Again I've got to say that although the people of HK are certainly courageous and full of enthusiasm, or at least those participating in OCLP, they need some political wisdom to push forward their agenda.
Back in the early days of CCP's rise, when they're weak and small all they advocated for is "cooperation between CCP and KMT to fight foreign invaders", and then later it became "to bring multi-party democratic system to China and have our presence in the congress".
It was not until the forces are largely even and the PLA started to win at major battlefields, the slogan became "cross the Yangtze river and liberate the whole of China".
You need to win over as many neutral parties as possible, to sound as realistic and reasonable as possible, to tailor your message to your potential audience as much as possible, in order to push forward your goals.
In this case, the protesters could have explicitly said that they "oppose the HKSAR government and CY Leung" but "have full faith in the Central Government that the voices of the people of HK will be heard and considered".
They could have said that "all they fight for is a better and more prosperous HK, for its people and for the greater good of Motherland", and "strongly oppose any foreign intervention and ideas of separatism".
They could have gathered support from the mainlanders by saying "we want to eliminate the income gap, we want to afford our own houses, we're no different from you so let's work together!".
They could have proposed a series of changes and reforms, both political and non-political, and initiate a direct dialogue with Beijing by sending a representative, and hide the "democracy" part somewhere in the text.
They could have proposed that instead of "HK people nominate as they wish", that a committee can be setup, where members are elected by people of HK, and this committee will represent the HK people to nominate a candidate, whereas Beijing will nominate one or two as well, and the CE can be elected from this group. Isn't this a middle ground?
I think it's important that the HK people realise that the kind of democracy they're pushing for is non-existent in many oldest and largest and most advanced and developed democracies in the world.
Democracy can take many forms, and it's not just one form that will work. If you're not happy with Beijing's arrangements, it's probably more realistic to push for change by first suggesting a middle ground, and slowly work up from there.
After all, the essence of democracy is about "compromise".
