Stop the Machine!!!

The "Stop the Machine" rally organised by a group called "October 2011" echoed the demands of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in New York that drew more than 5,000 people, including labour-union support, on Thursday.

"The poor are no longer patient," said one of the speakers, Ben Manski, a Green Party activist from Wisconsin, from a stage near the White House, decorated with the "We the People" preamble of the US constitution.

"It took us long enough, but we are no longer patient," Manski told the crowd, a mix of young people and veterans of protest movements of past decades who descended on the square with placards, drums and sleeping bags.

"This is a sacred struggle, on a par with the abolition of slavery, voting rights for women and civil rights," Manski said, "and just like those movements, we are going to win."

The protest - which has a four-day permit - got under way just as Barack Obama, the US president, called the Wall Street protests an expression of the frustration that Americans are feeling.

"I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works," he told reporters at the White House.

Obama also used the opportunity to push forward his $447bn jobs bill, the American Jobs Act, saying it would ensure tougher oversight of the financial industry.