i think that what we delude ourselves as thinking of democracy requires people like medea benjamin to push for due process with drone strikes, or glenn greenwald to get information out, or ralph nader to keep corporations on their toes. if the system that exists is going to work at all, it needs these kinds of liberals and libertarians to ensure it holds up it's own axioms. "the rule of law", and all that other liberal stuff. they talk about king, and that's another good example of the kind of perpetual reformism that the system requires to fulfill it's own promises.

but, if i look around me, i don't think "we need a bigger movement". two reasons:

1) co-option. and you can't just blame this on the hierarchy, "the masses" have to take responsibility for this. they melted all over obama. i don't see a way to avoid that. sorry.
2) if it can't be co-opted, it can be destroyed much more easily if it's centralized.

i could talk about how al qaeda's decentralized structure (rather than it's ideology or tactics) is something to try and emulate. to me, that was the promise of occupy. unfortunately, not everybody on the ground saw it like that. but, i think it was a first step. overall, i think a more valuable historical example is the kind of secret societies that were dominant in the french revolution. they realized that open organizing would be brutally suppressed, so they did it underground. we're not yet at that point, we're quickly approaching it. we need to sort of get that loss of democracy that we've been experiencing over the last few decades and find a way to adjust to it.

that is to say that this discussion belongs to the 1960s. there's a long list of fundamental realities that have changed so deeply that we just can't hope that we can organize these kinds of popular protests and hope that the state will respond, except in the kind of small scale ways that define what reformism is.

so, there's a housing problem in detroit. do they need a large scale organization? no - that's either going to be co-opted or repressed. rather, they need to find ways to quietly create clandestine, decentralized squatting networks with no active leadership that actively reject any kind of media exposure.

and i think that's a big reason why these larger movements aren't happening: the resistance is now anarchist, not marxist.

the "temporary autonomous zone" is becoming a more attractive model than working through a hopeless system.

field of broken dreams: if you build it, they will co-opt.