"OWS - Where have they gone?"

[MADem]

31. The agenda was NOT clear and that is because there was no leadership.

See, you can't even "speak for OWS" because there are no leaders. Yours is just one lousy opinion--because you can't speak for the group. You can give us your personal impressions, but that's it.

What doomed OWS was the inability to set a course of action on any issue, even one as mundane as where the porta potties were sited without a lot of talking stick bullshit and "consensus."

There are times when a little top-down leadership is a good idea. OWS would be alive, kicking and making some serious sense if the kumbayah-leaderless-"everyone has the same clout" input system was dispensed with, and people that the group deemed qualified were elevated as leaders and spokespeople. They'd probably still have some of that money that people, in good faith, sent in.

If leaders got jailed, you get more leaders--but you don't do without leaders. Lawyers and people who support the goals OWS championed don't like to deal with a borg of people waving their fingers in the air, with a bunch of homeless people who don't really give a shit about the issues but are just grateful for a place to crash that has less crime and free food, and those black bloc jerks who disrupted every third demonstration, having the same input as people who actually CARED about the goals of the organization. They like an organisational structure, a chain of command, a leadership succession.

OWS missed an opportunity, because of that time-wasting "consensus-leaderless" model, to provide a visible crucible for future political leaders. I do think they'd still be a fierce force if they'd just gone a little "old school" and went for a "responsibility and authority" organizational structure.