It wasn't an Agent Provocateur

[joshcryer]

130. The article does not indicate any sense of incitement.

However, "agent provocateur" has been used against the flag burners here, without any evidence. What's amusing is that the flag burning is not new to Occupy and it will not go away. Occupy is two groups. Group 1) is the long standing occupiers who are there every day, after work, or they don't work and it's their full time job. Group 2) are those who come out and regularly participate whenever there is a call to action but they have other commitments that don't allow them to be constantly active, a lot of them are known by Group 1, and they are just as much a part of Occupy as the rest.

As far as the flag burning is concerned I can't say if it's stragglers who did it in the other instances, but in this instance it appears that the flag burner is in Group 1, one of the regular activists, not just someone who came down to join in and give numbers to the protest. We had the same thing happen in Charlotte, the flag burners were actually going to be ostracized, but it turned out that if they were, the entire group would've splintered.

We should embrace those who express their free speech even if we disagree with it.

And that's precisely what the guy in the article did, he embraced his friend who burned the flag and explained it away as frustrations as opposed to some sort of moment signifying the Occupy Oakland movement as a whole.