Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Walkerville, meet Bloombergville, and Stand Up Chicago

A Walkerville tent.
There'll be a Rally for People's Rights tonight in Madison as part of the Walkerville protest outside the Capitol. Meanwhile, the citizens of New York City have set up their own tent city to protest savage budget cuts. They call it Bloombergville.

The Bloombergville Now blog reports,
More than 150 workers, students and concerned community members have occupied 1 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan to protest the Bloomberg Administration’s drastic proposed cuts to the city budget.


Protests will continue through the night as protesters begin Bloombergville, a sleep-out encampment in the public spaces around Centre Street on the eastside of City Hall Park. Members of Bloombergville are coming together to send the message to the mayor: No Cuts! Tax the Rich!

After years of cuts that have diminished services affecting average New Yorkers across the board from transportation to healthcare to education, the Bloomberg Administration’s new budget proposes further cuts the people of the city can no longer tolerate.

Protesters pledge to sleep out through the night and the protest will continue indefinitely until the Bloomberg budget is defeated.
Meanwhile, we almost missed this one: Thousands of people demonstrated in Chicago yesterday against corporate greed. Huffpost Chicago reports,
Several thousand people gathered downtown Tuesday, protesting bank bailouts and tax cuts for the wealthy and demanding jobs and funding for schools.
The rally was organized by "Stand Up! Chicago," which included the Chicago Teachers Union, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, the Illinois Hunger Coalition and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)...

Three separate marches snaked through the Loop, each led by a 12-foot-tall "corporate welfare king." The group converged at Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue, where some sat in the middle of the street during rush hour traffic.
Twenty-four people were arrested, including a disabled woman in a wheelchair who was handcuffed.

Lovely.