New York is braced for May Day mayhem.
Workers are staring at hellacious commutes today when the flagging Occupy Wall Street movement hopes to get a second wind with a full slate of “general strike” protests across the five boroughs.
That could not only make it difficult for people to get to their jobs, but it also could put angry demonstrators on a collision course with beefed-up police.
From Bryant Park to Bushwick, demonstrators will protest everything from economic injustice to school privatization in a series of planned and also potentially arrest-inducing unpermitted rallies, marches and walkouts.
If the Williamsburg Bridge-to-Wall Street march doesn’t bog down traffic, the group’s so-called “Bike Bloc” in Union Square will.
Workers who ignore the general-strike call will find it hard to get to their jobs.
It’s touted as a “day without the 99 percent” — seemingly disregarding the fact that most of the 99 percent actually works.
The activities are the biggest test of the movement’s organizing muscle since the winter.
Occupy groups in New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago and more than 100 other cities will join with immigrant groups and labor unions.
“While American corporate media has focused on yet another stale election between Wall Street-financed candidates, Occupy has been organizing something extraordinary: the first truly nationwide General Strike in US history,” the movement said on its Web site.
Organizers said they expect tens of thousands of supporters to swarm the streets in New York and the other cities.
“No work, no school . . . don’t bank, don’t buy,” is the mantra that has circulated on posters throughout the city.
And the NYPD is braced for the worst, putting detectives in uniform to add extra bodies and having arrest teams at the ready, law enforcement sources said.
Mayor Bloomberg vowed there will be no surprises, saying, “we are prepared for everything that we can think of all the time.”
“People have a right to protest. They don’t have a right to disrupt other people and keep other people from protesting or just going about their business.”
Activists are mixed on whether today’s day of action — which includes targeted protests at office buildings, financial institutions and media outlets — will result in large-scale walk-offs from work, or if they will trigger acts of civil disobedience.
One of the most controversial planned actions — a proposal to block traffic across the Golden Gate Bridge — has been scrapped.
The New York Civil Liberties Union said it will send a team of legal observers to May Day and Occupy Wall Street events around town to monitor police response.
The president of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which offers legal aid to OWS protesters, told The Post yesterday that cops visited the homes of at least three protesters to ask about their plans.
The NYPD did not immediately comment.
Cops, meanwhile, were busy yesterday investigating the source of powder-filled envelopes that were mailed with a note to six bank branches in Manhattan and a city office building on Gold Street.
Officials said the white-powder was cornstarch.
“This is a reminder that you are not in control,” said a message that arrived with the envelopes. “Just in case you needed some incentive to stop working we have a little surprise for you. Think fast, you have seconds.”
Police spokesman Paul Browne said the sender misjudged the mail delivery, and probably intended for the packages to arrive today.
One of the letters was addressed to Bloomberg.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Harshbarger and Tim Perone