Forum Post: A leader does more than lead
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 10, 2011, 11:05 a.m. EST by rachel1234
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If you could choose anyone to lead this movement who would you choose and why?
Look in a mirror. We are all leaders.
yes and your movement is disintegrating because you all collectively suck at it. pick one or a small group of people and let them lead. call'em whatever you want but you need leaders
We have leaders. We have thousands of leaders. We are all leaders. Our movement will not die because it is world wide and because the crises it is addressing will not go away.
Ya know what else has never died? The KKK and the Communist Party.
Claiming you arent dead isnt the same as being alive and kickin.
The whole "no leaders" thing is set up for some reason, im not sure why, but it smells....
Both the KKK and the CP were totalitarian outfits. OWS is profoundly democratic. It would be more accurate to compare OWS to the SP or the IWW, for example. Of course both of them are also past their prime, but they died for very different reasons than did the CP or the KKK.
OWS is much less likely to die because the crises we face today are much more systemic. Of course it is possible that we could descend more and more into a genuine police state, but going in the other direction OWS is a harbinger of a much more democratic society.
OWS is also the most ego free movement I have seen in nearly 50 years of activism. That doesn't mean that it is absolutely ego free, just moreso than any other movement I have been involved with. And it is really more accurate to characterize it as leaderful rather than leaderless. People step up and develop their talents. Leadership is contingent, based on particular circumstances in a particular time and place. Some people are talented at leadership at one time and place and in one context and other people are talented at leadership in other contexts.
This is really not so different than any social movement. MLK was most certainly not the sole leader of the civil rights movement. Indeed the more militant groups such as SNCC and CORE tended to be quite dismissive of his supposed leadership and derisively called him "De Lawd." Same was true of the CIO. Lewis was the tutular President of the CIO but there were a dozen or more leaders of affiliated unions that had as much notoriety as did he, not to mention literally hundreds of local leaders. So the whole notion of a broadly based leadership is not especially new, it's just that OWS has pushed it further than has ever been the case in the past. Another example was SDS which had a collective leadership which changed on at least an annual basis.
it will definitely die. i know many former supporters who are tired of supporting people complaining and not doing anything. without a leader, thats all you do, complain. focus your efforts otherwise your just spinning your wheels and might as well give up because you aren't going anywhere. a single leader and a "government" is necessary for an organization or a group of people. so says john locke.
My experience is different. I am finding more people are talking about it and empathizing with OWS. People coming up with ideas. People who are working good jobs, some that just got laid off. All are equally fed-up. Right now on the LiveStream section there are 219 "Occupy..." groups worldwide. 142 of them in the US! OWS is a few months old. It's bubbling from the bottom up, not the top down. A new way, a better way. Patience.
You appear to know nothing about OWS or you wouldn't spout such nonsense about it dying or being leadersless. I don't think you have spent one day at OWS in New York or at any other occupation or you would see that it is not only alive and well, but thriving. Just because the media is not covering it as much as you would like doesn't mean that it is dead or dying.
There are dozens of active Working Groups at OWS that meet daily. The GA meets several times a week as it does in dozens of other cities. And it is certainly not the case that OWS activists do nothing. Most of them have day jobs that they go to and on top of that they are up to their eyeballs in OWS work. It's like having 4 full time jobs. There is all kinds of work being done from planning and executing actions to finding shelter for people who were displaced by the evictions to finding jobs for unemployed OWS activists. OWS activists are way too busy to whine or complain.
As far as leadership goes, I have never seen such leadership as in OWS. Everybody steps up and really gives their maximum.
There has been a lot of history since John Locke and a lot of development of political theory. OWS is advancing that praxis still further.
and what have they produced? alot of rhetoric but no real action. centralized leadership is necessary. large groups of people by definition of their mass can't reach consensus
We are talking about a movement that is barely 4 months old and frankly a tiny movement at that. It is widely acknowledged even in the establishment press that OWS has been responsible for changing the national public discourse, which is quite an accomplishment for a movement so new and so small. It has also awakened large number of people from a decades long political slumber, another significant accomplishment. It has also created be greatest alliance between sections of organized labor and the radical intelligentcia that this nation has seen at least since the 1940s, a accomplishment that the social movements of the 1960s, though they were larger and longer lasting, were never able to accomplish. We have renewed the vision that another, more just, more democratic, more peaceful and more loving world is possible. And we have done that with thousands of leaders who have less ego than any social movement ever before so they have no particular need for celebrity status.
Yes! And the media counts this movement out and calls it a failure! Rediculous!
Yes, we need leaders so they can be attacked and discredited by the corporate controled media - got ya.
what? if our congress can't even agree on the simplest thing then how can hundreds of random people? leaders are necessary. there is no way to reach consensus with over a few dozen people. its proven. leaders are required for a functioning system
Gore Vidal.
I would choose V. He made mainstream the idea of a leaderless movement.
Leaders sacrifice their own interests in favor of the groups'. They may speak on their soapbox, but only when needed. I see lots of leaders and many wanna bees.
I would choose the KTC because they inspire.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/make-a-stand-join-the-clan/
The Revolution starts here!
The KTC because they never give up.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/make-a-stand-join-the-clan/
The Revolution starts here!
Honestly, I don't know. I know what I'd want from that leader, but I don't have a name or a face to put on it yet. I'd want a leader to be:
-A veteran of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, who has seen firsthand what works and what doesn't and is willing to focus on the former.
-Someone who can cross the boundaries between worlds, who may fully sympathize with and is considered by others (and himself) to be a part of the movement but has access to and can put on all the trappings of the professional so as not to scare or piss off middle America.
-Someone with a very sharp mind and a background in economics and finance, who when asked "How exactly did Wall Street screw us?" can provide an exact, technically correct answer.
-Someone who is very good at breaking down and parsing complex technical ideas for everyone to understand, so that he could walk anyone and everyone through the workings of Wall Street and K Street without losing accuracy and still producing a strong emotional response.
-Someone with insider knowledge and/or background on how politics and campaigns work, so that any political action mounted in the name of Occupy will have a serious shot at success rather than being a sideshow like Nader was.
-Someone who knows how to unify and synchronize disparate elements of a movement so that all of the different arms are capable of working in concert toward a common end.
-Someone who is willing to get behind the idea of moderate, regulated capitalism and knows how to successfully sell that idea to a public that in large part may not necessarily be ready to hear it.
-Someone with enough personal authority that when he tries to haul the anarchists and the communists back into line he actually can instead of being happily ignored or worse, get into a potentially divisive power struggle.
Find me a person capable of all, or at least most of these things, and you've found yourself someone perfectly suited to lead the movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-3hZsXrxaI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mkRFCtl2MI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SQqjTxI3vc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewGMBOB4Gg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/
http://blog.thezeitgeistmovement.com/
http://www.thevenusproject.com/