May Day with Occupy Wall Street, at Deutsche, Bank of America: Belated Bailout Blow Back

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 1 -- At ten pm the NY Police Department moved in on Occupy Wall Street's new General Assembly spot on Water Street, threatening arrest and then blocking exits from the plaza.

  First up Coehties Slip then north on even more narrow Pearl Street, the marchers were repeatedly blocked by riot police, to stop them from heading to Zuccotti Park or Liberty Square, its once and perhaps future name.

  On Beaver Street a surreal scene developed, in which diners from Delmonico's restaurant came out to ask the marchers what they were protesting. After some verbal interchange, the answer was clear a few blocks north as the march passed bailed-out JP Morgan Chase, and predatory lender Deutsche Bank which has decertified as a financial services holding company to escape regulation.

  "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!" went the chant. Inner City Press has dubbed it the Belated  Bailout Blowback, even on a three year delay.

  Photo stream here; video here

  May Day 2012 began with a picket of Bank of America on 42nd Street, and ended at least for some in a park at the foot of Wall Street by the river, where plans to block the Stock Exchange were hatched. It was tried in the Fall right after the first eviction of Zuccotti Park. May the questioning continue.

  The interplay with the so-called Arab Spring, and with the United Nations a mere 100 blocks north, remained ever shifting. At the UN on May Day, UNFPA presented a study in which consumption and pollution by the developed world was decried, as it would be later south on Water Street.

  Inner City Press asked the study's author about the poor's right to development. He claimed the study was misread. But was it?

  Then as Security Council political coordinators met about a trip to West Africa, the White House held a background press call about Barack Obama's flash trip to Afghanistan. The briefer, self-described as a Senior Administration Official, claimed that the burning of Korans and urinating on corpses did not make reaching the agreement with Hamid Karzai more difficult. How not?

  The agreement has no enforcement, of course, other than more diplomat consultations. The UN is mentioned only as a way to define sovereign states. The world remains as it was -- but another world is possible, they say. Watch this site.