News: Protests Continue on Wall Street
(Long Island, N.Y.) The hundreds of protesters who have gathered in a park owned by Brookfield Office Properties near Wall Street faced possible eviction during a scheduled cleanup. Reports stated that the cleanup was postponed, and that the rally-goers believed that it was designed as a plot to remove them from the area. Since the protests began there have been dozens of arrests, and an alleged seven arrests were made in the most recent hours of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
According to reports, the seven arrests occurred as hundreds of protesters left the park and proceeded to march south through the financial district. They continued to march north toward City Hall in order to further their cause and extend the movement. Since the movement began, more than three thousand protesters have occupied Wall Street and the financial district.
Sources have also claimed that similar protests have been occurring in over a thousand cities across the country. Areas like Boston, Denver, Seattle, and Philadelphia have reported rallies and arrests in correlation with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Globally, similar protests are expected to occur in over seventy countries, including two that are scheduled in Canada this weekend.
Reports stated that there have been over twenty arrests in Denver when dozens of protesters didn’t abide by the city’s eleven p.m. curfew. The rally-goers had gathered outside the state capital, as did six inside a senate office building in Washington. Sources claimed that over a hundred people were arrested in Boston after a rally occurred in an observed area for green space.
Cities like Trenton, Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco have also participated in the movement with rallying activity. Reports claimed that Houston, Los Angeles, Providence, Cincinnati, Salt Lake, and Atlanta were among the places involved in the protests in recent weeks. Many protesters claim to be executing their rights to peacefully object to the nation’s policies and to be exercising what is entitled to them under the First Amendment.
Protesters at the park near Wall Street believe that they have kept it clean and utilized brooms, mops, and buckets to work overnight at tidying the area. Nonetheless, neighbors and park officials have allegedly complained of unsafe and unsanitary conditions. Reports of odors, lewdness, harassment, and drug use have been made against the protesters that have occupied the area.
Many believe that the Wall Street protests are only the beginning of what’s to come as a movement against the billions of dollars spent in bank bailouts while unemployment and job insecurity still plagues the average U.S. citizen. The conditions of the protests- the lack of toilets and a shortage of garbage cans- illustrate the dedication rally-goers have to the cause of shifting more of the tax burden on the richest 1% of Americans. While the park is normally cleaned daily, it has not been serviced in the last four weeks of the protests.
