In a emailed statement, the AFL-CIO has called on its New York area members to travel to the Occupy Wall Street encampment in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Square and spend the night in solidarity with OWS standing guard against a planned eviction and police attack expected to be carried out on the orders of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Earlier today, Occupy Wall Street organizers called for a mass protest against the proposed eviction, launching a preemptive cleanup effort in hopes the city and Brookfield Properties, owners of Zuccotti Park, might relent and allow them to stay.
Update: Following a huge and rapid public outcry that included hundreds of thousands of online petition signatures—including yours—the threatened clean-up/eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters was called off early this morning.
We’ve scored an amazing victory thanks to a massive outcry. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg could try find evict the protesters at any time. Sign the petition in defense of the protesters and their First Amendment rights and then spread the word to everyone you know.
Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka On Occupy Wall Street and Mayor Bloomberg
October 13, 2011
“Mayor Bloomberg runs the risk of standing on the wrong side of history tomorrow. It is clear that what is being threatened in Zuccotti Park is nothing but silencing the voices and stomping out the rights of Americans. Participants in Occupy Wall Street are now in their fourth week of declaring that “we are the 99 percent” because our system is desperately, decisively out of whack—the top one percent is pocketing massive profits and dominating our politics while everyone else struggles to make ends meet. It is shocking that Mayor Bloomberg feels like that’s a message that needs to be silenced. The AFL-CIO stands with Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent of Americans just trying to level the massively unequal playing field.”
The AFL-CIO message reads,
From: “Manny Herrmann, AFL-CIO” <peoplepower@aflcio.org
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:52:47 -0400 (EDT)
To:
ReplyTo: peoplepower@aflcio.org
Subject: Go to Wall Street. NOW.
To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org
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