[Peace-discuss] RE: The War on Dissent Gets Creepy

[C. G. Estabrook]

Phil--

I think our disagreement is illustrated by your penultimate
sentence: "if I were caught [violating the Fugitive Slave
Law], I'd pay the consequences, and I'd accept that."  I infer
that you would "accept it" in the sense that you think you
would be morally obliged to do so, and I don't think you
would.  If you were caught smuggling Jews out of occupied
Europe during WWII, would you accept that you were morally
obliged to pay the consequences?  What's the difference?

Civil disobedience is a political tactic, and it has been
erroneously reinterpreted as a moral imperative.  

The goal of someone who chooses CD is publicity.  S/he
publicly breaks a law in order to say to the community at
large that his/her punishment is unjust -- to say, "Look,
they're making me suffer for doing something I shouldn't be
punished for doing" (e.g., integrating a business).  Civil
disobedience in secret would be pointless; breaking an unjust
law in secret is a good idea.  

Pace Wikipedia, all non-violent disobedience isn't CD: only
non-violent disobedience that seeks to make a political point. 
And of course AWARE's monthly actions on Main Street are not
CD; they would be, if we blocked traffic -- or occupied a
congressman's office --  in order to protest the war.  There
are those in the anti-war movement like Cindy Sheehan who say
we should be doing exactly that. 

Incidentally, we might think about the politics that make
spray-painting a wall a *felony*.  My guess is that
legislatures pass that sort of law in order to "fight gangs"
-- i.e., it's part of the suppression of lower-class groups
who use tagging as a form of public assertion.  It's something
like the arrest of of people distributing anti-war newspapers
during the Vietnam War on the charge of "littering"... 

--CGE

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:26:32 -0600
>From: "Phil Stinard" <pstinard at hotmail.com>  
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] RE: The War on Dissent Gets Creepy  
>To: galliher at uiuc.edu, peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
>Hi Carl,
>
>The law in question is spraypainting or vandalizing public
property.  I 
>don't hold it equivalent to a fugitive slave law.  I checked
out civil 
>disobedience in the Wikipedia, and the definition is "the
active refusal to 
>obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of
an occupying 
>power without resorting to physical violence" 
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience).  It's not
illegal to 
>oppose the war, and I don't feel that by carrying a sign, he
would have been 
>committing civil disobedience, because there would have been
no opportunity 
>to be arrested.  Are the monthly actions on Main Street civil
disobedience, 
>or are they protests?  I would make the argument that they
are not civil 
>disobedience.  If you feel differently, I'll respect that.  I
think it 
>weakens what others have done in the past, though.
>
>I think that it was unclear from the article exactly what Mr.
Ferner was 
>protesting, and your reply confirms it.  You refer to "an
anxious attempt to 
>assert that the system that contains an unjust law is itself
just and must 
>be supported."  I'm not anxious about it, but you imply that
the unjust law 
>is the law against spraypainting on public property (point of
disagreement), 
>when I thought that the injustice is the war in Iraq (point
of agreement).  
>You see the problem, right?  The issue is no longer the war,
it's 
>spraypainting on bridges.
>
>Getting back to the fugitive slave law, of course if I were
freeing slaves, 
>I'd avoid getting caught, so that I would have the freedom to
continue 
>freeing slaves.  But if I were caught, I'd pay the
consequences, and I'd 
>accept that.  Mr. Ferner went into his situation without an
understanding of 
>civil disobedience or what he was doing.
>