[nerfhammer]

This was Martin Luther King's basic strategy.

He tried organizing in Albany, Georgia that went uneventfully and without getting much attention or building momentum. So he started holding protests in jurisdictions in the South where he knew the local authorities would violently overreact, thus ensuring heavy national media coverage and a counter-reaction of horrifying the public at their treatment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany_movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_campaign