PPeople protest during the 'Occupy Wall Street' rally at Bowling Green Plaza on 17 September.
Photograph: Steven Greaves/Demotix/Corbis
On Saturday 17 September,
many of us watched in awe as
5,000 Americans descended on to the financial district of lower Manhattan, waved signs,
unfurled banners, beat drums, chanted slogans and proceeded to walk towards the "
financial Gomorrah" of the nation. They vowed to "occupy Wall Street" and to "bring justice to the bankers", but the New York police thwarted their efforts temporarily, locking down the symbolic street with barricades and checkpoints.
Undeterred, protesters walked laps around the area before holding a people's assembly and setting up a semi-permanent protest encampment
in a park on Liberty Street, a stone's throw from Wall Street and a block from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Three hundred
spent the night, several hundred reinforcements arrived the next day and as we write this article, the encampment is rolling out sleeping bags once again. When they tweeted to the world that they were hungry, a nearby pizzeria received
$2,800 in orders for delivery in a single hour. Emboldened by an outpouring of international solidarity, these American indignados said they'd be there to greet the bankers when the stock market opened on Monday. It looks like, for now, the police don't think they can stop them.
ABC News reports that "even though the demonstrators don't have a permit for the protest, [the New York police department says that] they have no plans to remove those protesters who seem determined to stay on the streets." Organisers on the ground say, "
we're digging in for a long-term occupation".
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET was inspired by the
people's assemblies of Spain and floated as a concept by a double-page poster in the 97th issue of Adbusters magazine, but it was spearheaded, orchestrated and accomplished by independent activists. It all started when Adbusters asked its network of culture jammers to flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents,
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