Photo credit: Jared Malsin
The Local East Village reported on today’s excitement:
As documented on The Local’s liveblog, demonstrations and arrests took place across the city today as anarchists, union members, Occupy Wall Street supporters, employees of The Strand, residents of public housing in Alphabet City, and even banjo players used May Day as an occasion to protest the status quo.
The proceedings were for the most part orderly, but scuffles broke out when approximately 200 demonstrators, many dressed in black and some covering their faces, assembled in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, at Second Avenue and Houston Street, at 1 p.m. for a pre-planned, unpermitted “Wildcat March.”
When demonstrators carrying a banner tried to push past a line of police onto the crosswalk on the northeast corner of the park, officers arrested several people after throwing them to the ground. Police grabbed this reporter by his backpack and pulled him back from the scuffle while officers ordered other journalists to stand back.
The rest of the crowd bolted south on Forsyth Street, then ran through the streets of Chinatown and SoHo, and eventually north on Broadway toward Washington Square Park. Some protesters toppled garbage cans and pulled orange traffic cones into the street to obstruct police who pursued on scooters. Protesters scuffled with one photographer, warning him not to photograph the demonstration.
Police arrested three people at the southwest corner of Washington Square after wrestling them to the ground. One of the arrestees identified himself as Luke Richardson. Another said his name was Dylan, and a third female protester declined to give her name.
The story as posted by OccupytheLIRR on YouTube:
May Day 2012.
1pm: “Wildcat” strikers assemble at Sara Roosevelt Park in the Lower East Side (NYC). At 1:30pm, a march begins. After initial arrests, hundreds of OWS protestors, student strikers, and “wildcat” laborers take the streets of the Lower East Side, consistently staying a block or two in front of the NYPD. This clip begins with protestors blocking the street with police barricades, chased by NYPD on foot, ending in a dramatic arrest by an undercover cop.
Hat tip: Breitbart TV
