>

Kipling was also a horrible racist lol.
The purpose of the violence is to make your life uncomfortable. Slavery is bad. Eventually saying slavery is bad wasn't enough and a civil war had to be fought because peaceful discussion doesn't move bigoted people to change.
The riots of the civil rights movement were every bit as critical to it's success as the impassioned speeches of MLK.
To say, well I don't like being coerced, that's the point. Sometimes peaceful protest doesn't make people change their mind. Sometimes you have to push harder.
No one will listen to you when you're violent is a crap argument, because no one was listening for years while you were peaceful either.
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Large groups of people under one banner are actually many individuals all with their own way they want to achieve things.
Do you think one person who thorns a brick while 99 others march peacefully should not be condemned? Should there be consequences? >

If only one person fires a gun at the British at Lexington, he probably gets hanged.
If a bunch of other people fire after he does, it's the "Shot Heard Round the World!" >

Can you answer my question without using an idiom, in plain English? >

Sorry I didn't think of the possibility you might not be familiar with the phrase.
If one person walks up to a police station and throws a brick, he's getting arrested. What if 50,000 people walk up to the same police station and overrun it? And does our perspective on the situation change if they are Egyptians or Chinese people storming their government buildings vs our own? >

Are you describing an act of protest?
I think there is a line where a protest becomes a revolution. 
The expectations are different for each. Iran is seeing a revolution currently in those actively fighting for their freedom. 
But does it matter if we label it something or another thing when there will always be supporters of that behaviour and objectors? >

I'd say the distinction lies more in the goals of the people protesting/revolutioning rather than the means they are using >

Where do you draw the line though? Do you believe every cause should be forgiven in public view or straight up allowed to be violent?
Like we can see the seriousness of a cause like BLM but alternatively there are people who genuinly do not believe it has reached the threshold where violence is acceptable. 
And that threshhold is surely different for everyone. And the amount of violence is surely different for everyone. I mean say, Nelson Mandella caused damage to hospitals and undoubtedly that cost people their lives. And many would argue that was justified due to the violence and damage recieved to him and the people of his cause. 
But that logic could be extended to any group. ISIS believes themselves to be freedom fighters just as strongly as any other , they believe their violence is wholy justified and necessary and paid in kind to the violence they recieve. Is condemming their violent acts wrong? Undoubtedly, their cause would not be as widespread if not for their violence. Or is it okay to condem because you might not believe in their cause (which is what you are complaining others do with BLM)?
I use extreme ends on examples to show the reasoning can’t really just be “the violence is okay because the people committing the violence feel like it is okay.” 
Alternatively, how much violence is okay? Like in my two examples, both could be argued as terroistic vs freedom fighter. But either way their causes are extreme change. 
But how much violence should someone protesting the expansion of the “silent area” in a library be able to cause? Like should they be able to destroy books for their cause? Spray paint? Yell and scream in librarians faces? Take a hostage or kill someone? Take over a section of the library and only allow comrades of the anti silent library union in? Should they only be able to do so after they exhaust whatever beuacratic means there are? 
Its a weird thing, because no one really likes violence and giving a blanket okay allows bad stuff to occur. But we can all vaguely agree sometimes it has been necessary historically.  I don’t think its a copout to talk about these lines and to critise violence when some would say movements like BLM have not exhausted to beaucratic democratic means of change at all (if voting records are to be believed, still most gen z and millenials are not voting as much). And starting a precedent of not always looking at violence critcally allows bad actors to be violent without immediate reproach. >

!delta
This is the first post to actually help me understand what my own position is better. Plenty of replies have been some silly semantics about obviously ridiculous extremes. Ironically your reply of extremes has a certain level headedness to it I find refreshing.
I think it's fair as you say to judge violence on a case by case basis as being excessive, uncalled for, understandable, whatever. I think the denouncing of violence in a protest can also be done though without using it as an excuse to avoid addressing the issue of the protest. Can we agree that the BLM riots became an ugly look for the US while not also ignoring that police brutality is another ugly look? >

I definitly can agree. Violence alone does not make any cause wrong and neither does it make the opposition correct. But violence from any cause should be considered critally and can be judged even if the underlining cause is “correct”. 
Though I agree many people jump this to dismiss all claims of a cause. And use it to support the opposing side which definitly brushes over it all easily. I think though the people who do that clearly aren’t making logical conclusions, they are very purposefully just trying to dismiss rather than engage in any discourse. >

What's the difference between a protest and an insurrection?
Should they be treated the same? >

A lot of it is sadly determined after the fact. MLK was certainly called an insurrectionist and worse in his day.
I don't think there is a meaningful distinction it's a sliding scale and very grey. >

The first part of that was a cop out, but okay.
So you're saying there's literally nothing protesters could do to delegitimize themselves?
In theory, the purpose of a protest is persuasion; demonstrate your grievance thereby convincing others to make mollifying changes.
Violent persuasion is coercion, not persuasion.  If a protest movement appears to be coercing rather than persuading, why should I focus on their grievances more than coercion and the subsequent harm they do?
Rudyard Kipling said that once you pay the danegeld, you'll never get rid of the Dane.  If I mollify a movement that's violent and destructive, I invite more violence in the future.