@spencerbeswick Yes, but this narrative of violence became harder and harder to sell the longer they stuck with peaceful civil disobedience. In the end you are striving to change the minds of enough to allow change to happen. Remember women fought for the right to vote and got it when they convinced enough white men with beards to vote for it. Leveraging the political system takes time, courage, alliances and consistently refusing to take the government bait to use violence.

@Robo105 @spencerbeswick I feel like it may be worth noting that the political system you mention is no longer functional. And before it failed completely it already had a strong tropism toward supporting injustice and empowering authoritarians. So, faced with the fascism that system has (inevitably?) led us to, we’re all going to need to quickly identify and enact whatever robust, effective and certainly extra-electoral methods are available to protect our communities and ourselves from imminent harm. And sure, some of those acts (of so far only property destruction aka vandalism) may look like “violence” to those who are not (yet!) being directly attacked by the state. 🙂

@cthon1c @spencerbeswick Your violence is exactly what Trump and his ilk are hoping and planing for. He will use that as an excuse to escalate to afv's and tanks which you can't match. Democracy survives and is restored when alliances are built and peaceful protests are out in the streets day after day after day. Why use a method that has been proven to fail? Peaceful is slower and harder but more fruitful.