Having grown up during the Civil Rights movement; read
Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” as well as Plato’s Apology, Crito, and Phaedo in
college; participated in the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era; and studied
Thoreau’s Resistance to Civil Government
for my undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, I thought I knew
something about civil disobedience.
In recent years, however, I’ve witnessed a couple of
protests that made me question what I understood about civil disobedience. Most recently, I was led to conduct a little
research and reread some of those classic works.
It is debated whether Socrates actually committed civil
disobedience, that is, deliberately broke the law. However, in the Apology he states that even if the charges against him were dropped
he would continue to practice his philosophical teaching, acting as a kind of
“gadfly” to the state. When offered the opportunity to reduce his sentence from
death to a fine, he suggests such a paltry amount that the judges dismiss it
and pronounce the death sentence. When,
in the Crito, he is offered a chance
to escape prison, he rejects the offer and argues on behalf of respect for the
laws and the courts. Perhaps it is
because he takes the position of accepting the ruling of the state, even though
he believes he is innocent, that we associate him with civil disobedience.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on “civil
disobedience” (15th edition), “…by submitting to punishment, the civil
disobedient hopes to set a moral example that will provoke the majority or the
government into effecting meaningful change.”
Perhaps, by accepting his punishment Socrates hopes to set
that moral example that will expose the state’s unjust use of its power. I can’t help but be reminded of A Lesson Before Dying (see July, 2014,
blog post), in which Jefferson, who is unjustly convicted and sentenced to
death for a crime he didn’t commit, but who emerges as “the bravest man in the
room” at his own execution. By
submitting to his unjust punishment with courage and dignity, Jefferson shames
his white oppressors and confronts them with their own moral weakness.
Both Henry David Thoreau (see Oct.-Nov., 2010, blog posts)
and Martin Luther King, Jr., make a distinction between a just law and an
unjust law, appealing to a higher moral authority, individual conscience for
Thoreau and God’s law for King. They
argue for the duty to disobey an unjust law.
In both cases, they advocated for going to jail rather than obeying an
unjust law. And in both cases they did
go to jail, hoping to set a moral example for others.
When Emerson visited Thoreau in jail, the story goes, he
asked, “Henry, what are you doing in here?”
And Thoreau retorted, “Ralph, what are you doing out there?” The implication
being that jail was the more moral place to be.
And nowhere in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” does King argue
that he should not have been jailed. He
argues for the use of non-violent direct action to challenge unjust laws by
disobeying them. By submitting to his
punishment, he held the higher moral ground in the face of those who upheld the
unjust laws.
Here we must make a distinction between direct and indirect
civil disobedience. In the former, as in
the case of civil rights activists who deliberately broke the Jim Crow laws of
segregation, disobeying those laws directly challenges their justice. In the latter, as in the case of protesters
who block traffic or break trespassing laws in order to march or demonstrate,
disobeying those ancillary laws provides an opportunity to protest some
injustice that is much greater than their own flouting of less important laws.
King and his followers used both methods, and suffered, not
only jail, but also brutal attacks from law enforcement. As shown in the contemporary film Selma, by using non-violence and submitting
to the consequences of their actions, they held the higher moral ground and
exposed their white oppressors’ total lack of moral credibility and standing.
King was inspired, not only by Thoreau, but also by Mahatma
Ghandi, who developed the theory of “satyagraha,” literally meaning “devotion
to truth,” but representing a method of political protest which invites
suffering rather than inflicting it, thereby exposing the brutality and injustice
of the dominant power.
As Gandhi himself stated, “I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the
application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of
truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he
must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be
truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means
self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by
infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha)
Other examples could be cited: the American suffragettes who
were jailed and force fed for protesting the denial of women’s right to vote
(see the film Iron Jawed Angels),
Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for 27 years for opposing apartheid in South Africa
(See the recent film Mandela), are
just two examples. (See more examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examples_of_civil_disobedience)
Though I’ve participated in protests, I’ve never had the
moral courage to risk arrest or police brutality. I have great admiration for those who have
demonstrated such courage and passion for their cause.
But on two occasions in recent years, I’ve witnessed cases
of so-called civil disobedience that have left me scratching my head. In both cases, the protesters demanded that
they not be arrested or charged. In both
cases, the protestors were warned that their actions were illegal and that they
would be subject to arrest. In both
cases they knowingly broke the law.
Both cases were examples of indirect civil disobedience,
though, I have to say, I’m not entirely clear if the protesters were arguing that the
laws they broke (trespassing and protesting on private property) were
unjust. And, if that’s the case, I’m not
clear if they would argue the laws were unjust in general or just in the case
of their protest. Perhaps they were
demanding that law enforcement and the court system recognize the justice of
their cause and give them a pass.
This would seem to be a new strategy in the use of civil
disobedience, a strategy of moral persuasion that calls for no serious
sacrifice on the part of the protesters.
But it would seem to ask the state to apply the law selectively, that
is, if the state agrees with your cause, then you will not be prosecuted, but
if it doesn’t agree with your cause, you will be prosecuted? Would those using this strategy approve if
the state failed to prosecute others who were protesting on behalf of a cause
they didn’t agree with? Like I said, I’m
scratching my head.
In any case, traditionally civil disobedients have derived
their moral credibility from their willingness to put the law to the test, risk
arrest or worse, suffer the consequences, and thereby challenge the justice of
the state from a high moral ground.
Which leads me to ask from where the protesters who demand that they not
be charged derive their moral credibility.
Is it enough to assert the justice of their cause? Would they consider it enough if a group they
disagreed with simply asserted the justice of their cause?
Let’s say a group of anti-abortion protesters deliberately
violates the buffer zone outside an abortion clinic and invades the personal
space of a client. Would it be enough
for them to assert the justice of their cause in claiming they should not be
arrested? If so, would those same
protesters support the pro-choice protesters who make the same claim while
deliberately trespassing or blocking traffic?
Perhaps the idea of suffering on behalf of your cause is out
of date. Perhaps in our modern “first
world,” it is too much to expect civil disobedients to accept the legal
consequences of their actions. Perhaps
there is a new, more modern theory of civil disobedience that now supersedes
those of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. How
do civil disobedients who demand that they not be charged justify their demand? How do they establish their moral standing?
I’m genuinely confused here, folks. Help me out.
