American Awakening: OWS replants flag at Zuccotti Park

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters retake their former famed stronghold of Zuccotti Park in New York, triggering several arrests by the police.

Anti-corporatism demonstrators had been evicted from the protest hub two months ago and the authorities had the park barricaded.

Barricades were taken down over Tuesday night after civil rights groups filed a complaint with the city’s buildings department, saying the barricades were against the city zoning law.

Occupy protesters returned to the park on Wednesday, occasioning a comparably harsher confrontation on the part of the police, who arrested three of them.

Protesters are planning to stay at Zuccotti Park, though, tents and sleeping bags have been banned there, since the November 15 police raid that forced the campers out of the park.

Over the past couple of months, the police have broken up Occupy encampments in cities and towns across the US and arrested dozens of protesters.

The Occupy Wall Street movement emerged after a group of demonstrators gathered in New York’s financial district on September 17, 2011 to protest, among other things, against the excessive influence of big corporations on the US policies as well as the unjust distribution of wealth and the high-level corruption in the country

There have been more than 5,800 arrests during Occupy protests in cities across the US up to December 31, 2011, according to the website Occupy-arrests.com.

Despite the crackdown, the Occupy movement has now spread to many major US cities, while inspiring rallies in Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries.

The worldwide demonstrations have taken issue with unemployment, war, and corporatism.