adminanti-Wall Street protests shut down one of the United States’ busiest ports.
Oakland – which does 59 percent of trade with Asia and is the fourth busiest US port – sent staff home early on Wednesday as hundreds of protesters besieged the docks.
“Maritime operations remain effectively shut down,” said a Port of Oakland statement in an update late Wednesday night, adding that services “will not resume until it is safe and secure to do so”.
Demonstrations that started on Wednesday were mainly peaceful until around midnight, when dozens of protesters hurled rocks and bottles, briefly occupied a vacant building and torched a barricade. Riot police responded with tear gas.
The Los Angeles Times reported that three protesters were hospitalised and several officers injured. Several dozen protesters were also arrested yesterday morning.
Local media reported that two protesters had been hit by a car and taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. While the protests were mainly peaceful, some acts of vandalism were reported, targeting closed-up bank branches downtown.
At one point some 200 people chanted outside a Wells Fargo branch, which had graffiti scrawled on its walls reading: “The 1 percent won’t back down” and “Who’s robbing who?” according to local CBS television. – AFP/LA Times.
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