By Eileen Fleming
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wwno/local-wwno-989183.mp3
New Orleans, LA – Their complaints are lobbed at a web of government, corporations and financial leaders they blame for the country's troubling economic state. Here's what some said when asked why they're demonstrating.
Neil Kallianpur
"I've been angry for a while, through I've been aware of the fact that there needs to be change and stuff. And I'm just now excited about the fact that we can actually get together a group of like-minded people and try and make a difference, or just spread awareness - do anything we really can do."
Megan Gafford
"The fact that our government's kind of turned into a .. almost a -- just thin fa ade of the corporations are working behind like a puppetry for them, and that shouldn't be how our country runs."
Michael Deese
"People ask what are we really protesting. It's the practices of those big banks of - they make all the decisions and they have bigger influences than us and so they need to act more responsibly. And if they won't act more responsibly then we should regulate them. We should give them, force them, to act more responsibly because they're too big to fail."
Louis Gonzales
"The people on Wall Street, the feds, they take all the money, they get bailed out. They're millionaires. Why they get bailed out and the American public is not getting bailed out. Nothing's going forward. Everything's going backward."
Danny Stovall
"Well, I'm standing up today because I've had people in my family who have been taken advantage of by insurance companies. I have a sister who is living on a fixed income and has worked all of her life and can't make it buying her medications, and so I'm standing up against the insurance companies right now."
New Orleans police are standing by the plaza, but have no plans yet to clear the demonstration.
For WWNO, I'm Eileen Fleming