Occupy Wall St Protesters Released
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October 3, 2011 TheFreshOutlook  |
The NYPD has released most of the 700 demonstrators it arrested on Saturday as protests spread into other US cities.
Police in New York have released all but a few of the protestors arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening. More than 700 people were taken into custody after protesters from the Occupy Wall St group began moving from the pedestrian walkway onto the bridge’s roadway.
A war of words has erupted between protesters and the NYPD, with the former claiming that they were tricked onto the roadway. Police have denied these accusations, and maintain that the protestors were given multiple warnings to stay on the walkway. Others have suggested that the confrontation came as a result of a misunderstanding.
One protestor, Robert Cammiso, told the Associated Press: “We were supposed to go up the pedestrian roadway. There was a huge funnel, a bottleneck, and we couldn’t fit. People jumped from the walkway to the roadway.”
Police have also been accused of a disproportionate response, as videos posted on YouTube revealed a strong arm response with many protesters being dragged away. In one clip, a young woman is forcefully arrested as protestors chant slogans like “Shame, shame, shame” and “You can’t arrest an idea”.
Last week, American mainstream media reported another YouTube video which showed a senior NYPD officer pepper-spraying two non threatening female protestors.
The Occupy Wall St campaign began in mid September as thousands of people gathered to protest against the actions of the financial industry.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald describes the protests as a movement against “the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions (that) is destroying financial security for everyone else”.
The fact that over 1000 protestors have been arrested since the protests began has led some to draw contrast with the financial sector’s lack of accountability for the financial crisis of 2008.
“The world’s economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protestors who are jailed,” said the author Salman Rushdie on Twitter.
Occupy Wall St has vowed to continue its campaign, with another march planned on Wednesday.
“We are the majority. We are the 99%. And we will no longer be silent,” said the group in a statement.
It also aligned itself with the protests taking place across the Middle East by saying: “We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of non-violence to maximise the safety of all participants.”
There were also protests in Washington, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston over the weekend. A representative from the Occupy Boston group, which drew 1000 people to a protest on Friday, described his group’s aims as the establishment “of a subsection of a national dialogue on finance reform and governance reform”.
By Dermot Tobin
[Image Courtesy of Adrian Kinloch]
