why assume that laws have any moral authority?

You bet your ass they were breaking the law. They committed breaking and entering, of the abandoned house. As they broke and entered, with the intent to commit a felonious act, which was the plotting and conspiracy to disrupt operations of the Oakland shipping yard, and lay siege to the properties of the Oakland Shipping Yard, thereby commiting a felonious intent to commit unlawful detention of the workers located inside the shipping yard by keeping them trapped in a bounded area against their will. I'd say the occupiers most definitely broke the law. I am just as angry about the state of things as the rest of America, but write your elected officials to pressure the Justice Department to prosecute the crook's that ripped America off. You may not use your "movement," as an excuse to cause property damages, trespass, and worst of all shut down the Oakland Port preventing the hard working long-shoremen and truck drivers from doing their jobs, thus interfering with other Americans legal right to earn a living. I say prosecute. They have a right to protest, but you may not trample the property or other rights of other American citizens with your protests. But you won't post this, cause it's the other side of the coin. The logical and balanced opinion. From Hyde Street of San Francisco. -Joel

I don't know how we all got by without your take on things up till now.

If a person does some protesting and someone laughs, that not a alack of understanding of history, thats just getting a laugh.

Many find it comical that certain people can't fathom why the rest of us don't enjoy their revealed world on the same level. This is what you share with pro-lifers who claim the civil rights movement and scream about the genocide of black babies.

There is a rich history of people who have noted the odd disconnect that your two groups share, not the least of which is "the Politics of Unreason" by Lippsett, or "the True Believer" by Hoffer. etc...

Exercise your civil whatever, I get to chuckle at you, even more so when you spout like a pro-lifer. And like Michael, if you rave about personal values as some sort of revealed moral authority jibber jabber, I get to point out anyone can do that, and giggle with glee when you back peddle.

One last note, if you break the law doing your thing keep in mind many of the people you note went to jail for their beliefs, or killed, or had the shit beat out of them, while you whine.

People died on the docks in SF so you can bitch about student loans. Freedom riders got the shit kicked out of them so you can occupy a house that has bee refinanced six times in six years.

But thanks for the history lesson, and the comical lack of understand of the modern political spectrum and the commonalities of Michael and the average right to lifer.

wrong, because you believed the lawbreakers were justified on "moral grounds".

Your attempts to get all philosophical can't hide your fundamental and distasteful bias.

I can't recall you ever making a post critical of the Occupiers or supportive of the authorities cracking down on them.

So when the first respondent here stated that the ONLY issue here was whether the protestors broke the law, you implied that such laws might not have a moral authority.

It's clear that statement was supportive of the arrested Occupiers here and not merely an abstract philosophical rumination.

Own your opinions and your biases.