The reason you are so surprised at the militancy of the protests around the country is because you haven't been paying close attention to protest culture in america until recently. If you had, this would not come as a surprise whatsoever. I'll explain:

When Occupy Wall Street happened, the tail-end of the anti-globalization movement passed their lessons and experience on to a new generation of students. Ballooning the number of people with unpermitted protest experience.

Six or so years later, the anti-police brutality protest culture emerged, and the occupy cohort and the black lives matter cohort merged and the population of experienced protesters doubled again.

at its peak, the anti globalization protest culture was perhaps thousands of people who would take the time to travel to a summit to protest NAFTA or the G20 or something.

Today, because of the frequency of protests, most American cities have THOUSANDS of people who have been to more than one serious and confrontational protest or riot. That experience matters. People learn lessons and develop new strategies and tactics.

Thus, no reason to travel between cities, the protests can happen everywhere at once (lesson from occupy). Sure maybe some number of people do (lesson from summit-hopping anti-globalization). But there is OVERWHELMING numbers of locals directly confronting cops (lesson from BLM)

People who deny this are for the large part *newcomers* to protest culture, have no clue what they are talking about, and are repeating talking points from city governments who wish to *shift accountability* for their failures with deliberate *misinformation*.

For many of us with experience (I've been following and reporting on riots for over 15 years) these narratives are tropes. Eye-rolling messages that are said time and again. What they really do is divide multiethnic, multi-tactic, and multifaceted cultures. It's bad. Stop.

Finally, a note on race: not all black people have the same politics. Just because a black person told a white person in a video something does not mean that black person is a spokesperson. By repeating that message in service of failing city administrations, you are tokenizing.

If you don't follow protest cultures closely, no one expects you to know what you're talking about. You don't have to weigh in. If you would like to, read the histories actual protesters write before you amplify administration-serving narratives. People die over this stuff.