Before leaving this morning, I caught an interview on CBCNN with a guy who's part of the OccupyTO protest that'll hit its peak on October 15th. I present to you now a partial, paraphrased transcript
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Was the person they interviewed actually in any position of leadership, or were they just arbitrarily chosen by CBCNN to be the Face of the Protestors? Because, at the protests this past winter and spring in Madison, I noticed an awful lot of larger media outlets just looking for the most ridiculous spokesperson they could find - someone who would give them a nice, mockable view of those silly protestors.
Well, this was all in a studio (both the dude and the anchor were sitting at the same table in a Toronto studio), and CBCNN is a public broadcaster (so, more sympathetic to these kinds of protests than most media outlets), so as best as I can tell, this guy was a legit person chosen by his peers to speak on their behalf. But I couldn't say for sure.
Unless he was introduced explicitly as representing some group, having organized some aspect of the protest, or something of that nature, I wouldn't suspect anything beyond him being one random protestor who responded positively to an offer of a televised interview. Which doesn't rule out being chosen by his peers, but probably more in the sense of having a lot of encouraging friends who think it's a great idea than in having been chosen after serious discussion by the assembled protestors.
I mean, I'm not under the illusion that there aren't many ridiculous people who don't know what they're doing but have a lot of poorly directed outrage at this protest, or at any of these occupy-themed protest, because of course there are; such people are going to be among the first to show up at pretty much any protest. But having seen how these people were in the minority at local protests despite being ever so popular with the media has made me deeply suspicious.
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I wanted to put my TV through a window.
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I mean, I'm not under the illusion that there aren't many ridiculous people who don't know what they're doing but have a lot of poorly directed outrage at this protest, or at any of these occupy-themed protest, because of course there are; such people are going to be among the first to show up at pretty much any protest. But having seen how these people were in the minority at local protests despite being ever so popular with the media has made me deeply suspicious.
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To be honest, I missed the very beginning of the interview where they introduced him.
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