More anti-Wall St demos on tap despite 700 arrests
‘Arrest one of us and two more appear’:
US: US activists decrying corporate greed pledged to march on Wall
Street again Wednesday despite the arrests of more than 700 protesters
who blocked weekend traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
As the loosely-organized protests entered their third week, some 800
defiant demonstrators maintained a presence in New York’s financial
district Sunday, drying out their rain-soaked clothes, eating and
organizing two major meetings.
“Arrest one of us and two more appear. We are a legion. For we are
many,” said Robert Cammisos, a 49-year-old former construction worker
who was briefly detained Saturday during a major demonstration in New
York against government-backed banking bailouts and corporate influence
in US politics.
Police said most of those arrested were issued criminal court summons
and citations for disorderly conduct before being released later in the
day.
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has overtaken a park near the heart
of global finance, where hundreds of mostly young activists hoist
banners like “Don’t be shy, join us” and “Hitler’s bankers - Wall
Street,” and chant slogans against big business moguls.
“A lot of people are back. This is a group that will not go away,”
Cammisos said, gesturing at a crowd gathered nearby.
Zephyr Teachout, a 39-year-old professor from New York, said she was
joining the protesters for the third time this weekend.
“I’m thinking about spending the night. I’ve never done it before.
Maybe tonight,” she said.
“It’s a free movement, people feel they will engage as they like.”
Though she acknowledged that the protest movement was “unlikely” to
secure the change it demands to the financial system, she said: “We
should try.”
Protests have spread to other cities across the country, from
Washington and Boston to Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
During Saturday’s impromptu march to Brooklyn, demonstrators filled
both the bridge’s pedestrian walkway and the roadway, bringing traffic
to a halt and forcing police to shut down the key connection between
Manhattan and Brooklyn for several hours.
Some of the demonstrators carried hand-drawn placards that read “End
the Fed” and “Pepper spray Goldman Sachs” in what police described as a
peaceful protest that nevertheless saw hundreds detained for public
order offenses.
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement, inspired by pro-democracy Arab
Spring movements roiling North Africa and the Middle East, said it
planned to hold its next march Wednesday afternoon from City Hall to the
financial district.
AFP
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