Given how much I've been pushing the war tax resister stuff of late, I figured today's Method should be 122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance:
In many situations, the making of speeches and the publication and distribution of literature which call on people to undertake some form of nonviolent noncooperation or nonviolent intervention themselves become acts of defiance and resistance. This is especially so in those countries where any call for resistance, especially for illegals acts of resistance, is itself illegal or seditious.
In England, for example, six members of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War were imprisoned in December 1959 for distributing leaflets calling upon people illegally to enter a rocket base site at Harrington. In Madrid fourteen men from Murcia province were charged with incitement to military rebellion and sentenced to imprisonment from six months to six years for distributing leaflets calling for a nationwide general strike on June 18, 1959.
This falls into the "rejection of authority" category of political noncooperation (from Gene Sharp's The Politics of Nonviolent Action):
Political noncooperation is the third subclass of methods on noncooperation [the others being social and economic]; these methods involve refusals to continue the usual forms of political participation under existing conditions. Sometimes they are known as political boycotts. Individuals and small groups may practice methods of this class. Normally, however, political noncooperation involves larger numbers of people in corporate, concerted, usually temporary suspension of normal political obedience, cooperation and behavior.
Political noncooperation may also be undertaken by government personnel and even governments themselves. The purpose of suspension of political cooperation may simply be protest, or it may be personal dissociation from something seen as morally or politically objectionable, without much consideration as to consequences. More frequently, however, an act of political noncooperation is designed to exert pressure on the government, on an illegitimate group attempting to seize control of the government apparatus, or sometimes on another government.
The aim of the political noncooperation may be to achieve a particular limited objective or a change in broader government policies. Or it may be to change the nature or composition of that government, or even to produce its disintegration...
The political significance of these methods increases in proportion to the numbers participating and to the need for their cooperation for the operation of the political system...
Political noncooperation may take an almost infinite variety of expressions, depending on the particular situation. Basically they all stem from a desire not to assist the opponent by performance of certain types of political behavior.
A year before his arrest for sedition, Gandhi wrote in Young India on March 30, 1921:
If sedition means disaffection towards the present system of Government, it is a virtue and a duty. But we do not need to preach it...We cannot paint the system blacker than it appears to the average audience today. All we need do is to show the people the way to destroy it. That way is self-purification. We shall put the Government in an uncomfortable corner...
Hitherto the word “revolution” been connected with violence, and has as such been condemned by established authority. But the movement of non-co-operation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt: it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, of spirit. Non-co-operation is a process of purification, and, as such, it constitutes a revolution in one’s ideas. Its suppression, therefore, would amount to co-operation by coercion...
Inaction on our part will kill Government madness. For violence flourishes on response, either by submission to the will of the violator, or by counter-violence. My strong advice to every worker is to segregate this evil Government by strict non-co-operation, not even to talk or speak about it, but having recognized the evil, to cease to pay homage to it by co-operation.
I don't know if that specific article was used as part of the basis for the sedition charge, but certainly his writings in Young India in general were. Fans of Attenborough's movie might remember a stirring court scene that encapsulated the trial which ended with this statement (necessarily summarized in the film):
I know that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk, and if I were set free I would still do the same. Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also last article of my creed. I know that my people have sometimes gone mad. I am sorry for it. Their crime consisted in the love of their country.
I am here to submit not to a light penalty but to the highest Penalty. In my opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. I am here to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be the inflected upon me for what in law is a deliberated crime and what appears to me be the highest duty of a citizen.
The only cause open to, judge, is either to resign post and thus dissociate yourself from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is evil and that I am innocent or to inflict on me the severest penalty, if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal.
He was sentenced to six years in prison, though he was released early because of illness (he was 53 at that point and had ended a fast just prior to his arrest on March 10).
In the US, we still have the Smith Act on the books, which was passed in 1940 and has been used three times to prosecute people allegedly advocating the overthrow of our government. And lest you think that we've forgotten quaint little things like sedition in a post-9/11 crazy world:
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico...demanded an explanation from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for investigating a federal employee who published an editorial critical of the Bush administration in a local newspaper.
In her letter to the weekly Alibi, Laura Berg, a clinical nurse specialist, criticized the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, noting that, “as a VA nurse working with returning…vets, I know the public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder.” She urged readers to “act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”
In September 2005, VA Information Security employees seized Berg’s office computer because they claimed “government equipment was used inappropriately…during government time for drafting an editorial letter.” No evidence was recovered to support that belief.
“The VA had no reason to suspect Laura Berg used government resources to produce her editorial,” said ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson. “She signed the letter as a private individual. From all appearances, the seizure of her work computer was an act of retaliation and a hardball attempt to scare Laura into silence.”
Ever since I was a kid, I've loved playing with fire...
ntodd
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
15. Group lobbying
19. Wearing of symbols
21. Delivering symbolic objects.
22. Protest disrobings
34. Vigils
38. Marches
57. Lysistratic nonaction
71. Consumers' boycott
90. Revenue refusal
117. General strike
120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
178. Guerrilla theater
193. Overloading of administrative systems
I've begun to think--in the wake of the Democratic failure to heed the voice of the people heard in the '06 elections-- the only way the 68% of us who are sane can bring about change is through a 'general strike' of sorts. In particular, we have (as Bush has pointed out) but one way to help our country--our purses and wallets. In this case, I believe we can help our country best by shutting them tight. No spending on non-essentials. No TVs, no new cars, no Starbucks, no nuthin' that isn't food, clothing, and shelter purchased from local mom & pop providers. Shut the economy down; it's already left most of us behind. Doing so is the only thing the monied interests will understand. And in the end they pull the strings and fund the politicians. Cut 'em off.
Posted by: MFA | September 04, 2007 at 12:44 PM