We don't need leaders so much as we need a unified agenda to move forward. It was easier to identify in the '50s because Jim Crow laws were seen by 99% of Black folk as something that needed to be eliminated if we were to survive. Dr. King and Minister Shabazz were natural leaders thrown into the right time and place to focus millions on the target and the strategy to attain it. It's hard for people to get on board if they all want to do their own thing and the power structure is aware of it.

The reason the Occupy Movement and the Don't Shoot/My Hands Are Up/I Can't Breathe protests are doomed to fail are because nobody knows what they want or how to get it. If you don't work as a collective to strike at a societal choke point, all your marching, chanting, and rioting is going to peter out and nothing will get done. There are really only two ways to get what you want as far as societal change are concerned: 1) Unified election strategy to get the people in office [[who can gum up everything like the Tea Party did) who will enact legislation of change and 2) Cohesive economic strategy designed to force the supporters of the current system to capitulate and demand change.

If you're not willing to vote to get what you want and you're still giving your money to people who would sooner piss on you than pull you out of the gutter, then you're going to get what you have. And right now, there's neither a strategy for change nor anyone who is pulling people together to advise them on an agenda for putting it together. Democrats and Republicans are basically the same, all out to keep what they have. It serves both for 97% of us to fight each other instead of the system that permits 3% of the citizens to control 33% of the wealth.