IIt was 70 years ago when four African Americans sat in the fifth row of a bus in Montgomery. Since one white man had to stand in the front, the driver asked the four to stand and move to the back of the bus. Three did it; one didn't – the rest is history. Or so many American children might have thought when they first read the story of Rosa Parks in school.
This is a story about courage, but, lest we forget, it is also a story about breaking the law. And the question for us today is what civil disobedience means in an era when the federal government has signaled its willingness to severely punish even perfectly legal dissent.
Before getting into any debate about how disobedience can ultimately strengthen democracy, it's worth reminding ourselves that Parks's textbook version usually doesn't tell the whole story. She was not just a tired seamstress who, after a long day of work, spontaneously decided to protest against injustice. Most likely, Parks had been a member of the NAACP in Montgomery since 1943; she led the youth of the organization and was African American rape investigation women in Alabama.
What Obama once declared—“that any of us, ordinary people without rank, wealth, title or fame, can somehow point out the imperfections of this nation, come together, challenge the status quo, and decide that it is within our power to remake this country we love until it more closely matches our highest standards”—is true, but it is not the whole truth: Parks had no rank or wealth, but she had many fellow activists and friends.
Resistance is a matter of coordination, and coordination is helped by having an effective organization behind it. The bus boycott, which lasted a staggering 381 days, depended on organizers quickly distributing pamphlets to the black community, as well as volunteers driving “private taxis” (in December 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional). Parks went on record saying, “The only thing I’m tired of is tired of giving up.” Others were also tired of it, but they had the energy and courage to organize.
What political theorist Brandon Terry called “Our culture's haunting references to the civil rights movement” and, in particular, “apparent consensus in celebrating civil rights“We overlook the fact that nonviolent protest against injustice was unlikely to be popular among whites across the country. Commission 1776tend not to be included in their stories; they make it seem as if the entire nation loved to unite around the idea of ”colorblindness” in the 1960s – and only crazed left-wing identity politics advocates undermined this happy consensus.
Civil disobedience ispublic, nonviolent, conscious but political act“, according to what remains the most influential definition put forward by the preeminent figure in political philosophy of the second half of the 20th century, John Rawls. There are reasons to believe that Rawls's approach has become objectively more difficult to implement today. Rawls argued that breaking the law to point out injustice could persuade the majority to bring about change. But he relied on a mass media system that allowed the majority to see injustice – think of the brutal attacks by police officers (and their dogs) on civil rights protesters in Birmingham. Although today information is more accessible—and Black Lives Matter was critically dependent on acts of police brutality going viral—our media landscape has gone viral as well. much more fragmentedand a lot of right-wingers are making sure things happen rethoughtwhich is a polite way of seeing: to make sure that their meaning is distorted.
Rawls also relied on the idea that in a “nearly just” society, disobedience must involve a willingness to accept punishment as a demonstration of one’s general “willingness.”loyaltyOf course, there is a general question about whether the United States can be considered “almost fair”; but in particular, there is a clear tendency by the Trump administration to undermine the rule of law.
The attorney general appears to have abandoned any independence from the executive branch, seeking to follow Trump's commands to exact revenge on his perceived enemies. As members of the Ministry of Justice reportedthe idea is no longer that cases are initiated after the facts have been established; rather, cases are constructed and then the race begins to find suitable facts. Some judges bravely resist; but the structural damage and corruption are already enormous.
Rawls saw civil disobedience as a form ofpublic speaking“. It is unclear whether this speech will be heard. Even if it is, one can doubt that it will be heard in good faith by the authorities. The philosopher suggested that “in a state approaching justice, the vindictive suppression of legitimate dissent is unlikely.” Today, dissent, both legal and legal, is already under attack from Trumpists and the President himself (most recently threatening to prosecute citizens who, in his opinion, violate “internal peace of mind”) Anyone who thinks about civil disobedience should have answers to problems that, despite all the injustices of the south, the “mother of the civil rights movement” did not have to face in the same way.
