> pretty peaceful

I don’t like this description. Peaceful protests are peaceful. Pretty peaceful protests aren’t peaceful.

There was a protest in my town recently where a cop car was set on fire and a bunch of windows were smashed. Maybe 200-500 people total but it was described as “mostly peaceful.” While that is true as I think only 10 people were arrested and more were violent, but that’s like 5-10% violent and the rest peaceful. I don’t think that’s earnest and truthful and I’d rather like to know if a group is peaceful or not.

There's a fundamental difference between property and people, and many people consider interpersonal violence as the dividing line between what's peaceful or not. This cannot be decided unilaterally. Using a zero-tolerance approach leads to outcomes like police gassing crowds of thousands of people because one individual flung a water bottle in their general direction.

Oh certainly. A burned car is a different form of violence than someone beaten or killed.

But “mostly peaceful” protests are the bad kind of protests. I think they are more accurately described as light riots or something or mostly peaceful riots. Or some inflection point between a lawful, peaceful protest and a violent protest.

The police actually just kind of watched the protesters smashing and burning stuff and they certainly werent tear gassing people. But I think that they do need to do something to stop violent/mostly peaceful protests and arresting 9 out of 100-200 rioters doesn’t seem to be reducing the number of riots.

While I agree there is a difference between committing acts of violence against people and inanimate objects, I would consider damaging or destroying a person's home or primary means of transportation (perhaps one and the same) as a direct attack upon that person's well-being. It's not accurate to say that a protest is mostly peaceful when random citizens lose their ability to drive to work and subsequently take on unexpected costs that might devastate them financially.

How is 90-95% peaceful not “mostly peaceful”?

I mean that “mostly peaceful” isn’t a good label as it downplays the important piece that most protests are peaceful. So a “mostly peaceful” is actually a violent protest.

It’s like describing someone charged with domestic abuse as “mostly a loving spouse who almost never beat their spouse.” True, but disingenuous.