Are we committed to Real Democracy

I don't agree with your framing of the question. It is problematic. I don't think you can remove the role of leadership from any organisation. It is true we can encourage the development of leadership capabilities amongst individuals active in the group. The question should be how can we make sure those who exercise leadership are accountable to the group? We want to create a society of true democracy and equality. But I don't believe any group can prefigure such an outcome

I like what Saeeda is saying here.
Saeeda doesn't mention leadership.
Saeeda mentions 'elites'. Elites usually wield power or money or both. Saeeda mentions, in our context, power and control.
In a horozontal organisation people may from time to time 'lead' on certain issues or actions but that doesn't necessitate them having unequal amounts of power or control.
Ideally, the only way someone should get power and control is if 'empowered' by the group to go ahead and lead on something.
In reality, people may obtain power and control simply by being most present and doing most of the work. That's why, alongside training other people to do the work and trying not to hang on to power and control (which is the responsibility of those who find themselves 'leading' a disproportionate amount of the time), it's necessary that people step forward and volunteer to share the work burdens (as Saeeda says).
I could probably write more but that's probably enough :)

@johnsinha Leading for me is not fixed in any situation including in conventional politics and corporations. If leadership is the advanced edge of thinking/doing in any given area and the ability to convey that area of thinking/doing to others where the engagement of others is needed. I.e Mohammed Ali can take the lead in boxing but to do what he did he did not need the buy in of others. While a economist does.

This is separate from the concept of power. In conventional politics., corporations, the power hierarchy stays relatively fixed. And leadership in areas can be dispersed or move much more fluidly. We have less control on who leads we have much more control who excercises power to allow progress in any given area or halt it.

Direct democracy theoretically frees leadership and passed power to the widest set of people. It also builds into its structure and process safeguards against new elites forming. There is a good reason for this, elites frame the world according to their experience and understanding, there are areas that they cannot grasp because of the limits of understanding that can exist in one small group of people. This excludes those that do not come from that experience and this disjunction leads to preferential treatment, behaviour etc which soon enough leads to "outsiders" being left behind or even being unfairly treated, given less access etc.

Direct democracy requires itself to build into its practice anti-elitist practices in a conscious manner.

The three ways that power begins to solidify into elites is in the areas of control, decision making, and doing.

We grow up in a social system which means if we follow our natural habits and behaviour we will end up in a hierarchical organisation with an elite. It requires conscious and explicit actions and practices to avoid this.

Also when we do take responsibility roles, and leadership roles are our practices those of leaders continuously and deeply aware that we are in the realm of the people with a duty of care to their needs or are we just getting things done.

I.e if the most important thing to us to make a change in the way we practice democracy than a significant part of our time and work needs to be in developing the way we work rather than what we work on.

I think the GA needs to be part MOOC. (Massive Open Offline Course)

I like famous speakers, especially those who are leading the way in their fields, however the real reason to choose Occupy democracy over another organisation is to try out the concepts of a different system, to see if egalitarianism can really work. Else lets be done with it and try out a Syriza or Podemos. A nicer version of what we have now.

The Tyranny of Structurelesss - struggle.ws/pdfs/tyranny.pdf

People often post a link to that. I always wish they'd explain the point they're trying to make! I've read it, and I think some of it reflects some things that Occupy has struggled with, but it's certainly not applicable to all of our organising or all of our conversations. It is also contradicted in parts by real life examples. So, what is the point being made specifically in relation to Saeeda's question?