The Latest: About a dozen gather in Zuccotti Park

NEW YORK – The Latest on the commemoration of the grassroots Occupy Wall Street movement, which started five years ago at New York City’s Zuccotti Park (all times local):

Noon

About a dozen people have gathered in Zuccotti Park, the one-time encampment of the Occupy Wall Street grassroots movement known for its refrain “We are the 99 per cent.”

Three people are holding a large banner that reads “Occupy Wall Street.” A few others have signs on the ground calling for an end to “revolving door politics.”

An almost equal number of police are standing along the sidewalk outside the Lower Manhattan park.

Five years ago, Occupy Wall Street was everywhere, first in New York City, then globally. But its famous camp was cleared out in an overnight police raid two months after it started, and other Occupy locations fizzled soon thereafter.

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8:25

Five years after the Occupy Wall Street began and then seemingly fizzled, demonstrators are gathering once again in New York City’s Zuccotti Park on Saturday to mark the movement and what they say has been its lasting impact.

They take credit for introducing income inequality into the broader political discourse, and for inspiring the fight for a $15 minimum wage and, most recently, the Democratic presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Some political observers even draw a line between the movement and the rise of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who tapped into the vein of suspicion against the power of elites — the 1 per cent — that Occupy made ubiquitous.

Occupy organizer Kalle Lasn (KAH-lay LAH-son) says the movement “had a deep-down effect on activists around the world.”

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