May Day 2012 – “A day without the 99%”

More information about the local actions on May Day is at

http://occupylaborsolidarity.org/

More information from Occupy Wall Street about national and worldwide action on May Day is at

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http://maydaynyc.org/why-strike

[from Occupy Wall Street]
Because you could use a holiday

May Day is a holiday during which no traditional work is done, yet it’s a day explicitly about work. It’s a day for recognizing that we are all workers, whether we’re rank-and-file union members, the precariously employed, students, or stay-at-home parents. It’s a day to recognize the value of our work, and the power we have to collectively change our working conditions and our world. By simply stepping out of the systems of production that confine and divide us, we can transform the conditions of society itself. May 1st is a day to explore the possibility of communities based on mutual aid rather than exploitation and consumption. Unlike Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and most other major holidays, you don’t have to buy anything and you don’t have to work feverishly in advance to celebrate May Day. You can make it what you want it to be. In fact, that’s really the only thing you have to do to celebrate May Day. It’s a day for and full of human potential. What will you make of it?

Because you work too hard for not enough money

Because this just isn’t working anymore

Because our struggles are one
We are all united: the system that declares unionized workers as “bad for business” is the same system that decides human beings are a commodity that can be “illegal.” It’s the same system which causes students to graduate college with so much debt that they must chain themselves to a career in something they despise, rather than pursue their passions and enrich their communities. It’s the same system that measures the value of a person by what they consume, and that measures the value of artists by how much they sell. It’s the same system that believes you can put a price on a sustainable planet.

(Im)migrants, Students, Workers, The Unemployed, The Underemployed, Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters, Sisters, Brothers, Neighbors, New Yorkers, Comrades, Friends: We are all suffering while the 1% prosper, and if we do not personally feel the strain, we surely have loved ones who do. Whether we are looking for work, facing decreasing hours, braving dangerous working conditions for a paycheck that barely provides the means to survive, returning day after day to the jobs that drain our souls and prevent us from seeing our loved ones, collecting debt like a hobby because education, housing, and the cost of life are impossible to afford: it has become clear that these systems were not created to support us and are incapable of doing so. Yet these very systems rely on our labor, our skills, and our compliance to function.

This system only continues to exist because we participate in it. To remove the power the system holds over us, the first thing we must do is to change ourselves. We can withdraw, for one day, and begin to enact a new world together. We can focus again on old values: mutual aid, community, hope, aspiration and faith—faith not in any leaders but in each other and ourselves.

This May Day, Occupy Wall Street in coalition with numerous organizations and occupations calls for A Day Without The 99%: No Work, No School, No Shopping, No Housework, No Compliance. Let’s take the streets, reclaim our communities, and reclaim our lives. If you can’t strike call in sick. If you can’t call in sick hold a slow down.

We know how to shut it down because we’re the ones that prop it up. Withdraw your consent and strike!

If you throw one stone, it’s a punishable offense. If a thousand stones are thrown, it’s political action

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http://occupiedmedia.us/2012/04/occupied-reports-from-the-front-lines-pre-may-day-edition/

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