It's true that politicians don't usually lead, they look to the voting base to see what they can do. I think the issue right now is that there isn't (yet) a unifying leader that can mobilize a big enough population of people to make it impossible for the media to ignore. while I think smaller protests have their place they are useless if they don't move to something bigger. And something bigger - that being millions of people filling the streets of multiple cities - won't happen without a big charismatic leader like Martin Luther King, jr.

Yet the middle of the road, center right democrats that hold power see this as a challenge to their control. They only have to look to how the GOP was hollowed out by a big charismatic leader in trump. The more "moderate" republicans lost control to the more extreme right - the moderate democrats don't want that and will do what they can to hold down that yet unknown person from gaining a voice for the left.