NYC Guerrilla Drive-In with Illuminator

WHAT: a 99% Guerrilla Drive-In street party (with The Illuminator!)
WHY: GE is being a "tax hole"
WHEN: 8pm, Tuesday, April 17, Tax Day
WHERE: GE's most famous subsidiary, NBC
(meet up @ the rink @ Rockefeller Center)

GE is possibly the worst corporate tax-dodger in the country. The've made billions off the 99%. In New York alone, GE's tax dodging has cost us $297 million. Money that could go to educating our children, keeping our neighborhoods safe, providing healthcare for our seniors, or creating good jobs in our communities. Instead it's all disappeared into the GE Tax Hole.

While we pay our fair share and play by the rules, GE sends an army of tax lawyers and lobbyists to Washington to write its own rules.

Well... Not. Any. More.

On Tax Day, Tuesday April 17, the 99% is heading to GE's most famous subsidiary, NBC, located at 30 Rock, in the heart of Manhattan, with a little surprise for GE, and a little party for ourselves.

Our beautiful secret weapon, The Iluminator, will be there to shine a light on GE's misdeeds. And the Tax Dodgers will take the plaza in their high-styling baseball duds and "go to bat for the 1%."

Later this month thousands of 99%ers are planning to swarm GE's shareholder meeting in Detroit, and they're looking to us to set the tone. Let's not disappoint!

Come on out Tuesday night and lets close down GE's tax hole. Popcorn will be served.

Tax Dodgers Go to Bat for the 1% on Tax Day

Photo: Paul Talbot

Tax Day: The Tax Dodgers go to bat for the 1%

The best team corporate money can buy, knocks social services outta the park! 

WHO: The Tax Dodgers will be celebrating yet another record-breaking season at the headquarters of their sponsors, GE, Verizon, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.  The team will be joined by their hula-hooping cheerleading squad, The Loopholes, and together, they will be personally thanking everyday New Yorkers for paying their taxes for them. The team will even pay a special visit to Trump Tower with their official mascot, ‘Mitt’ in order to  help Donald Trump throw a birthday party for Anne Romney, where Mitt himself is expected to show. The team’s house band, the Occuponics, will help them sing  joyous renditions of ‘Take Me Out To The Tax Game.’

Team owner Alec Dickman, explains the team’s victorious mood: “On Tax Day, most Americans feel like they are making a making a difficult sacrifice for the greater good.  Not us. For the richest corporations in America, Tax Day is Pay Day.”

SCHEDULE:  Tuesday, April 17 beginning at 12 noon and appearing around the city throughout the day.
12:30 pm - Tax Dodgers, Loopholes, Occuponics and Mitt will be outside 725 5th Ave.
1:15 pm - Bain Capital (57th and Madison).
2:00 pm - General Electric (50th and 5th).
2:45 pm - Paulson Group (50th and 6th)
3:30 pm - Wells Fargo (43rd and 6th)
4:00 pm - March from Bryant Park to Wells Fargo, 39th & 7th; Chase at 37th &7th; US Post Office 33d & 8th.
8:00 pm - GE Headquarers, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, joined by the mobile projection vehicle, The Illuminator.

Media Contacts:  
Gan Golan  gangolan@gmail.com  (510 )290-3334  
Ben Master (917) 657-2610 bmaster@unitedny.org

http://www.taxdodgers.net      http://www.facebook.com/TheTaxDodgers   #taxdodgers 

Update on Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 03:50PM by admin

On Tax Day, the best team that corporate money can buy went to bat for the 1%, helping Donald Trump celebrate Anne Romney's birthday at Trump Tower. The winning team also spent the day touring around New York congratulating the year's most valuable players, GE, Verizon, Bank of America, for another record breaking tax season. Here's what happened....

• Huffington Post [slideshow]: Tax Dodgers And Occupy Wall Street Protest Bank Tax Evaders Outside Trump Tower
• The Gaurdian: US protesters mark tax day with protest at Ann Romney's birthday party
• Gothamist [slideshow]: Tax Dodgers Visit Donald Trump's Trump Tower
• CNN : The Tax Dodgers Thank You For Paying Their Taxes
• Alternet: Romney Celebrates with Trump as Working New Yorkers Rally Against Rich Tax Dodgers
• Democratic Underground: Women leaving a lunch hosted by Ann Romney are confronted by protesters in Tax Dodgers uniforms
• WBAI: Tax Day (starts at 2:00)
• The Nation: Hundreds Protest America's Crooked Tax System
• The Epoch TImes: Low Tax Rates for Corporations, Wealthy Protested
• YouTube: "Take Me Out To The Tax Game"

An Anarchives Play: What is history?

[NOTE: Hey Paul - I forgot to CC you on this.  I imagined it something like a Platonic dialogue mixed with Pozzo & Lucky in a Godot-like setting. - Jez]

What is history?

- Yes let's define it!

Well, what do you think?

- well, it's definitely a story

Most definitely! But is it always a true story?

- well, not all the time…though a lot of people would like it to be!

How does history work?

- hmmm…too complicated.  Next question?

Okay, well how does a story become history?

- Wait a second, I've got a problem with this term history.  Can we step back for a second?

Click to read more ...

InterOccupy Arts Call [#A18]

Beautiful Trouble: tools for innovative creative direct action

The just released book, Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution, pulls together the deepest learnings and most innovative creative direct action tactics from Occupy and allied movements. Come hear Matt Smucker, Mark Read and Samantha Corbin -- three of the book's key authors as well as core members of Occupy -- along with co-editor Andrew Boyd -- unpack the insights of the book.

There will be breakouts sessions where *everyone* will have a chance to explore the tools offered in the book and apply them to the challenges YOU are currently facing in your organizing efforts.

Click to read more ...

WS2MS A14 Fun

Mark Skwarek's WS2MS Augmented Reality project documentation video.

Sat, April 14, 3-5 PM, The public is invited to a Family Sing-along from 3-5 PM with an open mic hosted by Marilyn Miller and Occupy Hudson Busk musicians.

LOW LIVES: OCCUPY! Videos Live at the New Low Lives Website

To view the video documentation of Low Lives: Occupy! click the image.

Don't Disappear Me Sack Race!

Join us at the Spring Awakening/City-Wide Assembly this Saturday, right near Wollman Rink, Central Park South. We’ll be there all day!

STOP THE PRIVATIZATION OF CHELSEA COVE!

[From the Aaron Burr Society]:

Diana Taylor is back. The girlfriend of Mayor Bloomberg sits on the board of directors of Sothey’s Auction House [1], Brookfield Properties’ Zuccotti Park [2] and the Hudson River Park Trust [3]. This trifecta of interlocking boards will be partying at the annual meeting of the Hudson River Park Trust. Please join Occupy Museums and Sotheby’s Teamsters Professional Art Handlers who will be protesting this event.

• THURSDAY, APRIL 12TH, 6 P.M.
• ST. PAUL’s CHURCH
• 315 WEST 22nd STREET (near 8th avenue)

Click to read more ...

Occupational Art School at Co-Lab [Austin, TX], #a7-14

[Click the image for info.]

OwA co-organizer Paul McLean travels to Austin for a week of occupational art & BBQ. The expo Tumblr is HERE.

WS2MS: Week 4

REvGaMEs: Call/Response, 2+ Sequence Poems

[Photo by Paul McLean]

1

[Game program initiated by (sender) Alexandre Carvalho]

Solo or collective meditationdance, process whereupon the awakening being feels the streams of the universe intermeshing with body and body politik, streaming to and from, here and there, improving and exercising creation-meditation with no fucking mediation.

Microfilaments play, histories stream about: converge, merge, diverge, merge - and Emerge. 

#OWS? Not an organization. An idea-organism. Faith that manifests. By making the invisible visible, desmystifying space-time, we nourish a new reality. 

!!kaleydoscope.

{{@vortex,,,,,of a free,,,,square,,,we,,spiral.  spin the wheels of

!!kaleydoscope.

got it? no need for it. it's there at the funhouse where all mirrors lie.

#novads = #novas + #nomads. Crossing event-horizons all day all week, not for people but with people, through people. 

all can be to ride lifestreams

let you body loose

feel the streams 

leave the space void

unoccupied

ride the streams

if you like dreams

Click to read more ...

Chronogram Covers WS2MS!

Hudson Valley's arts and culture magazine featured two great articles on OwA's "Wall Street to Main Street:

• "Wall Street to Main Street" in Catskill: Zuccotti-on-Hudson by Sparrow
• On the Cover: Joel Richardson's Grassroots Financial Revolutionary by Molly Lindsay

Here's an excerpt from OWS poet Sparrow's piece:

“Wall Street to Main Street” is an art show in a dozen storefronts, plus a 10-week festival of performance and workshops, ending May 31. This is the first legal collaboration between the Occupy movement and a town. Catskill was chosen for numerous reasons: its proximity to New York City, its economic troubles, the presence of an arts community, and it’s the home of Thomas Cole (founder of the Hudson River School of painters).

“There are ‘Main Street’ issues that play out on our Main Street,” observes Fawn Potash, director of Masters on Main Street. “It makes sense to talk about those things here.” Potash was on the curatorial committee organizing the festival.

Since the police raid on Zuccotti Park, art has played a larger role in the movement. One cliché about Occupy is that it is “a protest without demands”—which is attractive to artists. For what is art if not a protest without demands? The community at Zuccotti Park struck many artists and critics—myself included—as a giant artwork, a “living sculpture” or “temporal work of performance politics.” One such artist, Jessica Eis, documented the encampment, the police raid, and its aftermath, with video and still photography in “Sights and Sounds of Zuccotti Park.” Emily Bruenig makes books from ephemera found at Occupy Wall Street: yellow police tape, stickers, flyers, etc.

Revolutionary Toys

Photo by Paul McLean

TOYS EXERCISE FIRST AMMENDMENT RIGHTS
REFUSING TO BE SILENT
#ToyProtest

MANHATTAN, NY- Toys unite - putting aside brand and color to take a stand in support of Occupy Wall Street, invoking their first amendment rights, to say "we will no longer remain silent: toys are people, too". The toys will continue their campaign throughout the month of April and ask that toys across the country and the world stand up to join the toy protest. A large yellow bird, an event organizer stated, asked to be referred to as "Big Bird" said: "After recent events, we realized that we could no longer in good conscience remain silent. Until now we have been afraid to protest. Our faces are highly visible making us recognizable worldwide, but as many activists are targeted for arrests and beaten, including most recently a sixteen year old girl brutally arrested and carried down the street exposed, we see that it is our duty to take a stand for what we believe in and to lend our popularity in support of that cause." A blue furry, self-described "cookie monster", said "I like cookies as much as the next toy. MORE, but what's happening in our economy? Ninety nine percent of the cookies being eaten by one percent of the toys is just wrong. Even to me." Adding, "Hey, do you have any cookies? Some toy already ate ALL the cookies."

When: 11am-1pm, Sunday, April 1st
Where: F.A.O. Schwarz: 767 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10153 @11am;
Lego store @ Rockefeller Ctr: 620 5th Avenue at 50th Street; American Girl Store: 609 Fifth Avenue at 49th Street @12pm;
Toys R Us:1514 Broadway at 44th South, New York, NY @1pm.

The toys will be meeting at each location to protest and engage in dialogue. A long nosed elephant, called "Dumbo" another organizer added, "We believe in free speech, the right to express dissent, and to assemble and we will exercise that right in the face of any oppressive and immoral government or regime. "When asked what their primary goals are, a big eared mouse who called himself "Mickey" said, "Our concerns are the same as everyone else's. Economic and social justice, but in addition, toys face challenges others are not aware of. For example, Lego has incredibly sexist policies, often our clothes are made of cotton produced by child labor, and American Girl has taken to phasing out 'aging dolls' in favor of 'newer, fresher faces.' Our goal? To create awareness of these issues, to start a dialogue, and to encourage others to have the courage to step out- that's all folks. "A green hairy animal, going by "Oscar" and claiming to live in garbage cans added, "Look, if we can do it, anyone can and should. It's a question of conscience. After all, who is more well known than us?"

Contact - Revolutionary Games

WS2MS: Saturday [#m31] - The ILLUMINATOR & Elizabeth Blum!

Wall Street to Main Street programming for this weekend:

Saturday, March 31, 7:45 PM Mark Read’s shape-shifting van, The Illuminator lights up Catskill’s Main Street. This mobile activist tool converts to an Occupy Wall Street library and cinema with hot cocoa and popcorn served while viewing short documentaries and cartoons about the Occupy movement. Pocket park at 355 Main Street, Catskill.   Also, meet guest artist, Elizabeth Blum, activating her streaming light projection installation at 365 Main Street, 9 PM.

Concept sketch for Liz Blum's installation at WS2MS

• More info on WS2MS at greenearts.org
• More about Illuminator actions earlier this week!

Spatial Occupation @Hyperallergic: Discussion of OWS as Performance Art

OWS activist handing out fliers in the Bedford Avenue L station on October 28, 2011. (photo by the author)

Please join us for a discussion about performance art and Occupy Wall Street. From the early days of OWS performance art and artists have played a pivotal role in raising awareness about OWS and its importance.

This Wednesday, March 28, starting at  7:30pm until 9pm, we will explore the topic with artists, critics and OWS activists to better understand what it means and what role performance art plays in activism today.

The event will be at Hyperallergic HQ, which is located at 181 N 11th Street, Suite 302, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

If you have any questions about the event, feel free to reach out here.



@WS2MS

This is from Elaine Fernandez,  who is coming back this week to do some interviews.  - Fawn

REVgames Toy Protest Song Video

[From Paul Talbot]

Join in on the Action on April 1st 2012.. Join in anywhere in the world and just submit your photos to revolutionarygames.net or tag them #toyprotest and @revplay and we will retweet them.

For more information about April 1st Toy Protest check out Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/events/178142598971449/

Or at the NYCGA.net - http://www.nycga.net/events/event/toyprotest/

WS2MS: UpRiser Calisthenics by Bread & Puppet Theater!

WHEN: Tuesday, March 27th from 12 noon to 12:30PM

WHERE: Casa Latina, Brandow's Alley at Church Street, behind The Bank of Greene County just off Catskill's Main Street.

Start your day off right, with UpRiser Calisthenics!

Join Bread and Puppet Theater for a free noon performance, part of the "Wall Street to Main Street" series of exhibits and events taking place through May 31. 

• breadandpuppet.org
• Facebook Event page

WS2MS: SAVE THE DATE!

The Great Tortilla Conspiracy is coming to Catskill for "Wall Street to Main Street" in April! This is going to be amazing!

DON'T MISS IT!

WS2MS: Update!

Updated on Monday, March 26, 2012 at 06:46PM by admin

In the wake of Occupy Wall Street’s six month anniversary, small town America’s continuing struggle provides the backdrop for a unique art activist project, Wall Street to Main Street.  At the March 17^th premier, curious locals and out-of-towners enjoyed a perfect spring day visiting the 20 pop-up exhibit sites along the Main Street in Catskill, NY.  Walking along four compact blocks, visitors had time to talk and digest ideas in between installations.  This ten week expo features over 50 exhibitors, performances, workshops and seminars with a newspaper that serves as the project’s guide, The Wall Street to Main Street Message.   The day culminated in a party with poetry, prose and protest songs at BRIK Gallery where a comprehensive exhibition introduces the movement’s historical and global context. Artists and organizers celebrated at the local Thai restaurant with laptops open to a live webcast as Michael Moore held a press conference announcing a fresh wave of protesters flooding into Zuccotti and Union Square Parks. 

Click to read more ...