Remember a few weeks back when we stumbled upon a baby-blue Mercedes-Benz peculiarly branded with vanity license plates reading “OCCUPY”? It threw us off a bit. A late-model E350 convertible—base price $56,850—in support of a protest movement that often sounds as if it abhors the wealthy was quite the thing to see.

“Does Occupy D.C. have at least one outright admirer among the city’s top earners?” I asked at the time, hoping the car’s owner might step forward and clarify his or her reasons for getting the tags.

Well, the owner, a local patent attorney, emailed me this morning. He’s asked not to be identified other than his occupation due to some of the contemptuous reactions his car elicited in the comments section of the original post. But despite his place among the nation’s top earners, the owner, who got the plates last month, is sincere about his admiration for the Occupy Wall Street movement. He writes:

I got the tags as a show of solidarity with the movement. Of course, I realized that putting those tags on a Mercedes would be a huge contradiction, but I thought that it might attract attention (voila!) to the fact that there are actually 1-percent sympathizers for the 99 percent.

…

I am a left-of-left liberal who has understood for a long time that money has perverted our system—the Democrats are no better than the Republicans in that regard. It seems impossible, but we need to get money out of politics. I’d choose Obama any day over the GOP turkeys—but to stay in power he sadly needs to drink from the trough. There’s the contradiction—not those plates on my car.

I worked hard all my life to make the money I have—nothing was given to me, except a good, middle class education (which is a lot). And I’ve learned over the years that the best way for me to contribute to making social change happen is by contributing money to the causes I believe in.

Because he’s worked for it, why shouldn’t the attorney drive the car he wants? “Rather than have an ideological ally who happens to be in the 1 percent, I suppose that the Occupy supporters would have me trade in my car for a VW bus, or a 20-year-old Jeep,” he jokes. “Perhaps there are other 1-percent sympathizers who will be watching how the 99 percent treat the 1 percent, or more particularly treats me.”

The owner, in phone interview, says he’s lived in the District his entire life, grew up attending D.C. public schools and while he hasn’t participated in any of Occupy D.C.’s marches or rallies (or camped out at McPherson Square), he greatly admires the movement. In particular, he cites the group of demonstrators who put themselves through a weeks-long hunger strike last December as a protest against the District’s lack of full congressional representation.

And to my earlier feigned reaction to the fact that E-Class convertibles are assembled not at a U.S. site but in Germany, the owner points out that the dealer from whom he purchased his car and the mechanics who service it are all locals, even if much of the cost of manufacturing goes abroad where, he hopes, the workers who assembled his car earn decent living wages.

So, Occupiers, don’t, as one commenter suggested, be “douchebags” intent on “occupy[ing] this car.” This guy might have money, but it seems like he’s also got your back.