Have you read about celebrity, Jane Fonda'd civil disobedience on Fire-Drill Fridays?According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (October 20, 2019), Fonda's goal to get arrested on a weekly basis is going great. "...She plans to get arrested as many times as it takes to make her point."
Fonda is breaking laws but not laws she wants changed. She is breaking laws, getting arrested, encouraging others to do the same and all because she want attention focused on her climate protest. Does that make you think, just a little bit, about what Westboro Baptist Church has done to get attention paid to their cause? They picketed military funerals in order to bring attention to their anti-gay agenda. (I can't condone what Westboro has done.) Here's my question about Fonda's Civil disobedience: what happens if we all decide to break laws in order to promote our own agendas? Here is the link for the and a copy of the full article: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/environment/2019/10/20/Jane-Fonda-Sam-Waterston-arrested-climate-change-protest/stories/201910180183 Jane Fonda is arrested for a 2nd time at a D.C. climate protest — along with Sam Waterston NARDINE SAAD Los Angeles Times OCT 20, 2019 1:15 PMSo much for law and order. Jane Fonda’s aspirations to get arrested in D.C. repeatedly are going swimmingly. And this time, her “Grace & Frankie” costar Sam Waterston, a veteran of the police procedural “Law & Order,” joined her. In their latest display of civil disobedience, the actors were detained by U.S. Capitol Police on Friday amid ongoing climate change protests that snared Ms. Fonda the Friday before, just as she wanted. This is the second scuffle with law enforcement in a week for the Oscar winner, who has said she plans to get arrested as many times as it takes to make her point, and the first for Mr. Waterston. Capitol Police confirmed Friday that they arrested 17 people “for unlawfully demonstrating” in the unit block of First Street on the southeast side of the Capitol. All were charged with disturbing the peace through crowding, obstructing or incommoding, police spokeswoman Eva Malecki told The Times. Representatives for the actors did not immediately respond to The Times’ requests for additional comment Friday. The Associated Press reported that Ms. Fonda was taken away in a paddy wagon. Photos from the scene documenting the weekly youth-led rallies, known as “Fire Drill Fridays,” showed Ms. Fonda, 81, with her wrists up and wrapped in zipties. Mr. Waterston, 78, was photographed being escorted by police with his hands behind his back wrapped in ties, too. The rally drew at least a couple of hundred people, young and old. Ms. Fonda, a longtime political activist, recently told The Times that the protests will take place every week at 11 a.m. and will highlight a different issue. She’ll be joined by groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Oil Change International, all of which are active against climate change. Ms. Fonda had hoped to take a year’s hiatus from her Netflix series “Grace & Frankie” to live in Washington, but she was contractually unable to. Once the show ends, she intends to return to the Capitol steps, she said. While Ms. Fonda has taken part in many climate demonstrations, she said Greta Thunberg’s mobilization of international student strikes and other activism, along with the climate writing of author Naomi Klein, prompted her to return to courting arrests for a cause. Ms. Fonda cannot remember precisely which cause led to her last arrest in the 1970s. She said her target audience now is people like her who try to cut their plastic use and drive fuel-efficient cars, for instance, but otherwise “don’t know what to do and they feel helpless,” she said. “We’re trying to encourage people to become more active, across the age spectrum.” Especially in the U.S., young people appear to be driving many of the protests and rallies demanding government action on climate change, University of Maryland sociologist Dana Fisher said. Nearly half of the people who turned out for a September climate protest in Washington were college age or younger, and a quarter were 17 or younger, for instance, Ms. Fisher said. Most were female. On the other hand, it was older, white females who turned out for earlier protests during the Trump administration, like the women’s marches, Ms. Fisher noted. “There’s a whole group of very activated, middle-age white women. They woke up after the election, and they haven’t gone back to bed,” Ms. Fisher said. So far, those people have not been involved in the youth climate movement. Ms. Fonda’s efforts could “get them out there,” Ms. Fisher said. Leslie Wharton, 63, from Bethesda, Md., sat out the Vietnam War protests that drew out Ms. Fonda. She came out Friday as part of a group calling itself Elders Climate Action. Lots of people of all ages are worried about climate change and want to do something, Ms. Wharton said, but “us elders are retired or part-time. We can take the time.” The Associated Press contributed.
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Been trying to consider this topic from both side and so I want to share some information I found this week.
Below is a podcast called Philosophy Talk. I've listened to Philosophy Talk for ages, decades actually, and although my politics rarely line up with those of the hosts, I've gleaned so much from listening to their shows. This one is on civil disobedience and it is guaranteed to get you fired up with ideas and new ways to discuss the topic. This is a "must listen!"
Here is an excerpt from something I read this past week. I have the whole paragraph here so it won't be taken out of context. I added the underlining.
Revolution
Richard Stahler-Sholk, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015 https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/civil-disobedience The notion of a nonviolent revolution seems counterintuitive, since the scope of social and political change inherent in the concept of revolution is almost certain to be intensely resisted by entrenched interests. However, the logic of nonviolent action is not passivity, but rather active confrontation against unjust authority, using techniques such as mass noncooperation to expose the latent structural violence of a system and thereby delegitimize it. Such action may in fact provoke state violence, in which case the opposition may refuse to respond in kind, calculating that the resulting increase in delegitimation will lead to regime collapse. Maintaining a disciplined commitment to nonviolence in such circumstances may be difficult, particularly in the absence of a unifying moral framework of principled nonviolence (such as Gandhi's teachings in India). In fact, many nonviolent mass uprisings occur in a mixed context in which others have chosen to take up arms."
Here is one more of my discoveries this week.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
2001, Pages 11693-11696 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences Political Protest and Civil Disobedience D.Chong Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA "Political protest consists of a multitude of methods used by individuals and groups within a political system to express dissatisfaction with the status quo. Civil disobedience is a particular form of political protest that involves the deliberate violation of the law for social purposes. Within this broad conceptualization, civil disobedience can take numerous forms and be motivated by different reasons. Although Thoreau assumed that ‘civil’ protest would be conducted in an orderly and peaceful fashion, scholars disagree over whether civil disobedience is necessarily nonviolent by definition. In addition to disagreements over what kinds of actions qualify as civil disobedience, there is debate over when civil disobedience is justified. At a minimum, the civil disobedient must be able to demonstrate that the offending law or policy violates principles of welfare, equality, or justice. Civil disobedience rarely works through persuasion alone, but often depends also on pressure and coercion. In this respect, civil disobedience resembles a pragmatic tactic within a repertoire of strategies available to a protest group, rather than an option that is employed only when the conventional channels of participation have been exhausted." 4/5/2020 April 10th Virtual Debate Topic: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified.Read NowIn this season of Covid-19, we are daily exploring new ways to thrive. It is my middle school FIRE debate team that is helping to lead this effort. They are amazing!
If you've never debated competitively, you may not understand how much the debate community can miss competing, or how much we grow from participating. If you decide to join us in launching virtual competition and you have never debated before, no one ever feels completely ready to debate until after they actually start debating! So, I have an encouragement for you. Dive in and you will find that even losing gets you on the road to success. As Nike promotes, "Just do it!" That's what we're doing in launching virtual debate. We're just doing it! Our learning curve is huge. Stick with us and help us build. A quick post giving some initial thoughts on the April 10th debate topic:
Let’s consider some definitions: Always start with definitions so both sides of a discussion are talking about the same thing. (I’m not suggesting that these are the perfect definitions for the debate, just a starting point.)
We will achieve more if we work together. |
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