AM: Let me point to the biggest potential, whether you go to India, my country, or you go to China, or you go to Mexico, we see our youth being completely captivated by increasing consumerism. You know the goals that are being put forward before our youth, is to try to get an MBA degree, try to get a job in the corporate sector, you want the latest Nike shoes, you want the latest Gap clothes.However, something is changing. We are being able to defeat these corporations the way weve been able to challenge tobacco companies who were trying to capture our youth. It is the youth of this country who have actually come out on the streets. If you look at corporate owned media, you would think these are young punks who were out on the streets like those fans who go for football matches who have nothing better to do than to get in trouble with the police and with law and order. This is not what is happening. The biggest potential is that we are creating the future generation of America to be good patriots, patriots who are willing to put their lives on the line, who are basically willing to even battle with the police to actually build a Democratic nation and to make it true in this country.
The other potential of that is that, as I pointed out before, whether we talk about policies of international financial institutions which work against the working people, they are the same policies that are adjusting Americas poor today. So what we are doing is we are starting to challenge these policies right in the belly of the beast. Washington consensus has been responsible for increasing impoverishment around the world. Until we fight this battle right here in this country, where peoples basic human rights to food, right to shelter, right to social security, is implemented in this country, nobody is going to give a damn about peoples right to food in Mexico or in the Phillippines.
We are building an international movement. We are building a movement where there are no leaders, everyone who participates in the streets of Philadelphia or in the streets of Los Angeles is a leader who is taking charge of his or her destiny and the destiny of this country and the world.
Now you know THE REST OF THE STORY.
As for the last part of the selection you made from the interview, there ARE leaders, though they want to claim there are no leaders to their movement.
They really aren't any different from the old marxists of bygone eras that I can tell. Some groups still have individuals from the old school embedded in them. Then, it was Communist International to whom they were beholden, but even though they hailed the same central political power, they were divided into individual cells that changed, split or rarely (if ever) merged. The cells changed with the whims of those people within who had personalities suitable for taking initiative or egos too big to permit accomodation with others. The numerous cells (or these days, web groupipes) are pretty useful since they are small enough to be focused on one or just a few issues, small enough to control like a clique to avoid infiltration, but big enough to provide emotional support to keep the cell energized enough to go out and protest.
Each cell is like a mini fan club formed around one or two people with dominant personalities and largely single-issued and therefore tightly focused and motivated.
But they do have 'leaders'- more broad-minded cells which to govern lesser cells by giving direction and by organizing similar cells together for specific events, in turn dominated by other cells formed around slightly more flexible personalities. This is the case with the two organizations that seem to dominate this DC protest; they organize and lead their little cell- republics by arranging marches and providing permits and such for the diverse cells which under other circumstances wouldn't get along that well because of diverging interests.
And everybody just keeps telling the little cells that there are no leaders.