[nemothekid]

What you are asking for is for people to protest more nicely and to have a co-ordinated message. Ignoring the impossible ask of trying to get a single message from a decentralized movement, people have been asking for police reform. Black Lives Matter is founded on police reform. The original michael brown events was in 2014. I explicitly brought up Kapernick because he's been asking for reform in 2016! It's not until people starting saying defund did the message change from "well can we just have reform instead"?

Protests have always been extreme and riots has been historically the best vehivle of change for the proletariat. People on the ground are rarely going to be amazing orators in explaining what they need and for a underprivileged group, being reasonable has never worked. You have WSPU escalating to violence for Women's Suffrage in the UK. You have the troubles in Ireland. You have the underbelly of the violent race riots in MLK's marches.

And how do you keep it from escalating? By solving the underlying grievances people have. Most people don't turn to white supremacy through a pure ideological belief that the "white race" is superior. They start with system problems - increasing health costs, increasing housing costs and lack of upwards mobility, and in their search of their solutions they find someone who tells them what they want to hear.

At the end of the day when you have people rioting in the streets the time for "rational" discourse has long passed. The people who are most loudly chanting defund the police have been trying to reform for almost _10 years_.