World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg will be leading a weekly walking tour highlighting struggles for urban space on New York's Lower East Side over the past generation—including the squats, community centers, community gardens and Tompkins Square Park.  In addition to Tompkins Square, a focal point of popular resistance in the neighborhood since the 1850s, the tour takes in La Plaza Cultural and other community gardens, site of the evicted Charas/El Bohio community center, the former Christadora Settlement House, the historic Saint Brigid's Church (recently saved from destruction by a community acitivst campaign), the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and the former site of the Esperanza Garden, destroyed by city bulldozers in 2000. The one-hour tour leaves from the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) in C-Squat, 155 Ave. C between 9th and 10th Streets, every Sunday at 3 PM.

From AP, Dec. 19:

Truck Causes NY Traffic Pileup; 1 Dead, 33 Hurt
A tractor-trailer smashed into several vehicles on a major highway on Wednesday afternoon, setting off a chain reaction of fiery crashes, killing one person and injuring 33 others, police said.

The accident on the Long Island Expressway, about 70 miles east of New York City, left at least two dozen vehicles strewn across several hundred yards of the eastbound lanes. At least three vehicles, including the tractor-trailer, which was carrying storm debris, caught fire and were still smoldering into the early evening, a fire official said.

In the ninth YouTube edition of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg takes a tour of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), on Manhattan's Lower East Side, with veteran California eco-activist Darryl Cherney, in town to promote his new documentary Who Bombed Judi Bari? Weinberg, Cherney and the MoRUS crew discuss the cross-fertilization of ecological struggles from Northern California's redwoods to the streets of New York City.

A special screening at the New York City premiere of the new documentary Who Bombed Judi Bari? will benefit a local bastion of activism damaged by Hurricane Sandy—the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The event will be held on Saturday, Nov. 17, 8 PM at the Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th Street, in Greenwich Village.  The $10 donation will assist the museum, which had its hopes for a grand opening that very day dashed when its displays were immersed in the rising waters of the East River during the Frankenstorm. The 93-minute, award-winning documentary is engaged in a week-long run at the Quad, Nov. 16 through 22. The teaming of Judi Bari's story with the MoRUS brings together grassroots ecological struggles from California's redwoods and Lower Manhattan's squats and community gardens.

Well, we're back online after four days of the electricity being out in Lower Manhattan, and our rage level is even higher than usual. Where to even begin? For starters, with the most obvious reality. This blogger is 50 years old and grew up in New York City. Never in my life have I experienced a storm of anywhere near this magnitude (actually prompting the mayor to announce a "mandatory evacuation" of low-lying areas) until Hurricane Irene last year—and now it just happened again, even worse (much worse) one year later with the Hurricane Sandy "Frankenstorm." Pretty ominous evidence that something is way out of wack. 

You'd never know it from the sensationalist headlines, but the latest supposed near-miss, would-be, almost-was terrorist attack in New York City appears to be yet another highly specious case in which the "terrorist" plot turns out to be a creation of FBI infiltrators. All you have to do is actually read past the headlines, and this is immediately apparent. Let's take a look at the Daily News coverage from Oct. 17—with its typically alarmist lead, followed by implicit admissions that whole thing is almost certainly an FBI-generated scam...

From the New York Times, Oct. 8:

4 Die in Crash at Notorious Turn on L.I. Road
All five were teenage friends from Queens, and four had been classmates at Richmond Hill High School. Some had started college and were planning for careers years away, and they were all out for a ride early Monday in a car that one of them — a 17-year-old with a learner's permit — had recently started driving.

We recently noted the frightening rise of the neo-fascist "Golden Dawn" party in Greece, which actually now holds a parliamentary bloc despite the fact that its leaders (including sitting MPs!) are accused of violent attacks on immigrants. On Sept. 22, Digital Journal reported that these sinister creeps were making an effort to organize the Greek diaspora, launching local chapters in Melbourne, Australia, and in Astoria—the Greek neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. They launched a New York website (now seemingly disabled) that spouted the predictable populist pabulum, e.g.: "Our goals are to promote and support the Golden Dawn's nationalist ideals and vision for Greece among the Greek diaspora. We must resist and overcome the genocidal multi-culturalist, and anti-Hellenic agenda of the New World Order." And they organized an event to collect food and clothing to send back to Greece, ostensibly to aid families thrown out of work in the country's current econo-cataclysm. A photo from the event is online at the website Fuck Yeah Anarchist Banners, with a caption helpfully informing us: "This is NOT an anarchist banner. This is a fascist banner, being hung by organizers from the Golden Dawn neo-fascist party. They are violent, antisocial racists. It is being hung at the Stathakion Cultural Center."