They need a leader. We saw that in the fall of OWS. A leader that isn't compromise-able. It's like that scene in Django when Leonardo DiCaprionasks the same question about his slaves. In the absence of leadership we get complacency.
I wonder if we're just guilty of the line of thinking that leads us to believe that our time is more important than other historic times. If we look at true, lasting rebellions, they took many years for things to get so bad that people were compelled to act. Slavery in the US (and pre-US Americas) lasted hundreds of years before the Civil War. The French Revolution was a millennium in the making. Here, we're talking about a few decades of stagnation where actually a lot of people are doing really well, and even if you're poor there's a good chance you have a smart phone. I think the poor should demand better policies, but I just don't think things are bad enough for long enough to provoke a popular uprising.
I think that's exactly right. Compare the grievances of those uprisings you mentioned vs. the grievances we are talking about here. Most poor people have housing, food, and amenities that past generations would have considered luxuries. Do they have genuine reasons of protest? Yes. But the reasons tend to be rooted in a system that perpetuates cyclical poverty. Education for the poor is abysmal and next to nobody cares. Income for the poor is stagnant and their wealthy leaders largely dismiss raising their wages. The game is rigged, no doubt but it's rigged in a way that still allows you to buy your beer, have a TV and eat your hot pockets.
I disagree about the last thing you said, but I think it's easy for us to be inspired by other examples of revolt (the one that happened in Tunisia for example) and forget that this all started from a straw that broke the camels back, while the problems being addressed have been around for a long, very long time.