Which tactics are appropriate for today’s rebellions can only be determined by a strategic and organizational analysis along the lines [Marin Luther] King proposed, and not according to the moral judgment which he subordinated to that analysis. In fact, with news that Los Angeles is considering cuts in police department funding, Minneapolis city council members openly considering disbanding the police force, and curfews being lifted in several cities, there are good reasons to believe that the current riots are strategically effective.
“No justice, no peace,” from King’s vantage point, means that there is no positive peace without justice. Therefore in the context of injustice, there can be no negative peace, in the sense that there must be tension, there must be a “disturbance of the peace” in order to have the presence of justice. Today, when protestors shout “no justice, no peace,” we should understand this as a political principle which takes primacy over the abstract conception of a “peaceful protest.” No protest is unambiguously peaceful, for if it is oriented strategically and organizationally towards the transformation of society, it will necessarily constitute a disturbance of the peace. The disturbance of the peace will continue as long as there is injustice; so “no justice, no peace” is a slogan which represents the intransigent pursuit of justice, against all the forces of containment wielded by the state, against the voices of the white moderates who would blame protestors for the violence of the police, and against all those who fail to grasp King’s lasting message that a politics of overcoming injustice is a politics of revolutionary change.
—Asad Haider
"No Justice, No Peace"Related