155 Seized in ‘Green’ Protest on Wall Street

At least 155 demonstrators were arrested this morning outside the New York Stock Exchange as several hundred people assembled in a post-Earth Day protest against U.S. companies they branded as polluters.

Banner-waving protesters chanted and danced up and down Exchange Place near the world’s biggest stock market, but the gathering was calm and trading was not interrupted.

“It is absolutely normal,” NYSE spokeswoman Sharon Gamsin said.

A police spokeswoman said 500 officers had been assigned to the area, outnumbering the roughly 400 demonstrators, in an effort to keep protesters away from the NYSE building on Wall Street.

The early morning protest in the heart of the nation’s financial district was organized by a number of “green” political groups from New York to Quebec and followed the observance of Earth Day 1990.

The demonstrators called in a handbill for people to gather to “shut down Wall Street” in a nonviolent civil disobedience action.

Capt. Steve Davis, a New York Police Department spokesman, said most were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, blocking traffic and throwing garbage. “Most who were arrested wanted to be,” a police sergeant said.

Police cordoned off Wall Street and Broad Street outside the exchange, allowing traders and other Wall Street officials to pass through and enter the exchange and other buildings.

Men in pin-striped suits scurried up and down Wall Street, newspapers under their arms and briefcases in hand, largely ignoring occasional heckling by demonstrators, some of whom pleaded with the financiers to “take the day off”.

“Fine with me,” retorted one man in his early 30s, without breaking stride toward his office doorway.