Found out my sister is seeing one of the higher-ups for an anarchist group involved in OWS. I asked her what his views on the goal of the movement was, and she said:
My sister wrote:
Well, we had an interesting discussion on it. You know how Mom and Dad raised us; you critique the status quo when you have some other viable options on the table. X is wrong, so why not try Y? But he was raised to believe differently. He was taught that if X is wrong, you get rid of X, even if you don't have a Y to replace it with. As citizens it isn't our job to make the Y option; but it is our job to destroy X if it isn't working. I pointed out that the end result of that would be anarchy, and he said, "Unless we tear open the moral and political fiber of the country, nothing new will spring forth. And whatever does come of it, even if we don't know what it is, has to be better than what we have now."
Basically he's offering destruction, not construction. He told me to stay away from the protests, because they will turn violent; that's the plan of him and his group. They're pushing the envelope on purpose, because they know nothing will change unless the country is shocked; they're making sure to push just the right buttons to have someone on the police force overreact. He feels sorry for the naive college kids legitimately believing that OWS will change anything just with a few signs, because they're going to get a big dose of reality when the police start to come down hard on them.
After I heard that, I've pretty much turned against the OWS movement. Yes, the majority of people are likely innocent of this kind of insanity, but there're definitely focused groups attempting to use the masses to incite violent retribution from the police. In the same way that all the Tea Partiers aren't racists or religious bigots, not all the OWS people are anarchists... but there are enough, and they are effective enough, to make the movements poisonous to the country. I'm not happy with the status quo, but I'm also not about to support overthrowing capitalism.
On a personal note, October 15th was a worldwide day of protest apparently. Meanwhile, I participated in a marathon that ended up raising over $1.1 million for children's hospitals across the country. When I saw the facebook posts about people protesting and clapping each other on the back for sticking it to the man, I felt how out-of-place their concerns were compared to the real issues facing people every day. hold signs and march on Wall Street, or try to raise money for sick kids? I think I picked the right choice this weekend.
Even if I got sick from the marathon and had to take today off, ha...