On May 7, Walz joined fellow Minnesotan Collin Peterson as two of 19 Democrats who are among the bill’s 143 House co-sponsors.

Walz’s Mankato office received a petition with names of more than 400 constituents asking him to support the Federal Reserve Transparency Act (H.R. 1207).

Minnesota’s three Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are also co-sponsors of the bill, and Rep. Michele Bachmann enthusiastically attends Paul’s lunches on economic theory.

A protest against the Federal Reserve Bank’s role in the current economic crisis drew more than 100 to the bank’s Minneapolis headquarters last month.

But event organizer Melissa Hill told the Minnesota Independent the action is all on the ground today, with speeches and chants in the plaza in front of the Fed as well as a raucous parade around the bank’s riverfront headquarters.

Jordan Jelinek of Bloomington (in the foreground at left), a Tea Party protest veteran, said today’s gathering shared a message with the April 15 events: “Power to the people.”

Carrying a sign reading “Abolish the Federal Reserve System,” Jelinek said he “never really thought of myself as a protester until the socialist agenda of both Bush and Obama.” Government should leave people alone so they can engage in free trade, he said.

Government’s lack of control over the Federal Reserve was the main gripe of protester Matthew Caldwell of St. Louis Park. As an instution, the Fed, he said, is “not even quasi” governmental.

Like Jelinek and others at the rally, Caldwell supports a bill by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (HR 1207) to require an audit of the Fed. (Jelinek said the bill now has 82 co-signers including Minnesota Republicans Erik Paulsen and Michele Bachmann. He didn’t mention Democrats Keith Ellison and Collin Peterson, who opencongress.org also lists as co-signers — in error, it turns out, in Ellison’s case.

Caldwell missed the Nov. 22 End the Fed protest but attended an April 15 Tea Party, where he said Fox News’ hype had attracted followers of “Glenn Back, Sean Hannity, Fox News” who “co-opted”  the event.

Caldwell (pictured below) calls himself a “paleo-conservative” but said he distrusts the “left-right paradigm” that thrives on polarizing issues that distract attention from real issues.

Indeed, the first protest held at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve (video) in response to government bailouts of the financial industry was a more left-leaning affair contrasting concern for Wall Street institutions with a lack of concern for Main Street.

End the Fed is associated with Ron Paul but it’s an independent and non-partisan group, Hill said, noting that she had spread the word about today’s event via alternative outlets such as Indymedia.

She also said she has pushed for a future national End the Fed protest to be on a weekday, which she thought would help draw a crowd and more attention.