Wall Street Protests

ABC News reports: "Protesters who vowed to 'occupy Wall Street' are holding their ground in downtown New York, and say they have no plans to leave anytime soon.

"The protest started Saturday with a 'Day of Rage,' when thousands of people gathered in the Financial District and vowed to stay on Wall Street as long as it takes to make their point that they will "no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent." See #occupywallstreet on Twitter.

Live stream of Wall Street protests.

NATHAN SCHNEIDER, nathan at therowboat.com

Schneider is an editor of the website Waging Non-Violence. He is covering the Wall Street protests and filed a report for Democracy Now this morning.

He said today: "Much is being made of protesters not having a set of demands, but a large part of their point was to bring people together in general assemblies and have demands derived from those gatherings, literally taking democracy to the streets."

DAVID GRAEBER, david.graeber at me.com

Graeber is participating in the protests today. He teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College at the University of London and is author most recently of "Debt: The First 5,000 Years."

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said in response to the protests: "You have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs. That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

Graeber said today: "He's [Bloomberg] prescient, because if you look at who showed up, it was mostly young people, and most of them were people who had gone through the educational system, who were deeply in debt, and who found it completely impossible to get jobs. I mean, these people feel very strongly that they did the right thing. They did exactly what they were supposed to. The system has completely failed them. And they're not going to be saved by the people in charge. If there's going to be any kind of society worth living in, we're going to have to create it ourselves."