Mike Daisey, The Civilians, et al. Taking Part in OCCUPY BROADWAY Today

Mike Daisey, The Civilians, et al. Taking Part in OCCUPY BROADWAY Today:

On December 2, 2011 New York artists will introduce tourists and New Yorkers going to Broadway shows or shopping themselves into debt to the idea of occupation as creative resistance with non-stop free performances. Occupy Broadway will set up in a privately owned public space (POPS) near Times Square, turning once blandified space into a space for cultural production.

“The city created privately owned public spaces for the people, in exchange for bonus height and bulk in these spaces,” notes Benjamin Shepard, co-author of The Beach Beneath the Streets. “As State Judge Stallman made clear last week, the people have a right to be in these spaces 24 hours a day.”

In recent weeks, there has been a push to tramp on our rights to public assembly, public space and by extension democracy itself. In response, Occupy Broadway joins a global struggle using occupation as a form of creative resistance. Occupations are spreading around the world and around New York City, even uotown. Bloomberg Beware, you take our park, Now Liberty Park is everywhere! In a time when downtown theaters are rapidly losing their spaces, being turned into high-end fashion stores, Occupy Broadway is a symbolic attempt to regain the space of theatre as an accessible, popular art form, bringing it back to where it all started - in a public space, for the common citizen.