Nothing could be more patriotic or appropriate to the July 4th week than the expression of our democratic right to peaceful assembly. As reported in Waging Nonviolence, OWS and the "Reverend" Billy Talen led a large group from a fundraising party at the Highline ballroom down the West Side highway to the Toddler's Playground, a mere 300 feet from the site of the high-pressure gas pipeline. Not only is the playground in danger, as Don Lieber notes in PlanetSave, the pipeline puts 4,632 families, including 1,823 children under the age of 10, who live in zip code 10014, at risk. Public School 3, located approximately 2,500 feet from the pipeline’s proposed entrance into Manhattan, has a student population of approximately 625 students up to grade 5. Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board under President Clinton, put it this way: “All of these underground pipelines are potential bombs." That's not really the kind of fireworks we'd like to see on the Hudson.
Photos from the concert and action:
