ALBANY -- Occupy Albany protesters moved their cause inside the Capitol this afternoon to chant just down the hall from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's second-floor office against his opposition to an income tax surcharge on millionaire New Yorkers.
Cuomo could not hear them: He was 150 miles south in Manhattan. The loud demonstration, in the ornate War Room, ended in about a half-hour. Protesters were surrounded by state troopers.
"We'll be back,'' nearly 100 demonstrators chanted as they marched back out of the Capitol.
Like other Occupy movements in other cities, the nearly weeklong one in a park across the street from the Capitol has its many targets: banks, Wall Street, the rich, war and cutbacks in services for the poor. But the Albany one has tried to ratchet up support for extending a 3-year-old income tax surcharge expiring at the end of the year, which will save wealthier New Yorkers about $5 billion next year.
The group included old and young demonstrators, including state university students, members of MoveOn.org, and a few members of the Public Employees Federation, the state workers union battling Cuomo for months over a new collective bargaining agreement.
"This is a call to an emergency,'' Rob Smith, with a group called Interfaith Impact, urged the gathering.
"Cuomo serves the 1 percent,'' one sign said.
The Albany protest has gotten relatively extensive press coverage since it was revealed Cuomo tried -- unsuccessfully -- to get the city's mayor to evict demonstrators last week after an 11 p.m. curfew in the park just across Washington Avenue from the Capitol.
--Tom Precious
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