This is for those who supported the OWS people in the beginning. Do you still support them now?
I don't for the following reasons
1. Most if not all of the remaining protesters appear to be just the same crowed of useless, entitled bums that feed off society. In other words just as bad as the bankers they're against.
I've only seen one Canadian protest on video, but if it's like the US, it's mixed. Protests in places like Walnut Cree, CA (California not Canada) in the bay area reportedly had about none of the 'protester types' and just older protesters while the San Francisco protests have all types.
But your statement is absurd. Before we get to that, who cares? Let's say that Obama started a war with Canada, and there were big protests against it in the US. Let's say that the protests largely had the types of people you list. Does that invalidate the message of the protests - the war is ok, because of the protesters being those people?
No, it doesn't. But you apparently can't understand the merit of the issue as opposed to your opinion of the protesters. I view many of the protesters similarly to your description - there are things I don't like, a lot of grungy people obnoxiously shouting a few slogans - and I also see them as doing something great for society in making the effort to fight for the people against the terrible corrupt harm going on.
It's analogous to the Vietnam protests - who cares if you feel that way about the people protesting, they were protesting a corrupt war doing horrible violence. Good for them.
You should be supporting them for exercising some democratic rights for a good cause.
And that leads to your asinine claim the protesters are 'just as bad' as what's being protested.
It's estimated the rich have had their wealth that has corrupted our political system change the rules to divert trillions of dollars from the rest of the country to them, in perhaps the worst concentration of wealth problem in our history and one affecting the globe. There have been plenty of charts about this you don't appreciate; one statistic is an estimate that had this grab not been passed, American workers instead of making the same or a little less inflation adjusted $50,000 income would be making $93,000.
The wealth is there - it's just all gone to the rich creating a false 'economic downtime' for the people.
Now, you compare the protesters - who you criticize for trivial things and a few of them doing damage you measure in the tens to maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars of property damage in cities to the issue that has taken trillions of dollars from people. That is so idiotic as to show you as clueless.
2. They have no message. Its no longer about jobs or punishing corrupt bankers. Just devolved into pithy socialist slogans, like every other "protest"
Wrong. It's still about the corruption of the concentration of wealth.
3. They're causing tremendous damage to public property, which my tax dollars pay for. That's right, the 99% has to pay for what you wrecked. In Toronto, it's said that $45,000 in damage has been done to the park they're occupying. That could rise to over $100,000 if the city can't get in to winterized the sprinkler system.
See above. A million is one millionth of a trillion. Did I say idiot enough yet?
4. Shady elements have taken over. Drug use is running rampant in the camps. Vancouver's protest has already had a death from an OD. They're starting to attract violent groups. Toronto's has attracted the Mohawk Warriors, a native supremacist organization with a history of violence. Some of the incidents in the US protests are downright sickening.
"Shady elements"? You're talking about the American Tea Party, taken over by the shady elements like the Koch brothers.
Occupy hasn't been 'taken over', it's still a grass roots movement with all the messy chaos that comes with being a grass roots movement.
It does draw some fringes unfortunately - that's the price of a free society. For you it's white supremacists; for us it's groups like clueless self-described 'anarchists'.
So your argument is that the overdose in Vancouver would not have happened if the same people weren't in the protest? There wouldn't be any overdoses in this crowd?
Clueless.
5. When big unions get involved, I get suspicious.
Exposing your political bias and opposition to the people. Of COURSE the unions are likely to be backing a movement for workers to protest the corruption of the wealthy.
One minute you're criticizing the protests for not including people like union workers, the next you're attacking the protests for including the union workers.
Your attacks are nothing but specious attacks against the people protesting against massive corruption harming society - you are serving the interests of corruption.
It's one thing to point out criticisms of the protests while supporting their cause, and quite another to have petty attacks condemn the protests even happening.
There are always clueless people, as you show. Name me any protest or revolution and I'll show you people like you there. In the American revolution about as many people wanted to stay under the British as to form a new country. Hitler had supporters. Decades after Stalin there were Russians who missed him terribly. You're here cluelessly attacking the protests against the terrible corruption of our political systems and massive economic corruption and harm.
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