[Photo by Rob Bender]
INQUIRER: Ten protesters were arrested during an Occupy Philly sit-in Wednesday afternoon at the Center City headquarters of Comcast Corp. Several hundred people, including protesters and onlookers, watched the spectacle unfold at the Comcast Center on John F. Kennedy Boulevard. Area traffic was jammed for hours. About 1:30 p.m., nine protesters got into the lobby and sat for about an hour before being arrested. Another demonstrator had been arrested outside earlier. They had marched from the Occupy Philly tent city at Dilworth Plaza in solidarity with a “general strike” organized by Occupy Oakland protesters after a police crackdown last week that left an Iraq war veteran with a fractured skull. Among those arrested as Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey watched was a woman carrying a sign identifying herself as Diane Mohney, 66, of South Philadelphia. MORE
THIRD QUARTER REVENUE 2011: $14.3 billion
THIRD QUARTER PROFITS 2011: $908 million
THIRD QUARTER OPERATING CASH FLOW: 4.6 billion
TOTAL OPERATING CASH FLOW FIRST NINE MONTHS OF 2011: $13.4 billion
TOTAL REVENUE FIRST NINE MONTHS OF 2011: $40.8 billion
TOTAL PROPERTY & BUSINESS TAXES PAID TO CITY OF PHILADELPHIA 2011: 0
[SOURCE: Comcast Investor Relations]
[Photo via Associated Press/CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]
RELATED: Protesters shut down operations at Oakland’s port on Wednesday in demonstrations against economic inequality and police brutality, which turned tense as the night wore on. The protest by 5,000 people fell short of paralysing the northern California city that has been at the forefront of anti-Wall Street protests after a former US marine was badly wounded during a march. But as evening fell, an official said maritime operations at the Oakland port, which handles about $39bn (£24bn) a year in imports and exports, had been “effectively shut down”. “Maritime area operations will resume when it is safe and secure to do so,” the port said in a statement. A port spokesman said officials hoped to reopen the facility on Thursday morning. Protesters, who streamed across an overpass to gather in front of the port gates, stood on top of tractor-trailers stopped in the middle of the street. Others climbed on to scaffolding over rail tracks as a band played a version of the Led Zeppelin song Whole Lotta Love using amplifiers powered by stationary bike generators. MORE
LED ZEPPELIN: Whole Lotta Love (Royal Albert Hall 1970)