A group of students carrying signs and shouting slogans staged a protest on the Glenn Terrell Mall against large corporations and the 1 percent of U.S. citizens who hold most of the nation's wealth.

This protest, Occupy the Palouse, was held as a show of solidarity with other similar protests going on around the nation, which started with Occupy Wall Street, Pullman resident Paul Mencke said.

"There was a group of five of us who got together and planned this (Monday) night," senior women's studies major Kelley O'Brien said. "We wanted to show solidarity with protests around the country. We think this is important for students on campus to know about this and get involved."

They used Twitter, texting and Facebook to advertise for the event, O'Brien said. They will be meeting on the mall every day this week.

The protest started out small with two people meeting on the steps of Todd Hall, gaining participants as the day continued. They carried signs that read, "The revolution will not be privatized," "Students in solidarity with the 99%" and "Corporations are not people."

They also shouted slogans representing their cause.

Graduate student in architecture Gerardo Gonzalez Gomez spoke out against large corporations taking over and the need to get rid of them.

"All those rich people can share their wealth with us," he said.

He said large corporations should hire more local employees and lessen overseas hiring.

"I think there's a lot of people without jobs over here," he said. "We have a lot of immigrants who are already living here. Why are we hiring people overseas?"

Mencke said he hopes the demonstration showed the local community that this matters. The general population should look at how the economy is set up to benefit a minority of people and to oppress the majority.

"Solidarity and democracy in action," he said describing the protest. "I think it's a very motivating and inspiring movement right now. It's very new, and it also seems to not really have one leader or one exact message. I think that's kind of the new wave of pitching a movement."

Freshman philosophy major Jacob King said he disagreed with the message behind the protest and shared his opinion with the protesters. Though he said he understands what they are saying, he said the content of the ideas are misguided.

He said he disagreed with the concept that government should have more power to regulate which people businesses hire or giving them the power to push corporations to stop hiring cheaper labor from overseas.

"The problem with the system is, we can invest in the government and if that's the most sound investment to get what you want, that says the government has too much power over what goes on in the economy," he said. "It's just going to spiral until the government has almost totalitarian control."

He also disagreed with the ideas that the rich are responsible for fixing the current economic problem and that they should have to pay more taxes because they earn more money.

"I really hope people stop expecting everything to be done by corporations and the rich to pull things out of the hole," King said. "The fact of the matter is they pay so much more taxes as it is."