I feel like the occupy protest started out as something noble, now it seems like just an excuse to make waves without really having a set goal. I met quite a few Occupiers during the NATO protest and of the ones I talked, a lot of them didn't even know what they were protesting. They were there because they didn't agree with the establishment or the 1% but then they go around stealing from the nearby houses and causing trouble. They're doing more harm to their "cause" than good, in my humble opinion.
Yeah, I agree with this whole-heartedly. In October of last year in DC, old "hippies" and others in tie-dye apparel were waiting to get arrested as if it were a vacation. There were sign up booths for "what an arrest is like" and some people even went on vacation from Hawaii to show their "support". For what, old people cred??? When the night ended and the city decided to renew their permit, it lost all the steam of enthusiasm.
In Durham, NC, the occupy movement was so sparse it looked like a ghost town. Only young children with their parents were there to gawk, as if the thing was a sideshow clown act.
In Athens, GA, the occupy movement was basically idealistic college law students moderated by their teachers in an exercise in "democracy". They even really got into having the handsignals and started to wean out people whose opinions were esoteric and forehead-slappingly idiotic. Sounds like business as usual, right?
Come winter, they took down their tents in Athens (though they were slashed by haters) and it was invaded by homeless people who robbed the donations (stupidly left unattended...).
I started to feel it was on the wane and wouldn't last beyond the winter. Sure enough, once the students came back, it was harder to have a protest without the weather being nice.
The only real lasting change I saw from Occupy was that Bank of America took down an innocuous fee, which probably was just to weather out the ill will by the then-recent bank bailouts.
(As a side note, we contributed some money to help out the Occupiers in D.C., buying some "cheap cups for coffee." When we came back after driving to Dupont Circle and back, the woman looked at me as if I committed some heinous crime. "Styrofoam cups?!" she scoffed, "I hope no one burns their hands." Enough said.)