NYC February 28 Rally Against Suppression of Occupy Movement

What:    Rally & March
When:   5:00 p.m. Tuesday, February 28
Where:  Union Square, New York City (north end)

Support is growing for a non-violent mass action Tuesday, February 28 in NYC against the suppression and repression of the Occupy Movement, raising the demands, “Stand with the Occupy Movement!  No Rubber Bullets – No Beatings – No Tear Gas – No Mass Arrests, Don’t Suppress OWS. Drop All the Charges Against Occupiers.”  The General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street reached consensus February 11 in support of the Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement, and specifically in support of the February 28 Mass Action at Union Square in NYC.

Organizer George Packard, a retired Episcopal bishop who was detained by the NYPD while bringing water to the occupiers at Zuccotti Park, and later arrested in an Occupy Wall Street action, said the action February 28 “is the absolute preface to any other actions. It’s a question of process even before we take to the streets–how is it that there is this coordinated effort to stifle our free speech?! Mayors on conference calls simultaneously rousting encampments? Renegade cops taking aggressive initiatives because it makes superiors smile? Tear gas and rubber bullets fired into the ranks of Occupy Oakland? Enough!”

Cornel West, who led Occupy Wall Street to protest the NYPD “stop and frisk” policy; Scott Olsen, the Iraq veteran who was shot in the head by the Oakland police in October, and Boots Riley of The Coup have signed the Call, as has former poet laureate of the United States and U.C. Berkeley professor Robert Hass.

Occupy Cleveland also voted unanimously to support the Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement which says, “the state planned and unleashed naked and systematic violence and repression against people attempting to exercise rights that are supposed to be legally guaranteed. This response by those who wield power in this society is utterly shameful from a moral standpoint, and thoroughly illegitimate from a legal and political one.”

The action on Tuesday February 28 will begin with a rally at Union Square. New York organizers of the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement are calling on other occupations to sign the Call, bring it to General Assemblies, and organize local events on F28.

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