Flood Wall Street Ends with Mass Arrests after Day-Long Protest

United under the “Flood Wall Street” banner, some 2,000 demonstrators streamed into New York’s financial district Monday afternoon and promptly sat down in the streets. The sit-in, which organizers said was aimed at confronting “corporate polluters and those profiting from the fossil fuel industry,” completely shut down traffic in the area for nearly eight hours.

Around 7:30 pm, the New York Police Department (NYPD) began arresting protesters en masse and charging them with disorderly conduct. Earlier in the day, several arrests were made, with one witness telling RT pepper spray was used in at least one circumstance, RT reported.

Activists, many of whom took part in the Occupy Wall Street protests three years ago, did not have a permit for the demonstration from the NYPD, meaning they risked arrest for participating. National Lawyers Guild members sprinkled through the crowd handed out legal advice to those at the scene, taking down names and even helping people set aside bail money.

Warnings for people to leave the scene began being aired as organizers discussed plans to spend the night in the street. Police then separated the sit-in members from the rest of the crowd, installing a barricade. A diverse set of people were ultimately detained when the time came, including a man dressed in a polar bear outfit, two women in Captain Planet costumes, and a man who had attended the rally in a wheelchair and with a respirator.

Despite the mass arrests, the sit-in participants did not resist police when the plastic handcuffs came out, and the whole process was done in an orderly fashion. As individuals were escorted into police vehicles, people shouted various chants, such as “We’ll be back!” and “Go arrest Wall Street.”

Much of the original route mapped out by organizers had been gated off by police, but around 12 pm EST the march moved from Battery Park, weaving through traffic before setting up camp near the Wall Street bull on Broadway.