MarketWatch - August 21, 2014, by Greg Robb - Protesters, worried that the central bank is about to put its foot on the brakes, have come to the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole retreat this year to urge the central bank to hold off and give the economy more time to heal. This is believed to be the first time there ever has been protesters at the event.

“We strongly urge the Federal Reserve to reject the calls to raise interest rates and slow the economy down,” said The Center for Popular Democracy, a coalition of 70 organizations, in a letter to Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen and her colleagues.

“Although the stock market has roared back to life, and the wealthiest Americans are richer than ever before, too many of us struggle to secure even basic levels of dignity,” the letter said.

Becky Dernbach, 28, an organizer with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change — an advocacy group for low-income residents in Minneapolis — said she came to Jackson Hole to make sure that the voices of average workers were being heard by the Fed.

Kendra Brooks, 42, a resident of Philadelphia who has an MBA but still found herself out of work even after her unemployment benefits ended, said the American dream has “fizzled” in this economy.

“We are not their [the Fed's] primary concern. They are more focused on the top end of the [income] scale,” she said.

The activists said the Jackson Hole protest was the start of a new effort to get officials to understand the economy is broken.

The group held a two-hour meeting with Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who has been one of several regional bank presidents advocating for a rate hike sooner rather than later.

Ady Barkan, a staff attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy, said that the group appreciated the meeting but that the two sides had talked past each other.

George told the group that higher rates might not come soon, but said are coming and will balance the economy, he said.

“That is completely wrong,” Barkan said. The way to combat imbalance in the economy is through strong regulation “not throwing people out of work,” he said.

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