Thousands of anti-corporate demonstrators and union members poured through New York’s financial district yesterday to protest inequality in the US economy.

The ranks of the more than two weeks-long sit-in protest in New York swelled hugely ahead of the start of the march as US labour unions lent their powerful voice to the movement, watched by large numbers of police. Crowds banging drums and carrying signs like “Save our Republic” and “Equality, democracy, revolution,” crammed into the narrow, teeming streets near Wall Street, symbolic headquarters of the US corporate world.

Chanting “this is what democracy looks like” and “we are 99 per cent,” the loosely woven coalition of protesters was now backed by major unions including the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers and Transit Workers Union.

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