Without the threat of someone more extreme, I don't believe someone like MLK can be terribly effective. I also don't think someone like MLK can work in a repressive regime which isn't generally subject to public will, or when trying to enforce human rights which are constitutionally protected, strongly wanted by a small affected population, but meaningless to the greater population.

I can't see 50-80 year old non-technical voters caring about key escrow or mandatory data retention, even though it's an infringement of 1A/2A/4A/5A/6A/14A/+.

(It's not violence per se, it's extremism. RMS is a copyright extremist, and that makes things easier for people like Lessig I think. Gilmore is a fly-without-papers extremist, etc.)

There was for several decades--decades in which we saw perhaps the most progressive action on civil liberties--a very real and immediate threat of domestic terrorism from factions who felt oppressed.

At the end of the day, having ceded the monopoly of violence to the government, it becomes very difficult to merely ask nicely to have your freedoms restored. More Malcom X's would probably have helped the Occupy movement, least of all because the "We are oppressed, we're starting to fight back" is a narrative familiar enough to the American psyche.