Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Thousands of activists clashed with police in New York as May Day protests spread across dozens of U.S. cities. For more including a photo essay, click here. Activists across the U.S. joined the worldwide May Day protests on Tuesday. For more, click here. One of the Occupy Boston events was a “Death of Capitalism” Funeral Procession. For video of some of the fantastic puppets, click here. For a photo essay of the Occupy Boston protests, click here. For Oakland police clashed with Occupy activists yesterday, firing tear gas canisters and flash-bang grenades at several hundred protesters at the intersection of 14th Street and Broadway near City Hall before the skirmish quickly dissipated. Read more here.There’s concern over how far and with how much immunity, police can push their sweeping powers. A recent human rights group report blamed law enforcement officers for Tasering 500 people to death over the last decade. For the brief news report, click here. The electrical shock delivered to the chest by a Taser can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death, according to a new study. Advocacy groups like Amnesty International have argued that Tasers, the most widely used of a class of weapons known as electrical control devices, are potentially lethal and that stricter rules should govern their use. For more, click here. And the TSA’s mission creep is making the U.S. a police state. The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports – now it’s checkpoints and roadblocks. For more, click here. And an Occupy San Diego activist was sentenced to an overly harsh 90 days in jail and stiff probation conditions that have nothing to do with his protests.  And in doing so, the judge took it upon himself to throw down the gauntlet at the feet of the Occupy movement in San Diego. For the story, click here. And three targeted Americans: a career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained—sometimes at gunpoint—and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent. For more, see The NSA is Watching You. And Know Your Rights When Encountering Law Enforcement – check out the ACLU’s handy guide here. And you may know that during the Arab Spring, Egypt shut down Internet access for the entire country. Well, it turns out our president also has that power, an Internet “kill switch.” For the CNN story, click here.

Other Occupies/Protests:  A large group of Occupy protesters has occupied a building at Turk and Gough streets in San Francisco, saying they are planning to set up a commune there. The protesters, who had gathered for a noon rally at Market and Montgomery streets downtown, marched to 888 Turk St. afterward and began entering the building shortly before 3 p.m. The building is the same site, owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco, that was taken over by protesters on April 1. For more, click here. And in more California news: UC Davis Students and Faculty Face Prison Time for Peaceful Protest Against Bank. The pepper spraying of UC Davis students shocked the nation, but the persecution that the Davis Dozen protesters face is far worse. At the request of the UC Davis administration, District Attorney Jeff Reisig is charging the so-called Davis Dozen with 20 counts each of obstructing movement in a public place, and one count of conspiracy.  If convicted, the protesters could each face up to 11 years each in prison, and $1 million in damages.  The UC Davis administration is sending a clear message to protesters: dissent will not be tolerated. For more, click here. And 160 protests within just two months – and Canada’s student uprising continues unabated. And, with new clashes on Thursday night, the standoff over tuition fee hikes is turning increasingly violent. Centering on the country’s second largest city of Montreal, clashes resumed after talks collapsed between student leaders and authorities. For the news story, click here.

Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Follow @Boston_M1GS on Twitter for updates on the Occupy Boston M1 General Strike today (and search for #M1GSBOS and #occupyboston). Planning on photographing a protest? Know your rights. Taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right – and that includes federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties. Unfortunately, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs from public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply. For an ACLU photography fact sheet, click here. The history of May 1 as a workers’ holiday is intimately tied to the generations-long movement for the eight-hour day, to immigrant workers, to police brutality and repression of the labor movement, and to the long tradition of American anarchism. To read more, see May Day’s Radical History: What Occupy Is Fighting for This May 1st. According to Noam Chomsky, people seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning. Today, there is a renewed awareness, energized by the Occupy movement’s organizing, around May Day, and its relevance for reform and perhaps eventual revolution. For more, click here. And several hundred NYPD officers have been conducting training exercises on Randall’s Island in preparation for May Day’s protests. For the story, click here. The New York Police Department is closely following the “fissures” inside the Occupy Wall Street movement in preparation for what it sees as possible violence from splinter groups, according to a leaked memo. For more, click here. Whether workers, students or banking customers, OWS is calling on all Americans to stop offering their labor and money to corporations for one day and join their local Occupy chapter for a day of resistance. For more, click here. If past coverage is any indication, corporate media will not tell the May Day story accurately or with depth or analysis. That’s why more than 25 independent media outlets belonging to The Media Consortium are collaborating to provide coordinated, national coverage of May Day events from around the country. Calling themselves “Media for the 99 Percent” (http://www.mediaforthe99percent.com), these diverse outlets will offer a live TV and streaming broadcast, an interactive map, breaking news reporting, and coordinated social media coverage across their sites, reaching a combined audience of more than 50 million Americans. And the people who created the website http://www.occupy.com created an Occupy TV ad; if you haven’t seen it, check it out. And, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Richmond [CA] Police Department for police training documents, Mo Karn received much more than expected in return: homeland security and crowd control guides that show how the police target protests. And buried in the training guides are insights into three trends in law enforcement that have been occurring not just in Virginia, but nationally: the demonization of protest, the militarization of police, and turning local cops into “terrorism” officials. For the story, click here.

Other Occupies/Protests: The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said. Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on May 1 are JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy’s May Day planning committee. Events are scheduled for more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week. For more, click here.

 “Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.” Louis Antoine de Saint-Just