You are correct @calaber24p - non-violence was once beneficial when attempting to raise awareness, and perhaps has great propaganda-benefit when the boots wade-in and brutalize. However, when 'EVERYONE KNOWS' what the problems are and that we have moved on from education to demanding change, then allowing the state to place protesters in holding-areas, and make selective arrests of leadership etc. is totally f'n useless.
The state responds only when there is a 'real threat', first they respond with violence, but if the threat is sustained, it will respond with reform. If the objective is massive change to societal power-structures, then this threat must be sustained 'and' widespread. Of course when I say threat, I do not mean only violence .. aggresive non-cooperation as in refusing to acknowledge the demands of the state on every level, slowly causing failure over time in-aggregate ...
Standing in a group, ignored by the mass-media, waiting silently to get pepper-sprayed and stomped into the ground no longer has any value .. last time it did was the Battle for Seattle in 2007 .. when people still watched television, and was of such a scale, never seen in the United States that mass media could not ignore it.
It's never "the state" that responds, but just a small party within the state, who has power over its machinery. We should rather ask ourselves: Do we want to build such minority-controllable apparatus?