Lawrence resident Sarah Madden leads a group of demonstrators in a chant denouncing the recent bailout Friday, Oct. 10, 2008 outside U.S. Bank at the corner of Ninth and Massachusetts streets.

It’s time to get angry and make some noise about the bailout plan, a Lawrence protest organizer said Friday.

Dave Strano, 27, helped plan a demonstration in front of U.S. Bank at Ninth and Massachusetts streets to voice frustrations and call attention to the $700 billion economic bailout plan signed into law on Oct. 3. Protests to the bailout plan have sprouted up across the U.S.

“Our tax money is being used to bail out these lending firms that put us in this situation to begin with,” Strano said. “And that’s why we’re here and that’s why we’re going to continue to be here and continue talking to people.”

A group of about 20 protesters banged on pots and pans and chanted messages such as, “The people united will never be divided.”

Strano said he chose U.S. Bank as the backdrop to the protest because the bank is a subsidiary of Citigroup, one of the corporations in favor of the bailout plan, he said. U.S. Bank, however, has no relationship to Citibank.

“It’s going to benefit from this bailout package,” he said.

Meanwhile, people like Nick Entwistle,18, Kansas City, Mo., grapple with the figure $700 billion.

While holding a cloth banner that read “This is Class War,” he said, “When we talk about $700 (billion) that number means almost nothing to us, like it’s impossible for us to grasp – it’s so abstract,” he said. “But for these corporations, they deal with this amount of money, all in a world where there’s 1.5 million people dying of starvation.”

Larry Kelly, 57, a Lawrence nurse, said he thinks the repercussions of the bailout plan are still unknown, but likely far reaching.

“It was simply a free lunch for a bunch of bankers at the taxpayers’ expense,” he said.

“If we don’t protest like these people are doing, if we don’t get out and start doing something about it, we’re going to wind up slaves to the banking community, which are the global elite,” Kelly said.

Strano and others stressed the need for communities to unite at a grass-roots level to weaken reliance on government.

“What we hope to achieve today is to get people angry and to get people riled up and to get people involved,” Strano said.

He said the group plans to make the bailout protests a weekly occurrence.