I am told by someone who listened to Klein's speech online that she took questions afterward, which included the following:
1. In answer to the question "do you think OWS is an answer to the Tea Party?", she said "I think it's an answer to the Democratic Party ".
2. When asked "what can we do as individuals" to deal with the environment, etc. she said we can't do it as individuals, we must build a mass movement.
3. She spent some time arguing for the movement to develop democratic decision-making structures and not to "fetishize the lack of structure". She said that this had been tried before (probably referring to the 60s) and that it didn't work then.
Point 1 is very important because the most common approach of the mainstream liberal intellectuals and journalists is to interpret the OWS phenomenon as an adjunct to the Democratic Party, the Obama administration and the presidential election. Even the more sympathetic prominent liberals (Robert Reich and Paul Krugman) are taking this line, despite the fact that the main thrust of OWS is that the problems are systemic and the political parties are bought and paid for servants of corporate wealth and power. It is this central idea that gives OWS its force and can make it the spark of a new beginning for America.
Point 2 is important because mainstream ideology and the persistant message from the corporate media is that the way to deal with climate change and the despoiling of the environment is for individuals to pick up their trash and, of course, tighten their belts, while giant global corporations spew millions of tons of pollutants into the rivers, oceans and atmosphere, and do much of their dirty work in poor countries where people labor under the rule of authoritarian governments and their military and police forces.
Point 3 is important because OWS is a beginning, not an end. It is a catalyst for a much larger movement that will need democratic structures, discussion leading to theories, strategy and program, and the ability to organize millions of people in all walks of life and to work with those who are already organized in unions. It would be a grave mistake to "fetishize the lack of structure" that currently exists among a few thousand people who have barely begun to come together in a shared mission. This deserves emphasis because many of today's young activists have inherited ideas both from mainstream culture and from the thinking of the New Left of the sixties, which were inadequate then and are even more inadequate now in the face of much larger problems.