Thoreau: Was the first to coin the term civil disobedience. In the essay, “On The Duty of Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau exposed American democratic society for becoming lazy, speaking of tyrannical majorities and complacency that thrive under preconceived beliefs of freedom and liberty: “When the majority vote to abolish slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote.” When you live in a democracy, you can tend to believe that freedom and liberty exist already, and this ironically is quite dangerous as real struggles for liberation and minority movements can and do drown under its impulses. He calls upon the individual to resist the state and its corruption and resist falling into the complacent majority, who, by not acting, support slavery and war. He argued that those who understand a state’s wrongs and still support it are the government’s most conscientious supporters and most serious obstacles to reform. He believed that dissidence, when following one’s moral obligations, is respectful and righteous.
King agreed with Thoreau, in his autobiography, he says , “During my early college days, I read Thoreau's essay on ‘Civil Disobedience’ for the first time…I became convinced then that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” Barbara B. LaBossiere, author of “when the law is not one’s own”, provides a definition of civil disobedience that the two figures encompassed: “Gandhi and King’s actions outlined civil disobedience: nonviolent, a method of last resort, imposed by laws, moral issues must outweigh continued social complacency, directly targeted and planned, and not in violation of the moral rights of others.” They urged people to question their government and the laws it upholds and showcased the various forms in which dissidence could express itself. They grew the public’s consciousness massively and encouraged the realization of a higher law of morality to be applied and practiced: that of upholding justice.
What is your familiarity with King? Discuss. For King, civil disobedience seemed to be directly targeted at addressing particular unjust laws. He respected the government and maintained respect for its institutions. This was his response to injustice, and it was this response that set a precedent, an expectation of how civil disobedience should be demonstrated, largely in America, and justifiably so as for in his time, this method was very effective - it strongly combated racism that was held in place by law, such as Brown v Board. It is much of his and his followers' work and influence that pushed out and put to end these racist policies. America seems to have largely interpreted King’s work as only a series of peaceful demonstrations, and then appropriated their idea of this disobedience to formulate what was considered a socially acceptable method of protest, ignoring changing circumstances, and perhaps what civil disobedience really is entirely. But how does one fight injustice when injustice is not coded within laws but ingrained within the psyche of societal structures?
Rodney King case: Police brutality against Black people, for example, cannot be targeted as an unjust law because, although it is so frequently practiced, it is outlined as illegal under the law. Laws exist to enable people to maintain their rights and empower people to democratically protest, but these laws may not actually give way to improving injustices and making change: the police may not cooperate, the trial could be biased and dishonest, etc. The case of Rodney King exemplifies this. In 1991, Rodney King led the police on a chase, was stopped and eventually charged for driving under the influence. After he was stopped he was told to exit the car, to which then four Los Angeles Police Officers beat him brutally with batons for about 15 minutes. He was left severely injured and permanently disabled. The four police were charged with excessive use of force and when their trial occurred a year later, were acquitted and found not guilty. What resulted was five days of protest and riots across Los Angeles. There were large numbers injured, thousands arrested, and some killed. When your community is continuously targeted, oppressed and threatened, what do you do? Clearly, no justice could be served in court. How do you protect your community when those who are supposed to serve and protect it actively harm it? How else was the world supposed to know of the injustice this minority group was facing? The community largely responded by acting hostile towards police. In this case, in the eyes of the affected people, there is no sacredness in the laws of the state, so people turned to higher laws of survival and self-defense. In America, it seems that one’s right to self-defense is heralded and highly regarded in all cases other than those in which the offender is a member of the state or a representation of its authority. Where else was there for the persecuted to channel this disappointment? Those who are declared to protect and serve the law continue to violate it frequently, so what does this leave modern-day activists to do?