There's no need to hide if you believe what you say
 
True civil disobedience means taking responsibility for your actions, not
wearing a mask and slinking away
 
By Stephen Hume, Vancouver SunFebruary 17, 2010
 
A masked demonstrator protests outside BC Place before the start of the
Olympic Games.
 
A masked demonstrator protests outside BC Place before the start of the
Olympic Games.
Photograph by: Pawel Kopczynski, Reuters, Vancouver Sun
 
There's a difference between principled civil disobedience and mere
opportunistic thuggery. The difference lies in willingness to be held
accountable for one's actions.
 
Civil disobedience embraces personal responsibility for defying authority
and, if necessary, for breaking the law. Being prosecuted and punished for
repudiating an asserted injustice is crucial to the process.
 
Most of the civil liberties we now enjoy are the result of activists who
were prepared to challenge the status quo by defying authority and
publicly breaking laws they believed to be unjust. This is why the right
to protest is such an important part of democracy.
 
Women are no longer the chattels of their husbands or fathers because of
civil disobedience. Workers can join labour organizations because of civil
disobedience. People have the right to a fair trial and to know both their
accuser and the nature of the accusation because of civil disobedience.
Working conditions are safer because of civil disobedience. India is a
sovereign country because of civil disobedience. The American south is no
longer segregated because of civil disobedience. We have democracy itself
because of civil disobedience.
 
Thus, anyone who cherishes his or her democratic rights must also cherish
the right of citizens to challenge authority, to protest perceived
injustices and even, on occasion, to break the law in doing so.
 
Farm labour organizer Cesar Chavez, civil rights campaigner Martin Luther
King, pacifist writer Raymond Postgate, philosopher Bertrand Russell,
political activist Mohandas Gandhi, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and
environmentalist Betty Krawczyk all have one thing in common -they went to
prison for their civil disobedience; they took responsibility for their
acts; they stood up for their beliefs.
 
So it's notable that the small group of protesters who ran amok Saturday
morning, assaulting police officers, spray-painting cars, vandalizing
buses, smashing store windows and intimidating pedestrians, did not seek
to take responsibility for their defiant acts. They sought to evade
responsibility.
 
The agitators came masked, some apparently carrying weapons, and once they
had wreaked their havoc, provoking a response from admirably restrained
police officers, most disguised themselves and scuttled away. They didn't
stand behind their beliefs.
 
I've been trying to imagine Martin Luther King or Mohandas Gandhi skulking
behind dumpsters to disguise themselves before sneaking away from their
protests, but somehow the image just won't come.
 
To commit acts of violence, whether against people or property, and then
to slink away is not legitimate protest. It's thugs pretending to be
noble.
 
It is on the same moral continuum as those who try to get their way by
heaving bricks through people's windows at midnight, by writing poisonous
hate mail, phoning anonymous threats or secretly maiming a farmer's
livestock or killing someone's pets to make a point.
 
The masked vandal who protests the Olympics by smashing up storefronts and
then skulks away without taking responsibility is really employing the
same tactics as those who used to wrap themselves in white bedsheets and
plant burning crosses on the front lawns of people they wished to
intimidate.
 
So when I hear members of the Olympic Resistance Network sanctimoniously
saying it's not for them to pass judgment on fellow protesters regarding
the tactics they choose, I hear the same voices that used to say it wasn't
their place to tell the Ku Klux Klan its tactics weren't appropriate.
 
The sorriest history of humanity is one of people saying it isn't their
place to denounce bad behaviour. Silence grants tacit approval, in this
case for specious attacks on one group's civil liberties, purportedly in
defence of someone else's.
 
And that's another sorry human tradition -attacking a principle while
claiming to defend it.
 
shume@islandnet.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
 
 

Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun