"Ella Taught Me: Shattering the Myth of the Leaderless Movement'

""While their work has made a critical contribution, Kang frames that work in a way that misrepresents the larger movement. With a narrow range of sources, Kang’s piece concluded that “Twitter is the revolution,” that “our demand is simple: stop killing us," and that the emergent movement is “leaderless.”

The New York Times Magazine profile was problematic on each of these points. Borrowing from my research on Baker and my own participation in social movements, I want to refute the notion that this movement is leaderless. As some contemporary youth activists such as #BlackLivesMatter co-founder and Dignity and Power Now founder Patrisse Cullors have asserted, their movement is not leaderless, it is leader-full...
When Oprah Winfrey complained that recent protests against police violence lack leadership, she was describing the King style of leading, or at least the way in which the King legacy has been most widely branded: the reverend as the strong, all-knowing, slightly imperfect but still not-like-us type of leader.

[Ella] Baker represented a different leadership tradition altogether. She combined the generic concept of leadership—"A process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task"—and a confidence in the wisdom of ordinary people to define their problems and imagine solution."

http://www.colorlines.com/articles/ella-taught-me-shattering-myth-leaderless-movement

Long but valuable - read by sections, as they interest you.

Related: HBR old power/new power
 

FB: I love this description of the un-MLK model of leadership, and being able to see through claims that a movement is leaderless (and thus, illegitimate)

"That collective effort required leaders who were accountable to one another and were not singular. There were many organizers in groups such as SNCC who modeled Baker’s brand of what sociologist Charles Payne has called "group-centered leadership."

Rather than someone with a fancy title standing at a podium speaking for or to the people, group-centered leaders are at the center of many concentric circles. They strengthen the group, forge consensus and negotiate a way forward. That kind of leadership is impactful, democratic, and, I would argue, more radical and sustainable, than the alternatives."