Occupy Wall Street – A Grassroots Movement or Leftist Youth Exploitation?

Individuals from President Obama and Vice President Biden to media personalities have expressed their support for the leaderless movement, which is spreading all over, the country, event to places like Hartford. Some folks are even comparing the protestors to the Tea Party, the conservative movement that has dominated politics in the past two years.

As a strong supporter of the Tea Party movement, and after taking part in many Tea Party rallies locally and in DC, I do not see how the association of the groups is conceivable. Employed, educated, responsible middle age and senior Americans from all backgrounds and political parties attend Tea Party rallies. The gatherings are characterize by love of God (as each understands him or her), love for our country, American pride, and respect for authority and property. From its birth, back to 2007 on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, the Tea Party Movement has remained steadfast on its core beliefs of limited federal government, individual freedoms, personal responsibility, free markets and returning political power to the states and the people.

On the other hand, The "Occupy Wall Street" protesters list of 13 proposed demands from their website http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/ are anything but pro freedom and/or personal responsibility. Here are the top three demands.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This requires policies that end free trade, impose trade tariffs on all imported goods and raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all-private insurer must be banned from the healthcare market.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Now, does this sound like the demands of reasonable people who simply want to work and get ahead?  Or, is this the incoherent rhetoric of people fancying socialist utopia? Additionally "Occupy Wall Street" (New York) has seen over 800 arrests, and recently an occupier was caught on film defecating on a police car. Occupy Boston hosted the Tarek Mehanna Support Committee. The U.S. government says Mehanna, provided “material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” and acted as a “media wing” for al-Qaeda. In addition, the occupy Philadelphia protest unfurled the Soviet flag an insult to the millions who were murdered under Stalin, and to those who still suffer under communist rule.

Like the Tea Party Movement? Not by a long shot.