Consensus-based horizontal structures let tiny minorities veto prominent allies

Evidence

At Occupy Wall Street (OWS), which began that fall, many aspects of the former didn’t really work out, while the latter did. … Occupy Wall Street (OWS) insisted that all decisions be reached through consensus. At its most extreme, this led to outcomes in which a tiny number of people could block the will of the majority. One day, civil rights pioneer John Lewis arrived, signaling he supported the movement. A congressman in the United States government, this man had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and helped forge the modern repertoire of contention with his own body back in the 1960s. Most people in the ad hoc assembly wanted to let him speak. Two did not. “No particular human being is inherently more valuable than any other,” one of them—a white graduate student—said. Lewis was not allowed to speak. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 266

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Prefigurative politics holds that movement structure should mirror desired society — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 82; A horizontalist group member publicly declared it over without others’ consent — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 626; Consensus is shaped and structured by unequal power rather than freely formed — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 919 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Even deliberately inclusive identity spaces mute internal difference to achieve consensus #expands (0.82) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 517
• Consensus is shaped and structured by unequal power rather than freely formed #complicates (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 919