This chapter adopts a decentralised perspective to examine the influx of working-class supporters to the 2006 encampment. Focusing on a neighbourhood in southern Mexico City with a long history of protest dating back to the land occupations of the 1970s, it highlights the pivotal role of local leaders in sustaining mobilisation. The story of Dario, head of a neighbourhood association with 3000 members, illustrates how district intermediaries “made” the movement through everyday work among populations marked by poverty, domestic violence, and crime. The analysis explores how Dario maintained authority and solidarity in his territory, balancing moral legitimacy and strategic negotiation with district officials. This micro-level approach reveals the complex and often ambivalent labour behind mass mobilisation, as well as the fatigue and disillusionment that coexist with collective enthusiasm. By foregrounding the figure of the intermediary, the chapter reconsiders the moral economies underpinning activism and revisits clientelism studies through a Goffmanian lens, emphasising performance, relational maintenance, and the fragile equilibrium sustaining political engagement in marginalised urban contexts.