(Bloomberg News) New York City police arrested 124 Occupy Wall Street protesters celebrating the movement's first birthday as events drew fewer participants than similar demonstrations in May.
Hundreds of marchers took to the streets just after dawn today from Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, the physical birthplace and symbolic heart of the global movement. Police on foot, motorcycle and horseback trailed them at every turn.
The protests failed to keep the markets from opening as scheduled, though some commuters in the largest U.S. city were inconvenienced as police blocked off parts of the Financial District near the New York Stock Exchange and asked transit officials to close the Broad Street subway station. Richard Swensson, a 24-year-old college graduate, said he missed a job interview.
"I couldn't even get near the building and had to call to say I wouldn't make it," Swensson said in Battery Park. He said he understood the frustrations of the protesters but wished they would "think a little bit more instead of just getting all rallied up."
Today's numbers contrast with Occupy Wall Street's last major public event, on May 1, which drew tens of thousands of demonstrators across the U.S. as protesters sang in Manhattan's Union Square, smashed windows in Seattle and seized a vacant building in San Francisco. In New York, 34 were arrested in the May Day rallies.
Disorderly Conduct
Most of today's arrests were for disorderly conduct for impeding vehicular or pedestrian traffic, and follow more than 40 others over the weekend, said Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department. Police are "accommodating lawful protests" and making arrests for crimes such as blocking traffic, Browne said in an e-mail.
Dozens of police, some in riot helmets, arrested people, including a purple-cassocked bishop, at the Broadway entrance to Wall Street. A man with an acoustic guitar on his back was thrown to the ground by five officers near the intersection of Nassau and Pine streets. Picketers at the plaza at 140 Broadway sang Woody Guthrie's "Why, Oh Why" with a ukulele.
"I've been arrested four times now and I'll get arrested 1,000 times more until we see some change," said Barry Knight, a 44-year-old actor from Massachusetts. "We're fighting for nothing less than the future of our country. Do you want your kids to grow up in 'corptocracy' or in a democracy?"
Seeking Revival