Anti-greed protesters rallied globally on Saturday, denouncing bankers and politicians over the international economic crisis, with violence rocking Rome where cars were torched and bank windows smashed.
Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests began in New Zealand, touched parts of Asia, spread to Europe, and resumed at their starting point in New York with 5,000 marchers decrying corporate greed and economic inequality.
After weeks of intense media coverage, U.S. protests have still been smaller than G20 meetings or political conventions have yielded in recent years. Such events often draw tens of thousands of demonstrators.
The demonstrations by the disaffected coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from major economies were holding talks on the debt and deficit crises.
"I'm not passive anymore and I don't want them to be. This is their future too," Dawson said. "I work four jobs part-time, I take whatever I can get."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told the crowd: "I hope this protest will result in a similar process to what we saw in New York, Cairo and Tunisia," he said, referring to revolutions in the Arab world.
Outside of New York, similar protests were held in other U.S. cities and Canada. Hundreds turned out in Washington, D.C., while a couple of thousand people gathered near Toronto's financial district as well as in Portland, Oregon.
A protest in Los Angeles drew about 5,000 people.
(Additional reporting by Catherine Hornby in Rome, Naomi O'Leary and Michael Holden in London, Natalia Drozdiak in Berlin, Alexandria Sage and Gus Trompiz in Paris, Iciar Reinlein, Jonathan Gleave and Carlos Ruano in Madrid, Cameron French in Toronto, Edith Honan, Ray Sanchez and Ed McAllister in New York, Carmel Crimins in Dublin; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Mark Egan and Todd Eastham)
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