Mary Reinholz

Ralph Nader isn’t on the ballot this year, but the consumer advocate managed to fire up around 350 people, including rocker-writer Patti Smith, at Barnes and Noble in Union Square last night.

Introduced by former public advocate Mark Green, Mr. Nader touched on themes from his new paperback, “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future,” and recalled how mass movements led by a handful of people produced radical change.

These days, Mr. Nader said, many everyday folks seem to have lost their passion for activism and have become far more narrowly focused – and with lame excuses to justify it. “They’ll tell you,” he said drily, “that they’re too busy changing their profile on Facebook.”

Others, he noted, fear being ostracized or crushed by the powers that be because of their belief that the “the big boys own the system and you can’t control it. There’s been a loss of nerve. But it took six women in 1840 to start the suffrage movement” in New York, he said.  Read more…

Nicole Pasulka A recent dress rehearsal.

While developing “Micro-Mini Maxi Mystery Theater: En Total,” Jessica Dellecave asked the five dancers in the cast to recall their most embarrassing protest moments. With their help, she created a show that explores the often cringe-inducing intersection between activist fervor and queer young love.

The work, premiering tomorrow tonight at Dixon Place, grew out of three 10- to 15-minute studies the playwright, who goes by J. Dellecave, wrote between 1999 and 2010: one was about her experiences as a young, queer activist in the late ’90s, another about her frustrations with activism in 2005, and the other dealing with her mixed feelings about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In a controlled frenzy, Ms. Dellecave and her “pod” of dancers travel to space, find love at the protest march, and belt out Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Ms. Dellecave humps the floor in a pink mini skirt while delivering a monologue on love and activism. “Isn’t this romantic, going out in the street and smashing the state?” she asks.

It’s not romantic at all, but it is familiar. Like love, first experiences of activism can be both nostalgic and awkward to remember ten years, or even ten hours, later. Ms. Dellecave, whose full first name is Jessica, pokes fun at her history as a queer activist and, in doing so, pushes audiences to examine their own experiences. Read more…

Melvin Felix

Stanley Cohen has had a busy week.

Not only is he defending Mona Eltahawy, the commentator arrested Tuesday after defacing a provocative pro-Israel poster, but the Alphabet City-based lawyer spoke his mind about U.S.-Iranian relations to none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The Local has learned.

Asked if it might have been unwise to meet with the oft-condemned Iranian president and other government officials during a time of heightened international tension – and on the eve of Yom Kippur, no less – Mr. Cohen said, “I don’t worry about crossing lines.”

That’s evident from his client list, which includes members of the hacker group Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street as well as alleged terrorists. His latest cause, Ms. Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American columnist, faces misdemeanor graffiti charges after spray-painting an anti-jihad ad in the Times Square subway station – an act that Mr. Cohen told the Daily News was an exercise in free speech.

On the day Ms. Eltahawy was arrested, Mr. Cohen was making some bold statements of his own: he was among a handful of U.S.-based speakers invited to the midtown hotel where Mr. Ahmadinejad was staying to share their views of the Middle East with the Iranian president. Also in attendance were Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and its Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee. Read more…

Sanna Chu Ann Humphreys, 42, hoola hoop teacher

City Room reported that 124 people were arrested near Wall Street earlier today, on the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Gothamist noted that several of the arrested were in wheelchairs. Meanwhile other protesters are amassing at Liberty and Foley Square for public assemblies.

Around 1 p.m. Union Square, the site of many previous demonstrations, was relatively quiet. Volunteers manning the Occupy table were redirecting people downtown for scheduled events. But one woman, a hoola hoop teacher, was doing her part: Ann Humphreys, 42, was offering free hoola hoop lessons in what she hoped was the spontaneous and joyful spirit of Occupy. “I see the hoop as a way to bring the pressure down,” she said.

Based in North Carolina, Ms. Humphreys travels the country espousing the uplifting benefits of the hoop. She spent a few days at Zuccotti Park last October. “Back in the early days,” she said, “I noticed just the presence of hoop dance – the fun and levity – brought smiles to everybody’s faces.”

Tim Schreier Protester arrested at Sara D. Roosevelt Park

When we filed our final report on May Day activities in the wee hours of this morning, the police would say only that more than 30 were arrested during yesterday’s demonstrations. The final tally is now in: City Room reports that 34 people were taken into custody and another 52 issued desk appearance tickets.

The photo above is one of Tim Schreier’s newly posted shots from the Wildcat March at Sara D. Roosevelt Park. And arrest videos have also emerged on YouTube. A video posted by Kg4 shows a protester kicking out a police car window from inside of a cruiser. Read more…

Photos: Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Yesterday we spent 19 hours live-blogging May Day activities throughout the city: you can find our initial report here and our follow-up here. There was even a David Byrne cameo. Now a video of one of the arrests has popped up on YouTube (hat tip to Google Alerts). And above, here are Scott Lynch’s photos of Tom Morello’s “guitarmy” in Bryant Park and the festivities at Union Square.

Elsewhere: More Than Usual spots a swastika on the construction plywood at 51 Astor Place.

Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York discovers that sculptor Randy Hage has created a miniature version of Mars Bar. Read more…

Photos: Tim Schreier

A May Day march from Union Square to Wall Street, which some estimated to be over 30,000 people strong, ended with hundreds of participants gathering at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza near Battery Park, and then at Zuccotti Park after they were pushed out of the plaza by police.

The permitted march, which began after Tom Morello and members of his “guitarmy” performed at Union Square, stretched many blocks down Broadway and was both leisurely and boisterous. There was, however, the occasional scuffle: as The Local previously reported, bystanders booed and chanted “Shame!” as a photographer was arrested for climbing atop a food cart to take bird’s-eye photos. The police estimated that there were “above 30” arrests throughout the day, but were not able to give an exact number as of 2 a.m. Read more…

A surreal scene played out at the May Day march making its way down Broadway in SoHo. A photographer, Jessica Chornesky, who had climbed atop a food cart to get an overhead shot of the crowd as it passed Spring Street perturbed police officers, who demanded she get down. Ms. Chornesky complied, and passing protestors erupted in boos as the police tied her wrists with plastic bands at around 7 p.m.

The police then escorted her towards Mercer Street, where they awaited the arrival of a police van to haul her away. As Ms. Chornesky complained that the bands had cut off circulation to her hands, a sharply dressed David Byrne (giving Reverend Billy a run for his money) passed by on a bicycle, apparently unaware of the goings-on.

Ms. Chornesky was unable to say if she was working for any news organization before being taken away in the paddy wagon.

Update: Massive May Day March Ends Where Occupy Wall Street Began

Photos of the march across the Williamsburg Bridge, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and the Wildcat March by Jared Malsin.

As documented on The Local’s liveblog, demonstrations and arrests took place across the city today as anarchists, union members, Occupy Wall Street supporters, employees of The Strand, residents of public housing in Alphabet City, and even banjo players used May Day as an occasion to protest the status quo.

The proceedings were for the most part orderly, but scuffles broke out when approximately 200 demonstrators, many dressed in black and some covering their faces, assembled in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, at Second Avenue and Houston Street, at 1 p.m. for a pre-planned, unpermitted “Wildcat March.” Read more…

Today on The Local, we’re not only looking back at the May Day riot of 1990 (stay tuned for more on that), we’re also on the ground at a number of events planned city-wide and in the East Village. Below, you’ll find real-time updates from our reporters Jared Malsin (@jmalsin) and Evan Bleier (@itishowitis), as well as our contributing photographers Tim Schreier, Scott Lynch (@scoboco), Susan Keyloun, and others. We’ll also be linking to other online coverage. E-mail us, Tweet at us, or leave a comment if you have tips or want us to follow you on Twitter. And if you have photos to share, add them to our Flickr group.

Suzanne Rozdeba

May Day is almost upon us, and with it will come a citywide carnival of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

But what will May Day actually look like in New York City and in the East Village? Will we see orderly marchers proceeding peacefully between police barricades? Or will Wall Street burn, as the graffiti on Avenue A warns? Or should we expect, as Jerry Rubin predicted for the 1972 Democratic National Convention, “ten thousand naked hippies” marching on Wall Street?

Asked to predict the size of the demonstrations, Occupy organizer Marisa Holmes, 25, told The Local that May 1 will be on par with the movement’s fall protests or larger. “It won’t be a general strike but it will be substantial,” said the freelance film editor and graduate student at Hunter College. Read more…

Around the time he moved from SoHo to East 12th Street in 2004, Nikolas Kozloff – author of three non-fiction books about Latin America and numerous pieces about Occupy Wall Street for Al Jazeera and Huffington Post – was writing a novel loosely based on his brief tenure as an adjunct professor at CUNY. “Post-Academic Stress Disorder,” which Mr. Kozloff, 43, finally self-published last month, is the story of a young, socially vexed young man attempting to carve out a niche for himself in academia, latching onto subcultures in his new East Village neighborhood, and desperately seeking love and companionship – all while dodging a nefarious plot hatched by a fellow faculty member. The Local asked Mr. Kozloff, who now resides in Brooklyn, just how much of his novel’s wry observations about the anarchists, spiritualists, health nuts, pet lovers, and pie-throwers of the East Village were based on his six months there.

To what degree does your novel portray an exaggerated version of the East Village? The scene where the narrator, Andy, visits A&H Dairy (an exaggerated version of B&H) and is told that his grandfather had an affair with the neighborhood’s great anarchist, Emma Goldman, is pretty over the top.  Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

Good morning, East Village.

The Local snapped the above shot a day before longstanding vegetarian spot Kate’s Joint was seized by its landlord yesterday, presumably due to the back rent it owed.

Gothamist reports that a National Lawyers Guild observer is suing the NYPD for wrongfully arresting him on Second Avenue between East 12th and 13th Streets during an Occupy Wall Street march back in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

A real estate broker tells The Voice that you can still get a deal in the East Village. “You could get a small, two-bedroom apartment [in a walk-up], with a kitchen you could cook in for $3,000 a month,” she says. “I’m not saying the rooms are going to be the size of Texas, but I think that’s a bargain. And you have fantastic restaurants.”
Read more…

Rob Miller performs.

Anarchists weren’t the only oft-maligned political group to convene in the East Village this weekend. The Socialist Party USA, which has about 1,000 members nationwide, hosted a regional conference that drew a modest 15 people from New York City, Long Island and New Jersey to the party’s third-floor offices in the building known as the Peace Pentagon.

The Muste Building, a rundown three-story loft structure on Bleecker and Lafayette Streets, was named after a Dutch-born Pacifist clergyman, and has gone by its alternate name since the 1970s. Radical groups like the Granny Peace Brigade, Global Revolution TV, and the War Resisters League (which once owned the building) are among about 10 non-profits currently maintaining low-rent offices plastered with posters, announcements and pictures of New York anarchist icons like Emma Goldman.

On Saturday, entry into the Socialist Party USA’s quarters was $5, which got attendees music, a talk from a French leftist, dinner, a protest rally and plenty of lively conversation. Read more…

Jared Malsin Occupy Wall Street protesters denounce Bank of America.

Earlier today, local Democratic Party official Paul Newell and three other people closed accounts at Bank of America with plans to move their money to local banks as part of a protest organized by Occupy Wall Street activists.

Mr. Newell, the Democratic district leader for New York’s 64th Assembly District, Part C, which includes parts of the East Village, wore a blue athletic headband with a pin displaying a version of the Bank of America logo altered to read “FU.”

As Mr. Newell and his girlfriend Marissa Brostoff, a doctoral student in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and instructor at Brooklyn College, approached a Bank of America branch across from Zuccotti Park on Broadway, a security guard asked them if they were involved with Occupy Wall Street and locked the door, refusing them entry. Read more…

Who are the men and women seeking to occupy Union Square Park? So far we’ve met Karin Hofmann and Justin Stone-Diaz; Fathema Shadida and Tim “Chyno” Chin; John Eustor and Carlton Hall; and Ed Mortimer and James Pistocco. Today, in the final installment of The Local’s series, meet two more of your new neighbors.

Jared Malsin

Name: Sam Wood
Age: 22
Originally from: Farmingdale, New York
Current residence: Full-time occupier. “I’ve spent a decent amount of nights here in Union Square.”
Job before joining occupy: Unemployed
Current job: Full-time occupier, unemployed Read more…

Who are the men and women seeking to occupy Union Square Park? So far we’ve met Karin Hofmann and Justin Stone-Diaz; Fathema Shadida and Tim “Chyno” Chin; and John Eustor and Carlton Hall. Today, meet two more of your new neighbors.

Jared Malsin

Name: Ed Mortimer
Age: 56
Originally from: Connecticut
Current residence: Full-time occupier. Couch surfing. Occasionally sleeping on street.
Current job: Volunteer street medic
Looking for work? No. Dedicated to work with Occupy: “I’ve never worked so hard in my whole life.” Read more…

More than 100 people organized by Good Old Lower East Side, the Cooper Square Committee and other local groups rode to midtown in school buses this afternoon to protest Bank of America.

After pouring into the lobby of the bank’s branch at 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, the protesters – many of whom were residents of low-income and public housing buildings in the East Village and Lower East Side – chanted “banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” and “Bank of America, bad for America” as security guards and police officers told them to disperse. Read more…