Banks prepare for new Occupy protests
Revived movement readies for May Day
NEW YORK – The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall St. movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said.
Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on May 1 are Jpmorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy’s May Day planning committee. Events are scheduled for more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo & Co. investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week.
“Our goal is to kick off the spring offensive and go directly to where the financial elite play and plan,” she said.
After evictions and arrests from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to London that began last year, the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian Mcnary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, a subsidiary of Sweden’s Securitas AB. He works with international financial firms to “identify, map and track” protesters across social media and at their assemblies, he said. The companies gather data “carefully and methodically” to prevent business disruptions.
Banks are preparing for demonstrations at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Chicago summit May 20-21 by sharing information from video surveillance, robots and officers in buildings, giving “a real-time, 360-degree” view, said Mcnary, who works on the project. Banks co-operating on surveillance are like elk fending off wolves in Yellowstone National Park, he said. While other animals try in vain to sprint away alone, elk survive attacks by forming a ring together, he said.
Planning for May 1 in New York began in January in a fourth-floor work space about two blocks from Wall St., according to Holmes.
The date serves as an international labour day, commemorating a deadly 1886 clash between police and workers in Chicago’s Haymarket Square.