“I have just come from Foley Square. There are several hundred people marching this way,” a young man standing on Zuccotti Park’s concrete said. “We just crossed the bridge,” he added.
On November 17, 2011, thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters carrying signs that said “Debt Is Slavery” and “I Am More Angry Than Afraid” crossed the seemingly evasive Brooklyn Bridge.
Three hundred were arrested; seven officers and 10 protesters were injured.
They came to finish what they had started October 1, when police arrested more than 700 protesters as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. Many protesters said that police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge then trapping them in using orange netting.
“Twenty-two years ago, hundreds of us tried to shut down Wall Street. We got our asses kicked but we came back next year. We got our asses kicked again. Finally we did it,” historian and political scientist George Katsiaficas told the General Assembly.
“Where is freedom? Where is freedom to think about our lives in terms other than jobs and work? We have to TAKE our freedom,” he added.
Occupy Wall Street, a “leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders, and political persuasions,” arrived at Zuccotti Park September 17 to protest greed, social inequality, the 9 percent unemployment rate, and debt.
The consensus-based movement rapidly spread from New York City, its epicenter, to cities around the world, including Cape Town, France, England, and U.S. cities, nationwide.
Occupy Wall Street was raided November 15, in the middle of the night.
“I’m glad they evicted us. I was worried that this would fall apart but we are stronger and more pissed off than ever,” Freddy Valdez, 25, of Queens, New York told Yahoo News.
“When the mass evictions started, I was filled with a sense of despair. Now that I see this, that despair has been replaced with inspiration one supporter wrote on occupywallstreet.org,” one protester wrote on occupywallstreet.org, the movement’s unofficial de facto online resource.
Evicting Occupy Wall Street protesters has seemingly only made them more rebellious and prepared for major civil unrest.
“We don’t need a lot of people to make change. Jesus didn’t need a tent. Gandhi didn’t need a tent. Marti Luther Kind didn’t need a tent. And we don’t need a tent,” Johnny Kabuse, 50, of Brooklyn told Yahoo News.
“When everyone was marching, I was the only occupier in the park. I tied up 40 policemen, a command center, and four helicopters,” he added.