Nonviolent Protest and Resistance Privileged

[abaris]

How many of us already think we should be at that point...why aren't we?  Hence, rioters.

Many of these rioters are just because rioters. Such as the black block, an international movement of anarchists who travel from protest to protest to wreak havock, thereby giving the whole protest and movement a bad name.

That's an international phenomenon of doing more harm than good and I don't really think these guys care.

We're not at the stage of having to pick up arms yet. We're far from it, as long as courts are still doing their work and the constitutions are upheld. I presented the example of protestors in the former soviet block. With the one exception of Rumania, which didn't even really belong to that block, they all were peaceful. There were just so many people taking the streets that the rulers no longer dared to response violently. Sure, they arrested some, picked them from the streets, but others took their place and the movements only grew in force and made the powerful fear for their own hide.

There's even a very little known example of that happening in the Third Reich. During the war, I believe around '42, a large group of women took the streets to protest their husbands being deported. This was an isolated incident, but the regime buckled. The men were released and never bothered again.