Chris Faraone at the Boston Phoenix reports “As the weather heats up, so does the class struggle“:
With spring protests planned from Boston to the Bay Area, Occupy remains an unwieldy and unpredictable animal. Though there’s more and more connectivity between organizers nationwide, activists in different cities are pursuing local actions that are only tied to the larger effort in spirit, while hoping that small wins add up to a big kick in the one-percent’s pants.
And they’re joined by a newly invigorated core of allies. A conglomerate of established labor groups and non-profits — banded together as the “99% Spring” — has converged in many places with Occupy.
The various factions don’t always play well together. Some Occupy hands have been hostile to older-school progressive outfits, and suspicious of their ties to the Democratic party. Taken together, though, they have a whole lot of commotion on deck for the spring and summer:
* While Occupiers have been working regionally on everything from health care, to immigration, to public transportation, the movement and its allies still have their sights set on large banks and financial institutions. Specifically, they’ll be targeting upcoming shareholder meetings, including one this week for Wells-Fargo in San Francisco.
* On the week leading up to and on July 4, a swarm of Occupy sympathizers will flood Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was drafted. However, as of now the horde will be comprised of two rival groups — one organized by an Occupy spinoff outfit called the “99 Percent Declaration,” and one made up of original-flavor Occupiers.
* In addition to pro-labor May Day marches organized by Occupy and labor activists on the first of next month — which are expected to take place in more than 130 locations across the nation — both groups are also planning major actions at the late-May NATO summit in Chicago, as well as the September conventions for both major political parties, and many events in between…
The general strike and bridge offensive in the Bay will be coordinated between the Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition, Occupy, and other participating groups. Likewise, May Day festivities in New York — expected to be the biggest in the country — are very much a unified front between Occupiers and their more mainstream affiliates. Due to concerns about arrests by some participating groups, OWS organizers even broke their pattern of sidestepping city ordinances, and pulled a permit for their march from Union Square to Battery Park (just one of more than a dozen events scheduled for May Day). Some Occupy purists resent the decision, and will be carrying out autonomous actions. To the public, though, the aerial shot may look like one big benevolent mob stretched like an octopus across Manhattan…
Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones reports from the Left Coast:
On the first of May, the Occupy Wall Street movement hopes to leverage the labor holiday known as May Day and muster enough people power to blockade the Golden Gate Bridge—assuming, that is, that striking bridge workers take the lead. “We can’t do an action for them; we have to do the action with them,” says Lauren Smith, a spokeswoman for Occupy Oakland. An union organizer for the bridge workers had no comment on their plans, but alluded to something big: “Our actions are going to speak louder than words.”
While the presumptive bridge protest is just one among dozens of demonstrations being planned for 40 cities on May 1, it illustrates how the movement is simultaneously getting bolder and more strategic in its bid to remain a relevant part of the national conversation. Occupy organizers promise that Tuesday will be bigger than anything we saw from the movement last fall. “May Day will be the big kickoff of Phase 2 of Occupy,” says Marissa Holmes, an early OWS organizer. “I think we will see a lot of people in the streets taking more militant actions than they had in the past.” But bringing out the numbers—and rebooting a movement that has largely faded from the headlines—will require a greater level of partnership with organized labor and kindred protest movements….