>If you want to get something done you have to start off by putting in the work, then as other people see you being effective they join in and contribute their own energy and ideas.
This sounds exactly like a start-up and the way occupy is/was organized.
The spirit of iterate like mad, fail quickly and replicate successful ideas, much of which comes from modern military thinkers (for instance John Boyd's OODA loop -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop ). Such theories actually have deep utility in adversarial settings.
>Unfortunately this kind of organization, while good at empowering individuals is bad at quick tactical responses such as when facing a well organized adversary, such as local politicians and police.
I would argue this form of organisation is excellent at quick tactical responses, but generally bad at longer range strategic plans (which is generally ok, since long term strategic planning is near impossible at the tempo of modern business/conflicts). Look at the shift in military affairs toward pushing decision making down the change of command (what is often called network centric warfare).
also to your point of chain of command - i used to work as a forest fire fighter and I can tell you that chain of command is definitely a contentious issue. It really does need to be a give and take where you can draw on the macro advantages of someone higher up but rely on actionable decisions from people on the front lines.
To your point, well organized adversaries like local politicians and police are akin to pre-existing companies and vertical leaders who take too much time to act and are bogged down in rhetoric and bureaucracy.
Like any analogy, this one definitely has its limitations, but the points I made were things that struck me as uncannily similar to my experience working with my team on Backspaces.
That's just my perspective though, and can certainly see where you're coming from.
That might be so -- as the many evictions have illustrated -- but on the other hand, people who only encountered them in the isolation of their own opinion or through portrayals in the MSM are now seeing for themselves what Occupy actually meant and means.
I watched The Men Who Built America on History Channel. Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller bought themselves a President, McKinley, to thwart candidate reformer Bryan. Then reformer Teddy Roosevelt came along and they made him VP in McKinley's second term, thinking they'd buried him in a powerless job. McKinley got assassinated and Roosevelt rose to top man and got his reforms done anyway.
See, the Powers can crush Occupy as a place but the idea can't be killed and like Roosevelt rising again, so is Occupy and in a way -- firsthand experience by outsiders -- they can't now crush.
In other words, a flat hierarchy of self-starters? Heck, if you consider cleaning up the streets of Long Island to be an open-plan office, it's not much different than half the offices in SOMA.