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It’s time for ‘Occupiers’ to leave

Re: Occupy participants show courage, conviction, Letters, Nov. 19.

To the Editor,

Re: Occupy participants show courage, conviction, Letters, Nov. 19.

In defending the self-styled ‘Occupiers’, Holden Southward attempts to put lipstick on the proverbial pig.

Occupation means, “To seize possession of and maintain control over by, or as if by conquest”. Yet denying public space to the citizens who have worked and paid for it is seen as ‘occupying’ the moral high ground.

Contrary to Southward’s assertions, conviction is not camping out in public squares while using taxpayer provided toilets.

Conviction is getting up each day and facing the daily task of doing a good job, raising your children with civic and moral values and paying your mortgage and taxes while making a positive contribution to your community, your city and your country.

The ‘Occupiers’ are utopians who fail to recognize or understand human nature and they attract people who are prepared to use, abuse and manipulate them to serve their own needs.

Anyone who has followed the ‘Occupiers’ on the Internet will be appalled by not only the violence, crime and disrespect exhibited in cities around the nation, but by the incoherence of their message.

Occupy is largely divided into two camps. The affluent rebels with iPads, iPhones and other accoutrements of the privileged who rail against their own class and the drifters, grifters and fringe elements who infiltrate and prey on the opportunities provided by the naïve idealists.

And manipulating both are the academics, the social activists and the union organizers who are wilfully using the ‘campers’ as ideological canon fodder.

They’re not the 99 per cent, they’re not even the 20 per cent. It’s time for them to go.

Randy O’Donnell, Nanaimo