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Activists protest against Wall Street in New York City
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Jeremy Hobson: For more than a week, about 200 people have occupied
a small green space in New York, in the financial district, called Zuccotti Park.
They've been protesting for changes on Wall Street, though it's not exactly clear what kind of change they're looking for, as Stan Alcorn reports.
Stan Alcorn: This past weekend, the activists calling themselves Occupy Wall Street hoped to lead a few thousand people on a march through lower Manhattan. About five hundred turned up, with nearly as many messages. Signs ranged from "buy local" to "no such thing as too big to fail."
Milo Gonzalez is one of the marchers.
Milo Gonzalez: There's too many issues to represent here that we can't have any one solid demand.
They've got plenty of slogans though.
Crowd: All day, all week, occupy Wall Street.
Crowd: Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.
There was a central theme running through the protest -- that Wall Street is winning while the vast majority are losing.
Ryan Burrows drove from Pennsylvania to take part.
Ryan Burrows: The wealth disparity in America is just ridiculous right now. And I'm just sick of it.
The march ended a couple miles north of Wall Street with scores of arrests. But organizers plan to continue occupying Zuccotti Park for the foreseeable future.
In New York, I'm Stan Alcorn, for Marketplace.
Please keep covering this, Marketplace, and talk about the police brutality which is taking place down there. People are staying in spite for the brutality, and connected occupations are taking place in Austin, Los Angeles and there is one starting in Denver. Today I was talking to people who brought the message from Wall Street to East Setauket, Long Island. They were getting a lot of expressions of support from passers-by. They were standing, appropriately, in front of one of our post offices, which is being threatened with closure. This is a very important story and NPR has so far refused to cover it, as has the rest of the MSM.
Been following this all week- we had our own rally in solidarity with their first day - 9/17i in Austin.
You need to mention the general assembly process to decide those demands which has been a key feature of this movement since day one. One this is nearly universal in this whole thing, at that is a demand for the end of corporate personhood as allowed by the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC- This is the backlash from that ruling.
