A crowd of several hundred protesters, marching under a banner called Flood Wall Street, had done just that on Monday. As night fell, the demonstrators stopped traffic on Broadway near Wall St. as the group’s hard-line elements staged a sit-in and were then herded by police, handcuffed and either arrested or summonsed.
With traffic on one of the Financial District’s main arteries blocked, the police switched over to roundup mode under the watchful eye of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. A few people in the crowd shouted anti-police statements, but the mass arrests were conducted without the violent police-versus-protester clashes that characterized the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.
The day of demonstrations and civil unrest followed after more than 100,000 people marched in Midtown on Sunday to clamor for more steps to be taken to counteract climate change. At Monday’s peak, the Flood Wall Street followup event attracted about 1,000 participants. It was intended to culminate in civil disobedience arrests.
Earlier in the day, the activists gathered near the “Charging Bull” statue in Bowling Green and squared off with police officers who largely appeared to conduct themselves so as to avoid confrontation. Demonstrators inflated a large “carbon ball,” as they called it, and bounced it off cars and buses.“The people are rising, no more compromising,” the crowds chanted.
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