They didn’t occupy Wall Street for long, shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, or win many new fans.
And by Thursday night, the thousands of protesters flooding lower Manhattan seemed to have worn out their welcome after tying the Financial District in knots.
Two days after losing their two-month-old encampment at Zuccotti Park, the day of demonstrations felt more like a final hurrah.
Their vow to get many more out in the streets fizzled, Mayor Bloomberg declared.
“Occupy Wall Street had predicted on their website that tens of thousands would be participating in today’s protests, but there have been far fewer – and so far they have caused what can accurately be described as minimal disruptions to our city,” he crowed.
Unless you were in the thick of it.
“Today they proved that they’re able to piss off the 99% by stopping them from getting home,” said City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens). “In my opinion, this is their last gasp.
“With silly stunts like this, they’ve angered people they’re supposed to represent.”
The protesters, still smarting over their defeat at Zuccotti in a city courtroom, took to the streets by the hundreds Thursday morning in an effort to show that the movement’s anti-greed message endured.
Later, several thousand union members and college students joined late day marches in Union, and then Foley squares.
By the time marchers crossed the bridge into Brooklyn as night fell, there were nearly 300 protesters arrested – including a symbolic 99 busted on a bridge ramp hours after the protesters failed to delay the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
Among those arrested in the evening protest were City Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), City Councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito (D-Manhattan) and health care workers union president George Gresham.
They all sported white T-shirts reading “99 Percent,” and chanted “All day, all week, Occupy Wall Street” before police took them into custody.
“The rich don’t care about us,” said James Frazier, 52, a union organizer. “There’s no more middle class. I work, and I’m poor.”
The massive police presence during the protests only emphasized the cost to the city: An estimated $3 million a month on overtime.
Day and night
The protests began shortly after sunrise on the streets around the New York Stock Exchange, and continued into the early evening.
The crowd burst into cheers when one protester – armed with a projector – beamed the message “99 Percent” onto the wall of a downtown courthouse.
While there were minor skirmishes between police and protesters, no major battles erupted despite cheek-to-jowl proximity for most of the long day.
NYPD cops in riot gear seized control of Zuccotti Park after an officer’s hand was badly gashed by a protester, setting off a ruckus inside the Occupy Wall Street outpost. Rookie cop Matthew Walters, 24, took 20 stitches to his left hand at Bellevue Medical Center after he was slashed with a star-shaped piece of glass taken from a protester’s Captain America costume.
The scuffle led to a tense lockdown of the park as cops searched for a suspect in the bloody assault. The fracas came shortly after the demonstrators ended their morning march aimed at cutting off access to Wall Street. The officer was one of seven wounded during the day, said NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Scores of cops already at the scene flooded the park after the incident. No one was allowed in or out, and police were seen taking one protester, Brandon Watts, 20 – his face covered in blood – out of Zuccotti after the scary incident.
Cops said Watts, of Philadelphia, Pa., climbed on a wall inside the park and began tossing objects at police, including an AAA battery. Watts – who has been arrested four times since protests started in Sept. – then charged a group of officers, swiped a hat off a deputy inspector’s head and ran off, police said.
As cops tackled him to the ground, he struck his head, cops said. He was treated at Bellevue Hospital before he was charged with assault and grand larceny.
With Rocco Parascandola, Kerry Burke, Erik Badia, Melissa Grace, Tina Moore and John Marzulli
