Occupy Wall Street movement returns to New York City

Hundreds of protesters gathered in New York’s Duarte Square on Saturday in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The grass-roots movement was celebrating its three-month anniversary.

Organizers said they were also rallying to find a new base camp for the movement, which lost its iconic Zuccotti Park home after police evicted them on Nov. 14.

A possible new camp site would be an empty lot next to Duarte Square, owned by Trinity Real Estate.

“Today we are out here along with civil rights leaders, members of the religious community, local artists, members of the community board, calling upon Trinity Church to allow us to use this vacant lot next door, which has been vacant for three months, will and continue to be vacant for another, for a short period of time as a place to meet, to voice our protest until they come up with some other use for the space,” Mark Bray, member of the OWS press team, explained.

Among the hundreds gathered was New York City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, who said that he supports the  movement.

“This movement has been built on the need of the working class and the middle class. This movement is not going anywhere, is not leaving this city unless we take particular initiatives to close the gap between the 1 per cent and the 99 per cent,” Rodriguez told Reuters Television.

Some of the protesters said they came out to have their voices heard, such as Wayne Alterisso. The 64-year-old is a Vietnam War veteran, and a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service. He is now fearing for his job.

“Unfortunately letter carriers are at work because of Congress, as the Postal Service is in the constitution,     we’re regulated and controlled by Congress. And they want to get rid of 100,000 letter carrier jobs,” Alterisso said.

Debora Munczek, a clinical psychologist supporting the movement, said that losing Zuccotti Park was expected.

“I don’t think that it was something that was going to be able to last forever in that setting,” Munczek said.

“So yes, I think it lost some immediate force, but there is really events happening all over, all the time, every  day. And they are not happening at Zuccotti Park for the most part, they are happening all over. So I think that what the movement was really about was not just Zuccotti Park,” she added.

Occupy Wall Street hit the headlines when protesters took over Zuccotti Park on Sept, 17, sparking  demonstrations across the United States and elsewhere in the world and, in some cases, violent clashes with police.

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