TONIGHT: BP Protest In NYC

Environmental activists and the usual clingers-on to any social movement will gather near the BP station on Houston Street in downtown Manhattan tonight to protest the oil giant's culpability in the Gulf oil spill. Code Pink is involved. Ooh, and those always gentle folks from Critical Mass. I predict mayhem. Here's the action's fact sheet, via Gothamist.

The response to this event has been overwhelming and we are doing our best to make sure that everything goes smoothly. We need your help! Please read and follow these directions precisely, and SHARE them with your fellow protesters, many of whom will not see them. Word of mouth made this event huge, and word of mouth will make it beautiful. There will also be a dozen marshals with large MARSHAL BP badges who will be directing the group on site. Thank you!!

DO converge at 6 pm sharp at the BP station on Houston between Broadway and Lafayette.
DO NOT be early or late.
DO NOT demonstrate ANY violence, verbal or physical, to the police, to your fellows, or to property. If you are detained DO NOT resist. If you or another are detained or harassed CALL OR TEXT (917) 544-5604.
DO wear either a costume of your choice or white clothes (that you
don’t mind getting sludgy).
DO bring a water bottle full of dirty (with dirt, molasses, food coloring or water-based paint) to pour on yourself. At 6:15 EXACTLY you may walk onto the station’s property and pour this “oil” on yourself or your (willing) neighbor to demonstrate what the people and wildlife in the Gulf are suffering. At this point when we are asked to leave we will be trespassing, so we advise you to leave when requested to do so.

There are only a handful of gas stations in Manhattan, so it's just BP's bad luck that they are one of them. Some folks will surely spend Memorial Day weekend in the Tombs.

Critical Mess II

There was trouble during NYC's Critical Mass this weekend too. Via Gawker, watch a cop totally bodyslam a rider to the ground as the ride passes through Times Square. The rider was initially charged with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer for "aiming" his bike at the cop. But we're in the YouTube era and the video seems to tell a different story. It's presently unknown why the cop singled out this particular rider, but the NYPD has stripped him of his badge and gun pending an investigation. The cop may be charged with assault and perjury.

Critical Mess

A huge kerfuffle has erupted in Seattle over this weekend's Critical Mass cyclists' rights event in which a driver hit two cyclists, then was pulled from his vehicle and hit in the head with a bike lock while uninjured cyclists smashed his windows and slashed his tires. There are many conflicting reports on Slog. Cyclists are claiming that the driver screamed about being late for a dinner reservation before hitting the riders, but the driver claims he hit the gas accidentally and was panicked by intimidating riders who were threatening to "tip over" his car.

Says the remorseful driver: "I sympathize with [cyclists’] cause. I ride bikes too. I’m a liberal hippie democrat. I’m gay, the person with me was a lesbian and we were a attacked by eco-terrorists. It’s the most Seattle thing that could have happened."

Critical Mass, in case you are unaware, is a global cyclists movement (spawned in San Francisco in the early '90s) in which riders "take over" a city's downtown streets once a month to bring awareness to the need for bike lanes and rider safety. I used to think Critical Mass was kinda awesome until more and more of the rides turned confrontational and violent like in Seattle this weekend. Anybody remember the huge Critical Mass riot in SF back in '97? Helicopters, SWAT teams, hundreds of arrests. Many of the riders are self-proclaimed anarchists who use the rides as an excuse to create as much mayhem as possible, only to the detriment of their professed cause.