The State has always been willing to resort to violence to prevent citizens from challenging and overturning illegitimate forms of authority. That kind of critique strikes at the very heart of the State, and with such intensity, that it is only by State violence and repression that illegitimate authority can be maintained. Only the direct, unflinching application of massive State violence was sufficient to turn back the protesters. And, more immediately, the political leaders of Seattle and D.C. were willing to resort to State violence to prevent embarrassment to the host city, an issue that plainly weighs heavily on the minds of Philadelphia and Los Angeles city leaders. The willingness to engage in State violence to avoid embarrassment is plainly absurd.
State violence is problematic because what the State does, it does with prima facie justification.
The violent actions of ordinary citizens do not possess prima facie justification. In fact, ordinary violent acts are often prima facie unjustified. But as with capital punishment and police brutality , what the agents of the State do, legitimately or illegitimately, they do in the name of each and every citizen. And when State violence is illegitimate, when it's deployed against citizens seeking redress of their grievances, it inculpates the entire body politic in illegitimate acts. And to assume that they were equal in scope and degree is to assume something unsupported by the facts.