NEW YORK — Thousands of protesters, waving pink slips, formed a symbolic unemployment line stretching three miles from Wall Street to the site of the Republican National Convention today, a day after police arrested nearly 1,000 anti-GOP demonstrators.

The protesters stood peacefully in a single file on a chalk line for 15 minutes along Broadway, raising bright pink flyers that listed unemployment statistics and read: “The Next Pink Slip Might be Yours!”

“They’ve done everything they can to enrich the fat cats,” said Bob Keilbach, 62, an engineer.

Yesterday, police struggled to contain swarms of protesters with metal barriers and orange netting, eventually arresting 970 demonstrators with their sights set on a fortress-like Madison Square Garden.

More protests were planned for today, including an evening rally in Central Park’s East Meadow.

Police said more than 1,500 people have been arrested in convention-related protests since late last week. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said officers “have shown great restraint in the face of relentless provocation.”

Protests flared yesterday outside the New York Public Library, near the site of the fallen World Trade Center and in the historic Herald and Union squares.

“People are trying to question the policies of a corrupt government. They take to the streets and don’t ask permission,” said Gan Golan, 30, a graduate student from Boston, who was arrested hours later after he sat in the street and refused to get up.

On the stone steps of the library, hundreds gathered for a march toward Madison Square Garden. Verbal confrontations erupted as police moved them from the library’s front door and wrapped the entire block in orange netting. About 75 people were taken into custody, most for disorderly conduct.

About eight blocks south, demonstrators gathered in Herald Square, only a block from the convention, where they lingered near police barricades into the night.

A bus carrying Louisiana delegates was blocked by protesters. About 150 people were arrested in the incident and its aftermath.

At Herald Square, where Chris Matthews was anchoring convention coverage, a protester jumped over a park fence and tried to rush Matthews and his panelists, said MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines.

The man was blocked by security guards and removed by police before he reached any of the panelists, who included former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman and journalists Howard Fineman and David Gregory, Gaines said.

One of those arrested late yesterday in Union Square was a 19-year-old East Harlem man who was seen on a videotape attacking a detective a day earlier, police said. Police said they were charging the man, Jamal Holiday, with second-degree assault on a police officer.

But the activism has been largely peaceful.

Earlier yesterday, near ground zero, police encircled demonstrators from the War Resisters League with orange netting and arrested about 200.

Outside the Fox News Channel studios in midtown Manhattan, police in riot gear contained around 1,000 demonstrators behind barricades.

In what was dubbed a “shut-up-athon,” protesters denounced what they called the network’s right-wing slant. One woman held up a sign that read: “Republicans are really stupid. They watch Fox News and believe it.”

A 21-year-old Yale student was charged with assaulting federal officers and impeding the operation of the Secret Service after he entered a restricted area near Vice President Dick Cheney’s booth at the convention on Aug. 30, coming within 10 feet of him and shouting anti-war and anti-Bush statements.

A woman also was detained inside the Garden around 10 p.m. yesterday after she refused to leave a restricted area, said Secret Service spokeswoman Ann Roman.

The woman, 51-year-old Medea Benjamin of San Francisco, said in a telephone interview that she had been waving a protest sign and yelling at Cheney as he sat several yards away. She said she was a freelance journalist and had entered the convention using press credentials. Benjamin said she was handcuffed and questioned in a basement security room for several hours before being released.

In this morning’s unemployment protest line, demonstrators silently handed out the symbolic “pink slips” to passers-by.

“I’m concerned that unemployment is going up so drastically under the Bush administration,” said Gary Goff, 57, a data processor. “I think Bush is a disaster for working people.”

Jerry Nowadzky, 49, of Monticello, Iowa, said two companies he worked for outsourced to other countries. After losing his job as a $17-an-hour machinist, he now works at a grocery store for $10 an hour with no benefits,

“I can barely survive, and it’s because of jobs going oversees,” he said.

The “unemployment line” was organized by the nonprofit Washington-based People for the American Way and was part of the Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues and Ideas that called for a creative “response” to official party politics.