Occupy Wall Street Participants Reflect on Altercation with NYPD

By [Rebecca Chapman] What started as a pacifist movement dubbed Occupy Wall Street (OWS) descended last weekend into a whirl of chaos and resulted in the arrest of over 70 people, said protest organizers. On Saturday, Sept. 24, the OWS group marched from their base in Zuccotti Park to Union Square in a move, they believed, that would call attention to their seemingly underreported cause. As the protesters attempted to return back to Lower Manhattan, the New York Police Department [NYPD] allegedly descended on the group, arresting people and charging them with a variety of violations. According to members of the makeshift movement, the group has been living in the park since Saturday, Sept. 17. OWS organizers say they have no single demand but rather wish to call attention to the anger and discontentment of their peers and form a network by gathering in large numbers. As the group marched through the streets to Union Square last Saturday, they occasionally deliberately marched in the street against traffic in an attempt to create chaos, as one OWS organizer who wished to remain anonymous described, as well as to make it more difficult for police to arrest protesters. ?I mean, we were in the street,? he said. According to the same protester, however, it was the police who instigated the violence on Saturday. Brandon Szaley, who flew in from Colorado to be part of the march, described seeing a police officer run down the street toward a girl who was caught between a mesh net and a car in the street. ?He just blindsided her and kept running like he didn?t do anything,? said Szaley. He also described seeing participants pepper sprayed without cause. The NYPD could not be reached for comment, but in a statement made to The New York Times on Sunday, Sept. 25, Police Department chief spokesman Paul Browne claimed pepper spray was used in an attempt to quell demonstrators who were preventing officers from erecting a mesh barrier. The group occupying Wall Street is hoping that the NYPD?s reaction to this march and the subsequent publicity it has brought their protest will only make the movement larger and more sustained. Isham Christie, an OWS organizer, added that he believed the arrested protesters have since been released and most have returned to the Zuccotti Park.

Photos by Wyatt Kostygan [photosmash id=15 layout='gallery_view_layout']