NEW YORK — Occupy Wall Street will mark its first anniversary this September by attempting to blockade the New York Stock Exchange and trying to arrest bankers, organizers said Thursday.
The social protest movement has seen a steep drop in support since its founding a year ago, when hundreds of people camped in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street to protest bank bailouts and what they called the ruling "one percent."
But activists promise to make a comeback on the September 17 anniversary, about six weeks before Americans decide whether to reelect President Barack Obama or bring in his Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
The highlight of several days of street action will be a "people's wall" at the NYSE, Dana Balicki, a spokeswoman for the group, told AFP.
"We want to bring people down to the belly of the beast," she said. "That will be a pretty substantial act of civil disobedience."
In addition to staging a sit-in outside the heavily guarded building, there are plans to attempt citizen's arrests of bankers.
"That's still on the table. That's been talked about a lot. They've been planning some citizens' arrests for some time," 31-year-old Balicki said.
"There'll be a mass of people converging on the Stock Exchange to deliver our message: that we're the 99 percent and we're not going to take it."
Balicki said Occupy leaders have learned from past mistakes and are ready to get around any police crackdown.
Occupy's camp in Zuccotti Park last year spawned similar protests in cities around, the world as the movement tapped into widespread resentment over the economic slump, persistent unemployment and anger at Wall Street practices.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire entrepreneur, was initially tolerant.
However, after authorities cleared out the increasingly squalid tent camp, new attempts to protest were quickly overwhelmed by police, who regularly made dozens, occasionally even hundreds, of arrests.
Since then, the movement has failed to make good on promises to return as a significant force. Notably, efforts to make an impact at this week's Republican convention in Florida have fizzled out.
Balicki said "some really good tacticians" were at work on ensuring that the upcoming return to the streets won't be immediately quashed.
"We're learning from our past organizing mistakes and making it a little more difficult to get bottlenecked-in and squeezed by the cops," she said.
Organizers at the media-savvy OccupyWallSt.org site said that their protests are more relevant than ever.
September 17 "marks the beginning of year two of Occupy Wall Street and four years since Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, helping catapult our global economy into a new phase of disrepair," a statement said.
"No complaints from the rich one percent -- they're still rich. They're insatiable unless we push back."
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