Wall Street ‘flooded’ by climate protesters
At least 100 arrested as 3,000 protesters “Flood Wall Street” in opposition to capitalism’s role in climate change.
New York – Thousands of people took to the streets of New York to blockade Wall Street, a day after the city saw the largest march of its kind protesting against climate change.
At least 100 protesters were arrested as they tried to get through police barricades on Monday, as 3,000 people tried to “Flood Wall Street” and create what organiser said was “a rising sea of people to take radical action”
The protest came a day after an estimated 300,000 people marched in New York calling for urgent action on climate change, ahead of a UN General Assembly meeting in the city.
Michael Premo, one of the organisers of the Flood Wall Street demonstration, said: “It’s a collective response to a shared problem. The fundamental cause of the climate problem is our economic system.”
The demonstration began in the late morning, and because it was unauthorised, organisers prepared the demonstrators for the possibility that they would be arrested.
“If you’ve never been arrested before, this is the perfect action to join,” called out one organiser to the assembled activists.
Gabe Jack, 16, from Cincinnati, said that the protests were the first he had ever been to, and he called climate change “a cause worth getting arrested for”.
“We’re flooding Wall Street because Wall Street is flooding us,” he told Al Jazeera.
Don Pedro, a protestor who came from Peru for the march, said: “We’ve come to the heart of the financial system to demand a stop to the destruction of our planet.”