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members send them money and cheer from the sidelines.
    So how do you extract coherence from a movement filled with anarchists, whose greatest tactical strength so far has been its similarity to a swarm of mosquitoes? Maybe, as with the Internet, the best approach is to learn to surf the structures that are emerging organically. Perhaps what is needed is not a single political party but better links among the affinity groups; perhaps rather than moving toward more centralization, what is needed is further radical decentralization.
    When critics say that the protesters lack vision, they are really objecting to a lack of an overarching revolutionary philosophy—like Marxism, democratic socialism, deep ecology or social anarchy—that they all agree on. That is absolutely true, and for this we should be extraordinarily thankful. At the moment, the anti-corporate street activists are ringed by would-be leaders, eager for the opportunity to enlist activists as foot soldiers for their particular vision. At one end there is Michael Lerner and his conference at theRiverside Church, waiting to welcome all that inchoate energy in Seattle and Washington inside the framework of his “Politics of Meaning.” At the other, there is John Zerzan in Eugene, Oregon, who isn’t interested in Lerner’s call for “healing” but sees the rioting and property destruction as the first step toward the collapse of industrialization and a return to “anarcho-primitivism”—a pre-agrarian hunter-gatherer utopia. In between there are dozens of other visionaries, from the disciples of Murray Bookchin and his theory of social ecology, to certain sectarian Marxists who are convinced the revolution starts tomorrow, to devotees of Kalle Lasn, editor of
Adbusters
, and his watered-down version of revolution through “culture jamming.” And then there is the unimaginative pragmatism coming from some union leaders who, before Seattle, were ready to tack social clauses onto existing trade agreements and call it a day.
    It is to this young movement’s credit that it has as yet fended off all these agendas and has rejected everyone’s generously donated manifesto, holding out for an acceptably democratic, representative process to take its resistance to the next stage. Perhaps its true challenge is not finding a vision but rather resisting the urge to settle on one too quickly. If it succeeds in warding off the teams of visionaries-in-waiting, there will be some short-term public relations problems. Serial protesting will burn some people out. Street intersections will declare autonomy. And yes, young activists will offer themselves up like lambs—dressed, frequently enough, in actual lamb costumes—to
The New York Times
op-ed page for ridicule.
    But so what? Already, this decentralized, multiheadedswarm of a movement has succeeded in educating and radicalizing a generation of activists around the world. Before it signs on to anyone’s ten-point plan, it deserves the chance to see if, out of its chaotic network of hubs and spokes, something new, something entirely its own, can emerge.

Los Angeles
X-raying the marriage of money and politics
    August 2000
    This speech was delivered in Los Angeles at the Shadow

Convention, just blocks away from the Staples Center, where the

Democratic National Convention was taking place. The Shadow

Convention was a week-long conference to explore significant

issues—such as campaign finance reform and the war on

drugs—that the major U.S. political parties were ignoring at

their conventions. This speech was part of a panel called

“Challenging the Money Culture.”
    Exposing corporations—the way they have swallowed our public spaces, our ideas about rebellion and bought our politicians—is no longer just a pursuit for cultural critics and academics. It has become, in only a few short years, an international contact sport. All over the world, activists are saying, “Yes, we get it. We’ve read the books.