> Surely, nationwide daily protests would make elected officials reconsider their positions, given an upcoming midterm election, while there still is one.
Hah. When was the last time a non-violent protest yielded some kind of result by itself? Certainly never in american history.
Anyway, there are daily protests. They just aren't covered by the media. Hell, the protests for palestine never stopped... the media just never wanted to cover them.
Women's suffrage was relatively nonviolent.
As was the civil rights era. The people who chose to be violent made it take longer, actually.
I don't think that's really accurate. Without the perceived threat from the militant factions, the peaceful protesters wouldn't necessarily have had political backing and support. Peaceful movements had been suppressed until that point, after all.
I think it is. Change happened because a majority of reasonable people wanted it to change.
Terrorist attacks, kidnappings, etc made that change take longer. What made MLK Jr so unique was that he carried a message of peace, not a message of war.
The militant factions never had any real power and would have never been close to powerful enough to overthrow the government, and if they’d been more successful, would have swayed the masses’ opinions in the wrong direction.