The police arrested scores of protesters Saturday as a Financial District protest moved north to Union Square, my colleague Colin Moynihan has reported.
The protesters, who are loosely affiliated with the Internet hacking group Anonymous and the magazine Adbusters, are a tech-savvy group, readily employing social media to trumpet their cause throughout the more than weeklong protest. As the arrests began on Saturday, onlookers uploaded video and commentary to a variety of social media sites almost instantly, so that it was almost as if the incident were being streamed.
Some did in fact catch and broadcast the events as they unfolded. The group Occupy Wall Street has been live streaming some of its activities. This video, credited to a member of the group, shows thick crowds milling about the street chanting. The chants peak to outraged yelling when a protester is seen being arrested on the ground. There is some profanity in the following videos.
In this video, posted by a user named HongPong on YouTube, the crowd swarms the police, chanting “shame, shame.”
In this video, uploaded to YouTube by a user called RTAmerica, New York Police Department officers are seen dragging a man, who appears to be unable to stand, by his feet. In it, as in several other videos, the videographer asks the person being arrested for their full name and its spelling.
In this video, posted by LibertyPlazaRev to YouTube, a young man with a red T-shirt is thrown to the ground by police and arrested.
As we reported on City Room, some protesters are posting commentary, pictures and video to Twitter even when under arrest.
The Twitter user PulseOfProtest has posted video from what seems to be the back of a police van alongside other arrested protesters on his Twitter account.