Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Wall Street protests swell in New York, Boston


Wall Street protests swell in New York, Boston.

 A group of union-backed organizations joined the loosely defined Occupy Wall Street movement again Tuesday, leaving behind the confines of New York's financial district for the posh neighborhoods that dot Manhattan's Upper East Side, according to multiple group representatives.
Crowds also swelled in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, where demonstrators waved placards and chanted slogans attacking corporate greed and social inequality.
The union-organized march, meanwhile, took protesters past the homes of well-to-do residents like billionaire David Koch, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Organizations such as UnitedNY, the Strong Economy for All Coalition, the Working Families Party, and New York Communities for Change were accompanied by protesters typically based in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned park in New York's financial district.
The Upper East Side march was "in support" of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but was not organized by it, said T.J. Helmstetter, a spokesman for Working Families Party, a coalition of New York community and labor groups.
Protesters hopped on the subway, emerging at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street near Central Park, where organizers held a press conference that addressed both New York-centric themes, such as state taxes, and the movement's broader concerns of social inequity.
"We are the 99%," the group chanted, a reference to their insistence that most Americans lack the influence in their country's political and financial affairs enjoyed by the elite 1%.
"I think it's time that these people realize that people are hurting in this country and it's time to reform what's going on in Washington," said New York resident Lenore Silverstein, who attended Tuesday's march.

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