A Photographic Recap Of May Day In NYC

By on May 2, 2012 in News 16

Impose Magazine‘s Gretchen Robinette has a very thorough photo treatment of yesterday’s May Day activities in lower and mid-Manhattan. Parks and major thoroughfares such as Broadway north of Union Square were filled with protesters and celebrators who were busy marching and listening to lectures, teach-ins, and musical performances, culminating in a 5:30pm march to Wall Street. In the process, familiar spaces around the city were completely transformed, at least for a little while.

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  • Jin The Ninja

     ”There are 34,000 households, nearly 100,000 people, who are trying to
    live in the city on $10,000 a year. Half of the population of New York
    City is trying to live on $30,000 a year. This is—the levels of
    inequality in the city are absolutely stunning, and they’ve increased
    immensely since the 1970s.”

    david harvey on democracy now 4/30/12

    • Houseguest

      We need to tax the rich more so that the GSA can have more lavish parties in Vegas. Nothing solves income inequality like civil servants partying in Vegas. Rooms at the Luxor aren’t free, you know.

      Simple Ideas from Simple People – “Tax the Rich!”

      • Jin The Ninja

        i said nothing about politics or gov’t spending, merely i posted a poignant quotation on inequality. but continue with your t-head rhetoric.

        • Houseguest

          I’m sorry you’re very angry and upset, however, that’s the thesis of David Harvey’s last book “Rebel Cities” (a statistic from which you had quoted by the book’s author whom you heard on the radio) … if you are experiencing a gap of comprehension you may want to try to avoid referencing authors whose works you haven’t read but only had soundbytes dribbled into your precious little head. 
          Best of luck with all your endeavors in life! 

          • Jin The Ninja

             actually, not only have i read ‘rebel cities,’ but also his seminal works, ‘a brief history of neo-liberalism’ and ‘ the condition of post-modernity.’  the context of the excerpted quote was from an interview with amy goodman- and in THAT context he did not assert that particular point. he was discussing OWS in the context of historical labour movements. it’s not quite academic to ascribe meaning to citations outside of their initial context.

          • Houseguest

            The back-scrambling is precious. If you can’t address the point, just start screaming or, in your case, flooding the forum with multiple posts. 

            In further context, on Amy Goodman’s show, David Harvey was  using the quote you provided to rebut the idea that the Soviet Union wasn’t a good example of a well-managed economic and political system. 

            Cue spastic protestations and ho-humming insistence that, indeed, you’ve read X, Y and Z titles you managed to dig-up on Amazon/Wikipedia … 

          • Jin The Ninja

            ‘history of neo-liberalism’ is a very common title available in any library, i needn’t resort to wikipedia to cite harvey’s bibliography. Actually, Harvey was discussing a quote they aired from mayor bloomberg (after briefly summarising the paris commune) – to which he cited those statistics i re-posted, here is the transcript:
             
            AMY GOODMAN:
            Earlier this month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg compared the
            city council’s living wage bill to communism. The bill would raise
            workers’ wages at city-subsidized developments. Bloomberg made the
            comment in an interview on WOR radio.

            MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: If you think about it, the last time you really had a big managed economy was the USSR,
            and that didn’t work out so well. You cannot stop the tides from coming
            in. We need jobs in the city. It would be great if all jobs in the city
            paid a lot of money and had great benefits for the workers—not good for
            the employers—but if you force that, you will just drive businesses out
            of the city.

            AMY GOODMAN: That was Mayor Bloomberg. David Harvey?

            DAVID HARVEY:
            That’s the usual story. But look at the situation. The top 1 percent in
            New York City earns—on income tax returns, earns something like $3.75
            million a year. That’s what the top 1 percent earns, on average. There
            are 34,000 households, nearly 100,000 people, who are trying to live in
            the city on $10,000 a year. Half of the population of New York City is
            trying to live on $30,000 a year. This is—the levels of inequality in
            the city are absolutely stunning, and they’ve increased immensely since
            the 1970s.

            And then [inaudible] say, who dominates urban life? Who dominates the
            decisions? Well, it’s the 1 percent. And so, I think what Occupy Wall
            Street and the rest is saying is that we only have one form of power,
            which is people on the streets, actions in the streets. We don’t have
            the power to dominate the media. We don’t have the power, the money
            power, to dominate politics. And this is the situation we are in. So
            Occupy Wall Street is trying to give a different mode of political
            expression to politics as usual.

            so you see, although david harvey (as well as many left academics) has (rightfully) decried soviet state capitalism in other works, it was bloomberg in this instance whom resorted to red-baiting- the sole mention of the USSR came from him.

          • Houseguest

            Yep, as I said, “David Harvey was  using the quote you provided to rebut the idea that the Soviet Union wasn’t a good example of a well-managed economic and political system.”

            If you don’t possess the skills of analysis, logical reasoning or rational interpretation to understand it even with the aid of a transcript then, perhaps, that’s part of a different conversation? 

            Let me know where you’d like to ramble off to next. 

          • Jin The Ninja

            What David Harvey said, was not in any way a deconstruction of Soviet socio-economics. Bloomberg was red-baiting, pulling a cute little mcarthy era tactic of obfuscation. that’s okay, you didn’t get it. resorting to ad hominems is the last line of offensive for a troll.

          • Jin The Ninja

            and as an aside: on the issue of david harvey’s politics- while i am sympathetic to them, they are not the same as my own, and neither do they need to be. I can acknowledge something he says, as particularly cogent without needing to adopt his exact rhetoric.

      • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

        Kinda dodges the whole “oh wait, we haven’t been taxing the rich for thirty years and things got worse” reality, doesn’t it? I’m all in favor of scourging the GSA for their crimes…but none of that changes the reality…we slashed taxes on the rich and on corporations…and lo and behold…we have annual budget crises like never before. Not to mention gutting of public services to maintain the cost of multiple boondoggles and giveaways…not surprisingly lobbied for by the rich with their newfound disposable billions in income.

        • Houseguest

          Huh? 

          It was too hard to get through the double negatives and creatively neurotic ellipses to read this, I regret. 

          If you’d like to take another crack at it, I’ll give it a glance, though. 

          • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

            Troll says “I can’t refudiate this…I can has grammarz plz.”

          • Jin The Ninja

            lol. verily, i concur.

      • Houseguested

        Oh look, this troll is really just a shut-in with no friends, he’s been here all day on Disinfo just acting like a jerk. You know, if you actually treated people with some modicum of respect, you actually might be able to have some “real life” friends … just like the people on TV or in the movies.

  • tooCents

    I like that activists wear clothes that through the media make them look like weirdos to the masses that aren’t to be taken seriously or are to be disliked because they’re weirdos and “professional protesters”.