Occupy, The Civil Rights Movement, and Decentralization

Over at orgtheory.net, Fabio Rojas recently asked a good question: why has Occupy not followed the tactical and organizational choices made by the Civil Rights Movement. As Fabio points out, they share ideological similarities, yet Occupy has largely been a decentralized movement while the Civil Rights Movement favored large organizations and clearly defined goals. It’s a post that’s worth reading and mulling over in its entirety, and it’s generated some interesting conversation. I did, however, want to raise one point with regard to this question, though, that hasn’t been brought up (at least at the time I’m writing this) on the thread, which is that Francesca Polletta covered some of this in her piece “How Participatory Democracy Became White.”