Consensus decision-making and exhaustion prevented the MPL from channeling mass momentum

Evidence

THE MOVIMENTO PASSE LIVRE HAD to decide what to do next. After the messy, multimillion-person marches on June 20, the MPL did not call for any more demonstrations. Some of them thought they could have supplied a new demand—perhaps going all the way, for the eponymous Free Fare—to direct the huge amount of energy now on the streets. They found, just walking around town, that people would shout support for them. People would ask what they were doing next. But making such a decision would have required every single member to agree. It is hard to decide on an entirely new campaign quickly if you rely on consensus for your decision-making. Just as importantly, they were dead tired. Some of them were now very ill; others had lost a lot of weight. Mayara had been working the whole time as a waitress while organizing street combat and becoming a minor national celebrity. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 453

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the book’s recurring theme that protest movements lacked organizational capacity to convert mass energy into lasting demands, mirroring Morsi-era Egypt and other cases. — connects to: Consensus decision-making and fear of bureaucracy stalled a mass movement’s momentum — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 455; Consensus is shaped and structured by unequal power rather than freely formed — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 919; Milgram subjects obeyed because legitimacy plus incremental momentum locked them into continuing — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3939
• SEED: An angle for an essay on how horizontal consensus structures handicap movements at the moment of maximum leverage.

Broader Connections

• Consensus decision-making and fear of bureaucracy stalled a mass movement’s momentum #corroborates (0.93) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 455
• Milgram subjects obeyed because legitimacy plus incremental momentum locked them into continuing #expands (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3939
• Consensus is shaped and structured by unequal power rather than freely formed #complicates (0.71) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 919