Protest movement leaders simultaneously shielded attacked police and blamed the state for violence.

Evidence

If you only caught that scene, it looked very much like a group of punks had almost killed a police officer. This was not something that the MPL as an organization really believed to be productive. It was actually members of the Movimento Passe Livre who pulled the officer out of there and surrounded him to separate him from the crowd immediately afterward. At the same time, it was their public policy to blame all chaos on the state, and to avoid criminalizing resistance. It was a difficult line to walk. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 377

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A protest movement managed street chaos and blame while refusing state co-optation — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 371; Police violence against protest organizers turned leadership figures into martyrs — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 368; Negative sanctions by authorities escalate protest into collective political violence (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Negative sanctions by authorities escalate protest into collective political violence #expands (0.78)
• Law-and-order policy created the police violence it is blamed for #corroborates (0.76) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1114
• Routine police presence triggers terror in activists conditioned by state surveillance. #complicates (0.74) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 533
• Media coverage persistently equated protest property damage with police violence #corroborates (0.73) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1548
• Police violence against protest organizers turned leadership figures into martyrs #expands (0.72) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 368
• Early anti-war marches gained media attention only through police violence #exemplifies (0.72) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 367
• State violence falls along a spectrum from official to semiofficial to unofficial #qualifies (0.70)