A horde of Wall Street demonstrators shut down the Brooklyn Bridge for 2 1/2 hours this afternoon, halting traffic and clashing as cops arrested as many as 700 on the famed span’s roadway.
About 100 cars were left stranded as the loud, angry crowd covered the crossing from end to end in an inflamed day of demonstrations against high unemployment, bank bailouts and financial pain for the masses.
One irate driver, a Ground Zero construction worker, blasted the pedestrians.
“I work my ass off all day, and these goddamned hippies close down the Brooklyn Bridge so I can’t get home?” he said. “This ain’t right!”
The rowdy protestors, who have repeatedly tussled with police in the two weeks they’ve spent downtown, made their way through the rain from Zuccotti Park to City Hall, where the NYPD locked the park gates and diverted them elsewhere.
The crowd bottlenecked at the entrance to the bridge, tying up traffic as they slowly oozed across in a bid to get to Brooklyn Bridge Park.
According to police, the NYPD arrested over 700 protesters during the demonstration.
“About halfway across the bridge, a bunch of people took the road,” said Occupy Wall Street protester Yaeir Heber, 22. “It was planned, at some point, to stop traffic and they did it midway and then when they did that cops started arresting people.”
Eventually police hauled away hundreds of protestors, who were allegedly a menace to drivers, into custody.
They cleared cars from the bridge, making room for paddy wagons and at least four MTA buses, loading protesters, their wrists bound with plastic zip ties, aboard.
Demonstrators lit up Twitter, slamming the NYPD for allegedly arresting young teens and cramming people into vans “with no air.”
Occupy Wall Street urged people to give them information about officers who were making arrests.
“To anyone who has seen officer badges, pics, etc. We name and shame,” the group tweeted.
The chaotic day of rainy protests ended with police finally clearing the crossing around 6 p.m. As buses full of those in custody rolled off the bridge, the crowd chanted: “Let them go!”
Some bold faced names have shown up at the Occupy Wall Street protests, including Susan Sarandon, Russell Simmons and civil rights activist Cornell West but at least one got a cold reception yesterday.
Embattled Congressman Charlie Rangel tried to lend his support but was chased away by a heckler.
Rangel had begun an informal speech to the crowd when a man started taunting him, and then coming towards him, witnesses said.
City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) was standing nearby as the incident unfolded.
“Charlie was saying how they need to have more people down here to support this. That’s why he was there,” Barron told The Post. “This heckler came out of the crowd and went after him.”
As Rangel, who was unhurt, backed away from the pushy protestor the crowd came to his rescue, swamping the heckler and chanting in response: “Everyone has the right to speak.”
A Rangel spokeswoman denied that the congressman was chased away.
“He knows people are frustrated and hurting badly from the financial meltdown,” spokeswoman Hannah Kim told The Post. “He is glad that he went.”
Once the demonstrations began, the crowd bellowed together as they marched: “Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like!”
Organizers of the amorphous group issued an ominous “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” Thursday night.
“No true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power,” the group declared. “We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.”