Reminds me of the populists who tried to enact change in ancient Rome. One of them would call for reform and end up murdered. The next one would find protection before calling for reform, but ended up murdered anyway. Each successive would-be reformer learned from the mistakes of his predecessors and changed his strategy accordingly. A couple of the reformers whose names I can remember are Tiberius Gracchus [1] and his brother Gaius Gracchus [2]. One of my favorite podcasts has an excellent six-part series on the fall of the western Roman empire, which introduced me to this very topic [3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Gracchus

[3] http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php?page=hharchive