Reuters: Most Read Articles: Occupy takes May Day protests to streets

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Occupy takes May Day protests to streets May 1st 2012, 21:16 1 of 27. A masked protester with Occupy Wall Street stands on Broadway in New York as part of a nation-wide May Day protest, May 1, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford By Edith Honan and Emmett Berg NEW YORK/OAKLAND, California | Tue May 1, 2012 5:06pm EDT NEW YORK/OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered outside banks, meditated in public parks and staged anti-corporate song-and-dance routines on Tuesday in a May Day bid around the United States to revive a movement that triggered nationwide protests last year against economic injustice. Hundreds of protesters in Oakland, California, clashed with baton-carrying police who fired flash-bang grenades and used a loudspeaker to order demonstrators to disperse from an intersection, in just one of numerous demonstrations that unfolded in U.S. cities. Police arrested small numbers of protesters in minor clashes around New York, chasing hundreds of marchers along Broadway. Although labor unions rejected pleas from leaders of the Occupy movement for a general strike, and demonstrators backed off a pledge to occupy San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, activists hailed the day's events as a step forward in the movement that had grown inactive and cash poor since capturing world attention last fall. "We've been building important alliances and radicalized people in what they're willing to endorse. I mean, we never even used to celebrate May Day. Now look at this," said David Graeber, an anthropologist and author active in the movement. May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, has long been a day on which the labor movement holds street demonstrations and marches, but less so in the United States than elsewhere around the world. Many demonstrators wore black bandanas symbolic of an anarchist faction within the largely peaceful Occupy movement, leading to some of the confrontations with police. About 400 New York City protesters - most of them clad in black, with black bandanas covering their faces - ran onto Broadway as police chased them on scooters. At least five were arrested. Occupy Cleveland canceled its events "out of respect for the city" after U.S. authorities announced the arrest of five self-described anarchists in the Cleveland area on suspicion of plotting to blow up a four-lane highway bridge over a national park. Occupy Cleveland said in a statement the men arrested were associated with their movement but that "they were in no way representing or acting on behalf of Occupy Cleveland" and that the group was committed to non-violent protest. In Seattle, some 50 black-clad protesters marched through downtown, carrying black flags on sticks, which they used to shatter the windows of several stores including a Nike Town outlet and an HSBC bank before police moved them out of the area. Inspired by the pro-democracy Arab Spring, the Wall Street protesters last year targeted U.S. financial policies they blamed for the yawning income gap between rich and poor - between what they called the 1 percent and the 99 percent. TRAFFIC SNARLED In San Francisco, a protest by unionized ferry workers worsened the morning rush-hour for Bay Area commuters. Anticipating a one-day walkout by workers, transportation officials suspended ferry service between San Francisco and Marin County to the north, forcing some 3,000 commuters to head into town over the Golden Gate Bridge instead and slowing traffic over the famed span. "I'm a single person barely making ends meet myself. If I had kids it would be 10 times worse. It's hard enough, isn't it?" said picketing ferry deckhand Leslie Propheter, 52, from the nearby town of Novato. Across the bay in Oakland, demonstrators painted graffiti on buildings and signs in the center of town with one protester throwing a hammer at the window of a Chase bank branch. The window did not break. At least 500 gathered near Frank Ogawa Plaza, the heart of the Occupy movement there last fall, marching up and down various streets, closing those roads to traffic as they went, while police kept a low-profile presence nearby. One group entered a Bank of the West branch to stage a protest inside. Occupy Chicago protesters being shadowed by police gathered outside Bank of America branches, raising a large "Chicago Spring" banner and chanting "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out." Police blocked a State Street bank entrance, and banks along Chicago's financial spine of LaSalle Street prepared for protesters by posting extra guards and closing some entrances. About 200 protesters in Portland, Oregon, were "moving" a woman back into her foreclosed house, chanting "welcome home" when she managed to get in through a side door. Portland Mayor Sam Adams thanked student demonstrators who marched through town and gathered at City Hall, saying, "keep up the great work" and inviting them to use city hall restrooms. "The Wall Street fat cats are unfairly gaming the system in a way that makes the common man upset," said Bradley Shields, 56, a freelance travel photographer from Honolulu who was visiting New York. New York police reported 10 instances of harmless white powder being mailed to financial institutions and others, along with a note saying, "Happy May Day ... This is a reminder you are not in control." (Additional reporting by Lucas Jackson, Keith Bedford, Atossa Abrahamian, Ronnie Cohen, Teresa Carson and Andrew Stern; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Philip Barbara) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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