Eh, you know what? I think you've gone way out of your way to construe my comments as meaning something different than what they do. Do you think that it was yo

Eh, you know what? I think you've gone way out of your way to construe my comments as meaning something different than what they do. Do you think that it was your local bookstore owner and restauranteer throwing bricks in the window? Do you even think it was someone so dedicated to their art that they've appeared in galleries and have become known for their craft? Maybe there was some brilliant author in the crowd? Somehow, I doubt it. As for "useless" degrees -- I majored in Political Science so I know what a useless degree is. The point is not to denigrate them for having an economically useless degree. The point is to expose what I think is the real motivation here, that slackers have found it increasingly difficult to float without having any real contribution to make back. It used to be that you could graduate with a soft humanities degree, rent a shitty loft in a neighborhood like West Oakland and still live pretty well. Now, you're gonna have to move out to the suburbs unless you can contribute, generate and capture substantial, financial value. Certainly engineering is not the only field worth a damn. My comment was an allusion to a strategy employed by a certain class of privileged people, which is essentially to find a local minimum of effort/reward even though they typically come from a background which affords much greater opportunity. I contend that it's the demands of these people on display today, being presented as if it were aligned with the needs of Oakland's truly poor. In short, the people protesting today are poor for different reasons than the people whose struggle they are claiming in the passage I quoted.