Hundreds camped out in London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam on Sunday after clashes in New York and Rome in worldwide protests seen as the start of a new global movement against corporate greed and budget cuts.
An estimated 500 people spent the night outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London’s financial district, where around 70 tents could be seen. Some 200 people also camped in front of the European Central Bank building in Frankfurt and 50 tents were seen outside the stock exchange in Amsterdam. There were rallies in 951 cities in 80 countries around the globe on Saturday in an extension of a campaign born on May 15 with a rally in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square by a group calling itself “Indignados” (“Indignants”).
The rallies passed off mostly peacefully but in Rome hundreds of the tens of thousands of protesters set cars alight, smashed up banks and hurled rocks at riot police, who responded by firing tear gas and water cannon jets. Seventy people were injured, including three in a serious condition, and 12 people were arrested. There were also clashes in New York where the “Occupy Wall Street” movement has gained pace and 88 people were arrested.
“I think it is very moving that the movement that was born here has extended throughout the world. It was about time people rise up,” said 24-year-old Carmen Martin as she marched towards Puerta del Sol. In Washington, the son of slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr told a crowd on the National Mall that his father would have been proud. “I believe that if my father was alive, he would be right here with all of us involved in this demonstration today,” Martin Luther King III said.
Major protests also took place at European Union institutions in Brussels, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Leipzig in Germany. Hundreds also set up camp outside Australia’s central bank in Sydney. Demonstrators also gathered peacefully in Paradeplatz, the main square in the Swiss financial center of Zurich. There were smaller mostly peaceful protests also in Amsterdam, Geneva, Dublin, Miami, Montenegro, Paris, Sarajevo, Serbia, Canada, Vienna and Zurich, with protesters chanting anti-capitalist slogans and wearing satirical masks.
In Greece, Mexico, Peru and Chile, thousands also marched to protest what they slammed as an unfair financial system and stagnant unemployment.
