I think that this article really illustrated the idea of “power to the people.” If you can motivate a lot of people to care about an issue you can make a lot of progress. Many of the instances of rebellion described in the reading were situations of the poor being upset about wealth disparity in the colonies. This was not the most powerful group in society by any means. The poor, however were able to get a large group of people together to illustrate how they felt about the issue and that was impactful. It was a real case of strength in numbers. If you are able to get the masses upset enough about an issue, actions will be taken.
I found the part of the reading that talked about “the myth of the Revolution– that it was on behalf of a unified people,” to be very interesting. The Revolution was being caused by a large group of colonists, many of which wanted different things. Despite them all wanting different things, they all had a similar end goal that they thought would further their cause. I think that this goes to show that it is still possible to lead a group that is motivated by different things, to a common goal. The leader just needs to understand the different motivations and target them.
I agree with you when you say that it is possible for a leader to lead to a common goal even with lots of different individual objectives. However I think a main point of the Article was that the rich exploited the poor in the country to rise up against the “evil British” when in reality it was the rich oppressing the poor more than the british.