Civil disobedience as law enforcement

Civil disobedience as law enforcement - Waging Nonviolence:

• Based on the Justinian Code’s protection of res communes, governments have long served as trustees for rights held in common.
• Legal rationales have played a critical role in many nonviolent movements. They strengthen participants by lending a sense of clarity that they are not promoting personal opinions by criminal means but rather performing a public duty. And they strengthen a movement’s appeal to the broader society by presenting action not as wanton lawbreaking but as an effort to rectify governments and institutions that are themselves in violation of the law.
• Future climate protesters can proudly proclaim that they are actually climate protectors, upholding the law, not violating it. Nobody should expect American judges to start acquitting protesters on public trust grounds any time soon. But juries that try climate protesters should keep in mind that they have the right and the responsibility to acquit those they believe have violated no just law.

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Boycott! A Call to Renew the Resistance that Works

Boycott! A Call to Renew the Resistance that Works | Occupy.com:

• I puzzle over the tepid response to the N.S.A.-corporate phone collusion scandal. Or lukewarm challenges to what the iconic John Lewis terms the Supreme Court’s “dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act”? How can entrenched Republican/corporate powers, so hypersensitive to shallow publicity stains (like Paula Deen), otherwise run roughshod, upping warfare against women or the misery of debt-laden college students, graduating into adulthood as indentured servants?
• A quick reminder, simple, how-to kit for driving a boycott home plus big, successful modern boycotts:
• 1930: Gandhi’s March to the Sea defies the colonial British tax on commercial salt.
• 1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott: Rosa Parks’ arrest led to comprehensive boycott led by then-unknown Martin Luther King, Jr., ended 18 months later by Supreme Court’s agreement segregated buses are unconstitutional.
• 1960s: Grape Boycott: grassroots/community non-violent protest organized by the Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers highlighted plight of migrant workers, led to union contract and superior working conditions.
• 1980-90’s: Anti-Apartheid Boycotts: embargoed financial dealings with South Africa to defy racist “apartheid” policy.

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We all should share critical government operation concerns

At the beginning of every day of session in both the US House and the US Senate, a clergy person leads prayer. This venerable custom has been practiced with our elected officials for many years. These prayers aren't long, and they serve spiritual needs of our representatives and their staff.


It seems to me that most Americans don't actively communicate with their government officials when they see operationally relevant breaches occurring in the capitol. We seem to give them a pass, as if the government isn't composed of precious human beings with souls.


Yet, most of us have seen activity-- some perpetually driven-- such as: 1) neglecting unsatisfied basic needs of the poor, 2) disrespecting duly elected Pres. Obama's beliefs and authority, 3) lacking empathy for other legislators' arguments, 4) executing the death penalty on a man not proven guilty, 5) accepting, during session, business campaign contributions, 6) lacking care and regulation for our environment, 7) disdaining fiscal responsibility for our federal budget, 8) disrespecting our founding legal documents, 9) trespassing against other nations, and 10) preferring personal ideology over the nation's interest.


Regardless of the personal spiritual state of each of our elected officials-- even those who comprise our nation's highest level of government-- we, their constituents, have an absolute mandate to share with them our critical operational concerns. Easy-to-use tools for engaging with our own representatives are readily available on the internet; and those citizens without the internet can reach them in several ways.


Let us share with our government representatives any concerns over important capitol practices, even if we can only do so by minor acts of nonviolent disobedience, for they are constitutionally mandated to represent each one of us.

Henry David Thoreau and "Civil Disobedience"

Answers.com

Henry David Thoreau

Oxford Dictionary of Politics: Henry David Thoreau

• (1817-62) American essayist. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College. Thoreau is famous for having coined the term civil disobedience. His most powerful and influential political essay, ‘Civil Disobedience’, originally published under the title ‘Resistance to Civil Government’ (1849), exalts the law of conscience over civil law. Incensed by the Mexican War (1846-8) and the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850, which ensured federal assistance to slave-catchers, Thoreau became concerned with widespread personal complicity in injustice. As a public act of protest against the Mexican War, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax and was imprisoned overnight. 1854 Thoreau published Walden, or, Life in the Woods, a plea for simplicity in everyday life.  — Vittorio Bufacchi

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Henry David Thoreau

• Thoreau was an activist involved in the abolitionist movement on many fronts: he participated in the Underground Railroad, protested against the Fugitive Slave Law, and gave support to John Brown and his party. Most importantly, he provides a justification for principled revolt and a method of nonviolent resistance, both of which would have a considerable influence on revolutionary movements in the twentieth century. In his essay on “Civil Disobedience,” originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government,” he defends the validity of conscientious objection to unjust laws, which ought to be transgressed at once. Although at times it sounds as if Thoreau is advocating anarchy, what he demands is a better government, and what he refuses to acknowledge is the authority of one that has become so morally corrupt as to lose the consent of those governed. “There will never be a really free and enlightened State,” he argues, “until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly” (“Civil Disobedience”). There are simply more sacred laws to obey than the laws of society, and a just government—should there ever be such a thing, he says—would not be in conflict with the individual conscience.

Thoreau Reader

Civil Disobedience  Originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government" By Henry David Thoreau - 1849 - with annotated text

Desobediencia Civil - Spanish translation by Hernando Jiménez

• While Walden can be applied to almost anyone's life, "Civil Disobedience" is like a venerated architectural landmark: it is preserved and admired, and sometimes visited, but for most of us there are not many occasions when it can actually be used. Still, although seldom mentioned without references to Gandhi or King, "Civil Disobedience" has more history than many suspect. In the 1940's it was read by the Danish resistance, in the 1950's it was cherished by those who opposed McCarthyism, in the 1960's it was influential in the struggle against South African apartheid, and in the 1970's it was discovered by a new generation of anti-war activists. ...