When the system changes in response to the activists’ stick, credit often goes to the carrot.

queeranarchism:

So there’s this thing that I see repeating over and over:

Often respectable non-violent activist groups who speak to power in a civilized manner get no where for decades because the system doesn’t need to listen to them, because it loses nothing from ignoring them. 

But then a radical activist group shows up who are prepared to just burn the system down. And then suddenly listening to that reasonable non-violent group becomes very attractive to those in power.   

And the non-violent group will always claim that their non-violence was what changed the system, but it was the fear of something worse that made the system change.