A red light light isn't a form of violence unless it was intentionally programmed to harass people. Intentionally shutting down the subways and preventing people from going home for two hours (which has happened in my town) is violence that harms innocent people. Note that I said "Residual, unintended effects from a large protest (such as traffic backups) are not immoral.."
Though I sense our positions on this issue are wildly different, I think we may have some common ground here. It raises the question of what defines the lines between vengeance, justice, and tyranny. And if you ask a hundred different people that question, you will get a hundred different answers. Add to the fact that the fate of human lives can depend on the application of those definitions, and you sow the ground for verbal strife. That is why it is so important that we discuss these issues rationally, with deference to the facts and without deference to lies. Speaking of which...
MLK wanted people judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Stop right there. Conservative whites LOVE to quote this line of MLK, because it is so easy to interpret in the context of not challenging the system of oppression of blacks that was strong then, and is still strong now. But since you want to play quote game,
let's play!
"We’ve got to fill the jails in order to win our equal rights."
"A second area in which there is need for strong leadership is from the white northern liberals. There is a dire need today for a liberalism which is truly liberal. What we are witnessing today in so many northern communities is a sort of quasi-liberalism which is based on the principle of looking sympathetically at all sides. It is a liberalism so bent on seeing all sides, that it fails to become committed to either side. It is a liberalism that is so objectively analytical that it is not subjectively committed. It is a liberalism which is neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. We call for a liberalism from the North which will be thoroughly committed to the ideal of racial justice."
And to put your trite little quote into context...
"As you know, we are involved in a difficult struggle. It was about a hundred and four years ago that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the Negro from the bondage of physical slavery. And yet we stand here one hundred and four years later, and the Negro still isn’t free. One hundred and four years later, we still have states like Mississippi and Alabama where Negroes are lynched at whim and murdered at will. One hundred and four years later, we must face the tragic fact that the vast majority of Negroes in our country find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred and four years later, fifty percent of the Negro families of our country are forced to live in substandard housing conditions, most of whom do not have wall-to-wall carpets; many of them are forced to live with wall-to-wall rats and roaches. One hundred and four years later, we find ourselves in a situation where even though we live in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, men are still arguing over whether the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character. Now this tells us that we have a long, long way to go."
All copy-pasted MLK quotes. All located with a two-second google search.
Your move.