It’s déjà vu all over again.
On the one-year anniversary of when Occupy Wall Street first camped out in Zuccotti Park, Sept. 17, 2011, OWS will try to make an elaborate comeback today and regain some of the strength the movement enjoyed last fall.
As in the past, one of their key plans is to try to disrupt the morning commute in the Financial District.
Protesters say they will stage a sit-in outside the New York Stock Exchange at around 7:30 a.m. After that, they plan to move on to such targets as a Chase branch, the corporate headquarters of Bank of New York Mellon and a U.S. bankruptcy court, according to the group’s organizers.
Earlier in the month, Occupy Wall Street mentioned making citizens’ arrests of bankers as they go to work this morning, but it’s unclear if they’ll go ahead with that plan.
The day’s events will then conclude with an 8 p.m. march on Zuccotti Park, which has been barricaded. Police told Metro yesterday they would not close off any streets as a result of the protest.
But will OWS succeed in regaining the strength of last year?
“The numbers are not going to be like they were in the fall,” said Mark Bray, an Occupy Wall Street organizer. “In the fall it was a media sensation, it had a novelty to it, but that sort of hype is impossible to maintain forever.”
But although the group has lost some momentum, protesters said they have successfully brought economic injustice into the public eye.
“The language of the 99 percent and the 1 percent has now almost become cliché because it’s so popular,” Bray said.
Rent is Too Damn High joins Occupy
To celebrate its one-year anniversary, Occupy Wall Street held a series of events over the weekend, such as a concert yesterday afternoon at Foley Square that attracted about five hundred people.
A number of minor politicians were in attendance, including Jimmy McMillan of the “Rent Is Too Damn High Party,” who told Metro that al-Qaeda members were forming corporations in order to hide their true identities.
