Protest, Wall Street Protesters | featured news

Capitalism has taken root in the one of the most unlikely places in New York's financial district -- Zuccotti Park, home of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Oakland police raided the Occupy Oakland encampments early Tuesday morning and reportedly arrested dozens of protesters. Oakland police confirmed that an operation was in progress to clear out the encampments but said it was not clear yet how many protesters had been arrested.

Anti-Wall Street demonstrators of the Occupy Chicago movement stood their ground in a downtown park in noisy but peaceful defiance of police orders to clear out, prompting 130 arrests early Sunday, authorities said....

Months before the first occupiers descended on Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, before the news trucks arrived and the unions endorsed, before Michael Bloomberg and Michael Moore and Kanye West made appearances, a group of artists, activists, writers, students, and organizers gathered on the fourth floor of 16 Beaver Street, an artists' space near Wall Street, to talk about changing the world. There were New Yorkers in the room, but also Egyptians, Spaniards, Japanese, Greeks. Some had played a part in the Arab Spring uprising; others had been involved in the protests catching fire across Europe. But no one at 16 Beaver knew they were about light the fuse on a protest movement that would sweep the United States and fuel similar uprisings around the world.

Protesters in Rome smashed shop windows and torched cars as violence broke out during a demonstration in the Italian capital, part of worldwide protests against corporate greed and austerity measures. The "Occupy Wall Street" protests that began in Canada and spread to cities across the U.S. moved Saturday to Asia and Europe, linking up with anti-austerity demonstrations that have raged across the debt-ridden continent for months.

Protesters expressed fears Thursday that a scheduled cleanup of the private park where they've been camped out near Wall Street is merely a ploy to unravel the demonstration.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to spread—with massive arrests Monday night in Boston—the tea party wants you to know that the progressive protests have nothing in common with its own grass-roots effort.

Mounting anger over joblessness and income inequality snarled rush-hour traffic in downtown Chicago as thousands of teachers, religious leaders, union workers and other protesters marched on Monday.

Rasmussen Reports returns from the field with what I think is the first poll about Occupy Wall Street. The buried lede: At the moment, the protesters who've been mocked on CNN and Fox News, accused of class warfare by Mitt Romney, and handled delicately by the White House, have... decent favorable ratings.

Demonstrators are preparing to march on New York's financial district, with rallies also planned in several other US cities. Occupy Wall Street organisers hope to attract thousands of people to the rally in lower Manhattan, having won the backing of powerful unions. The demonstrations are now in their third week and show no sign of fading.