Ok guys, this is devolving into a name-calling flame-war, and nobody wants that. I would like to clarify a few things, though: 1) I am not saying that the Occupy* Movement should not be out protesting. Even if I did, whether or not they should be doing this has 0% to do with my opinion. This is a free country and peoples' right to free speech is pretty much paramount. 2) I'm not saying thye need to have a coherent message. However, I pointed out the lack of coherent message, and the fact that I moticed the MULTITUDES of messages because someone DID actually ask Tom what the message was. This someone was not me. I was just jumping in with... 3) My FIRST-HAND OBSERVATION. I'm sorry, people, but I've been... accused of learning about all this from The Media. Yes, I heard about the Occupy* from media outlets (NPR, if you really want to know). I have not ever read an editorial about them. I don't watch TV news, I don't read newspapers, and if I do google up some news I red the FACTS. Yes, I did hear that there was no clear voice in the Occupy* movement, and I had some assumptions as to the main message, so you know what I did? I WENT DOWN THERE. Yup. I had a week off work, so I got up, drove downtown, located the unilateraly-renamed People's Plaza and LOOKED FOR MYSELF. In fact, I joined in. I marched around U.S. Bank Plaza, I TALKED to the other protestors, I gathered stickers and pamphlets (and READ them) and I took looooots and lots of pictures. Basically, I did the research. Now I'm not a very good Marketing Target. I don't ever watch commercials on TV (yay DVR), I don't really listen to commercial radio, and I have Adblock Plus. So I don't really know what media's 'coherent messages' is but it's kinda skipping over me. I used that term because it makes sense to ME, not because anyone has FED it to me. I've mentioned before, I do think we can use some social and economic change in this country. But if you're going to have a movement to achieve thic change, it really should have some goals. And I'll just point out ne thing. On Thursday, OccupyMN was (according to their twitter feed/facebook page (two sites I do not frequent but were a good source to find out the group's activity)) were gathering at U.S. Bank Plasa to protest forclosures. Yet a large percentage of the placards and signs people carried contained anti-war messages. I just think that if you're outside a bank, protesting forclosures, the vast majority of your signs should be on-topic. I would like to hope that this could be taken as constructive critisism. Again, I am actually very happy that people are finally getting up and making some noise. This country greatly needs to kick itself in the butt. People here are fairly apathetic and I am very happy to see them finally paying attention. We kinda dug ourself into this situation, so we need to work hard to dig outselves out. But that's a LOT harder to do when instead of bringing shovels, people bring everything from rakes to magazines to kitchen sinks. I would recommend that we drop this subject from the list at this point. I am more than happy to talk/discuss/debate the topic with anyone who is interested in doing this in a non-flame manner, and please feel free to email me directly if you like, but I think the list can do without it. And just to be on the safe side: Hitler. -Yaron --