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Martin Luther King, Jr. on "Meet the Press" - Discussing Power of Civil Disobedience

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Martin Luther King, Jr. on "Meet the Press" - Discussing Power of Civil Disobedience

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Martin Luther King, Jr. on Civil Disobedience

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"A History of Civil Disobedience" - MSNBC Examines Gandhi's Salt March

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"A History of Civil Disobedience" - MSNBC Examines Gandhi's Salt March

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Rachel Maddow examines Gandhi's influence on the civil rights struggle in America in the 1960s as an introduction to an interview with civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., on the release of his graphic novel "March: Book Two".

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In 1963, Audrey Faye Hendricks put on a neatly ironed dress and a pair of Mary Janes, tucked a board game under her arm, and calmly marched off to be arrested. She was nine years old. Along with hundreds of other African-American schoolchildren, Audrey walked out of the 16th Street Baptist Church and through the streets to protest segregation. A block and a half later, she was arrested for parading without a permit. Up to 800 children joined Audrey in jail that day, a number that would later climb to several thousand. A year later - and after horrors including the bombing deaths of four little girls at the church - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I carried a picture of Audrey in my pocket when I went to get arrested in late June, together with about 600 other women in Washington, D.C. We were protesting the government's unconscionably cruel border policies, in which government agents reportedly have ripped babies from their mothers' breasts and lied to parents about where their children are. We chanted in front of Trump Tower, held a sit-in outside the Department of Justice, and finally occupied a U.S. Senate building.

For me, this was clearly an issue worth risking arrest for. But my experience was embarrassingly cushy compared to Audrey's. The U.S. Capitol Police who patrol the Senate buildings were unfailingly professional. They approached each woman, politely told her that she was getting a final warning, asked if she was choosing to get arrested, and then waited for each person to agree and stand up, even helping women off the floor. I had been nervously waiting to have my hands zip-tied behind my back and have my belongings taken and cataloged. Instead, the officers simply walked us in groups out to the lawn, where we chatted under the trees and were processed in a couple of hours by police officers sitting at a long, orderly row of card tables. All I have to do is return within two weeks to pay $50 and resolve my arrest ticket.

What accounts for the difference between Audrey's experience and mine? It's hard not to conclude that much of it has to do with race. Most of the protesters appeared to be white - although the majority of the organizers and chant leaders were women of color, which should be no shock to anyone familiar with organizing by African-American and Latina women to oppose injustice. It seems unlikely that an action consisting primarily of people of color, holding signs invoking #BlackLivesMatter and protesting police brutality against black youth, would have been treated with similar respect.

Indeed, examples abound of the punitive consequences of having brown or black skin:

· A study from the New York Times concluded that police were far more likely to use force against blacks than against whites or other racial groups, even correcting for any racial disparities in crime statistics.

· Protests by communities of color against police brutality are themselves often harshly policed, leading to lasting trauma. In the meantime, white people rioting after sports victories or defeats are typically seen as a harmless nuisance at worst; even when they are arrested, their transgressions are not ascribed to the community at large.

· Despite agreement from a majority of law enforcement agencies across the country that anti-government extremists pose a higher risk of violence than Muslim extremism, the Boston Police Department contracted with a software company to monitor social media content classified as "Islamic Extremist Terminology," as well as phrases like #blacklivesmatter, #dontshoot, and #mikebrown.

· The activities of daily living are no safer: Police have been summoned to respond to people of color mowing the lawn, renting an AirBnB, playing golf, attending a college tour, pushing a stroller, walking with iced tea, and reading C.S. Lewis.

That's why it felt particularly important as a person who operates with white skin privilege (not to mention many other layers of privilege) to risk arrest. At a time when the damaging consequences of this administration's policies are being felt in homes across the country, it is incumbent on those who have less to fear to risk more. If a vulnerable nine-year-old could risk a week in jail, taking a day off work to get arrested felt like the least I could do - and it's reasonable to ask why I didn't do it sooner. Trump may be doubling down on cruelty, but systemic inequality has been around since long before he came into office.

Civil disobedience is not the only option, of course. There are many ways to heed historian Timothy Snyder's exhortation to resist " anticipatory obedience": recruiting friends and colleagues to join marches, giving money to one of the many groups in the trenches fighting for justice, making phone calls to elected representatives, or just speaking up when it's uncomfortable. Whatever the route, with the president flirting with autocracy and fomenting fear, it is critical to get off the sidelines. Our democratic institutions are worth the effort.

(Photo: Flickr.com/ ep_jhu)

Informed citizens are our democracy's best defense

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Why We Need Civil Disobedience Now More Than Ever

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In 1963, Audrey Faye Hendricks put on a neatly ironed dress and a pair of Mary Janes, tucked a board game under her arm, and calmly marched off to be arrested. She was nine years old. Along with hundreds of other African-American schoolchildren, Audrey walked out of the 16th Street Baptist Church and through the streets to protest segregation.

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On December 6th, less than a month after the election, Vice-President Joe Biden, who was in New York to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award, for his decades of public service, used the occasion to urge Americans not to despair. "I remind people, '68 was really a bad year," he said, and "America didn't break." He added, "It's as bad now, but I'm hopeful." And bad it was. The man for whom Biden's award was named was assassinated in 1968. So was Martin Luther King, Jr. Riots erupted in more than a hundred cities, and violence broke out at the Democratic National Convention, in Chicago. The year closed with the hairbreadth victory of a law-and-order Presidential nominee whose Southern strategy of racial politicking remade the electoral map. Whatever innocence had survived the tumult of the five years since the murder of John F. Kennedy was gone.

It was telling that Biden had to sift through nearly a half century of history to find a precedent for the current malaise among liberals and progressives, but the comparison was not entirely fitting. Throughout Richard Nixon's Presidency, Democrats maintained majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The efforts of the antiwar movement to end American involvement in Vietnam had stalled, but Nixon's first years in office saw the enactment of several progressive measures, including the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Clean Air Act, as well as the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2016, the Republicans won the White House, maintained control of both chambers of Congress, and secured the ability to create a conservative Supreme Court majority that could last a generation or more. Donald Trump, a man with minimal restraint, has been awarded maximal power.

Last summer, the A.C.L.U. issued a report highlighting the ways in which Trump's proposals on a number of issues would violate the Bill of Rights. After his victory, the A.C.L.U.'s home page featured an image of him with the caption "See You in Court." In November, Trump tweeted that he would have won the popular vote but for millions of illegal ballots cast. This was not just a window into the conspiratorial and fantasist mind-set of the President-elect but a looming threat to voting rights. Ten days after the election, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund released a statement opposing the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, as Attorney General, based on his record of hostility to voting rights and on the fact that he'd once brought unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud against civil-rights activists. But, with a Republican majority that has mostly shown compliance with Trump, despite his contempt for the norms of democracy, the fear is that he will achieve much of what he wants. Even if he accomplishes only half, the landscape of American politics and policy will be radically altered. This prospect has recalled another phenomenon of the nineteen-sixties: the conviction that "democracy is in the streets."

Movements are born in the moments when abstract principles become concrete concerns. MoveOn arose in response to what was perceived as the Republican congressional overreach that resulted in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The Occupy movement was a backlash to the financial crisis. The message of Black Lives Matter was inspired by the death of Trayvon Martin and the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Occupy's version of anti-corporate populism helped to create the climate in which Senator Bernie Sanders's insurgent campaign could not only exist but essentially shape the Democratic Party platform. Black Lives Matter brought national attention to local instances of police brutality, prompting the Obama Administration to launch the Task Force on 21st Century Policing and helping defeat prosecutors in Chicago and Cleveland, who had sought reëlection after initially failing to bring charges against police officers accused of using excessive force.

Last July, when the Army Corps of Engineers gave final approval for the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, anxious that the pipeline would threaten their water supply, started an online petition and filed a lawsuit to halt construction. Thousands of activists, including members of Black Lives Matter, and two thousand military veterans went to Standing Rock, to protest on the Sioux's behalf; last month, they endured rubber bullets and water hoses fired in freezing temperatures. On December 4th, the Army Corps announced that it would look for an alternate route. But, since Rick Perry, Trump's choice for Energy Secretary, sits on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline (and in which Trump, until recently, owned stock), protesters are settling in for a long winter.

In that context, the waves of protests in Portland, Los Angeles, Oakland, New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., in the days after the election look less like spontaneous outrage and more like a preview of what the next four years may hold. Unlike the specific protests that emerged during the Obama Administration, the post-election demonstrations have been directed at the general state of American democracy. Two hundred thousand women are expected to assemble in front of the Capitol, on January 21st, the day after the Inauguration, for the Women's March on Washington. Born of one woman's invitation to forty friends, the event is meant as a rejoinder to the fact that a candidate with a troubling history regarding women's rights-one who actually bragged about committing sexual assault-has made it to the White House.

The first Inauguration of George W. Bush, in 2001, saw mass protests driven by the sentiment that the election had been stolen. The protests that greet Trump will, in all probability, exceed them: some twenty other groups have also applied for march permits. Given his history with African-Americans, Muslims, Latinos, immigrants, unionized labor, environmentalists, and people with disabilities, it is not hard to imagine that there will be many more to come. The Congress is unlikely to check the new President, but democracy may thrive in the states, the courts, the next elections, and, lest the lessons of the sixties be forgotten, the streets. ♦

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On December 6th, less than a month after the election, Vice-President Joe Biden, who was in New York to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award, for his decades of public service, used the occasion to urge Americans not to despair.

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The success of nonviolent civil resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder

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Jamila Raqib: The secret to effective nonviolent resistance

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We're not going to end violence by telling people that it's morally wrong, says Jamila Raqib, executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Instead, we must find alternative ways to conduct conflict that are equally powerful and effective. Raqib promotes nonviolent resistance to people living under tyranny -- and there's a lot more to it than street protests.

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Julia Bacha: How women wage conflict without violence

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Are you setting out to change the world? Here's a stat you should know: nonviolent campaigns are 100 percent more likely to succeed than violent ones. So why don't more groups use nonviolence when faced with conflict? Filmmaker Julia Bacha shares stories of effective nonviolent resistance, including eye-opening research on the crucial leadership role that women play.

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Peter Gabriel: Fight injustice with raw video

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Musician and activist Peter Gabriel shares his very personal motivation for standing up for human rights with the watchdog group WITNESS -- and tells stories of citizen journalists in action.

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Julia Bacha: Pay attention to nonviolence

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In 2003, the Palestinian village of Budrus mounted a 10-month-long nonviolent protest to stop a barrier being built across their olive groves. Did you hear about it? Didn't think so. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha asks why we only pay attention to violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict -- and not to the nonviolent leaders who may one day bring peace.

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AP News - Civil Disobedience Stories from Around the World

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AP News - Civil Disobedience Stories from Around the World

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PHOENIX (AP) - The Latest on the immigration activists with the Abolish ICE movement and protests in Phoenix (all times local):

6:30 p.m.

Four activists who chained themselves to each other outside one of the entrances to a county jail in Phoenix have been arrested in an act of civil disobedience.

Authorities say the four were sitting down and blocking the entrance Wednesday evening and refusing to leave.

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PHOENIX (AP) - The Latest on the immigration activists with the Abolish ICE movement and protests in Phoenix (all times local): 6:30 p.m. Four activists who chained themselves to each other outside one of the entrances to a county jail in Phoenix have been arrested in an act of civil disobedience.

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CNN 10 is an on-demand digital news show ideal for explanation seekers on the go or in the classroom.

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Excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance"

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Excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance"