American Awakening-US protesters storm Zuccotti Park

Hundreds of anti-wall street protesters have made use of the massive police presence in Times Square on New Year’s Eve to retake their former campsite at Zuccotti Park in New York.

The demonstrators took some of the metal barricades that surrounded the park, and tossed them into a pile in the hours before midnight on Saturday night.

“All week all year, we’ll still be here,” protesters chanted as they jumped on top of the pile.

Zuccotti Park hadn’t been occupied since protesters were evicted in mid-November in an early morning police raid. That led to police raids on other encampments across the US from Boston to Los Angeles.

Most anti-Wall Street encampments in the country have been forcibly cleared.

Scuffles broke out between demonstrators and police as the NYPD presence started to amass again shortly before midnight and at least one police officer fired an arch of pepper spray into the crowd.

The Occupy movement first began when a group of demonstrators gathered in New York’s financial district on September 17, 2011 to protest against the unjust distribution of wealth in the country and the excessive influence of big corporations on US policies.

Despite the police crackdown and the mass arrests, the Occupy movement has now spread to many major US cities as well as to other countries such as Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal.