And that's a shame because the spokespeople for the status quo want to destroy you. They will say anything they can to dismantle and discredit this protest. And you are helping them. Why not let the best and brightest move to the front. And while you're at it, maybe let these three other kinds of people just, y'know, clap and hand out fliers because they're distracting from the message.

Personally, I find that message really compelling, and based on your signs I'm guessing you do too, but I don't hear it getting through. Probably because for every well-intentioned, well-informed, pragmatically-minded protester like this one or like this one there is a patchouli-laced, economically-retarded jackass hogging the media attention. (In the rare cases when the media decides to cover you at all).

Protesters Who Think the Problem is Simply Corporate Greed

One of the best things about working in New York City is that I get to go down to the protests and hear countless demonstrators eloquently explaining the abuses of corporate greed and showing how it has tainted a system at the expense of honest hard-working families - or at least that's what I hear as I have my liberal, pinko wet dreams while snoozing on the downtown 2. Unfortunately, what I actually hear is a lot of people talking about "fuckin' Corporate America, man," and that's just about it. That is not the refrain of a successful protest. That's why you never saw this:





"I have . . . had it up to here with these crackedy ass crackers."

Let's keep this a movement about change, not blame. Marching in the streets and calling for retribution from those shadow figures you believe caused the recession like it was a murder is better rhetoric for a lynch mob than people seeking to restructure society. Not to mention that the "fuck Corporate America rallying" cry is easy fodder for Conservatives to say simply, and convincingly, this is a group that hates capitalism.

Hating capitalism is not on the table. This is America. Capitalism defines our history, our economy, and our national psyche And the purpose of this protest cannot be a naive attempt to change the very souls of American businesspeople. To punish businesses for their greed. It's the wrong message and counterproductive. Call me jaded, but I thought we all just took it for granted that businesses are amoral creatures driven by profit. Being enraged at Corporate America for being greedy is like reading Cracked.com and being enraged by its use of the list format. This is who we are.

In the America I thought I lived in, we expect business-people to be driven by profit, but we rely on our Government to protect us from those abuses. We expect Government to set laws to govern what a business can and cannot do. Government can establish a minimum wage, ban child labor, and tax imports. Government can enact rules against predatory lending or . .. anything if it has the support of the people. And we expect our government to keep us safe from this cold unfeeling beast we call capitalism with things like food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and social security.

Isn't that the relationship we've all agreed on because it makes sense?

If you visited the zoo and your whole family were mauled to death by several ferocious tigers, would you march to Indonesia, protesting the insatiable blood-lust of tigers? Would you seek to have tigers removed from the zoo even though they're the biggest attraction, selling the most tickets and keeping everyone in business? Or would you just, y'know, be furious because the Zoo forgot to lock the cages? I thought we all knew tigers were dangerous and we agreed we'd keep them around anyway because we had competent zookeepers and big steel bars.

Let this be a protest which defines and demands a structure from our government to protect us from the wild animal of capitalism, because you'll never make a tiger a vegetarian no matter how many of you take a dump in Zucotti Park.

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