This weekend, Brooklyn will be occupied with Occupy Brooklyn.
The borough’s fledgling social justice movement will offer two days of rallies, teach-ins, speeches and, yes, some good old-fashioned protesting as longstanding progressive groups embrace Occupy Wall Street.
“The weekend is in line with the various struggles that have been going on here already for a long time,” said an organizer who’s been involved with the movement since its inception, but requested not to be named.
Occupy Brooklyn’s events — part of Occupy Wall Street’s official “Occupy Your Block” efforts to connect to communities around the city this weekend — will be centered around Cadman Plaza in Downtown on Saturday and will many traditional liberal groups, including the Green Party, FUREE, Organizing 4 Occupation, the Sierra Club and Brooklyn For Peace.
The fair will culminate with a rally and march in and around Downtown — what one blogger called a “March To the Most Dangerous Traffic Intersections in Brooklyn” — stopping at locations of anti-capitalist outrage, such as Atlantic Yards, and the JP Morgan Chase, where protesters rallied on Thursday.
Sunday’s events will include a gardening excursion to Bushwick Farms, and a teach-in and fundraiser at the historic Slave Theatre in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
An Occupy Brooklyn organizer said it only made sense for the old-line liberal groups to embrace the new movement’s spirit.
“Inequality and economic marginality — none of these things are new,” said the organizer. “There are people that have been struggling against these things for years.”
For info, visit www.occupybk.org.
Reach reporter Eli Rosenberg at erosenberg@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2531. And follow him at twitter.com/from_where_isit.
