Reply #42: Usually an idea gets batted around and shared by many before someone steps up.

[MADem]

OWS needs at least spokespeople, if not leaders. Without someone who can validate information, tell the media what is true and what is not, the major themes that will be flogged until they bubble up on the nightly news will be

--Human poop at campsites
--Homeless bums crashing the party, using drugs, causing trouble
--Sex in sleeping bags
--Violence and vandalism and theft
--ACORN secretly running the show

and things of that nature.

It is naive to think that this thing can stay unorganized forever. It can't. Even in Egypt at the Arab Spring demos, there very quickly came to be a cadre of people who communicated with the press and called the shots.

It is my view that unless the movement sticks to its knitting, specifically jobs/economic parity/corporate corruption/governmental enabling/unfair tax codes/greed in banking and stuff of that general group of themes, they risk turning into an Any Protest Fits Most- "United for Peace and Justice" joke.

They did not need to be identified with the Boston accused terrorist, as an example. It doesn't matter how many people say "Well, it was just a few individuals" and "The Steering Committee (or what ever the hell little groupthink group) doesn't have a position on that" the bottom line is that when a big pile of people march from the OWS encampment to the courthouse where Osama's translator is on trial, shouting slogans, it does NOT help the movement and it creates an association. This isn't the "Can a Muslim Get a Fair Trial" protest--it's supposed to be about economic opportunity and corporate corruption.

That's just my opinion.