn more about this and more here.

Want to get involved? Here’s how:

Organize

For the past couple of months Occupiers from all over the country have gathered via InterOccupy conference call to conceive of, and implement a strategy for, the Occupy National Gathering. This is the group that hase submitted the “Occupy National Gathering Proposal” to assemblies around the country. You can join them in organizing the final details as the National Gathering is gearing up. The planning calls happen weekly via the InterOccupy system on Tuesdays at 9PM EST. To join the call please register.

Spread the Word

Share the National Gathering on Facebook and Twitter (@OccupyNG) with your friends to raise awareness and bolster the National Gathering’s attendance.

Go to the National Gathering

RSVP to the Facebook Event Page and invite your friends to join you.

Need to find out how to get to Philly? Occupy Caravan is organizing travel from all over the country. To find out more visit occupycaravan.com or join Occupy Caravan’s weekly InterOccupy call by registering here.

TODAY Monday, June 4 2012
Assemble in Bryant Park (42nd St and 6th Ave, NYC) at 6pm.
Move to New Amsterdam Theater at 7pm.

FTHEBANKS HITS OBAMA WHERE IT HURTS
BRING A DOLLAR TO DANGLE, AND A POT TO BANG

On June 4th, members of F The Banks will be escalating our campaign to highlight the failure of the government to investigate the financial crisis.

Recently, we took our campaign to Attorney General Schneiderman’s office, to try and take charge of his underfunded, understaffed, and underachieving “Task Force”. Now, we’re going straight to his boss, Obama. And we’re going to hit him where it hurts: his campaign funds.

It’s predicted that the Obama campaign and related PACs will spend over a billion dollars trying to get him re-elected. For just a few cents out of every campaign dollar, they could fully fund the task force that he touted in his State of the Union speech.

Instead, Congress is refusing to fund it, and the task force is floundering.

While Obama is fundraising for his campaign, we’ll be holding a fundraiser for what really matters: bringing the banks to justice.

We’ll bring one dollar each, and wave it in their faces to underscore the ridiculous disparity between campaign spending and the amount of money needed to bring justice to the bankers who caused this crisis. We will bang our pots and pans to bring noisy attention to their quiet investigation.

BILLIONS FOR A CAMPAIGN, NOTHING FOR JUSTICE?
FIGHT BACK. HIT THEM WHERE IT HURTS
BRING A DOLLAR AND A POT OR PAN

From a January 27 Occupy Wall Street action at the MoMA in support of the locked out Sotheby's workers. Photo by @NEREphotography, via Occupy with Art

This article was written by Gary Roland for and published by Waging Nonviolence in their series Occupy Spring. Check out their blogs!

Last September 22, when Occupy Wall Street was just five days old, labor activists from the encampment at Zuccotti Park disrupted an auction at Sotheby’s in support of the locked out art handlers of Teamsters Local 814. This action began a collaboration that lasted nine months, eventually leading to the ratification of a new three-year contract that ended the lockout on May 31. George Miranda, president of the Teamsters Joint Council 16, said, “These hard-working men and women will go home today and tell their families that they got their job back, and that’s what the Teamsters call a victory.”

On the management side of the battle was a premier union-busting law firm, Jackson Lewis, which represented a board comprised of some of the most wealthy and politically influential people in the world. On the other side were 42 workers, many of them artists themselves, who loved handling some of the most important art objects in existence and who refused to allow their jobs to be turned into low-paying, temporary contract work. They were joined by OWS activists and the Teamsters Joint Council to struggle toward a victory that some felt was improbable from the outset. The heavy lifting of this campaign, though, was borne by the workers’ family members, who had to tighten their belts and go without during the dispute.

Having been a part of the campaign from the OWS side, I had a chance to see close up how certain strategic decisions led to its success and to draw some valuable lessons from it.

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