I am an ardent supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I appreciate the passion and frustration of those Americans (this guy included) who no longer feel the voting booth is a legitimate channel to address corporate influence on American government.

The number one criticism from those that either resent the protests or (more likely) dismiss it with casual condescension is the movement’s failure to coalesce around a singular message and set of goals. While I do think it’s clear that Occupy’s main thrust is frustration with corporate influence, images of protesters championing a myriad of other, often unrelated, causes leaves the impression that the Occupy camp is a village market at which anyone can try to sell the liberal issue most important to them.

Furthermore, the protesters are often derided for not knowing what they’re talking about. Videos of conservative trolls interviewing the protest crowds very clearly demonstrate that, yes, Joe Protester often cannot discuss articulately or knowledgeably the issues for which he is spending weeks in a tent.

What many people seem to miss is that this has always been the dynamic of popular grass-roots movements. For some reason, we tend to apply a rose-tinted filter to the past, casting previous movements as ennobled demonstrations by philosopher-revolutionaries or, at least, the dignified and sober every-man. As if the unfortunate scent and difficult sanitation challenges facing the protesters on Wall Street are unique to their movement, we tend to scrub these sorts of unpleasant practicalities from our heroic narratives of past heroes of democracy.

To the contrary, popular movements are always characterized by 99% raw emotion and 1% thoughtful and focused leadership. The power of the people is not in its depth, but in it’s breadth. Of course the disgruntled, unemployed waitress isn’t going to have read a library of economic theory or be savvy on the endless stream of news, historical data, and white papers that need to be consumed (and remembered) to debate intelligently. And that’s okay. Not everyone has the time or talent to be a scholar. If someone were to carry a camera around an anti-tax protest in colonial America and put the town butcher on the spot with an arcane question about effective tax rates in the empire, I’m sure he would come off as bumbling.

For all of the praise given to ubiquitous recording devices and social media, I think we are also seeing the negative effects that these tools can have on the building of a popular movement. The great thing with these tools is that they give everyone a voice. The only problem is that they give everyone a voice. The anatomy of a successful movement is that of a small charismatic leadership channeling the frustration of many into a singular, compelling message. Most protesters only need invest their voices and passion; let those with the encyclopedic knowledge and rhetorical skills guide the talking points, engage the press, and create actionable goals that the rest can rally behind.

It’s a double edged sword: information and enthusiasm can be shared at a lightning pace, but a powerful message is lost in all the fly-by static. When everyone has a megaphone from which to communicate their own personal motivation for protesting, it makes it very hard for leaders and coherent goals to emerge. This presents a big marketing problem: the passion of the Occupy protesters has been very effectively communicated, but so has the ideological disjointedness and callowness of some parts of the movement. These have been a part of every movement in history, but now they are visible.

I, for one, remain optimistic and hope that the movement can find its voice. It is significant and admirable in itself that people are willing to take to the streets and express their frustrations, but in order not to waste the momentum and grass-roots enthusiasm of the last month, the protesters, regardless of the varying reasons that brought them to the streets, must throw their support behind leaders than can articulate a unified set of motivations and goals.