Protest erupt in New York City after Trump signs orders to advance Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines

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New York - Hundreds of New Yorkers joined Actress Jane Fonda and Film Director Josh Fox in the evening of January 24, 2017 at Columbus Circle in New York for a rally and march to Trump Tower in a massive peaceful protest after Trump signs orders to advance Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines

Donald Trump signed four executive orders Tuesday that he said would greenlight the construction of the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines and speed the approval of other proposed infrastructure projects.

Trump called KXL "something that's been in dispute, and it's subject to a renegotiation of terms by us. We are going to renegotiate some of the terms, and if they'd like, we'll see if we can get that pipeline built. A lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs. Great construction jobs."

The State Department, in a protracted review under the Obama administration, said that spending during the project's construction would support about 42,000 jobs, but many of those jobs have already been completed, and experts have concluded that the pipeline would offer only 4,000 construction jobs if built within a year and just 35 permanent positions once completed.

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Keystone XL would run 1,179 miles to connect the tar sands in western Canada with the existing Keystone pipeline network and oil refineries in the U.S. The Obama administration rejected the $5.4 billion project in November 2015, concluding that while pipelines emit fewer emissions than alternatives like ships, trains or trucks, the pipeline's construction would worsen heat-trapping carbon emissions and contribute to climate change by enabling energy producers to invest in new high-cost wells in the tar sands, where development emits up to 22 percent more carbon than conventional drilling.

The Dakota Access Pipeline would stretch 1,172 miles across four states from oil fields in western North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois. The $3.8 billion project, which is about 90 percent complete, would cross beneath a reservoir, prompting outcries from Sioux tribal members and other Native American groups and environmentalists that the pipeline would threaten water supplies. Obama ordered a halt to work on the pipeline in December.

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Both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access projects sparked vigorous debate between environmentalists who said the pipelines were symbols of energy companies running roughshod over local residents and environmental concerns, and fossil fuel groups that said the projects were emblematic of a federal bureaucracy and a White House beholden to green interests.

#2017 #Activism #ClimateChange #climatejustice #DakotaAccess #DakotaAccessPipeline #DefendTheSacred #demonstration #DivestDAPL #FossilFree #IndigenousRights #JaneFonda #JoshFox #KeepItIntheGround #KXL #mniwiconi #NewYork #NoDAPL #noKXL #NoPipelines #NYC #NYC2StandingRock #NYCLightBrigade #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #ProtectTheSacred #Protest #‎Solidarity #StandingRock #StandWithStandingRock #StopKXL #StopTheBlackSnake #StopThePipeline #WaterDefenders #WaterIsLife #WaterProtectors ‪#‎weareallconnected,#DonaldTrump #DumpTrump #GOP #humanrights #LoveTrumpsHate #NewYorkers #NotMyPresident #Photography #rally #RejectPresidentElect #revolution #RiseAndResist #StopTheHate #trump #trumpvsallofus, #DonaldTrump #DumpTrump #GOP #humanrights #LoveTrumpsHate #NewYorkers #NotMyPresident #Photography #rally #RejectPresidentElect #revolution #RiseAndResist #StopTheHate #trump #trumpvsallofus

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More Than 400,000 People Join the Women's March in New York City 

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New York City – In solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington and Women’s Marches across the country and around the world, more than 400,000 people from NYC’s five boroughs, the tri-state area, and cities and towns across the U.S. are expected to participate in a peaceful march for women’s equality and human rights from the UN to Trump Tower in NYC on January 21, 2017.

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The Women's March on NYC (WMNYC) is scheduled to begin at 10:30AM with a rally at One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza.

The diverse slate of speakers at the rally includes Sue Doster, Co-President of InterPride, the International Association of Pride Organizers; NY State Senator Liz Krueger, a strong advocate for tenants’ rights, affordable housing, healthcare, social services, and equitable funding for public education; Bertha Lewis, Founder and President of The Black Institute (TBI); Michele Irimia, a Cuban-American educator and board member of Heritage of Pride, Inc. (NYC Pride); and Shandra Woworuntu, the founding Director of Mentari Human Trafficking Survivor Empowerment Program. Kashish, a socially conscious Muslim-American singer-songwriter will perform her song “Stronger Together” which was inspired by the 2016 presidential election (she will donate all proceeds from downloads of the song to the ACLU). In addition, global women’s empowerment veteran Shazia Rafi and performer Lindsay Fisher will lead an informal women's choral group, dubbed the HERmonics, to open and close the rally.

"Our mission is to provide a safe and accepting platform for supporters of equality to rally andmarch in promotion of civil rights for every human regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, religion or creed," stated WMNYC Chief Coordinator, Katherine Siemionko.

"This historic and peaceful event is open to the public, and we warmly welcome ALL to participate." 

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Immediately following the rally, an all-female drum line will lead the first wave of the procession to Trump Tower at 721 Fifth Avenue. Due to the large number of participants expected, organizers will issue staggered start times to participants to facilitate the march. 

#2017 #Activism #Art #demonstration #DonaldTrump #DumpTrump #GOPHandsOffMe #march #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #pussygrabsback #RejectPresidentElect #ResistTrump #‎Solidarity #trump #TrumpTower #trumpvsallofus #WMNYC #WomenRights #WomensMarch #WomensMarchNYC

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Occupy Museums presents an Artists Speak Out at the Whitney Museum

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Occupy Museums Values Statement on #J20

January 20th is not a day for business as usual. It is a day of reckoning: a day when we must step back stand together and acknowledge how far we have fallen from the values that we supposedly uphold as individuals, communities, and institutions. At the same time, however, we must recognize that this occasion is exactly business as usual in the United States of America. It would be naive to suggest that the advent of Fascism is representative of one man or one woman or one administration. This moment has finally landed following decades of Reaganomics. It landed after centuries of living in a house with a flawed foundation built on slavery, stolen labor, and bloodshed; maintained through the normalization of systemic injustice. It has landed as the full legitimization of cultural homogenization, techno-militarism and life inside the atomized logic of corporatism. It has landed after the sequestering of money and political agency into fewer and fewer hands. We have become a country of red and blue: a separatist mentality that replays “the people” as demographics, driving wedges between “races,” classes, regions, genders, education levels, and worldviews.

Our values — values fought for tirelessly over the generations, values that we believe to be sacred — have proven to be as fragile as they are precious.

Facing this reality, we bear much responsibility and seize this moment of national coming-into-consciousness as an opportunity. Occupy Museums calls on our communities — in this case artists, cultural practitioners, and institutions — to directly name and confront this truth: we are living in a Fascist State. Fascist propaganda exacerbates the racism and misogyny embedded in our culture for cynical political ends; it is the enemy of art. This can be seen from the new administration’s plans to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts — a last vestige of truly public support of the arts. Their vision of art is reduced to luxury trappings for oligarchs. Although the same financial sphere that has largely brought us to the current precipice stands behind US museums as their primary means of support, this doesn’t devalue their potency as public spaces and repositories of collective mythologies. Their civic function depends not on philanthropy but on struggle. Museums require artists, activists, and global citizens to challenge them, demanding that they hold true to their missions to serve the public, not just the 1%. That is why on #J20 we invite our communities to join us inside the museum, which we demand function as public space, to declare our common values, to make undeniable our demands, and to render our truths unmediated and unavailable for contortion, interpretation, or abstraction. Then we head out into the streets.

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Occupy Museums reflects on the values behind our mission and in solidarity with all arts workers commits to continuing the struggle for the following:

1. Racism and xenophobia are real and alive today. Misogyny and homophobia are real and alive today. White nationalism is growing in political, economic, and symbolic power. We value cultural institutions who are able to name the severity of this political zeitgeist and join the fight for dismantling white supremacy. We declare that one cannot be neutral on a Fascist train. We commit to joining in efforts to organize an anti-Fascist resistance.

2. Arts within neoliberal economies have long been stripped of social organizing force and community accountability. We have witnessed a transparent bid to transform art into an asset class for private speculation, upending its political autonomy; art has become a tool of propaganda. As this incoming administration dramatically reduces or eliminates public funding for the arts, museums will be relying solely on compromised private funding. We uphold the value of art and cultural production independent from financial and political coercion, free from appropriation and exploitation.

3. We reject a culture that ignores or celebrates US war and imperialism. We reject a culture that fetishizes, essentializes, and flattens the layers of our shared reality. Such a culture reflects a shallow politics where sycophantic hype replaces public discourse. We value art that is authentic, layered, diverse, and unafraid of delving into the complexity of our shared experiences. We commit to a struggle against the reign of hegemonic power brokers in the arts and in support of a more committed art and discourse. Museums must move toward greater social justice to be relevant.

4. Since their inception centuries ago, the collections of art museums have consisted of objects stolen from indigenous and oppressed peoples whose cultures were appropriated and/or decimated to reify whiteness. Even though museums partially embody the democratization of art, they are also sites embedded with white supremacy and patriarchy. We will not separate our appreciation of museums from the ongoing need to shift the power that is codified into this mode of cultural representation. We commit to the ongoing struggle for increased presence of Black and Brown people, immigrants, and women in museum administrations, collections, events, and viewership, and in the return of stolen cultural heritage and objects.

5. White Nationalist populism thrives from the perceived (and often real) elitism and exclusivity of the “art world.” Yet it is a right for every human being to partake in and benefit from the cultural wealth and heritage composed from our collective history, regardless of economic or social status. We believe that access to cultural institutions should always be free and we commit to a long struggle to take back institutions from the exclusivity of philanthropy and high-ticket-price corporate models.

6. Economic precarity stemming from the devaluation of labor and increased corporate profits from extractive debts drives a wedge between members of our society, pitting us against each other in ruthless competition. We look to democracies across the globe who affirm the right to a living wage and even a basic income and call on our nation’s cultural institutions to pay all employees, contractors, and exhibiting artists a living wage for their labor.

7. The transformation of public spaces and our neighborhoods and homes into speculative instruments increases the already dire state of class anxiety. The economic precarity suffered by artists puts them at risk of being both affected by and a catalyst in the gentrification of poor neighborhoods. Cultural institutions play a major role in gentrification that must be addressed; it is imperative that institutions use their cultural and financial capital to support their communities of arts workers and their local publics rather than enable gentrification by participating in development schemes.

8. Intellectualism and cultural experiment are considered as dangerous and unpatriotic to Fascists. Nazi poet laureate Hanns Johst famously wrote: “Let ’em keep their good distance with their whole ideological kettle of fish … I shoot with live ammunition! When I hear the word culture …, I release the safety on my Browning!” Our cultural institutions must fortify themselves against the coming onslaught by deepening and declaring their commitment to and support of artists, critical discourse, freedom of expression, and their immediate communities. We call on all museums and cultural institutions to stand in solidarity with the artists, art critics, art workers, and public who will not stand by in silence as power is handed over to Fascists. Cultural institutions can begin (as some have already begun) by collectively reassessing their institutions’ statements of ethics, making amendments, addenda, and revisions that specifically address the institution’s role and responsibility to treat its workers fairly, to protect them from State repression when threatened, and to support the creation of bold and progressive works of art.

Speak Out on Inauguration Day, organized by Occupy Museums, takes place at the Whitney Museum (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan) on January 20 from 11am to 2pm. Admission to the event is free, and entrance to the Whitney will be on a pay-as-you-wish basis all day in observance of the inauguration.

#2017 #Activism #Art #ArtStrike #DisruptJ20 #FakePrez #J20 #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #OccupyMuseums #refusefascism #RejectPresidentElect #ResistFacism #ResistTrump #WhitneyMuseum

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Associated Builders and Contractors Empire State Chapter (ABC) hold rally opposing apprenticeship mandates outside New York City Council

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New York City, Jan. 18—The Associated Builders and Contractors Empire State Chapter (ABC), and many other community organizations held a rally with a diverse crowd of hundreds of open-shop craft workers to voice opposition to mandated apprenticeship on private construction job sites.

"ABC’s number-one priority is the safety and wellbeing of the talented men and women who work for our member companies," said Brian Sampson, president of the ABC Empire State Chapter. "Today I stood side by side with hundreds of incredibly skilled New York City merit shop construction workers who are safely building New York's future and would be put out of work by the proposed apprenticeship program mandate. While we are pleased the New York City Council has made a wide array of good proposals to improve construction safety, any legislation mandating apprenticeship programs will halt construction and put 100,000 hardworking men and women, including many who attended today's rally, out of a job without improving safety."

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”Rather than impose unfair new rules, the council can provide immediate improvements to construction safety in the city by adopting best practices from high-performing contractors such as mandatory scaffold training and fall protection certifications, that are accessible to all parties involved in construction," added Sampson. "ABC members work hard to recruit, develop and retain a talented, well-trained workforce, and we look forward to continuing to engage the City Council to improve construction safety in a way that will benefit all workers, regardless of labor affiliation.

#2017 #ApprenticeshipMandates #ConstructionWorkers #NewYork #NYC #NYCityCouncil #Protest #rally #SafetyFirst #SafetyForAllNYC #WorkerRights

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Make the Road New York issues "Safeguarding Immigrant Coverage" a report on benefits of health insurance for immigrants and joins national effort to oppose repeal of the Affordable Care Act at the Save My Care Rally

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NEW YORK (January 18th, 2016) — On Wednesday, just days before the presidential inauguration and amidst Congressional negotiations about the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act, Make the Road New York will release a new report, "Safeguarding Immigrant Coverage," showing the impact health insurance coverage has had on immigrants in New York, and the importance of maintaining and expanding coverage options. The report release will take place at a press conference at which advocates, local lawmakers, health care professionals, and impacted families will meet the National Save My Care Tour Bus outside City Hall, demanding that any changes the heath care system must provide better coverage for more people.

If Congress simply repeals the Affordable Care Act, 2.7 million New Yorkers will lose coverage, risking their health and livelihood. Repealing health care reform would also result in a $3.7 billion loss to the state budget and a $600 million hit to counties across the state. As Make the Road New York’s report highlights, the damage would also be particularly grave for immigrant New Yorkers, who often face greater hurdles in accessing health insurance.

Despite public disapproval Congressional Republicans are rushing down a dangerous path that could take health coverage away from 30 million Americans and raise premiums for millions more. With no substantive plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, Congressional Republicans instead are floating a number of so-called legislative “Band-Aids" that would raise taxes on working Americans, undermine quality of care for everyone and destroy Medicare.

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Co Sponsored by : Make the Road New York, The Office of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Get Covered NYC, The Center for Popular Democracy, Save My Care, Health Care for All New York, Community Service Society, Raising Women's Voices - NY, Citizen Action of New York, Metro New York Health Care for All, Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare, Healthcare Education Project, Doctors Council, Vocal- NY, Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York Immigration Coalition, Children's Defense Fund - NY, Young Invincibles, Doctors for America, National Physicians Alliance.

#2017 #ACA #Activism #AffordableCare #AffordableCareAct #DefendHealthcare #demonstration #GetCoveredNYC #HealthcareForAll #HealthcareIsAHumanRight #healthcareisaRIGHT #humanrights #LoveTrumpsHate #MakeTheRoadNY #MedicareForAll #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #Obamacare #PeacefulResistance #Protest #rally #RejectPresidentElect #revolution #RiseAndResist #SaveMyCare #SinglePayer #‎Solidarity #StopTheHate #trump #TrumpCare #UniversalHeathcare

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Community and Elected Officials join thousands of construction workers in demanding safe job sites citing alarming rise in construction related deaths better training and improved safety on jobs

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New York City, January 18, 2017 - Citing the alarming rise in construction related deaths, thousands of hardhat construction workers, along with elected officials and community leaders, today called on the City Council to pass the Construction Safety Act, a series of bills that will provide for true professional training to improve the safety of all construction workers and the general public.

"If 30 people died at their jobs in the last two years in any other industry we wouldn’t have to fight for basic safety measures to be implemented in their workplace, but apparently for the safety of construction workers we do,” said Terry Moore Business Manager Local 46 Metallic Lathers and Reinforcing Iron Workers. “So we’re out here today doing just that, fighting for the right of every worker to make it home safely at the end of the day. The question for the administration if they choose to oppose this legislation is, 'How many more must die?'”

In the last two years, 30 construction workers have been killed while on the job. In the rush to cash in on the real estate boom, developers have ignored basic safety requirements and training on jobsites throughout the City. Today, the New York City Council took the long overdue first step in securing construction jobsites. Protesters urged the City Council to be the city's true progressive voice and remain vigilant in requiring stringent safety standards and rigorous training for all construction projects in the city.

“Today we say enough is enough,” said Mike Hellstrom, Organizing Director, for the 17,000 member Mason Tenders District Council, LIUNA. “Too many workers have left for work in the morning, never to return home. Today we make sure that the dead have a voice in demanding safe work sites for all construction workers, union and non-union. Providing a highly trained, safe workforce on a constructions site, whether they are large or small, is not a political or economic issue; it is a moral issue. Today marks a turning point in our fight for safe jobs. The Speaker and City Council are to be commended for the leadership they have shown.”

New York City Councilmember Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn) said, “Some will call them (the 30 deaths) accidents but these were no accidents. These fatalities were because proper safety requirements were either not in place or ignored by site supervisors. They were ignored because something else is more important than safety, more important than human life.”

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Luis Colon, a Local 46 Apprentice and former Park Side non-union worker, spoke on behalf of all the workers who risk their lives every day, "When I started working construction nobody cared if I knew how to work safely or not, they just wanted to get the work done as quickly and cheaply as possible. I was injured at work, as were many of my co-workers. When I started working with Park Side Construction, one of their workers had just died on the job. People were passing around photos and laughing about how he didn’t know what he was doing, as if it was his own fault. I love what I do, I’m building New York, but construction is dangerous and I want to be around to watch my daughter grow up."

Earlier in the day, NYCOSH released the “Deadly Skyline” report attributing the alarming number of deaths to lack of training for the workforce. Of the 30 deaths over the last two years, 28 were at non-union jobsites.

"The ‘Deadly Skyline’ report illustrates yet again what we know to be true: preventable construction fatalities are on the rise in New York City and the only way to end this epidemic is with training and safety requirements for all workers,” said Patrick Purcell, Executive Director of the Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation & Education Trust, GNY LECET. “Thankfully the wait is now over and meaningful construction safety legislation will be introduced in the City Council today that will ensure stringent safety and training standards. I want to thank NYCOSH for continuing to shine a light on the construction industry and how we can work together to protect all construction workers,” Purcell added.

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Outraged Activists vow to "Drain the Swamp" by camping out at Goldman Sachs HQ in New York until inauguration day 

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New York: January 17th, 2017 - Hundreds of Activists launch #GovernmentSachs, a 3-day resistance with a sustained site of resistance and encampment in front of Goldman Sachs’s HQ in New York, to confront Goldman Sachs’s burgeoning influence on Capitol Hill; Solidarity actions against #GovernmentSachs are also taking place in California and Nevada.  

Trump won under a dangerous combination of racism and a populist message to “drain the swamp” and rid Washington of the political and financial elites, who he claimed were “getting away with murder” while “making a tremendous amount of money.” Yet, following his victory, Goldman Sachs now not only has an open door to the government, they are the government.

From the appointment of Steve Bannon (Chief Strategist) to Steve Mnuchin (Treasury Secretary) to Gary Cohn (National Economic Council Director) and most recently, Jay Clayton (SEC Chairman), we now have the most Wall Street driven administration in history. Under this Goldman regime, our policies will be dictated by the very same people that created the foreclosure crisis. They will continue to destroy our jobs, evict our families, criminalize our bodies and profit from incarceration, and put our land and water at risk.

As the movement to resist Trump  grows across the nation, hundreds of activists in New York City, California and Nevada will confront the very people pulling the strings on Trump’s administration and his cabinet: #GovernmentSachs.

From their investment on fossil fuels and the prison industrial complex to their role in the foreclosure crisis that caused the 2008 economic collapse, Goldman Sachs has played a key role in the extraction of wealth from low-income and middle-income families across the United States.

Through sustained actions in the lead up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, campers will illuminate Goldman Sachs takeover of our government and growing influence on every aspect of our economy.

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Some of those participating have already raised hell on Goldman Sachs, when on January 5th & January 12th they stormed Goldman’s lobby in New York and New Jersey respectively. On both occasions the activists were met with a disproportionate use of force. 

#2017 #Activism #Art #CivilDisobedience #DefendDemocracy #demonstration #DisruptJ20 #DonaldTrump #DrainTheSwamp #DumpTrump #encampment #GoldmanSachs #GovernmentSachs #LoveTrumpsHate #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #occupation #PeacefulProtest #Protest #RejectPresidentElect #ResistHere #ResistTrump #ResistTrumpTuesdays #‎Solidarity #StopTheHate #trump #trumpvsallofus

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Chinatown & LES Reclaim Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Demand Mayor DeBlasio to Step Down for Racist Rezoning

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On January 16, 2017; The Citywide Alliance Against Displacement held a rally at City Hall to demand Mayor DeBlasio step down for promoting racist rezoning plans that target communities of color and to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.‘s legacy of fighting against racial and economic injustice all over the country. The Alliance said it chose this day to hold the rally to reclaim the day from politicians like Mayor DeBlasio who use celebrations on this day to cover up their own racist policies. 

The city is facing a crisis of displacement, as the city government has encouraged luxury developments in communities of color like Harlem, Williamsburg, Lower East Side and Chinatown, causing high-rent and real estate tax increase in these neighborhoods. As a result, tenants are facing evictions, small businesses are closing, jobs are being lost, and communities are being destroyed. Mayor DeBlasio, the so-called "progressive" mayor, nevertheless helps perpetuate the City's legacy of racism and displacement On the one hand, he refuses to pass community-led rezoning plans like the Chinatown Working Group rezoning plan that will protect all of Chinatown and Lower East Side. On the other hand, he imposes his developer-friendly rezoning proposals in neighborhoods like East Harlem, South Bronx, East New York, lnwood and Flushing, despite overwhelming community opposition to his plan. Last year, over 90% of community boards throughout the city rejected Mayor DeBlasio’s citywide rezoning policies.

Protesters also pointed to the numerous investigations on Mayor DeBlasio and his administration for his ties to the real estate industry and “pay to play” accusations. As numerous front-page stories have shown, the Mayor has hired real estate company staffers to formulate his housing policy, and given enormous power to people with close ties to developers and Wall Street firms. Therefore, it is not surprising that his housing plan reads like the real estate lobby’s wish list. The investigations of the DeBlasio administration has revealed a dangerous disregard for our communities and preference for developers who would displace us all. 

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The Citywide Alliance Against Displacement feels an urgent need to reclaim Martin Luther King Jr. from politicians like Mayor DeBlasio and those elected officials who stand along with him to push for displacement; they turn around and seek to use celebrations on this day as a fig leaf for their own racist policies. The legacy of Civil Rights should be one of ordinary people standing against injustice and racism, but the hypocritical stance of politicians and their puppets on this day has corrupted that legacy. 

At the event the Citywide Alliance Against Displacement presented their demands:

1. End racism in city planning. Pass community-based “People First” plans like the Chinatown Working Group rezoning plan.

2. End public funding for luxury development, such as 421-a. Instead, use public resources to preserve and build more permanent low-income housing.

3. Stop privatization of public land and assets.

4. Mayor DeBlasio and those in City Council who also collude with developers to step down.

#AffordableForWho #AffordableHousing #BillDeBlasio #CityHall #DeBlasio #displacement #Gentrification #HousingRights #humanrights #lanlord #LowIncomeHousing #MayorDeBlasio #NewYork #NOEVICTIONZone #NothingInnovativeAboutDisplacement #NYC #NYCMayor #OurCity #PictureTheHomeless #PressConference #protest #rally #RealAffordabilityForAll #rezoning #SaveNYC #tenantharassment #tenants #tenantsfightback #ThePeoplesResponse #Zoning

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Hundreds gathered at Trump International Hotel in New York to protest Republican efforts to destroy U.S. Healthcare System

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NEW YORK CITY – On January 15, 2017; Activists from the newly-formed anti-Trump group Rise & Resist staged a “cough-in” at Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City, to fight against the radical changes to the American healthcare system proposed by the Trump Administration and Republicans. Twenty activists began loudly coughing inside the Jean Georges restaurant and then marched into the hotel’s lobby carrying signs reading “TrumpCare Makes Us Sick! We Need Obamacare!”

Outside the hotel, they were joined by over 400 activists chanting, “Healthcare Is A Right! Fight Trump!”

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Rep. Tom Price (Trump’s nominee for the Dept. of Health and Human Services) want to privatize Medicare, drastically cut funding for Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program, end funding for reproductive health services, and gut the Affordable Care Act.

“Trump and his appointees have shown career-spanning, active contempt for queer folks, black and brown folks, and poor folks, and have continually created legislation that puts our lives at risk” states Rise and Resist member Isha Racho, “their gutting of healthcare provisions is another example of how they do not value us, our lives, or our rights as Americans.”

Although neither Congressional Republicans nor the Trump Administration have even released a replacement plan, the Senate and the House have already moved to repeal the Affordable Care Act – commonly known as Obamacare – jeopardizing the insurance of over twenty million Americans.

“If we allow Trump and his congressional cronies, like Paul Ryan, to destroy the gains made during the Obama era” remarks Rise and Resist cofounder James Krellenstein, “millions of Americans will lose their health insurance and thousands of people will needlessly perish.”

Rise and Resist is demanding that Trump and Congressional Republicans cease their efforts to destroy Obamacare.

"As a person living with AIDS and cancer, I know how important the ACA is to people with serious illnesses and pre-existing conditions” explains veteran AIDS activist and Rise and Resist member Mark Milano, “the Republican zeal to repeal it without anything to replace it is heartless and cruel.”

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Rise and Resist is a group of diverse working together to directly assist and to protect the individuals and communities whose life and liberty are in danger following the 2016 election.

#2017 #Activism #ActUp #ActUpNY #AffordableCare #ColumbusCircle #DefendDemocracy #DefendHealthcare #demonstration #DonaldTrump #DumpTrump #GOP #HealthcareForAll #HealthcareIsAHumanRight #humanrights #LoveTrumpsHate #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #Obamacare #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #Protest #rally #RejectPresidentElect #revolution #RiseAndResist #SinglePayer #‎Solidarity #trump #TrumpCare #trumpvsallofus #UniversalHeathcare

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Anti-Fur March 2017:  Animal rights activists get the word out that compassion is the fashion, and fur is DEAD! 

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Members of Caring Activists Against Fur (CAAF), Long Island Orchestrating for Nature (LION), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and other animal rights activists, voiced immutable opposition to the horrific fur trade, denouncing the confinement, torture and extraordinarily brutal extermination of innocent beings - all in the name of fickle "luxury" and transient, superfluous "fashion."

A couple hundred added their voices to a burgeoning group of energetic animal activists whose prime directive is to elevate public awareness about the plight of innumerable defenseless foxes, minks, raccoons, dogs and cats and other mammal victims of the gruesome fur trade, who are violently and systematically removed from their natural habitats, corralled into inescapable death camps, crammed into tiny, filthy cages for months in ALL weather conditions, beaten, stomped on, anally electrocuted, gassed, bludgeoned to death, even SKINNED ALIVE so that affluent first-world consumers can gleefully, obliviously parade around, morbidly draped in the skins that are, quite literally, ripped off these animals' backs as they helplessly writhe in overwhelming shock and agony 'til the final throes of death overtake them. These pathetic, skinless creatures will often suffer in mortal agony for minutes or hours - all for vain, pretentious, human notions of "luxury apparel" and "fashion."

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These groups run an ongoing campaign to STOP this insanity and work toward the total abolition of the global fur industry, making a vocal, public impact for the animals trapped and languishing in this insidious death trade, and to send a meaningful message to the heartless people who line their pockets with blood and entrails, who build their posh castles with the unspeakable screams of terror and suffering from countless innocent beings. 

#2017 #Activism #AnimalAbuse #animalcruelty #AnimalRights #AnimalsBattalion #CAAF #CanadaGoose #demonstration #FurIsMurder #FurTrade #LION #march #NewYork #NYC #PeacefulProtest #PETA #Protest #‎Solidarity #TheirTurn

© Erik McGregor - erikrivas@hotmail.com - 917-225-8963

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