Police Arrest 1002 Anti-Nuke Protesters At Wall St. Rally

NEW YORK CITY--City police yesterday arrested 1002 demonstrators, part of a crowd of more than 4000 antinuclear protesters who tried to close down the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Most exchange employees reported to work despite the chanting lines of demonstrators that greeted them at five police check-in points, and NYSE officials termed activity inside the exchange "fairly normal."

Police arrested the demonstrators, who remained peaceful all day, on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing government operations. Police issued summons and then released 757 of the protesters; the other 245, many of whom refused to cooperate with officials, were held overnight.

Organizers of the "Manhattan Project" demonstration demanded that NYSE officials "delist" 61 corporations involved in the nuclear power industry. The protest was also scheduled to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash.

Most of the protesters, who sat in groups near police barricades and in the middle of the financial district's busiest streets, went limp when police approached. Officers dragged demonstrators by their arms or carried them on stretchers to waiting buses and paddy wagons.

The day's most violent clash came shortly after 11 a.m., when police on horseback and foot charged through a group of protesters following a jazz band up Broadway.

Police knocked one demonstrator off a pair of six-foot stilts, and several officers clubbed a group of demonstrators near the front of the line.

I Love a Parade

"The decision to use the horses was a logistical one--we have no comment on why the decision was made to use force at that time," police public information officer Fred Elwick said yesterday afternoon. Police on the scene said the street was cleared because the demonstrators did not have a permit for a parade.

No one was hospitalized, although one woman, kicked in the head by a horse, was treated and released by paramedics on the scene. Elwick and exchange public relations official Charles Storer said no employees or police were injured.

Eye Spy

Protest leaders said they considered the day a success even though they failed to halt trading on the exchange. "This brings the connection between nuclear power and our economic system into the public eye," Carri Tarver, leader of a Greenwich Village group of protesters, said yesterday.

"We had to be pleased with how they behaved. There was no violence at all," Elwick added.

Exchange officials ordered employees to arrive for work between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m., two hours earlier than usual, yesterday. Workers who arrived before 7 a.m. strolled through police barricades without incident.

Demonstrators, many of whom camped in church cellars or homes of protest organizers Sunday night, gathered shortly after dawn, physically blocking entrances to the police check points while they sang folk songs and begged employees to "stay home, just for a single day."

Many brokers and exchange workers stepped over or on demonstrators to get through; others crawled under sawhorse barricades or let police hoist them across the barriers.

"We have no higher absenteeism rates than usual, "NYSE spokesman James Grinder said yesterday. Employees arriving for work early received overtime pay. Storer said, adding "it was pretty much business as usual" on Wall St.

Floor traders cheered and threw ticker tape when the opening bell clanged at 10 a.m. 50 years to the day after that ring signalled the start of a decade-long depression.

Big Board volume was lower than usuual--22 million shares--but Storer called that a coincidence. "The stocks they were talking about didn't seem to do anything dramatic. I checked a few of them, and General Electric, for example, was unchanged," Storer said.

Outside, police spent the morning arresting small bands of demonstrators, many of whom congregated at the corner of Exchange St. to block latecomers trying to report to work and to prevent buses carrying arrested protesters from leaving the area.

The arrested were taken to Police Plaza in Manhattan or to the 84th precinct house in Brooklyn. Demonstrators who refused to give their names, or whom police charged with resisting arrest, will be held until "the arraignments can take place, which may take a while since we are kind of clogged up," officer Richard Barbari said yesterday. Several demonstrators said police warned them they might be detained as long as 3 to 6 hours if they refuse to cooperate.

After police broke up the jazz parade at 11 a.m., demonstrators regrouped on the steps of the Federal Market, 100 yards down Broad St. from the exchange's main entrance.

As workers poured out of brokerage houses along the street for lunch, many demonstrators tried some anti-nuclear proselytizing.

"These kids are probably right, just like they were right about Vietnam. But it will take us ten years to realize it," Lee Virzi, an employee of a Wall St. brokerage house, said as he watched demonstrators dressed as neutron bombs and a core reactor vessel dance on the corner of Broad St.

"I don't think too many people here will be resentful," Virzi added.

But other Wall St. regulars scoffed at the demonstration. "They are freaks," one unidentified man said. "Do you think anyone with a job would be out here?" he added.

"The people with the money and the power will just phone in their orders from outside," Vito Gentile, a broker said.

After a quick meeting of affinity group leaders, demonstrators decided to march around the exchange.

A small flurry of ticker tape greeted the two-block-long line of demonstrators at one corner, and crowds lined Broadway five-deep to watch the parade.

Demonstrators skirted the exchange by a block in their first circuit of the area, and then sat down in the middle of Broadway shortly after 2 p.m.

Police waited ten minutes for the arrivals of paddy wagons and rapid transit buses, which were used all day to haul protesters to jail and then began to make arrests.

Warning curiosity-seekers to stay on the sidewalks, police took only 40 minutes to clear the street of nearly 200 protesters.

The peaceful demonstration was in sharp contrast to the attempted occupation of the Seabrook nuclear power plan three weeks ago, when demonstrators tried to take down fences with wire cutters and police responded with mace, tear gas, police dogs and firehoses. "This had different aims and a different philosophy," one protester said