Scott LynchGood morning, East Village.
Stay tuned for The Local’s comprehensive coverage of May Day. With major Occupy protests set to begin across the city later today, a number of smaller protest activities have been scheduled for points across the East Village. Among them is a demonstration touted by GOLES via Twitter: “This MAY DAY, LES Public Housing Residents take their struggle to the streets! Meet Up: 2pm Houston & Ave. D”
From 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., workers at The Strand plan to stage a picket outside the bookstore as a part of the 99 Pickets, which are taking place across the city on Tuesday.
And later, at 5:30 p.m., rent reform activists plan to hold a “Tenants’ General Assembly” outside Cooper Union’s Great Hall.
Before all that pops off, here, care of the Allen Ginsberg Project, is the poet waxing revolutionary in Prague, where he had been elected May King thirty years earlier.
Elsewhere in the world of Occupy: City Room reports that a lawsuit filed yesterday by citizen journalists, City Council members, and others alleges that “the City of New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and several large corporations have regularly violated the constitutional rights of Occupy Wall Street protesters who have sought to express their opinions at various demonstrations across the city.” City Room also reports that a separate group is suing the police department for improperly using barricades to pen protesters in for as long as two hours at a time.
The city has identified the after-schools programs that will have their funding cut, and DNA Info reports that “one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the city is the Lower East Side and Chinatown, where P.S. 2, P.S. 20, P.S. 124, P.S. 137, P.S. 140 and P.S. 142 will lose funding.”
The Huffington Post ponders the double-edged sword of LGBT-oriented schools: “Consider that Harvey Milk [in the East Village] enrolls around 80 students, while Q High can accommodate 25, with only 14 enrolled to date. That’s not many peers to socialize with, which is an important facet of high school.”
According to Broadway World, the Theater for the New City’s Lower East Side Festival for the Arts kicks off May 17, starting with ” a day-long block party, beginning at noon, hosted by composer/satirist Richard West, featuring performances from musicians, singers, belly and flamenco dancers, comics, poets and more, as well as a community Cultural Fair with food and crafts vendors.”
Neighborhoodr reports that a 1992 documentary about Mosaic Man Jim Power will soon be posted online. In the meantime, the site posts some stills.
Will Chloe Sevigny be the next celeb to leave the East Village? While walking New York magazine through the 1862 garden co-op she bought seven years ago, she admits that she’s looking for a new place, though she adds, “Maybe I won’t find the right thing and I’ll just stay here. Or maybe I’ll fall in love and get married and move somewhere else entirely. You never know!”
In anticipation of the Epicurean Cocktail Feast at the Bowery Hotel (part of the Lucky Rice Festival), The Post recommends some Asian cocktails around town.
