I’m writing to express my concern over the ramping up of the vilification of the occupying protesters by the mainstream media. It has taken a while for the right wingers to come to realize the protesters do have legitimate complaints and that these are resonating with a growing number of the 99 per cent of society.
The hard part for the Tea Potters and the right-wing media was to come up with a believable reason to attack the protesters as the majority were nice-looking, very calm, articulate people, not anarchists running through the streets burning police cars and breaking windows.
It must have been a relief that in several cities there were deaths due to drug overdoses and the general unruliness that happens when large groups of people are confined together. Now the Tea Potters had the excuse they needed to run the protesters out: public safety. This reasoning drips of the hypocrisy that the right wing is capable of.
The downtown East Side in Vancouver has had people dying for years, women being murdered and fights 24/7. No one has shut that place down.
The majority of the First Nations live in settlements that would make many Third World refugee camps look inviting. The right wingers blame the victims for their problems. But no, the government is not closing those places down in the interest of public safety.
The RCMP throws innocent people into jail. Sometimes those people die. The Tories aren’t closing the jails down. Hell, they like the process so much that they are spending everybody else’s money to put more people in jail.
Our right-wing Tory government even extends its sanctimony into their “Tough on Crime” stance, except when it’s a Tory committing the crime.
Our great Prime Minister Stephen Harper-crite tells us all that the “in-and-out” financing scheme was legal and all would be OK in the end. In the end, our “Tough on Crime” government allowed the guilty to walk free and clear after pleading guilty to the crime.
I guess it would have been embarrassing to put Tory senators in jail. The right-wing Tory Tea Potters are only tough on crime when the perpetrator isn’t a Tory.
The right-wing money bags may attempt to shift the focus of the protest and their political servants will try to sweep the protest under the rug, but the facts remain. The rich are getting richer at an accelerated rate and the rest of us are getting poorer by the day.
Hoby Irwin
Whitehorse