Protesters Prepare for May Day, Police Brace

Several months of extensive planning by the leaderless Occupy movement will culminate on Tuesday with massive protests nationwide, and here — citywide — against economic inequality, a broken system, and greed — individual and corporate. May Day, which coincides with International Workers’ Day, perhaps a spring reawakening for Occupy Wall Street, calls for a general strike aimed at unifying the 99-percenters and disrupting the status quo by shutting down commerce for a day in New York City. "Be it no work, no school, no shopping, no banking," says the website May Day 2012, "the general strike is both a show of force and a cry for a remedy to the human rights crimes perpetuated by a weighted, biased, outdated system." Concludes the websites' preamble, "We call on everyone to join us: No work! No school! No shopping! Take the streets!"

“Part of the message that we’re trying to get across is that the 99-percent make things run in this country,” said Mark Bray of the OWS press team. “Without us, society wouldn’t function ... Withdrawing our labor from the economy shows the power we have. If it were sufficient to write letters to our Congress people or cast a ballot in November, we would be doing that."

Permitted and unpermitted gatherings (or actions) will take place throughout the city, with a large "Pop-up Occupation" to begin in Bryant Park at 8 a.m. and last until 2 p.m., to be followed by a march to Union Square. Organizers have arranged a permitted solidarity rally in Union Square at 4 p.m. (with Tom Morello, Dan Deacon, Immortal Technique, Das Racist, Bobby Sanabria and others), after which protesters will hoof it from Union Square down to Wall Street — where both the Occupy movement and financial collapse began.

Read more: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/04/ows-may-day-nyc-protests-solidary-march.html