Mayday! Mayday! “Mayday!” Wall Street Sez It’s Going Down, Going Down, Going Down!

Podcast: Download

“Technical note:  In this interview the guest’s audio is occasionally distorted.  We have minimized the problem and believe the information warrants sharing even though the audio is not up to our usual standard. Thank you for your understanding.”

“Mayday,” which is used as a distress signal and derives from the French “m’aider (“come help me”), is already being sounded by Wall Street and its Bankers in reference to the upcoming “May Day” national protests.  And, they nervously claim to have good reason.

Being aware of this alarm being expressed by the Financial Community, I sought out one of NYC’s most active volunteers (I was told she was “awesome”) to get a better idea of the “Occupy” side of this story, Ms. Jackie DiSalvo.  As a spokesperson for the OWS Labor Outreach committee and being on the planning committee for the Mayday Solidarity March Coalition – she deserves that tribute.

I described to Jackie a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article titled “Wall Street Tracks ‘Wolves’ as May 1 Protests Loom” in which Brian McNary, a Pinkerton Global Risk director describes both Occupiers and the threat that “May Day” has for his banking clients and the need for “surveillance” of wild-eyed radicals.

“Banks cooperating on surveillance are like elk fending off wolves in Yellowstone National Park,” he was quoted as saying… “While other animals try in vain to sprint away alone, elk survive attacks by forming a ring together,” he declared.  (full article:  http://buswk.co/JbFbpc)

Well, however compelling this labored analogy – how many “elk” have enlisted the largest police force in the world to bolster its “ring?”  (When I visited Union Square the other day for the Student rally against $1 Trillion in educational debt, there were close to 50 (FIFTY!) police cars surrounding the Park.  If that is required at a Student demonstration, what is in store for May 1?)

As Jackie sees it, this May Day demonstration will be the largest of its kind in years and will take place in cities across the U.S.  As such, it will attract the less-than-neutral attentions of NYC’s “finest.”

Planning for that possibility, Occupy has organized what it terms “Green, Yellow and Red” zones.  As peaceful as it intends to be, organizers have done their best to identify the safest (from arrest and harassment) areas as being green, the more problematical as being yellow, and the more risky as being red.

Why is this even necessary?  May Day is a holiday for the 99%. It is a day for people to come together, across all those lines which too often divide us — race, class, gender, religion — and challenge the systems that create these divisions.

On May 1, 2012, millions of people throughout the world — workers, students, immigrants, professionals, houseworkers — employed and unemployed alike — will take to the streets to unite in a General Strike against “a system that does not work for us.”

In 2010, JPMorgan gave the NYC Police Foundation the largest donation is has ever received – $4.6MM.  They outfitted over 1,000 officers with state-of-the-art laptops and communications tools.  Donations are large and ongoing from Wall Street to the cops…and one has to ask – “Is this not turning NYC’s police department into the largest de-facto privately funded anti-protest army in the U.S.?”

As for the police presence?  What is being defended?  Will justification for police violence be concocted, as exampled by by the police and the military actions against protestors in Greece, Spain, the Middle East?  Will the suppression of the “American Spring” begin on May Day?

I suggest you be there to draw your own conclusions.  Don’t go to work. Don’t go to school. Don’t shop. Take the streets!

Want more details?  http://maydaynyc.org/homepage, where you will find links to the Mayday Solidarity people as well as links to the 99 Pickets.  Be there.  In the Square.