By Patrick Michels |
10.07.11
americanindependent.com
On the street corner outside the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas,
crowds of Ron Paul supporters with megaphones shouting, “Audit the Fed!”
are nothing new.
They were there again Thursday, but they were joined this time by
hundreds more demonstrators whose anger has turned not only on the fed,
but on all the big banks and corporations that have avoided serious
accountability for their role in the financial crisis.
On the street corner outside the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas,
crowds of Ron Paul supporters with megaphones shouting, “Audit the Fed!”
are nothing new.
They were there again Thursday, but they were joined this time by
hundreds more demonstrators whose anger has turned not only on the fed,
but on all the big banks and corporations that have avoided serious
accountability for their role in the financial crisis.
The protest began in the morning at nearby Pike Park, then marched a
few blocks to the sidewalk and lawn beside the Federal Reserve. The
crowd came and went from there a couple times during the day, first
marching to the downtown landmark Chase Tower, then again to the John F.
Kennedy Memorial Plaza.
Full of signs and shirts bearing the Occupy Wall Street movement’s
“99 percent” slogan, the crowd was also peppered with 9/11 Truth
demonstrators and the Guy Fawkes masks of the hacker group Anonymous.
They chanted their thanks to the Dallas police lined up to monitor
the crowd. One leader reminded the crowd that police and firefighters in
Texas were facing serious job losses too, thanks to smaller state and
local budgets.
Dallas AFL-CIO board member Gene Lantz read a statement of support
for the crowd before the march began Thursday. “We’re just going as
participants,” Texas AFL-CIO spokesman Ed Sills told the Texas
Independent. “We haven’t organized it. We’re going to take part in it.”
McKenzie Wainwright, one of the protest’s leaders, announced that
folks from the Transportation Workers Union and the Communications
Workers Union were in the crowd as well, according to the Dallas Observer.
Though the crowd was mostly young, there was a wide range of ages — a
shirtless middle-aged man showed up wearing a barrel, and another woman
carried a two-sided sign reading, “Seriously pissed off grandma,” and
“I can’t believe I’m still protesting this crap.
Bernard Kern, a retired Lutheran minister from North Richland Hills,
came armed with a four-point call for change on the sign he carried:
stop war, economic exploitation, hunger and global warming. “It’s pretty
exciting,” he said, to see so many young people out marching for
change.
“A diversity of issues is a good thing,” he said, because it shows
how many different slices of the city are ready to stand up and complain
about feeling disenfranchised. “We feel like we can’t influence our
legislators to effect systemic change.” (CONTINUE READING)