An easy way to test this article's hypothesis would be to sit down with the old hands who help organize these protests - let's say, some of the old former SNCC

An easy way to test this article's hypothesis would be to sit down with the old hands who help organize these protests - let's say, some of the old former SNCC and Black Panther types advising the younger Black Lives Matter organizers, and ask them if they think a series of demonstrations are the means to change things. I am pretty confident, because I have spent a lot of time around organizers of different colors who go back to the 1960s (or 1930s) that 99% of the time, they are going to say no. It's a very easy way to falsify this hypothesis. I mean, you might get this reaction from some 16 year old who has come to their first demonstration, but you would rarely get it from someone seriously involved. New Yorker articles about such matters usually have some flaws, but this one is much worse than usual as he didn't do a very simple thing to falsify his hypothesis.