Occupy Wall Street protests: Police make arrests, use pepper spray as some activists storm barricade
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Christina Boyle, Emily Sher, Anjali Mullany AND Helen Kennedy DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Thousands of union workers joined protesters marching through the Financial District Wednesday for Occupy Wall Street's largest rally yet against "corporate greed."
The march was mostly peaceful - until after nightfall, when scuffles erupted and some of the younger demonstrators were arrested when they tried to storm barricades blocking them from Wall Street and the Stock Exchange.
Witnesses said about 200 people tried to push through barricades and police responded with pepper spray and penned them in with orange netting.
A video posted on the Occupy Wall Street Twitter feed late Wednesday night showed police swinging at a protestor with a night stick.
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The clashes marred what was an almost festive mass demonstration beneath the canyons of Lower Manhattan.
Members of the city's biggest labor unions put on their marching boots to walk in solidarity with the students who began camping out three weeks ago to protest the excesses of the richest 1%.
"We are the 99%. So are you!" protesters chanted as they marched to Foley Square, just north of City Hall.
Organizers said the crowd, which jammed the square and stretched for blocks along Broadway, was 10,000 to 20,000 strong.
"I want the wealthy to pay their fair share," said Alex Ponton, a 67-year-old retired salesman from Teaneck, N.J., who said he'd never been to a protest before.
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Cops arrest protestor on Broadway. (Julia Xanthos/News)
"If, in some small way, I can show up and yell and support and march, I'll do whatever I can do to help Main Street."
He welcomed the union muscle, saying it gave the protest more substance, "so it doesn't appear to be a clown show."
Bob Masters of the Communications Workers of America said the spontaneous uprising was in keeping with popular revolts breaking out all over the world this year.
"Occupy Wall Street captured the spirit of our time," he said. "This is Madison. This is Cairo. This is Tunisia."
Filmmaker Michael Moore railed against the fat cat bankers in plush offices far above the street, singling out Goldman Sachs.
"They are responsible for ruining the lives of millions of people," he said. "They weren't just satisfied with being filthy rich."
Twelve thousand people from around the world watched - or tried to - on a jittery Internet live stream.
"It's an epic march," said John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, who urged his 35,000 bus and subway workers to march.
The union influx helped hone the economic message of the often-incoherant early protests.
"I feel the middle class has been under attack for some time now. I always wondered when this was going to happen," said Jimmy Shea, 45, a union carpenter at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx who lives in Merrick, L.I.
"The students set it off with Occupy Wall Street and the unions came around because the unions are finding the same problems as the kids," he said.
After a round of speeches, the marchers headed back to Zuccotti Park, the epicenter of the grassroots howl of economic frustration that is spreading quickly around the country.
On the national stage, the movement was getting harder to ignore. Pizza mogul Herman Cain, the GOP primary front runner in some new polls, trashed the marchers as tools of President Obama.
"If you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!" said the self-made CEO of Godfather's Pizza.
Another would-be Republican president, Newt Gingrich, called the demonstrations a reaction to Obama's policies - the bank bailouts in particular.
"These are the Obama demonstrations," he said on the stump in South Carolina.
In Washington, Democratic pols began to speak up for the demonstrators.
"The silent masses aren't so silent anymore," said House Democratic Caucus chairman Rep. John Larson of Connecticut.
Rep. Louise Slaughter of upstate New York said, "For 30 years, America's middle class has watched its living standards erode while the wealthiest 1% amass fortunes that would make the robber barons blush."
At least 39 unions and community organizations joined the march, including MoveOn.org, the Coalition for the Homeless, the United Federation Teachers, United Auto Workers, United Healthcare Workers and Public Employees Union DC37.
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