Liberty Lifestyle: The American Tradition of Civil Disobedience

The First Amendment to the Constitution enshrines the right to peacefully assemble. However, the United States was founded through resistance to government authority, yet its system of government depends on people respecting the law. We are a nation with a tradition of civil disobedience, and many great changes have come about from bending the rules, and sometimes even breaking the laws. But the times have changed from the Civil Rights movement and women’s suffrage. Do today’s civil disobedience actions measure up to the past?

A Quick Comparison

In 1917, women with the National Woman’s Party started picketing outside the White House, demanding then-President Woodrow Wilson support the right for women to vote. Their assembly was peaceful and they were known as the Silent Sentinels because they stood quietly holding banners, with questions such as “How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty.”

Then the country entered World War I, and the women became more critical of the president. Police started arresting women for obstructing traffic. According to the National Park Service, more than 150 women were convicted, and some chose imprisonment instead of paying fines they considered unjust. The fight here was for liberty, for equal rights for women.

Fast forward to today and the protests against ICE agents. Across the nation, demonstrators are claiming the federal officers are “kidnapping” people off the streets. Civil disobedience runs rampant with many of these protests with protestors not just blocking and obstructing agents from doing their jobs, but physically attacking them, throwing objects at them and their vehicles, and committing other acts of violence.

The fight in this instance is protecting humanity, yet the problem is that the people being arrested by ICE agents are breaking the law by being in the country illegally. Many of them are also either wanted or convicted of violent crimes.

Protests of the Past

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

In 1846, writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax – taxes imposed on individuals rather than on property or income. For years he’d withheld the tax because he opposed slavery and government policies connected with it. He was also against the Mexican-American war because he thought it would expand slavery into more territories. He didn’t want his money supporting a government whose policies he considered immoral.

The experience led him to publish an essay three years later that was originally titled Resistance to Civil Government, but later became known as Civil Disobedience. He argued, “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” Thoreau’s central argument was that individual conscience should not automatically surrender to government authority or majority opinion. He questioned whether obeying the law was always the same thing as doing what was right. “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

On February 1, 1960, four black college students sat at a white-only lunch counter in a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were refused service but stayed there until the store closed. The protests grew as more students joined, and the sit-in spread to other cities. By the end of that year, black customers were being served at lunch counters in hundreds of Southern stores.

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Martin Luther King Jr. took the philosophy of civil disobedience further in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. The city's segregation system was challenged through boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations. When authorities obtained a court injunction against the protests, King and other organizers decided to defy it. King was arrested on April 12, 1963. While imprisoned, he wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, responding to religious leaders who had criticized the demonstrations.

These examples demonstrate civil disobedience without violence or property damage, but what about the Boston Tea Party? Was this civil disobedience or something more? On December 16, 1773, colonists boarded three ships in Boston Harbor and destroyed their cargoes of tea to protest British policies. The Boston Tea Party involved property destruction, so it doesn't fit the narrower modern definition of nonviolent civil disobedience. It is better described as an early example of organized resistance to government authority.

But were these acts justified? Who decides when breaking the law is okay?

When Is Civil Disobedience Justified?

Philosophers disagree about what qualifies as civil disobedience, according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Some say it must always be nonviolent while others argue that certain forms of property damage, or refusing to accept punishment, don’t necessarily disqualify an act.

Some people believe they have a responsibility to stand up against unfair laws, especially when other efforts to change them haven't worked. Others argue that laws are necessary to keep society functioning and that people shouldn't be able to break them simply because they disagree. The problem is that two people can both believe they're doing the right thing while having completely different ideas about what is fair and just.

Civil disobedience in America has been around since before the US was even a country, but the way Americans are utilizing it has changed. Peaceful protests seem to be disappearing and basic bending or breaking the laws have gravitated to acts of violence and destruction. Black Lives Matter, for example, saw hundreds of people injured, some killed, including black shop owners all in the spirit of expressing that black lives matter too. Political violence is escalating, attacks on citizens for their beliefs is becoming more common, and flagrant – and violently – opposing the law seems to be an almost everyday occurrence. The right to challenge government authority is an important part of American liberty, but that doesn't give anyone the right to threaten or harm others. At what point does fighting against injustice become an injustice of its own?