Monday, October 14, 2024

"Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters arrested outside New York Stock Exchange"

"Jewish Voice for Peace" meet Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

From the Associated Press:

About 200 demonstrators protesting Israel’s war in Gaza were arrested in a sit-in outside the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, police said.

The protesters chanted “Let Gaza live!” and ”Up up with liberation, down down with occupation!” in front of the stock exchange’s landmark building in lower Manhattan.

“The reason we’re here is to demand that the U.S. government stop sending bombs to Israel and stop profiting off of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” said Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace, the group that organized the demonstration. “Because what’s been happening for the last year is that Israel is using U.S. bombs to massacre communities in Gaza while simultaneously weapons manufacturers on Wall Street are seeing their stock prices skyrocket.”

A handful of counterprotesters waved Israeli flags and tried to shout down the pro-Palestinian chants....

....MUCH MORE

Bringing to mind a vignette we retold as the outro from:
Meanwhile in Britain: "Just Stop Oil" Banquet Crashed, Rape Alarms Ascend On High
They have banquets?
***
....Oh does the rape alarm chorus bring back memories, not personal, but of this story:
November 23, 2022
Great Moments In Oil Protest History

I thought we had posted this account but a search of the blog says no.

I failed you.

And though it reads like an Onion parody, this is exactly how it was published. Kudos to the writers.

From The Times, February17, 2005:

By Laura Peek and Liz Chong

Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement. 

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. “The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims,” a spokesman said.

Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said.

“They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.” When a trader left the building shortly before 2pm, using a security swipe card, a protester dropped some coins on the floor and, as he bent down to pick them up, put his boot in the door to keep it open.

Two minutes later, three Greenpeace vans pulled up and another 30 protesters leapt out and were let in by the others.

They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts “open outcry” trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading.

But they were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. “They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately,” a photographer said. “It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back.”

Mr Beresford said: “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.”

Last night Greenpeace said two protesters were in hospital, one with a suspected broken jaw, the other with concussion.

A spokeswoman from IPE said the trading floor reopened at 3.10pm. “The floor was invaded by a small group of protesters,” she said. “Open outcry trading was suspended but electronic trading carried on.”....

....MORE

A couple paragraphs that will live as long as the Internet Archive (and a few other places) remain accessible:

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

As we've said regarding the tactics used by Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion:

"Is that a man-bun? I haven't seen a man-bun in years?" , wait, sorry, that was a comment on the vandals in Vienna. From the same post:

As with any behavior, if the consequences become painful enough the behavior will stop.