Thousands of anti-corporate demonstrators poured into New York's financial district on Wednesday, backed for the first time in large numbers by trade unions and raising the stakes in a more than two-week long street revolt.
At least 5000 people, with streams of reinforcements arriving all the time, crammed into Foley Square in lower Manhattan, where the city's courts and government buildings are located. They then marched toward Wall Street.
Union officials estimated the number at 8000 to 12,000 and it was clearly the biggest protest yet for the fledgling movement.
The mood was festive, with some even bringing babies, but there was also defiance as the crowd chanted: "This is what democracy looks like!"
What started last month as a ragtag sit-in protest against corporate influence and social inequality was transformed into a bigger, more serious event with the arrival of major unions including the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, Transit Workers, and teachers' union.
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Unions brought numbers and organisational skills to the rally, which, unlike others staged throughout the Occupy Wall Street protest, was authorised by the police.
And in another sign that the initial, youth-led campaign of civil disobedience had gained momentum, Democratic politicians for the first time voiced support for what some analysts are starting to herald as a potential left-wing rival to the conservative Tea Party movement.
A similar demonstration, with a focus on protesting the US war to subdue the Taliban in Afghanistan, was planned for Thursday in Washington.
In New York, crowds banging drums and carrying signs like "Save our Republic" and "Equality, democracy, revolution," crammed into the narrow, teeming streets around the financial district, symbolic headquarters of the US financial system.
Chanting "we are 99 per cent," the loosely woven coalition of protesters flooded through lower Manhattan, watched by large numbers of police, who did nothing to intervene, other than to keep traffic flowing.
However, police made clear that Wall Street itself was off limits, barricading the famous thoroughfare leading to the New York Stock Exchange to all but residents and local employees.
Protesters have a huge list of grievances, ranging from the mountain of US student debt to shrinking retirement benefits for the elderly, as the United States struggles to regain its once powerful economic stride.
"Something is wrong in America," said Charles Jenkins, director of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, who spoke to the crowd from a makeshift podium. "When students went out of college and they can't find a job, something is wrong."
