12 May – 15 May protest – reclaim

Update: 12m15m, All over the globe protestors have hit the streets again. Marking the anniversery of the OWS movement last year hundreds of thousands have entered Peurto Del Sol Square in Madird.

 

 

Previous post 19 April2012:  Twelve years ago we took to the streets in the biggest globalised protest against the corporate rape of our planet. After 9/11 we went back to shopping. Now we are back, make May Day 2012 the culmination of a decades long movement for a better world?

I recall well the protests of May Day 2000 the images of a protester in London hanging from the Golden arches of McDonald’s trying to kick it down. This image actually lead to an essay I wrote on symbolism, for my generation McDonald’s no longer symbolised an affordable family restaurant but a cancer homogenising food and culture while raping the Brazilian rainforests with cattle factories.

The mass rallies held all over the world on May Day 2000 had come after years of anti-corporate globalisation, pro sustainable future protests. The Seattle battle, the shooting of protesters in Milan and Rio had shown the world and its leaders that people really wanted a change of ways. And after the great coming together for the millennium where we all celebrated as one humanity on Earth it was felt one final push in the Spring of 2000 would finally step us forward. The 9/11 tragedy stopped all that, Bush told us to go out and shop to save the economy, to save western capitalism and we did. We borrowed, we bought, and the bankers gambled and for a while we went to sleep.

Then in 2008 the GFC woke us up, nothing had changed it had only gotten worse.

Now we have formed again, OWS went global, there are revolutions everywhere, and this coming May Day will mark a true start.

We must create a better world, for we are Earth’s grandest creation, and if we don’t the legacy of intelligent life may be lost forever.

See below for the actions you can join for May Day 2012, and videos of the 2000 protests.

Madrid:

Live Streaming from media for the 99% of May Day 2012

May Day 2000 London

From the film “A Year in the Streets” 2000

Promo video for Occupy May Day 2012

OCW plan for Los Angeles May day 2012

Global General Strike for May 2012

From the core, AdBusters:

Hey you dreamers, strikers and new left redeemers out there,

For thirty-one magical days beginning this Tuesday, May 1, we take the plunge and Strike! We block the Golden Gate Bridge; occupy a Manhattan-bound tunnel; seize the ports. In 115 cities, we march into banks, erect tents and refuse to leave. We disrupt financial institutions forcing thousands to preemptively close. Five thousand of us pray, dance, sleep on Wall Street and in front of the Fed and if the Bloombergs of the world bring out paramilitary police to intimidate us, we use our social media fire to call out 50,000 more occupiers and intimidate them right back.

In the week before the G8 and NATO summits, we light the spark globally. We occupy hundreds of squares in cities on every continent – from Paris to Berlin, Toronto to Athens, São Paulo to Bucharest and beyond – we up the ante with direct actions that paralyze capitalism. For a few days, maybe for a full month, we act as if we already live a world run by people, not corporations.

Our movement goes geopolitical later in May. We swarm Chicago and confront NATO. We tell the military elites there to stop their saber rattling against Iran, halt the global arms race and get behind what the majority of the people on Earth want: a nuclear-free world starting with a nuclear-free Middle East that includes both Iran and Israel.

And then when the G8 leaders meet in Camp David, we create a global spectacle the likes of which the world has never seen before … millions of us … individually, in flash groups and en masse, we burst out laughing at the lunacy of the eight most powerful political leaders on the planet thinking they can dictate the people’s business from behind closed doors and barbed wire fences. For one day, we take over the global mindspace with a whirlwind of #LAUGHRIOT jokes. (Like: Why did the G8 chickens cross to Camp David? / Cuz they’re on the other side. haha!) We laugh our heads off on every news broadcast in the world.

May 1968 was the first wildcat general strike in history … it spawn hundreds of occupations, campus uprisings and workplace disruptions globally … but then it fizzled. Maybe this May 2012 we won’t?

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

OccupyWallStreet.org / Tactical Briefing #26, #27, #28 and #29 / Find out what your local Occupy has planned for May 1, May 12, and the #LAUGHRIOT then join the movement in Chicago

P.S. We want your most intimate stories and photos of May’s spiritual insurrection for Adbusters #102. Send to editor@adbusters.org.

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Note: The G8 summit has been moved from Chicago to Camp David because of planned protests in May2012.