MCA Day invite posted to Facebook

Fans of the late Adam Yauch are organizing a memorial event in Union Square on May 19th at 11am.

When Beastie Boys rapper Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch lost his battle with parotid gland cancer earlier this month, fans across the city rushed to memorialize the musician, who had roots in New York City. A mural showed up in Midwood, Brooklyn, where Adam went to high school, flowers and candles were placed at Avenue A and 11th Street where the band recorded “Polly Wog Stew,” and the Brooklyn Bowl held a screening of the Beastie Boys’ live concert flim.

This Saturday, a memorial event called “MCA Day” is planned in Union Square at 11am – described as a “day of humble tribute and colorful celebration of the life and music of Adam Yauch.” The invite suggests shelltoe shoes and a Beastie Boys t-shirt, but even if you don’t dress in classic 90s rapper style, stop by and pay tribute to the late musician by singing along with some Beastie Boys songs.

Check out the MCA Day Facebook page and Twitter feed for more info.

NJ Governor Christie and Newark Mayor Booker’s new video adventure

Checking in with politics across the water in New Jersey, where NJ Gov. Christie and Newark Mayor Booker have taken a comedic hands-on approach to government in this new video. Oh, and Cory Booker also strikes a Tebow touchdown pose after catching a flying baby.

Unfortunately, the video’s comedy is based in truth: Is Cory Booker stealing the spotlight from Chris Christie? Newark may be the largest city in New Jersey, but it seems like Mayor Booker hits the news much more often than the state’s Governor. It’s hard not to overshadow the first-term Governor when Booker has been committing acts of Mayoral heroism since 2006 such as running into burning buildings, using Twitter reports to dig people out during a blizzard, and personally patrolling the streets until 4AM.

What do you think, was this a good move for Christie? There’s really no saving grace for him in the video, with Booker overshadowing the Governor at every turn and Christie only stepping in at the last minute to answer a vague phone call insinuating that he may accept an offer to be a Republican Vice Presidential candidate.

A 911 call center in Buffalo, NY

An independent audit of the city’s 911 call center system reveals it to be fraught with dangerous and inefficient procedures.

It began with a need to overhaul New York City’s aging 911 system, which suffered outages and long delay times during the 2010 Christmas blizzard. Now, the process is behind schedule, has cost $2 billion, and may have actually made emergency response slower.

The audit of the 911 system has lately become a source of contention, as the Bloomberg administration came under attack for not releasing the results of the report, saying they were preliminary and claiming that response times were better than they’ve ever been.

Last month, the State Supreme Court ordered that the report be released, and today, the administration released an edited form of the call center report.

The document, called the 911 Call Processing Review (911 CPR), originally weighed in at 216 pages, but has been released as an edited 113-page document, with no indication of the differences between this document and the longer document which the administration claimed was a draft and unsuitable for public release.

A Great Big City is working to obtain a copy of the report. If you have information relating to the content of the report or the status of the 911 system, you can leave a comment below, email contact@agreatbigcity.com, or submit information anonymously at agreatbigcity.com/contact.

Protesters march in the May Day parade down Broadway

A police officer who worked during the May Day protests gives some advice to the Occupy movement.

Yesterday’s May Day activity required a huge police response, and one of those officers took to Reddit’s politics section to provide some pointers on how the movement could get past its current perception:

I’ve had that opportunity to speak with dozens of protesters this past year from Occupy and similar movements. I’ve also spoken with many more store owners, residents and people working in the area. I keep hearing these two things from the public:

1. I agree with the protesters but they are acting juvenile.
2. What specifically do they want?

The officer also brainstorms some policies that the Occupy movement could endorse to make it more popular with the public, such as calling for a maximum interest rate on student loans and legalizing marijuana.

Head over to the discussion thread on Reddit to read the rest of his thoughts, then take a look through the comments for the Reddit community’s reactions to the issues the officer raises.

May First General Strike light graffiti via Brandon Neubauer on Flickr

Today is the day – Occupy Wall Street and other associated groups have been planning actions for the May 1st General Strike, and today we’ll be monitoring the result of their planning.

This entry will be updated throughout the day, with the latest information showing up at the bottom of the page, timestamped in the live blog. Refresh the page to see the latest updates. On the right side of the page is a list of Occupy Wall Street Twitter accounts which will provide a real-time feed of what is happening around the city. A Great Big City is not responsible for any content or links that are posted in that sidebar by Twitter users.

Even before May Day begins, we have seen suspicious powder incidents at banks across the city, at least one of which contained a reference to May 1st. If this is indeed an action from an Occupy Wall Street-related group, it would indicate a significant change in protest tactics, and may draw a greater police presence during the May 1st demonstrations.

Leave your comments below or send in your photos and info on today’s protests in the comments section or on the contact page

In advance any May 1st protest activity, a document from NYPD SHIELD was circulated around the web. The six-page PDF document is a summary of the actions that Occupy Wall Street has planned for the day, and details some of the tactics that protesters may use, including the “black bloc” tactic of protesters wearing bandannas and masks to conceal their identity and a potentially rowdy “wildcat march” planned for 1:00pm at Sara D. Roosevelt Park.

The second major event before the May 1st protest began was a series of NYPD visits to at least three protesters’ homes, during which they were questioned about their May Day plans. Originally the story was posted to Anarchist News, but Gawker contacted the protesters for more information about how and why the protesters were questioned.

Live streaming video

Timcast will be live-streaming video all day from the May Day protests, and has consistently high-quality video combined with insightful commentary.

May Day Radio

Check out this live radio show being broadcast today called May Day Radio. Listen on the embedded player below or click through to their website for other listening options.

Other live video streams

• OccupyEye

Other liveblogs

• The NY Daily News has a liveblog of NY-area protests
• Reuters is running a liveblog of May Day events from around the world
• Huffington Post has more information about the early-morning NYPD raids, with a liveblog running below the article about May Day protests worldwide
• Animal has a great series of photos from today
• The main OWS site occupywallst.org is posting live updates from various May Day protests
• The Village Voice