http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesNycRallyOpposesRaciallyBasedMarijuanaArrests play stream
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New Yorkers Rally To Oppose Racially Biased, Illegal And Costly Marijuana Arrests And Stop-And-Frisk Practices Of Mayor Bloomberg's NYPD!


Mayor Bloomberg, now presides over the largest initiative in the country to arrest young men of color on false marijuana possession charges - an outcome of the controversial stop-and-frisk practices conducted by NYPD. Evoking Charles Dickens’ famous novel, protestors declared that biased policing practices under Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly were creating "A Tale of Two Cities". One is for white residents where marijuana possession was decriminalized in 1977, where they are seldom stopped and frisked, and mothers do not fear that their children
will be unlawfully rounded up by the police. The other New York City is for the hundreds of thousands of people of color who are stopped even though the overwhelming majority of them are innocent of any wrongdoing; tens of thousands are illegally searched, falsely charged, arrested and incarcerated for
marijuana possession (even though it’s not a crime in New York); and mothers live in fear of the police unlawfully snatching their children off the streets. Underscoring the two city theme at the end of the rally, about a dozen young white people blocked the entrance to NYPD headquarters exposing themselves to arrest
by police as they denounced the racially biased police practices – the police refused to arrest them!

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STOPPING THE NYPD’s Stop and Frisk
With
Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colorblindness
Jamal Mims, Occupy Wall Street
Mary Black, and Benita Rivera, parents
Leticia James, N.Y. City Council member

More than 700,000, according to NYPD documentation predominantly
African-Americans and Latinos have been profiled for stops and frisks,
as a result of what is now referred to as the “new”Jim Crow policies of
policing and inflicting state terror on communities of color. But, in
response to the increasing criminalization of communities of color is a
burgeoning movement prepared to, STOP Stop and Frisk as they say
no to the new Jim Crow.

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Occupy Wall Street Occupies The Brooklyn Bridge As Tens Of Thousands Say
We’re Here To Take Back The Wealth We Created And They Covet And Control!
With
The 99%

Angry and reeling from the horrific military attack which Bloomberg
perpetrated on peaceful, sleeping protestors fighting for economic justice
in our increasingly unjust and undemocratic country, in a National Day of
Action both to celebrate the 2-month birthday of Occupy Wall Street, and
protest the outrage of the eviction, an incredible, diverse group, poured
into the streets – “all day, all night Occupy Wall Street”! The 99%
delivered a powerful message that the domination of society by a tiny
elite of super-wealthy individuals and corporations, harnessing government
to do their bidding was unacceptable. The days protests were capped off
by a rally and march over the Brooklyn Bridge by tens of thousands
determined to take back and redistribute the wealth of this country to those
who created it – the 99%.
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http://www.archive.org/stream/NycsOwsOccupiesTheBrooklynBridge

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Occupy Wall Street Wins, Then Celebrates with Citywide Protests

Following a huge and rapid public outcry that included hundreds of
thousands of online petition signatures and phone calls to New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office, a threatened clean-up/eviction
of Occupy Wall Street's home base at LIberty Square was postponed
just before the 7 AM deadline on Friday, October 14 as thousands of
99%ers massed at Liberty Square to defend Occupy Wall Street.

The next day saw a sea of protests starting at Liberty Square when
thousands marched around Wall Street targeting Chase Bank which
leads all others in predatory foreclosure evictions. It moved to college
protests at Washington Square Park featuring numerous issues including
health care. Tens of thousands of protesters then converged on
Times Square culminating a day in solidarity with protesters around
the country and the world in a new mass movement which is now
just one month old.

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During the Great Depression The Homeless Created Hovervilles, Now
Mayor Bloomberg’s Budget Cuts Are Responsible For Bloombergville!
With
New Yorkers Against the Budget Cuts

Students, labor, and communities united against the Mayor’s proposed
budget cuts occupying downtown Manhattan near City Hall for the past
week, in symbolic encampments they’ve called Bloombergville in a campaign
to defeat the mayor's cutbacks and layoffs. The campaign against
Bloomberg's poverty budget has resulted in arrests of some of the protesters
and the NYPD has threatened arrests on several other occasions, but
Bloombergville is still alive -- and growing.
******************
Key Democrats Join Gov. Christie Cutting Public Worker Bargaining Rights
and Balancing the Budget on the Backs of the Workers
With
Barbara Keshishian, President, New Jersey Education Association
Hetty Rosenstein, Area Dir., Communications Workers of America N.J.

Despite a massive outpouring of protesters at the State Capital at Trenton, Democratic leaders of the State Senate and Assembly, Stephen Sweeney
and Sheila Oliver, joined with bombastic bully Governor Chris Christie to
get approval for a measure to strip health care benefits from collective
bargaining rights for state public workers. This could triple health care
costs to workers while the millionaires tax went down in defeat. Combined
with so called New Jersey public worker pension reforms this will lead to
lowering workers pay by 5 -10% while reaping big profits forthe insurance
industry who charge high commissions for public worker health care
insurance.

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WBAI Radio’s Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Reports
Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash Special Live Broadcast Of

District Council 37's Massive Fightback Rally at New York City Hall
No Layoffs, No Contracting Out and No Service Cutbacks
Tuesday, June 14th 4 – 6 pm


DC 37 rocked NY City Hall with its biggest demonstration ever.On June 14,
DC 37 union members, joined by allies of the working class stood up for
their union rights & economic needs, fought back against the fiscal assault
on our public schools & public health care, the shredding of public services
that prevent child abuse &keep rats from running wild in New York City, and
raised their voices against the drive to crush public employees' rights from
coast to coast. They stood in solidarity to protect the libraries where so
many immigrants enhance their language skills, where so many of the
unemployed use free computers to search for jobs, and where so many
children -especially the city's record 43,000 homeless children - do their
homework. They will spoke out for the public parks and pools, the only
free recreation available for working families.

By letting the state “millionaires’ tax” expire in December, the Mayor and
the Governor are cutting taxes on the wealthy by $5 billion a year. Mayor
Bloomberg has squandered taxpayer money by throwing away
three-quarters of a billion dollars on the CityTime payroll project (where
the contractor is also accused of stealing $80 million from the city), failing
to collect business taxes that are owed to the city, and continuing to waste
some $10 billion on 18,000 private contracts for work city employees could
perform. If his administration can waste that kind of money, then the Mayor
can afford to cancel the service cuts & layoffs, stop the attacks on public
employee benefits and get real about raises for workers. The right-wing
effort to destroy union rights and drive workers hard fought for wages and
benefits further down the economic ladder is a cancer that will spread
unless we stop it.

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Just A Cutting & A Slicing:
Bloomberg Seeks To Eliminate Subsidized Day Care
with
G.L. Tyler, Political Action Director, DC 1707

Mayor Bloomberg, is attempting to eliminate nearly 17,000 infants and toddlers from safe, quality and affordable day care. The “Education Mayor” is prepared to devastate subsidized daycare. Once again, Bloomberg has exposed himself to be not the protector of working families but ready to turn his back on working families needing public day care. The Mayor has a $2 billion “Rainy Day” fund that he does not wish to share with New Yorkers in need. He cannot take this money, our money, and give it to the millionaires and billionaires while cutting the jobs of day care providers and forcing working parents out of the work force if they don’t have child care.

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The New Class War on Unions Spreads to Ohio
with
Joseph Rugola, Exec. Dir., Ohio Assn. of Public School Employees, AFSCME

Following Gov. Walker’s union busting lead, Ohio Gov. Kasich proposes to nullify public employee unionization rights by taking away impartial arbitration of disputes, the right to strike of “non-emergency public employees” and protections against privatization of government jobs. Despite the demonstration by over 20,000, it was politics at its worst, Republican leaders rammed this bill through by kicking opposing members of their own party off key committees.
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NYC Union Rally Blasts Bloomberg and Cuomo Attacks

District Council 37 Locals 375,154, 768 & 1549 demonstrated at City Hall Park in support of the resistance of workers & their unions under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states. On the NYC front, they railed against proposed layoffs by Mayor Bloomberg, despite projections of a multibillion dollar budget surplus and a plethora of costly and often corrupt outside contracts. Both the Bloomberg and Cuomo Administrations oppose continuing the millionaires’ tax to enhance revenue rather than cutting public services and layoffs.

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Bloomberg’s Snow Job and
The NYC Council Inquiry Into The Blizzard Fiasco
with
NYC Councilmember Jumaane Williams, Chairman, Oversight and Investigations Committee

The NYC Council held hearings into how the mayor's administration took nearly a week to clear city streets after a holiday weekend snow storm and we’ll go inside the hearings with Jumaane Williams. Specifically on the agenda, was determining what made the mayor say that streets were plowed while everybody was telling him they weren’t. While, the media blamed the sanitation workers, we know the buck stops with the mayor and the managers he appointed and we dig out their negligence and incompetence and find out why.
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Stop the Layoffs: City Workers Protest Bloomberg’s Budget Madness

DC 37 Locals 1113 and 375 held an angry demonstration at City Hall Park recently protesting the layoff of 129 Dept. of Finance workers which is partof the 889 layoffs announced by Bloomberg for this year. Recent forecasts by the NYC Independent Budget Office and the City Comptroller say that NYC will have a budget surplus in excess of $1 billion this fiscal year. Bloomberg’s credibility has been further eroded by the $80 million fraud in the overbudget $800 million CityTime payroll contract which many speakers mentioned as the tip of an iceberg of waste in the City’s $9 billion budget for outside contracts and high paid consultants. They also called for higher taxes on the rich to prevent layoffs and increase NYC services.

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Bloomberg To FDNY Vulcans, “Burn Baby Burn”
with
Paul Washington, Past President, Vulcan Society, FDNY
Richard Levy, attorney for Vulcan Society

Rather than complying with a Federal court order to choose among five plans to increase hiring of African American and Latino candidates for the NYC Fire Dept. to reverse long standing discrimination, Mayor Bloomberg choose to suspend hiring for the next class of 300 firefighters. This will result in short staffing in the Department and an expensive increase in overtime pay. The class action lawsuit was initiated in 2002 by the Department of Justice and the Vulcan Society, the fraternal organization of NYC Black firefighters, against NYC’s discriminatory hiring practices.
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Laundry Workers Rally To Protest Privatization & Save Union Jobs

In the battle against filth, the workers at the Brooklyn Central Laundry in East Flatbush are stalwart foot soldiers. Union workers wash the dirty sheets, towels and uniforms for most of New York City’s hospitals, folding more than 10 million pounds of laundry a year. Employees say the linens sometimes hold body parts. They nearly always contain blood. But under a proposed reorganization plan announced in May by the Health and Hospitals Corp. (HHC), which runs the laundry, the service would be taken over by an undetermined private company. The city says private companies can beat the laundry’s price per pound, which the union estimates at $1.30. Privatization will cause the loss of 120 living wage union jobs. So while HHC says get back, the workers fight back.
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Joining Honduran President Zelaya In Brazilian Embassy
with
Andres Conteris, Director, Program on the Americas, Nonviolence International, in the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras where Pres. Zelaya has taken refuge
and
Tim Russo, Correspondent, Free Speech Radio News, has been reporting live from Tegucigalpa, Honduras since the return of Pres. Zelaya

Stella Workers Rally vs. Goldman Sachs & Mayor Bloomberg

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Joining Honduran President Zelaya In Brazilian Embassy
with
Andres Conteris, Director, Program on the Americas, Nonviolence International, in the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras where Pres. Zelaya has taken refuge
and
Tim Russo, Correspondent, Free Speech Radio News, has been reporting live from Tegucigalpa, Honduras since the return of Pres. Zelaya

More than 90 days since the military coup d’etat in Honduras
Pres. Zelaya returned to join the resistance movement in the
final stretch of the fight to restore constitutional order. Report
from inside the Brazilian Embassy where Pres. Zelaya has
sought sanctuary and from the streets of Honduras after the
escalation of repression by the coup government. How is
Zelaya lining up his support and strategy in these moments,
how are the masses responding and what has been the role
of the U.S.?.
******
Stella Workers Rally vs. Goldman Sachs & Mayor Bloomberg

Anti-union Lance Inc., based in No.Carolina is poised to buy Stella
D'Oro cookies and if they do the Bronx plant will be shut and its
unionized workers, who have waged a courageous struggle for more
than a year will lose their jobs. So, the Stella workers and their
supporters brought their pleas to keep the plant in New York to
Goldman Sachs one of Lance's high-profile investors and then to
Mayor Bloomberg to intervene to keep Stella D’oro in the Bronx.

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