But just as theory needs practice to give it life, practice needs theory to sustain it. And protest, finally, needs to find its place in a larger project of political decision-making and organization. Like many people, I long for a far more decentralized and varied world than the one we have, a world less dominated by consumerist monoculture and the routine injustices of transnational trade. What is far harder to see is how we get there from here. It could take a while, and we will have to feel our way.
Hope is sometimes zealous, but it is also, paradoxically, the most patient of virtues.
More important, asking someone to tell you exactly what to do about citizenship is not just impractical but self-defeating. So there's another issue the protesters must address next week. Thus far the movement has succeeded with its own kind of decentralization, offering no particular leaders or spokespeople as focal points. Its amalgam of disparate interests has been far from perfect, but has nevertheless exhibited a fairly functional form of non-hierarchical action. I suspect this cannot continue much longer.