Advertise on NYTimes.com <http://www.nytimes.whsites.net/mediakit/> Report an ErrorTimes Topics <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/index.html> > Organizations <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/index\ .html> > O <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/ind\ ex.html> > Occupy Wall Street E-MAIL <http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/ref\ erence/timestopics/organizations/o/occupy_wall_street/index.html> Occupy Wall Street (Wall St. Protests, 2011) [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/09/30/timestopics/topics_prote\ st_190/topics_protest_190-articleInline.jpg] Updated: Sept. 30, 2011
Occupy Wall Street, a diffuse group of activists who claim to stand against greed, corporate influence, gross social inequality and other disparities between rich and poor, converged on the financial district on Sept. 17, 2001, encamping in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned public park at Liberty Street and Broadway. The idea, according to some organizers, was to camp out for weeks or even months to replicate the kind, if not the scale, of protests that had erupted earlier in 2011 in places as varied as Egypt, Spain and Israel. On the group's Web site, they describe themselves as a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent." The 1 percent refers to the haves: that is, the banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry. The 99 percent refers to the have-nots: that is, everyone else. In other words, said a group member: "1 percent of the people have 99 percent of the money." The police made scores of arrests on Sept. 24, as hundreds of demonstrators, many of whom had been bivouacked in the financial district as part of the lengthy protest, marched north to Union Square without a permit. As darkness fell, large numbers of officers were deployed on streets near the encampment in Zuccotti Park, where hundreds more people had gathered. Efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated: protesters were corralled by police officers who put up orange mesh netting; the police forcibly arrested some participants; and a deputy inspector used pepper spray on four women who were on the sidewalk, behind the orange netting. Raymond W. Kelly, commissioner of the New York Police Department, said that its Internal Affairs Bureau would look at the decision by the officer, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, to use pepper spray, even as Mr. Kelly criticized the protesters for "tumultuous conduct." The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., also opened an investigation into the episode, which was captured on video and disseminated on the Internet The police's actions suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism, but that may appear less nimble in dealing with the likes of the Wall Street protesters. The group plans to continue the protest indefinitely.
