A true leader is someone who has failed repeatedly and learned his or her lessons, who has struggled all his life, and who has come to understand the needs of the people. Those needs are physical, they are economic, they are family and community, and they are spiritual. There's good answers out there, and they come from all sorts of social and political perspectives. Rigidly following any existing political doctrine will not yield the best solutions. The method of change is never "protest" or "expression" or "liberation", instead it's about building community, developing a network of friends, and actually making public policy changes.

Leadership is about making the community, our society, and our nation a better place. It doesn’t start with “hey look at me I’m successful, I’m a top executive at xyz Fortune 500 company, and now I want to run for public office, and to trick you into thinking nobody owns me, I am even going to spend my own millions on my campaign”. The Phil Murphy’s of the world will simply never understand the real needs of the working class, because they have never been poor. Some have never even been an average person. Remember that infamous video of Pres. George Bush seeing for the first time the wonders of a cashier scanning a product with a bar code, at least 15 years after everyone else first saw it.

What kind of leader will ever have a perspective on what constitutes fair banking policies when they’ve never been personally impacted by the banks with their fees and interest rates? And who has never struggled to put food on the table, and find a good career. Or who has never been frustrated with getting the landlord to make the most basic repairs.

The average working class family is faced with the economic decision of how to be gainfully employed with good health insurance, AND pay market rate rent without government assistance, AND afford market rate day care, AND handle all the logistics and stress of getting the kids back and forth to day care or school, while getting to work on time to keep that job. For instance, can you afford the additional expense of purchasing another automobile, and then where do you park it overnight? And if there is a single additional complication in your life, like caring for a sick or elderly relative, paying a child support obligation, facing a legal struggle, being stuck in serious debt and living paycheck to paycheck, your kid is now in 3rd grade, and has to attend another school 2 miles away, or having an arrest record that limits your career choices, you are basically doomed. Is “the system” really working when it’s so much easier to just stay on public assistance rather than deal with that brutal life struggle, knowing that you face the consequences of what happens if you lose that job, and you have already given up your government assistance that took so many months or years to attain.

A leader is someone who understands that whole dilemma, and the real world impact it has in keeping people poor and on government assistance. That doesn’t happen by reading about. It happens by living it, and being immersed in it. That is the person who understands that the real public policy struggle is how to make that urban neighborhood a safe and livable place, where as many people as possible can live and thrive without government subsidies. Both “the system” and the modern urban neighborhood have to be made to work.

There cannot be gouging and predatory business plans, especially regarding banking and insurance. Essential services like utilities, internet, housing, day care, medical, and dental must be made affordable not by government subsidies, but by just and reasonable government regulations that allow those industries to attain a reasonable profit and remain in private hands. At the current time, it is mostly only utilities that are regulated.

The capitalist system has to be fair for people to support it, to respect it, and to participate in it.