NY police arrest nearly 200 at Occupy Wall Street event

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Police say nearly 200 people have been arrested as Occupy Wall Street protesters march in small groups around Manhattan’s financial district to mark the anniversary of the grass-roots movement.

Police also removed four protesters in wheelchairs after they blocked a busy street Monday.

The demonstrators clogged traffic, and dozens of police officers and vans lined the streets.

But the protests lacked the heft of last year’s Occupy events. Last year there were thousands of protesters. On Monday morning, there were a few hundred at most.

Earlier, they gathered near Zuccotti Park, the site of the movement’s birth.

Events are planned in more than 30 cities worldwide.

In San Francisco, they included an afternoon march to the Financial District and an evening rally outside Bank of America.

Occupiers were upbeat as they spread out in their old stomping grounds, giddy at the prospect of being together again.

They brushed off any suggestions that the movement had petered out.

“This is a movement. It’s only been a year,” said protester Justin Stone Diaz of Brooklyn. “It’s going to take many years for it to develop and figure out exactly who we are.”

But the movement is now a shadow of its mighty infancy, when a group of young people harnessed the power of a disillusioned nation and took to the streets chanting about corporate greed and inequality.

A familiar Statue of Liberty puppet was back, bobbing in the crowd above protesters’ heads.

Protesters in wheelchairs blocked a road and chanted “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street!” before they were steered off the road by police.

Zuccotti Park, the former home of the encampment, was encircled by metal police barricades lined with police officers standing watch.