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OWS is knowingly helping the very types of corporations that they says they are protesting! Every time I see images and video clips from OWS, I see people wearing items made by mega-corporations such as Nike & Adidas! OWS protesters wearing clothing from North Face, & J. Crew. Hypocrites! Using Apple products...hypocrites! How can anyone take OWS seriously when protesters are ranting about corporate greed, fairness and helping the poor when they are wearing a $100.00 pair of Nike shoes, a $150.00 North Face jacket, using an $800.00 I-Pad....hypocrites!

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[-] 2 points by americanexpat (14) 13 years ago

First of all, the very fact that you think this makes them hypocrites tells me that you understand nothing about this movement...and your tone in this post tells me that you have no desire to understand it. I could speculate what that tells me about your values and your choices in life, but then I would be sinking to your level. No thanks.

Second, and quite simply, you are wrong. It's okay to be wrong. All of us are from time to time. I'm not threatened by our disagreement, however, because I'm willing to be wrong. I would love it if you had the intellectual integrity to articulate something beyond namecalling and try to tell us why you think the OWS movement is invalid.

But as to why you are wrong (i.e. "them" being hypocrites) it stems from your fundamental misinterpretation of what "they" are angry about. We are not angry that corporations exist. We are not angry that corporations make stuff. We do not deny that corporations make useful stuff, and even stuff that we like. We are angry that corporations have been thoroughly deregulated, that they have been allowed to bring immeasurable damage to our communities and our livelihoods. Corporations should not be allowed to do whatever they want to increase the bottom line. They are beholden to stockholders to increase their profit margin and they will take increasing risks to achieve that. It is up to government to prevent them from taking too great a risk to the detriment to the public. If you think "fear of losing business" or "fear of lawsuit" is what holds them back from that, you are dead wrong, and the proof is in 2008. Only regulation....when it is truly, fairly and impartially applied.....achieves this.

Everyone except the most depraved among us would have to admit that some regulation is good, even necessary. Remember when we started making rules about how old a child has to be to work? About company's responsibilities when employees are hurt by unsafe work environments? About how much rat feces is acceptable in our food? About how clean the kitchen of a restaurant needs to be so as not to be a haven for food borne illnesses? That's regulation.

Wanting something that is produced by a corporation (or finding usefulness in it) does not equate to supporting everything ever done by that corporation. This is why "they" are not hypocrites. Open your eyes, perhaps your mind will follow.