New Orleans       Some of this media handwringing by reporters about the alleged absence of leaders of what they call the left is actually amusing.  Their real complaint is that they don’t have some ready person they can call for quotes on their stories and puff up as a leader, whether or not the person actually has a base or any organization whatsoever.  What they want is a spokesperson for whatever they want to call the issue de jour or a movement of some sort in the making.  It rarely has anything to do with leadership.

A recent complaint with this title couldn’t have been clearer when the reporter bemoaned the fact this fact saying, “Today there are no Tom Haydens, Abbie Hoffmans or Jerry Rubins…There are no activists gaining fame via organizing….”  My first response to this notion is “Thank goodness!”  But, in what world of the imagination were Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin ever leaders of the left?  Tom Hayden had his Port Huron moment and later became an elected official at the municipal and legislative level in California, where arguably he was a leader in those jurisdictions, but hardly a leader of the left in those years.  How many people really know who DeRay Mckesson, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Sarsour are, even if they would recognize that there were marches and actions in Black Lives Matter and the post-Trump election Women’s March?  This is not to detract from any of their contributions, but seeing them as leaders of the left would be a stretch.  In another article in the New York Times Magazine many decades ago, the political philosopher Herbert Marcuse spoke of the media at that time as a “flesh eating machine,” and he had no clue how much bone and blood might be devoured in the current divisive and atomized media landscape.

Activists by definition are also different from organizers and miles away from being leaders.  (See George Goehl in the current issue of Social Policy.)  The prominence of activists can in fact be distracting and prevent the development of real organization and deep movements for change.  To be clear, the liberal left has an abundance of leaders, just fewer that are presumptuous enough to speak for the whole or willing to be ground up in the media machine, rather than their own work in building their organizations.  The media’s critique of the Occupy-style leaderless operation is old hat.  There are large organizations on the liberal-left among unions, political formations, and community-based operations that are both hierarchical and use consensus to build solidarity.  Increasingly, organizations are becoming more centralized in order to assure sustainability and enable the persistence to create change and enforce accountability.  All that is a good thing.

Donna Murch, a professor at Rutgers, was quoted saying, “The corporate media did a lot of damage to the social movements of the 60s.”  True that!  The early ought’s did the same as many potential leaders were encouraged to build a “brand” personally, rather than build organizations that could drive change collectively.  There are always a variety of leadership styles, but the key test of leadership remains whether someone has a base.  That may not work for reporters, but it absolutely works for making social change.