Political violence is almost never justified.

The vast majority of these protesters are expressly non-violent. They camp to bring public attention to injustice. Some stay past curfew, deliberately practicing civil disobedience. They anticipate being gassed, maced, shoved, dragged, and otherwise abused by police -- and do so without retaliation.

Of course, there can be other actors with their own agendas. Some looting. Some rioting. However, it does us a disservice to blindly clump those practicing civil disobedience with those practicing violence, or to write about the former as if they were enacting violence, when the opposite is true.