Bottles and Bricks: Rethinking the Prohibition against Violent Political Protest

We argue that violent political protest is justified in a generally just society when violence is required to send a message about the nature of the injustice at issue, and when it is not ruled out by moral or pragmatic considerations. Focusing on protest as a mode of public address, we argue that its communicative function can sometimes justify or require the use of violence. The injustice at the heart of the Baltimore protests—police brutality against black Americans —is a paradigmatic case of this sort, because of the relationship of the police to the injustice and the protests against it.