Ravi, these aren't students. They are lumpen. Back in '91, Gulf War protest, I was part of a mob of a couple hundred anarchist punks in S.F. that also dragged newspaper racks and dumpsters into Market St. in front of the Chevron HQ, set them afire, and ran through the Tenderloin, a neighborhood even poorer than The Mission district where I lived once too, trashing property.
Didn't do nada to stop that war, except make us feel like macho militants doing an imitation of the Days of Rage.
More effective by far was when in '91, thousands non-violently totally surrounded the SF Federal Bldg. Shut it down for a day.
This kinda of sheeit, only shows how self-marginalized anarchists of this type are.
The riots of the mid to late sixties, besides scaring the shit outta the USG and local authorities (and adding to illusions by white ultra-leftists that The REVO was building) accomplished far less to advance civil rights, than mass, non-violent March on Washington '63, marching on Selma, or the disciplined Birmingham movement that took a yr. to desegregrate buses, but, I guarantee 'ya, if there had been riots there, there would not have been widespread support for the demands of King et. al. in '55.
-- Michael Pugliese