Mark's Pages

May 28, 2003:

Best natural activist you've ever seen. Sits crosslegged in a classroom, finely tuning her responses to subtle verbal and body-language queues of the high school students asking her questions. Listens. Answers in their language, without patronization. They're interested, eyes on her. Later her colleagues join in, and it's all jargon: "comrades", "internationalism". The students become restless, eyes wander, the discussion loses focus.

If her friends had half a clue they'd shut up, let her talk. But, they don't. Their walls are already closing around her. Over time they'll ruin her with their lack of reflection, their inability to strategize, their sectarian posturing. In a word, their habits. And so the world will lose something it sorely needs, an organizer with talent.

Our tradition speaks of "the crisis of leadership". What the phrase disguises is that by and large we're that crisis. The precondition for the emergence of real leadership is the revolt of those leaders against the constraints of unreflected routine that weigh on them, as Marx said, like an Alp.