One of the things that civil rights leaders often miss is that the messenger has historically mattered. The Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s worked in part because Martin Luther King Jr. was viewed as the leader, and he was a minister, and preached non-violence. Had Malcolm X been the face most people saw, it might not have worked out as well. The gay rights movement did not get very far with parades and drag queens in the streets, but has done very well with rather "normal" looking sitcom characters and having prominent, successful people come out as LGBT.
Perception is reality in this society we live in. The bulk of our voting class folks are working class folks, and they are limited in their time to put into considering these issues. Whether it's right or not, groups seeking change have to put the right face on their movement, and sell it in a way that reaches most Americans. The "professional protestor class" hasn't quite got that yet, which is why most social-change movements don't work in America. I did say most.
This is why the coverage of the "I Can't Breathe" protests and movement is so important. When these protests are covered as "anti-police," they are losing a large portion of the people they need to reach. Are they anti-police? No, they really aren't. FOX and other conservative outlets are lying about them openly, so as to discredit them, but they are just that, lies. As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said above, it's not anti-Catholic to call for the removal of pedophile priests, it's also not anti-cop to call for the removal of police brutality and bad cops.
In general, liberal causes have to get better at framing the messenger. Regardless of what you'd like to think, or what you'd like to feel, every successful social change movement in American history had the right messengers. That's still needed now, in 2014, and will be in 2015.
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