Mass march to converge on Wall Street May 12

On May 12, which falls on a Thursday and is a full week after the New York City budget proposal will be released by billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a coalition of city unions and community organizations will converge on Wall Street. It will be the second mass demonstration to target Wall Street in a span of two-and-a-half months.

The group, led by the United Federation of Teachers, plans to converge on Wall Street from seven different locations in the downtown area. Details are sparse at this point, but on Wall Street there will be teach-ins and more protests against austerity and the attacks on public sector unions, especially teachers.

Within its resolution in support of the May 12 mobilization, the UFT states, “In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has launched a ‘stealth Wisconsin gambit,’ threatening thousands of unnecessary and unconscionable teacher layoffs for the sole purpose of passing legislation which would eviscerate the right of New York City teachers to due process and create de facto, ‘at will’ employment, allowing teachers to be fired for any reason or no reason at all.”

Bloomberg has threatened to lay off more than 4,500 teachers in New York and has been trying to dismantle the rule of “last in, first out,” which guarantees protection for experienced teachers with seniority.

Many other public sector unions and organizations are beginning to show support for May 12. Such a protest is needed as part of the process of building a massive fightback of working people against a program of austerity. In fact, many more actions will be needed like this one.

Increasingly, Wall Street will become a target of these protests, especially in New York, where there is a struggle to reinstate the millionaires’ tax and for the state to keep the monies it collects from the stock transfer tax to use for peoples’ needs instead of giving the billions of dollars back to the superrich.