Kate Conger

A new 7-Eleven is under construction in the East Village.

Last week, the New York Times reported that the East Village was emphatically protesting an incoming 7-Eleven. The Slurpee giant is worming its way right to the trendy core of the neighborhood, renovating a storefront on Avenue A and East 11th Street. The neighbors are worried that the snack chain will have a negative impact on local businesses and further gentrify the already-changing area.

It's not the first time a New York neighborhood has tried to block a big chain from moving in -- think way back, if you will, to the Astor Place Kmart kerfuffle of 1996. The Times diligently covered that one too (although they've updated their terminology for anti-capitalist kids in the last decade; what were once "skateboarding teen-agers" are now "black-clad youths"). Back then, one resident fretted, "I hate the thought of stepping over Kmart shoppers on my way to buy bagels on Sunday morning."

Skeptical that one store, even one as gigantic as the 145,000-square-foot Kmart, could have such a distinctive impact on a neighborhood, we decided to pay a visit and find out.

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George Pingeon chained himself to construction equipment Wednesday, temporarily halting construction on the Spectra pipeline.

Eric Walton

Construction on a pipeline that will bring fracked natural gas under the Hudson and into the West Village was halted for two hours Wednesday when George Pingeon, a member of the opposition group Occupy the Pipeline, chained himself to a backhoe on the construction site.

Opponents have been fighting the pipeline since it received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May, escalating their tactics once construction on the Manhattan side of the 16-mile pipeline began this summer.

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Jason Lewis/ Village Voice

Representatives from the New York State Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce voiced their outrage on the steps of City Hall yesterday over a proposed bill that would lower procurement goals for Hispanic-owned businesses bidding for city work.

Earlier this month, the city announced revisions to Local Law 129, which was created in 2005 to increase the number of Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises that secure contracts to perform work for the city. The bill would lift the $1 million contract-limit currently in place for program participants, and it would implement better support systems for M/WBE's .

But those in attendance at yesterday's rally are fuming over a portion of the bill that reduces procurement goals for Hispanic construction firms from nine percent to four percent.

And, as the Voice previously reported, these groups are promising to use their influence within the Hispanic community to campaign against any politicians who vote for or support the bill.

"I can assure you that any Councilman, who supports this bill, that comes to the Latino community, will face a very angry constituency, inside their district and outside of their district," Peter Fontanes, head of the New York Association of Hispanics in Real Estate and Construction, said at the news conference. "Anybody thinking of running for mayor who votes for this bill and supports this bill, I can assure they will not get our support. And, we will campaign against them actively."

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Tea Partiers making their voices heard outside the presiential debate at Hofstra yesterday.

While Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were getting ready to take the stage at Hofstra University last night for the second presidential debate, the streets outside the campus were lined with anarchist banners, tricorn hats, "don't tread on me" flags, and papier-mache Reaper drones.

"We're here to voice displeasure with how this country is going," said Roy Haines, a 54-year-old from Wantagh, who joined the motley debate protests with a group of fellow Tea Partiers. "We need to stop taking from people who are actually earning it and giving people who feel entitled to it."

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Stacy Lanyon

Protesters painted themselves a toxic green to protest the construction of a new pipeline for fracked natural gas in Manhattan.

Activists protesting the construction of a new natural gas pipeline into the heart of Manhattan stepped up their efforts to draw attention to the issue this weekend by getting naked, painting their bodies green, and dancing along the West Side Highway.

See More: Naked Green People Fight Pipeline Construction (NSFW)

The NJ-NY Expansion Project, known familiarly as the Spectra Pipeline after the Texas-based energy company behind it, runs about 16 miles from Staten Island, through New Jersey, and under the Hudson before surfacing in the West Village.

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The legal aftermath of of the NYPD's crackdown on street protest over the past year continues to unfold, with another lawsuit filed against the department in federal court.

The most recent suit is filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund on behalf of two protesters, Johanne Sterling and Joshua Cartagena. Sterling was one of the young women kettled and pepper-sprayed by Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna on September 24 of last year.

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A U.S. District Court judge ruled yesterday that the NYPD unlawfully arrested and fingerprinted hundreds of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Sullivan found that the NYPD acted unlawfully when it carried out mass arrests of demonstrators at two protests during the convention. He also ruled that the NYPD's decision to fingerprint arrested protesters was unlawful.

"We're gratified that the judge rejected the city's claim that the NYPD has the discretion to engage in mass arrests when officers observe individual unlawful activity," New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a release. "This ruling is a victory for the right to protest -- a core democratic principle."

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C.S. Muncy

A scene from yesterday's anniversary protests. See the whole slideshow.

For those who have been tracking Occupy Wall Street since its earliest days, yesterday's anniversary often felt familiar to the point of deja vu.

Lower Manhattan was once again transformed into a city under siege, with metal barricades at almost every intersection, police trucks, vans, scooters, horses, and legions of police officers and corporate security.

And when hundreds of people mustered in the early hours of yesterday morning to ring the New York Stock Exchange and protest the widening gulf between rich and poor and the growing control of government, the canyons of the Financial District again rang with drumbeats and familiar chants: "We! Are! The 99 percent!" "Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!"

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Tomorrow, it will be one whole year since a group of anti-corporatist raiders met for the first time in Zuccotti Park and deemed themselves Occupy Wall Street. Since then, the national explosion of 99-versus-1 Percent politics has had its ups and downs - in New York, Bloomberg's army of police officers shut down the Park in a late night raid but the movement has sprung legs in numerous other cities. More »

Activists set fire to their debt papers Sunday in Brooklyn in a gesture meant to evoke the 1960s draft card burnings.

A few dozen people gathered in Brooklyn Inlet Park on the Williamsburg waterfront Sunday to talk about debt, have a picnic, and set some things on fire.

The mood was festive -- there was cake and lemonade, the air was crisp and clear, and the towers of Manhattan glittered across the East River.

But the purpose of the assembly was somber: to talk about the ways that different kinds of debt is strangling the people gathered there, and millions more across the nation.

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