(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Occupy for Jobs demonstrators on Wednesday protested the bailing out of the banks, demanding more job programs for the unemployed.
"We've got thirty million people in this country who are either unemployed or underemployed and they need jobs. And so we're here to say that from now on, until the government begins dealing with that reality, painful reality, that unemployed people and their supporters are going to start occupying things,” said Larry Holmes, one of the organizers of the protest.
“We went into a few banks. We had no intention of staying there tonight, but it was to leave a calling card, so to speak."
The protesters left the branches of the banks after police ordered them to get out with threats of adverse measures.
Separately, a civil rights lawyer has criticized the New York Police Department (NYPD) for launching a raid against protesters at the city's Zuccotti Park on November 15. Norman Siegel said thousands of books that belonged to the protesters were lost during the raid.
"You see before you, on this table, the condition of some of the books that were returned. Damaged, not usable, not a pretty site,” said Siegel.
The Occupy movement emerged on September 17 when a group of demonstrators gathered in New York's financial district to protest social inequality and high-level corruption in the country.
Despite police hindrance and mass arrests, the Occupy movement has now spread to major US cities, and inspired similar protest efforts across the world, including those in Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal.
In Canada, police arrested several Occupy Toronto protesters on Wednesday.
Backed by a court order, city workers also dismantled tents and cleared debris from a downtown park in Toronto.
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