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I don't think the collective "us" you speak of needs enlightening
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Might be more correct. Whether or not it should be 'need' or 'needs', I'm not sure. Having used 'us' as a collective noun rather than a pronoun, need may be correct. That's an area I always find difficult. Like for instance 'a number of us were/was ...' My natural speech inclination is to use were in that instance, because I'm referring to multiple people. But 'a number of people' could be considered singular. Same with 'team'. The team was on time/the team were on time.
'needs enlightened' jars with me. I don't think 'to be' is exrtraneous. That said, I just automatically insert that as I read it, so it really doesn't matter and certainly doesn't need correcting for it to be clear.
'people that' as opposed to 'people who' is a matter of dialect as much as it is a matter of grammar. Perhaps your ommision of 'to be' is also a dialectical matter.