Um, they often don't. https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1308986825491525635

The idea of "peacefulness" is a fetishization anyway. If we are talking about nonviolence and violence, then it would be ahistorical to say that nonviolence does not "force change," bc it certainly has. And it has also, often, not been permitted. Violence has also forced change.

So the idea that nonviolent protest is useless bc they allow it is way off base. Similar to the argument that if voting changed anything, they would make it illegal, this argument fails to account for existing efforts to limit both protest and voting rights. Like, significantly.

I know protest and ballot access matter in this moment because the people who want me dead want to take those rights away from me and the other people they want dead.

Neither violence nor nonviolence reliably "force change." That's not a thing. People take all kinds of actions in the moment and people have historically had tremendous impacts through both nonviolent and violent action. None of it is welcome by the state if it is impactful.

Also, let's not suggest that people are simply allowed to do something when folks have been pretty routinely brutalized and/or caged for doing that thing. This is not a country where people are simply allowed to protest if they remain "peaceful."