New York City police arrested 12 protesters affiliated with the Occupy movement who participated in a Lower Manhattan march on Sunday night.
About 300 people participate in the march to show support for protesters in Oakland, California, where a Saturday night Occupy demonstration ended with police firing smoke and tear gas and arresting at least 500 people.
Protesters in Oakland attempted to take the Henry Kaiser Convention Center’s building in the city’s downtown area, but were stopped by the police. The security forces reported 300 arrests during the day.
The number of those arrested grew to nearly 500 as the protesters then aimed to take over the YMCA building before storming the City Hall on Sunday.
The crowd in New York began marching just after 7 pm in Washington Square, where hundreds of people assembled near a fountain, beating drums and waving flags, before heading north and eventually ending up in Tompkins Square Park.
”New York is Oakland, Oakland is New York,” protesters chanted.
Meanwhile, police arrested two people after Occupy protesters in the US city of Philadelphia knocked down a fence at the City Hall construction area, the group campsite before their eviction in November.
The protest campaign owes its inspiration to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which began when a group of demonstrators gathered in New York’s financial district on September 17 to protest the excessive influence of big corporations on the US policies as well as the unjust distribution of wealth in the country among other things.
According to occupyarrests.com, with the exception of the latest arrests, at least 6,319 Occupy protesters have been apprehended since the emergence of the movement.
