N.Y. activists take their message to the doorsteps of top executives

NEW YORK - Now it's personal: Hundreds of anti-Wall Street protesters held a "Millionaires March" on Tuesday past the homes of some of the wealthiest executives in America, stopping to jeer "Tax the rich!" and "Where's my bailout?"

Walking two-by-two on the sidewalk because they had no march permit and didn't want to be charged with blocking traffic, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement and other groups made their way up Manhattan's East Side, along streets like Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue where some of the richest 1 percent of the population live.

They paused outside buildings where media mogul Rupert Murdoch, banker Jamie Dimon and oil tycoon David Koch have homes, and decried the impending expiration of New York's 2 percent "millionaires' tax" in December.

"I have nothing against these people personally. I just think they should pay their fair share of taxes," said Michael Pollack, an office worker in a law firm. He held up a sign with a saying attributed to department store founder Edward Filene: "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them."

For the last 31/2 weeks, protesters have besieged a park in lower Manhattan near Wall Street, denouncing corporate greed and the gap between rich and poor. The uptown march marked the first time the Occupy Wall Street movement has identified specific people as being part of the 1 percent the demonstrators say are getting rich at the expense of the rest of America.

When the march reached Park Avenue and East 93d Street, protesters stopped in front of a building where they said Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's chairman and CEO, has an apartment. Marchers screamed, "Where's our bailout?" and "How do we end this deficit? End the war, tax the rich!"

JPMorgan was among the banks that received a federal bailout, money it has since repaid.

Dimon got supportive words Monday from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is himself a billionaire executive but whose East Side townhouse was not on the protesters' list of targets.

Dimon has "brought more business to this city than maybe any other banker in [the] modern day," the mayor said. "To go and picket him, I don't know what that achieves. Jamie Dimon's an honorable person working very hard. He pays his taxes."