That was over half a century ago. The state and media apparatus are different now. A local jail isn’t going to run out of capacity, now they just call in buses from nearby prisons. The msm ignores, distorts, or outright lies about you when they don’t like your objective.
The civil disobedience was a tiny part of the whole action. Same with Rosa Parks, the organizers looked into these people’s backgrounds so the media would have difficulty portraying it negatively and communicated with aligned newspapers beforehand to ensure enough favorable coverage so they’d have the first word.
These actions weren’t done in isolation. The point of peaceful protest is to create a credible threat and offer a more peaceful alternative. The civil rights act wasn’t passed because the oppressor just had a change of heart, it was passed after every city burned for a week after MLK’s assassination when politicians saw people who looked just like them getting beaten to death in the streets.
These are good points. The takeaway is that civil disobedience faces hurdles today that it didn’t face in the past. I still think, however, that it can be a useful tool in the fight for a more fair and equitable system.
Some of these hurdles can be overcome. (For example, you’re right that the media will lie about the protest, but on the other hand, everyone now has the ability to record events with the phone in their pocket.
I never meant to imply that civil disobedience is the only tool at our disposal. My point is more that, if we can’t even get people to do that much, then all this talk of organized violent action is just lip service.
Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.
Tell that to the civil rights protesters in the 60’s. It was illegal to sit at white only lunch counters. But clearly civil disobedience worked out
That was over half a century ago. The state and media apparatus are different now. A local jail isn’t going to run out of capacity, now they just call in buses from nearby prisons. The msm ignores, distorts, or outright lies about you when they don’t like your objective.
The civil disobedience was a tiny part of the whole action. Same with Rosa Parks, the organizers looked into these people’s backgrounds so the media would have difficulty portraying it negatively and communicated with aligned newspapers beforehand to ensure enough favorable coverage so they’d have the first word.
These actions weren’t done in isolation. The point of peaceful protest is to create a credible threat and offer a more peaceful alternative. The civil rights act wasn’t passed because the oppressor just had a change of heart, it was passed after every city burned for a week after MLK’s assassination when politicians saw people who looked just like them getting beaten to death in the streets.
These are good points. The takeaway is that civil disobedience faces hurdles today that it didn’t face in the past. I still think, however, that it can be a useful tool in the fight for a more fair and equitable system.
Some of these hurdles can be overcome. (For example, you’re right that the media will lie about the protest, but on the other hand, everyone now has the ability to record events with the phone in their pocket.
I never meant to imply that civil disobedience is the only tool at our disposal. My point is more that, if we can’t even get people to do that much, then all this talk of organized violent action is just lip service.
I think Kwame Ture put it best.