We had sustained national protests for months just a few years ago. The problem isn't that we're placid, but that the barriers we face to organizing mass movements are close to insurmountable and there's no available and responsive avenue to successfully lobby for change in our so-called democracy.

It's the state and all of its carceral powers against a politically uneducated population that's one arrest away from getting fired and then one missed paycheck away from homelessness, or one injury at the hands of a too-excited cop away from medical bankruptcy.