Just to interject your last thoughts, I've seen a mix of both love and hate for them. More hate than the love. Don't be so quick to judge. Same goes for a Ron Paul argument or Christian based thread.

Maybe bottles needed to be thrown to wake the movement up and take it out of its glorified loitering stage.

There's only so long that a movement can follow the rules its trying to break before it becomes nothing more than a legal event with no purpose or balls.

I imagine

that if there wasn't a cop dressed in riot gear, there was no reason to throw anything?

Provocation is a duel edged sword.

Originally posted by Absco
Just to interject your last thoughts, I've seen a mix of both love and hate for them. More hate than the love. Don't be so quick to judge. Same goes for a Ron Paul argument or Christian based thread.

Too much doesn't have to equate to a majority though
I understand what you are saying

Hell even if there are more anti-ows posts there's the pro-ows minority is still too large

Yeah well i don't support stupid people or stupid actions throwing things and atagonizing the police there is only but one outcome and for any to sit there and expect the police to just stand there and take whatever they literally threw at them.

I side with the police they respond to their instigations good luck getting cop haters ever seeing that tho.

Originally posted by Evolutionsend
I support them because they're the only ones that have stood up and said, "Let's stick it to the man".

But they are NOT sticking it to the man
Sticking it to the man never meant people who are rich, the 'man' always represented entities that took something from YOU, like tax
So I think you may be confused with that phrase and thus support the movement for misguided reasons

Originally posted by Evolutionsend
It seems like anyone that stands up is deemed trouble before long. We need a babyface to stand up, someone that's never even gotten a speeding ticket. I'm not sure anyone like that exists though.

Umm... I have gotten speeding tickets and other types of tickets

you are trying to dumb down basic crticial thinking
stick to the issues, understand what the problem is and i do not care if you are clean or have a babyface or not

look at the picture you are painting
you are saying either you protest like an idiot or you have a babyface with no tickets and speak your 'mind'
as if the middle logical ground is non-existant

you are being part of the problem

A protest is a lot like a concert..

First you throw some bottles on the stage to hype up the band and amp up the show, then you push your friend in the crowd to start a nice mosh pit, you rush for the stage, jump up grab the mic and do a nice scream with the singer before diving into the pit...

Its only a matter of time before the band starts a wall of death and it becomes the most talked about show for years!

Well there are two ways to look at police reaction on this particular protest.
Either the police shouldn't have been heavy handed because it injured / punished those that were peacefully protesting. (Pro OWS)
Or the police should not have been heavy handed because it increases public sympathy for the protest (Rational anti OWS).

However, there is a third view common among the extreme anti OWS element. They think that OWS protestors either deserve it, or that OWS are to blame for how the police behave.

The reasonable anti OWS people should spend as much time fighting the extreme anti OWS element as they fight the pro OWS. They understand that its not so much about who is to blame, its about public perception (through the media etc) about who is to blame.

I would think this would be common knowledge by now--certainly it's common knowledge among the police: There are people whose only purpose in life is to attend events like this and cause trouble. That is their only purpose on Planet Earth; that is what they do in life. That is where these things always start, and as often as not it's the innocent people who are too close to them who suffer.

I tell you this from experience. Having attended many a protest in Berkeley, and having known a substantial number of these (self-described) Anarchists, I tell you they are almost without exception the cause of these problems.

Of course the police welcome them. In most cases the police are waiting for their orders, their excuse, to put down the protest. What's more, I have no doubt that they are taught in their training to aim for the head of the nearest protestor when they fire off their tear gas, their rubber bullets, their beanbags--whatever.

Just tonight I saw on the local (Oakland) news a police sergeant saying how sorry they were that this poor marine was injured; how many of their own officers are underwater in their mortgages; etc., etc. But they were "just following orders."

Just following orders. Just following orders! Just following ORDERS! I ask you: Whose job is it to order their police forces to brutalize people exercising their right to protest? Whose job is it to order their men to shoot someone in the head with (presumably) a gas canister, and then fire flash-bang grenades at his comrades who come to his aid?

Sure they're sorry now. They're sorry their worthless, cowardly asses were video'd while doing it; sorry they've now been shown to be the worthless, bullying s***s they are.

But, you know--they were just following orders....