Wall Street protesters buoyed by global support

NEW YORK?? Anti-Wall Street demonstrators were on the march again Saturday in New York City as protests against corporate greed and economic inequality spread around the world.

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Over the past month, the protests have expanded from New York's financial district to cities across the United States and abroad. Demonstrations were called this weekend in the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa.

In New York, as many as 1,000 protesters marched Saturday morning to a Chase bank branch in the financial district, banging drums, blowing horns and carrying signs decrying corporate greed. A few protesters went inside the bank to close their accounts, but they didn't stop other customers from getting inside or seek to blockade the business.

Story: Day of global Occupy protests gets under way

Police told the marchers to stay on the sidewalk, but the demonstration appeared to be fairly orderly as it wound through downtown streets. Other demonstrations were planned around the city all day Saturday.

The march came a day after protesters at the heart of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in New York exulted Friday after beating back a plan they said was intended to clear them from the privately owned park where they have slept, eaten and protested for the past month. They said their victory will embolden the movement across the U.S. and abroad.

"We are going to piggy-back off the success of today, and it's going to be bigger than we ever imagined," said protester Daniel Zetah after Friday's announcement that protesters could remain in the park.

In the U.S., marches were planned in cities large and small from Providence, Rhode Island, to Little Rock, Arkansas; to Seattle. About 200 people camped overnight in Detroit, a group spokeswoman said.

How does a group like Occupy Wall Street get anything done?

In New York, a march on a bank was scheduled for late morning with a rally simultaneously elsewhere, to be followed by other events through the day that were to culminate in what organizers called an Occupation Party starting late in the afternoon in Times Square.

The U.S. protests were linking up with anti-austerity demonstrations that have raged across debt-ridden Europe for months.

A call for mass protests on Saturday originated a month ago from a meeting in Spain, where mostly young and unemployed people angry at the country's handling of the economic crisis have been demonstrating for months. It was reposted on the Occupy Wall Street website and has been further amplified through social media.

On Saturday, tens of thousands nicknamed "the indignant" marched in European cities from Sarajevo, Bosnia, to Stockholm.

The Friday showdown in New York came as tensions rose, with dozens of arrests in several U.S. cities and scattered clashes between demonstrators and police.

The owners of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan had planned to temporarily evict the protesters Friday morning so the grounds could be power-washed. The protesters, their numbers swelled to about 2,000 before daybreak, feared the cleanup was a pretext to break up the demonstration. They vowed to stand their ground.

Just minutes before the appointed hour, park owners Brookfield Office Properties announced it would postpone the cleanup at the request of "a number of local political leaders." The company gave no details. Word of the decision brought boisterous cheers from the demonstrators.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose girlfriend is on Brookfield's board of directors, said his staff was under strict orders not to pressure the company one way or the other. He noted that Brookfield can still go ahead with the cleanup at some point.

In San Diego, police used pepper spray to break up a human chain formed around a tent by anti-Wall Street demonstrators. Police in riot gear herded hundreds of protesters away from the Colorado state capitol early Friday in Denver, arresting about two dozen people and dismantling their encampment. In New Jersey's capital of Trenton, protesters were ordered to remove tents near a war memorial.

In New York City, police arrested 15 people, including protesters who obstructed traffic by standing or sitting in the street and others who turned over trash baskets and hurled bottles. A deputy inspector was sprayed in the face with an unknown liquid.

Organizers in Des Moines, Iowa, accepted an offer Friday night from the mayor to move from the state Capitol where they were prohibited from staying overnight to a city park blocks away, averting a possible showdown.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Meghan Barr, Karen Matthews and Patrick Walters in Philadelphia, Patrick Condon in Minneapolis, Mike Householder in Detroit, Colleen Long in New York and Michael J. Crumb in Des Moines, Iowa.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44914155/ns/us_news-life/

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