How exactly do non-violent protests work on a mechanical level? It's nominally just a bunch of people standing outside, but they signal "Hey, we are numerous and we are enthusiastic enough about this issue to potentially swing elections." This is somewhat compelling on its own, but guarantees nothing considering how much more influence special interest groups (i.e. police unions) would have in comparison.
So after several years of accomplishing little or nothing by standing outside, the authorities in question risk riots if the issue is salient enough. Obviously a significant portion of the participants are just opportunistic and bereft of ideology but it's undoubtedly not all. To me, a riot signals "Look, we tried standing outside to show you we care but that didn't really accomplish anything. To make it 100% that we seriously care about this issue, we are willing to burn this place to the ground."
Nominally the democratic process gives voice to those who want change. But realistically, what exactly is left if your appeals for redress are as meaningful as waves crashing on a barrier wall? The only realistic pathway is to showcase your commitment to the cause by breaching the eternal peace of civil society and engaging in widespread criminal conduct. The detente has broken at that point.
I personally care a great deal about the issue of police misconduct and their lack of accountability. I had no qualms about supporting the burning of the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct building. Insofar as the currency of rioting is "dramatic displays of destruction", burning down a police building was precisely effective. As far as the rest of the destruction of unrelated property, I can't really get behind it but I'm also reticent to completely condemn it. The reason being is because I do not have a good refrain in the form of "Please don't riot, try X instead." X remains blank, I don't have a viable or reasonably effective alternative of getting attention and forcing policy change.
Large chain stores won't be seriously affected because of their risk pooling and insurance arrangements, but they definitely will be reticent of re-establishing themselves in already disadvantaged neighborhoods (e.g. See the decades 14th St and H St neighborhoods in DC took to recover from the '68 riots). Small businesses were hit really hard by covid and this only added to it considering that insurance policies typically exempt recovering from civil unrest and other force majeure exceptions. Unless they're lucky enough to win the media lottery and get traction on a gofundme, their livelihood will just evaporate. Not to mention the multitudes of needless and gratuitous assaults meted out to uninvolved bystanders.
It's really unfortunate, yet ultimately inevitable, that it has gotten to this point. Once a riot starts, there is no controlling it nor any significant ways of mitigating collateral damage.
Scott Alexander has an excellent essay on civil society, called Against Murderism. My position on this issue is completely compatible with the ideals described in that essay.
The appeal of civil society is to impose a mutual truce for violence in exchange for subjugating yourself to obeying the dictums of the system. But as soon as that agreement loses its value, people will defect because there is no longer a reason to cooperate. Describing this as is (as I do above) is not necessarily an endorsement. Whether or not the defection is moral will depend entirely on whether the reason for defection is. It will also depend on your subjective assessment of whether the civil society process is sufficient enough.
The 13 colonies had plenty of elections under British rule, albeit with significant exceptions. Maybe that's good enough for some and therefore the American Revolution was an immoral break from the truce. Maybe the present day suffrage is not enough; after all felons and illegal immigrants can't vote. Is that enough to break the truce? Depends on your opinion.
There's no democratic situation that you can present which would characterize any break from it as by definition immoral. That point will always be up for debate. Defection is always an option no matter how civilized any society is; whether or not it's moral is necessarily going to be a subjective assessment of whether the grievance adjudication is sufficient to counter any oppression in the system. If it's not, you will see defection.
Update 6/5/21: So the tone I'm seeing from a lot of government agencies and legislative bodies is something along the lines of "We'll do anything to make you stop." Los Angeles City Council for instance has proposed cutting the LAPD funding by ~5-8% ($100-$150 million). Justin Amash has introduced legislation very close to my heart eliminating the relatively modern doctrine of qualified immunity. Minneapolis city council president has suggested dismantling the entire police department and creating something else from scratch. These are just a few examples.
Obviously these measures range with regards to how half-hearted or half-assed they are. But it seems pretty clear that local authorities are desperately trying to appease the demands of the protestors, no matter where they previously had stood on the issue.
I can't imagine this happening without the widespread mayhem and destruction that has occupied the last couple of weeks. It seems compelling to me that riots definitely "work", or at least they did under these specific circumstances. Of course though, this is heavily shifting the norm so I'm curious who will next agitate for violence as a shortcut for policy change.
A few years later, what's the followup assessment? Did the riots "work" for the medium or long run benefit of the marginalized, or only to get some short run appeasement?
Alas, the subjective nature of judging when one's own asserted grievance has been addressed sufficiently (with violence if not) is a rather big sticking point. It alas reminds me of the folks who decide that they should resist arrest unless they agree that they are guilty.
If people's discernment of personal "justice" was intelligent, informed, thoughtful, honest, conscious, and unbiased, then allowing it to override the official rules (made on a one size fits all basis) would be a no-brainer. But we repeatedly see how subjective, biased, and illogical such assessments often are.
Few of the people who want to have this power to over-ride "the system" would like to live in a society which would result if everyone else also had that power.