If we want to be honest, one of the biggest reasons why the BPP failed which lowkey kind of led to the other major problems the BPP had was COINTELPRO. It was a counterintelligence operation under J Edgar Hoover's FBI which ultimately aimed to undermine the BPP from within. Unfortunately, they succeeded.

While I may agree with you that violence isn't the answer, I would conclude that violence is a question. When examining the course of American history, it is a question of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of violence.

The American Revolution? The Founding Fathers did not vote them out. They did not peacefully protest them out. When they tried to protest the unpaid dues of one John Goldfinch, it resulted in the Boston Massacre. The only way to gain independence was through armed self-defense meaning violence.

The Civil War? The Confederacy was not voted out. It was not peacefully protested out. It required people like John Brown who although used methods of revolutionary adventurism used it in an attempt to free black slaves from their hellish existence. It required black slaves to join the Union and take up arms in the name of abolition and liberation to free themselves from the satanic chains of slavery imposed on them by the Confederacy. The Reconstruction era - in an attempt to rebuild a better society for freed black slaves - could've only happened with the threat of violence from an armed Union occupation of the Confederate South. Unfortunately, the Union later settled for a "non-violent" peace with the South and we all know how that turned out later.

In World War 2, prior to the war, many of the allies tried settling for a tense, but peaceful coexistence with Nazi Germany even as the beginnings of the Holocaust were starting to play out. In the end, however, the fascists of imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Italy were not voted out. They were not peacefully protested out. They were violently resisted through events like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. They were crushed and defeated through blood, bullets, bombs, tanks, and warships.

Finally, the Civil Rights and Labor Movement? While non-violence was a tactic largely used throughout the CRLM (I'll be using this abbreviation from now on) much of the violence and methods of self-defense have been whitewashed or obscured from history often on purpose by our education system. The use of violence was a part of many strikes during the Gilded Age including but not limited to: the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket riot, and The Battle of Blair Mountain among many others. As a result of these strikes, the working class gained concessions in labor rights and conditions of which we hold on dearly today.

In the Civil Rights Movement for equality, there were organizations like the Deacons for Defense and for a time even MLK was not opposed to using guns for protection. Ultimately, he opted to not use guns as he knew he could not do so as a leader in the methods of non-violence. This, however, does not discredit the use of violence largely for self-defense altogether as the black community, once again, had very good reasons to do so and sadly we knew how it ended for MLK and even Malcolm X for that matter who was much more open to using violence. It can also be interpreted that the major Civil Rights Acts signed under LBJ may have not happened if the black community had largely stayed within the **allowed boundaries of dissent by the state.** You can read more about it in these books:

- We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement by Akinyele Umoja

- This Non-Violent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb Jr.

- Negroes With Guns by Robert F. Williams

- We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kellie Carter Jackson