After spending time watching their antics, defense of violence and other criminal activity, racial/gender based hate, and level of immaturity- spending time amongst ‘professional protesters’ has made one thing clear to me. Many in this community could be dangerous to our cause.
I’ve heard leaders of this community complain that we are not more ‘grateful’ for what they have done; they’ve referred to newcomers as ‘Mactivists’, complained about all of the ‘Yuppies’ joining the cause. They have been actively excluding the masses, responding to public postings on private forums- keeping themselves far from the masses. There is a feeling of exclusivity, of being better than others.
It has taken 6 days of, painful, conversations to people in this crowd to stand-down on the issue of property destruction- and there is great resistance to using the word ‘denounce’ in reference to violence. Rather than listen and discuss logically, many of us have been subjected to abusive language, and race/gender based hate.
I beg of you all to stop for a moment and realize that (to use the words of one of your own) you are about to “typically lefty fuck this up”. This protest is about ALL of the people, not select few- and, regardless of how long you have been fighting, there is no special privilege here.
This is a movement of the people- not of the professional activists. You all need to drop the baggage you’ve been carrying, and quit pushing antiquated ideologies . The world has changed since the 60’s, now it is time for the protestors to change with it.
Tomorrow I will attend, and will push that we hold a resolution to DENOUNCE violence of all types- physical, verbal & property damage. The 99% despise this behavior, and will not tolerate such things- and cannot be held back by a small percentage of the population….
(Posted on Occupy Vancouver’s Facebook page on October 15th)
