OCCUPY WALL STREET, the protest encampment at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, has many historical inspirations. After all, the tactic of sitting down and refusing to move was used by angry veterans marching on Washington in the early Depression years, striking automobile workers in the late 1930s and civil rights protesters in the 1960s. But there is a local precedent, one that few people remember today: the sit-ins and “occupations” that followed New York City’s deep budget cuts in 1975 and 1976.

In the spring of 1975, amid a recession and mounting anxiety about municipal bookkeeping, the banks that had long marketed the city’s bonds refused to do so any longer. To regain access to the bond market, and under pressure from Albany and Washington, Mayor Abraham D. Beame proposed a series of austerity budgets, slashing funds for schools, libraries and firehouses and, for the first time, charging tuition for the City University of New York.

Leaders of public sector unions organized a mass march on Wall Street to protest the cuts. They criticized the First National City Bank (forerunner of Citibank) for failing to support the city in its hour of need. They urged members to cancel their accounts and withdrew union funds from the bank....