Protests Erupt in over 1500 Cities Worldwide

FROM TAHRIR SQUARE TO TIMES SQUARE

The following piece appeared in ML Update, the weekly newsmagazine of the CPI-ML (Liberation), in its October 18-24, 2011 issue and is being reproduced from there with due acknowledgement.

Tens of thousands flooded the streets of global financial centres, capital cities and small towns on October 15.

After triumphing in a standoff with the authorities over the continued protest of Wall Street at Liberty Square in Manhattan’s financial district, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread worldwide today with demonstrations in over 1500 cities globally and over US cities from coast to coast as of October 15. In New York, thousands marched in various protests by trade unions, students, environmentalists, and community groups. As occupiers flocked to
the Washington Square Park, two dozen participants were arrested at a nearby Citibank while attempting to withdraw their accounts from the global banking giant.

“I am occupying Wall Street because it is my future, my generation’s future, that is at stake,†said Linnea Palmer Paton, 23, a student at New York University. “Inspired by the peaceful ocupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo, tonight we are coming together in Times Square to show the world that the power of the people is an unstoppable force of global change. Today, we are fighting back against the dictators of our country—the Wall Street banks—and we are winning.â€

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WHILE the spotlight is on New York, †occupy†actions are also happening all across the Midwestern and Southern United States, from Ashland, Kentucky to Dallas, Texas to Ketchum, Idaho. “People are suffering here in lowa. Family farmers are struggling, students face mounting debt and fewer good jobs, and household incomes are plummeting, said Judy Lonning a 69-year-old retired public school teacher. “We’re not willing to keep suffering for Wall Street’s sins. People here are waking up and realising that we can’t just go to the ballot box. We’re building a movement to make our leaders listen.â€

Protests filled streets of financial districts from Berlin, to Athens, Auckland to Mumbai, Tokyo to Seoul. In the UK over 3000 people attempted to occupy the London Stock Exchange. “The financial system benefits a handful of banks at the expense of everyday people,†said Spyro Van Leemnen, a 27-year-old public relations agent in London and a core member of the demonstrators. “The same people who are responsible for the recession are getting away with massive bonuses. This is fundamentally unfair and undemocratic.â€

In South Africa, about 60 people gathered at the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, and protests continued despite police efforts to declare the gathering illegal. In Taiwan, organisers drew several hundred demonstrators, who mostly sat quietly outside the Taipei World Financial Centre, known as Taipei 101.

Six hundred people have begun an occupation of Confederation Park in Ottawa, Canada today to join the global day of action (October 15). “I am here today to stand with Indigenous Peoples around the world who are resisting this corrupt global banking system that puts profits before human rights,†said Ben Powless, Mohawk citizen and indigenous youth leader. “Native Peoples are the 99 per cent, and we have been resisting the one per cent since 1492. We are marching today for self-determination and dignity against a system that has robbed our lands, poisoned our waters, and oppressed our people for generations. Today we join with those in New York and around the world to say, No More!â€

In Australia, about 800 people gathered in Sydney’s central business district, carrying cardboard banners and chanting: “Human need, not corporate greed.†Protesters will camp indefinitely “to organise, discuss and build a movement for a different world, not run by the super-rich one per cent,†according to a statement on the Occupy Sydney website.

The rapid spread of the protests is a grass-roots response to the overwhelming inequalities perpetuated by the global financial system and transnational banks. The organisers said that the Occupation of Liberty Square in Manhattan will continue indefinitely.

Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s financial district, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1500 cities globally.

OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest one per cent of people, who are writing the rules of the global economy, are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality that is foreclosing our future.

(Source: www.occupywallstreet.org)