THE OCCUPY WALL STREET protests have spread across the United States, as the demonstrations enter their 18th day.

Demonstrators marched on Federal Reserve banks and camped out in parks from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine, in a show of anger over the country’s economy and corporate greed.

In Manhattan, hundreds of protesters dressed as corporate zombies in white face paint lurched past the New York Stock Exchange clutching fistfuls of fake money. In Chicago, demonstrators pounded drums in the city’s financial district. Others pitched tents or waved protest signs at passing cars in Boston, St Louis and Kansas City, Missouri.

The arrests of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend galvanized a slice of discontented America, from college students worried about their job prospects to middle-age workers who have been recently laid off.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are using a common slogan – we are the 99 per cent – to highlight the inequalities that see in their society. On their website, organisers have written that they are inspired by “the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic” to achieve their ends, and stress the need for nonviolence during the demonstrations.

Additional reporting by the AP