Canon used to run the successful ad campaign with Andre Aggasi - Image is Everything.

Well, image is still everything. It’s the optics that define movements and trends. Here, we’ve got the OWS movement, and it’s been defined by images. How can you categorize what kind of politics are involved? Well, you see flags, symbols, and physical acts as captured on video or photos.

So, to someone like Killgore, they’re focusing on the anarchists, the arrests, and the encampments and wonder what it’s all for since nothing changes.

I’ve had plenty of experience first-hand with the protests (as had Obdicut) at Zuccotti Park, and it’s a whole lot more than the general image portrayed by media outlets, even those that are seemingly sympathetic to the idea of OWS (after all, they’ve got to make money and trying to capture the ideas of OWS protesters is harder than trying to catch the gotcha images of an arrest, guys in Fawkes masks, or other crazies that have come down to get face time at Zuccotti Park, let alone the arrests for sit-ins and disrupting traffic, etc.).

Heck, the most interesting part of the OWS protest was the guy I encountered who wanted to see serious financial reform and had a poster outlining what he’d like to see happen. It was a good image too (and posted on my blog, if I say so myself). He was out there for quite a few days - and I think he would come down during lunch to protest, and then return home or back to work.

I saw lots of people who weren’t all that much different than I was - maybe a few years younger or older, but who articulated real issues with the way the economy was, how the government was treating specific groups of people, and proposing ideas/solutions. Some of the stuff I agreed with, some of it I thought was outlandish and some of it was flat out crank territory.

I might not have agreed with what they were saying, but it was important enough for me to capture those images and post them to the blog. Not only was it newsworthy, but it helped spread their message even if my viewership isn’t that large. At least it’s out there for others to read.

Would I have gotten larger viewership had I focused/posted only the confrontations with police - the hot shots of police arrests, etc.? I suppose, but the protests are much more than just police confrontations, crackdowns, or protest marches.

There’s plenty of messages trying to be sent, and while I guess I post only a portion of them (inserting my own bias), I understand and try to maintain some level of objectivity in my postings/reporting.

So, when there are mass-arrests, I will post/report those, but not at the expense of whatever message the protesters themselves were trying to get across.