Led by a man who believed in nonviolent resistance to government oppression, these brave people would soon transform the face of America–a man who believed that governments must listen to and heed our demands. If not, then it is within our power as a free people to press for change. And when government doesn't listen, then, in the words of King, we can engage in peaceful, nonviolent resistance.
CHAPTER 29
Know Your Rights or You Will Lose Them
It astonishes me to find ... [that so many] of our countrymen ... should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty ... which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries."655–THOMAS JEFFERSON
Whether we can turn things around will depend on how many Americans are willing to learn their rights and take appropriate stands for freedom.
Militant Nonviolence
"Most citizens," writes author and journalist Nat Hentoff "are largely uneducated about their own constitutional rights and liberties."656
The following true incident is a case in point for Hentoff's claim. A young attorney preparing to address a small gathering about the need to protect freedom, especially in the schools, wrote the text of the First Amendment on a blackboard. After carefully reading the text, a woman in the audience approached the attorney, pointed to the First Amendment on the board and remarked, "My, the law is really changing. Is this new?" The woman was a retired schoolteacher.
For more than two hundred years, Americans have enjoyed the freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, among others, without ever really studying the source of those liberties, found in the Bill of Rights. Yet never has there been a time when knowing our rights has been more critical and safeguarding them more necessary.
Thus, it is vital that we gain a better understanding of what Thomas Jefferson described as "fetters against doing evil."657 If not, I fear that with each passing day, what Jefferson called the "degeneracy" of "the principles of liberty" will grow worse until, half asleep, Americans will lose what our forefathers fought and died for.
Martin Luther King Jr. certainly understood the imperative to know your rights and then engage in expressive activity to further the cause of freedom. King knew very well that government is a reactive institution not a proactive one–that is, government reacts to "we the people" when we the people get active. As King wrote in an essay published shortly after he was assassinated:
We need to put pressure on Congress to get things done. We will do this with First Amendment activity. If Congress is unresponsive, we'll have to escalate in order to keep the issue alive and before it. This action may take on disruptive dimensions, but not violent in the sense of destroying life or property: it will be militant nonviolence.658
The Bill of Rights
In other words, an active citizenry is all that stands between us and an authoritarian government. Education, thus, precedes action. It's time to become educated about your rights. A short summary of the first ten amendments shows how vital these freedoms are.
The First Amendment protects the freedom to assemble together and speak your mind and protest in peace without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans cannot be silenced by the government.
The Second Amendment guarantees "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." This is one of the most controversial provisions of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, there are those who claim that gun ownership in America should be restricted solely to the police and other government officials. In many countries, owning a firearm is a mere privilege, reserved for the rich and powerful. Self-protection, however, is not a privilege in America. It is an individual citizen right that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized.
Protesters for Peace (Student movements and demonstrations (UA023.025.073), Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries.)
America was born during a time of martial law. British troops stationed themselves in homes and entered property without regard for the rights of the owners. That is why The Third Amendment prohibits the military from entering any citizen's home without "the consent of the owner." While Americans no longer have to fear the quartering of troops in their homes, the safeguards keeping the government–including the military–out of our homes are fast eroding. Increasingly, the threat of martial law being imposed is a clear and present danger.
There's a knock at the door. The police charge in and begin searching your home. They invade your privacy, rummaging through your belongings. You may think you're powerless to stop them, but you're not. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from searching your home without a warrant approved by a judge. But what about other kinds of invasions? Your telephone, mail, emails, computer, and medical records are now subject to governmental search. Even though they're all personal and private, they are increasingly at risk for unwarranted intrusion by government agents. The ominous rise of the surveillance state threatens the protections given us by this amendment.
You cannot be tried again after having been found innocent. The government cannot try you repeatedly for the same crime, hoping to get the result they want. It's one of the legal protections of The Fifth Amendment. Moreover, you cannot be forced to testify against yourself. You can "plead the Fifth." This means that if you are accused of committing a crime, it is up to the state to prove its case against you. You are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty, or your property without following strict legal codes of conduct.
The Sixth Amendment spells out the right to a "speedy and public trial." An accused person can confront the witnesses against him and demand to know the nature of the charge. The government cannot legally keep someone in jail for unspecified offenses. Moreover, unlike many other countries, Americans also have the right to be tried by a jury of ordinary citizens and to be represented by an attorney. Our fates in criminal proceedings are not decided by panels of judges or unaccountable politicians.
Property ownership is a fundamental right of free people. In a legal dispute over property, The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial.
Like any other American citizen, those accused of being criminals have rights under the Constitution as well. In some countries, the government abuses what they see as disloyal or troublesome citizens by keeping them in jail indefinitely on trumped-up charges. If they cannot pay their bail, then they're not released. The Eighth Amendment is, thus, similar to the Sixth–it protects the rights of the accused. These are often the people most susceptible to abuse and who have the least resources to defend themselves. This amendment also forbids the use of cruel and unusual punishment.
The framers of our Constitution were so concerned about civil liberties that they wished to do everything conceivable to protect our future freedom. Some of the framers opposed a bill of rights because it might appear that these were the only rights the people possessed. The Ninth Amendment remedied that by providing that other rights not listed were nonetheless retained by the people. Our rights are inherently ours, and our government was created to protect them. The government does not, nor did it ever, have the power to grant us our rights. Popular sovereignty–the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers–is clearly evident in this amendment and is a landmark of American freedom.
The framers established a federal system of government. This means that power is divided among local, state and national entities. The Tenth Amendment reminds the national government that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution. Congress and the President have increasingly assumed more powe
r than the Constitution grants them. However, it's up to the people and the state governments to make sure that they obey the law of the land.
"We the People"
Having stood the test of time, there is little doubt that the Bill of Rights is one of the greatest statements for freedom ever drafted and put into effect. In the end, however, it is the vigilance of "we the people" that will keep the freedoms we hold so dear alive. Therefore, know your rights, exercise them freely or you're going to lose them. If freedom is to survive in an environment where the government continues to ignore and oppress its citizens, then we will need to think and act like revolutionaries–nonviolent ones, that is.
CHAPTER 30
Compliant Lambs or Nonviolent Gadflies?
"We must see the need for nonviolent gadflies."659
–MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
When it comes to the staggering loss of civil liberties, the Constitution hasn't changed. Rather, as we have seen, it is the American people who have changed.
Once a citizenry that generally fomented a rebellion and founded a country, Americans are no longer the people they once were. Americans today live in a glass dome, says author Nicholas von Hoffman, a kind of terrarium, cut off from both reality and the outside world. In his words, they are "bobbleheads in Bubbleland. They shop in bubbled malls, they live in gated communities, and they move from place to place breathing their own private air in bubble-mobiles known as SUVs."660
Like lambs to the slaughter, too many Americans march in lockstep with whatever the government dictates, believing that to be patriotism. And those who do get a bit rowdy in voicing their disagreement with government policies find themselves labeled "troublemakers" and made into easy targets for attack by the media, politicians, the government, and the police.
"Tension"
In the past, however, it has been the so-called troublemakers–those rowdy protesters who challenge the status quo–who have actually changed things for the better in America. When Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights struggle for African-Americans, Martin Luther King Jr. and others participated in peaceful protests such as mass marches and sit-ins. The police response was repression in the form of tear gas, dogs, fire hoses, and arrests, including that of King.
Children's March Organized by Martin Luther King Jr. (Charles Moore / Black Star)
Yet as King acknowledged in his April 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," demonstrations and objections to the status quo are sometimes necessary. Still, King was opposed to violent protests, preferring instead to encourage "tension." As he wrote: "... there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth ... we must see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."661
Civil Disobedience
King's philosophy was undergirded by civil disobedience. This means of nonviolent resistance was used to great effect by Mahatma Gandhi in his campaign for Indian independence from the British, in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, and, of course, by the civil rights movement, to name three examples. Civil disobedience was also used to great effect at the Boston Tea Party.
Protests can take the form of stopping traffic, sidewalk protests, sit-ins, and other non-verbal forms of expression. The key, however, is standing on principle without wavering. As author and agitator Henry David Thoreau wrote in his 1849 Resistance to Civil Government, or Civil Disobedience, inactivity by citizens can be more harmful to society than revolution:
There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing ... They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret.662
Thoreau goes on to note that for protest to be effective, it doesn't need to use force:
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a bloody and violent measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution.663
Moreover, civil disobedience, according to Professor Erich Fromm, is the definition of a "free" person:
If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave... Obedience to a person, institution or power (heteronomous obedience) is submission; it implies the abdication of my autonomy and the acceptance of aforeign will or judgment in place of my own. Obedience to my own reason or conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act of submission but one of affirmation. My conviction and my judgment, if authentically mine, are part of me. If I follow them rather than the judgment of others, I am being myself...664
The Spirit of Resistance
Peaceable or not, the United States has a long history of revolutionary and reactionary behavior. Thomas Jefferson was one such rebel. "What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" Jefferson wrote. "Let them take arms ... What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."665
The figurative message of Jefferson's words should be heeded by all. His words illustrate the importance of political action. Jefferson, like Thoreau and King, hated inaction and stasis. Each of these men believed that the status quo should be challenged when it was found lacking, and overturned when it yielded unjust results. Embracing that spirit today might lead to civil disobedience, but surely from time to time that is necessary. Without it, the civil rights movement would never have succeeded, the colonies of the United States would never have broken free from their British oppressor, and India might never have gained her independence.
Thomas Jefferson and those who followed took it as a rule of thumb that political progress stems from dissent. Under the First Amendment, people have a right to dissent. The great dissenters such as Martin Luther King Jr. were even willing to commit civil disobedience to force the government to assume its constitutional role.
But as author Howard Zinn points out all too well, "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience."666
CHAPTER 31
What Kind of Revolutionary Will You Be?
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never
voluntarily given up by the oppressor; it must be demanded
by the oppressed."667–MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
With the government's relentless assault on our pocketbooks and freedoms, the economic and fiscal picture for many Americans is bleak. The national debt is in the trillions. People are losing their homes and jobs and millions have fallen into poverty. At the same time, lucrative tax breaks exist for the corporate rich, while the average citizen is heavily taxed. The Constitution and civil liberties have been undermined at every step. And don't expect any of these developments to let up anytime soon.
Understandably, many are bewildered. But now is not the time to shrink from our responsibility as citizens. In fact, we should welcome the chance to regain control of a government out of control. And if there is to be any change, it is going to be brought about by us, "we the people," not the politicians. No president, no congressman, and no judge can do what you can.
There is no better time to act than the present. Fear, apathy, escapism, or reliance on some government official to save us will not carry the day. It is within our power as citizens to make a difference and seek corrective measures. That principle is the basis of the American governmental scheme.
Revolutionaries
We n
eed to think like revolutionaries. Thus, there can be no room for timidity or lukewarm emotions. What we need is passion, dedication and courage. And to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., we have to demand change from the oppressors.
There are certain things that are common to every successful struggle. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Get educated. Without knowledge, very little can be accomplished. Thus, you must know your rights. Take time to read the Constitution. Study and understand history because the tales of those who seek power and those who resist it is an age-old one. Understand the vital issues of the day so that you can be cognizant of the threats to freedom.
2. Get involved. Become actively involved in community affairs, politics and legal battles. Think nationally, but act locally. If our freedoms are to be restored, taking action at that local level must be the starting point. Getting involved in local politics is one way to bring about change. Seek out every opportunity to voice your concerns, and demand that your government representatives account for their actions. Be relentless.
3. Get organized. You can overcome the governmental behemoth with enough cunning, skill, and organization. Play to your strengths and assets. Conduct strategy sessions with others to develop both the methods and ways to force change.
4. Be creative. Be bold and imaginative, for this is guerilla warfare–not to be fought with tanks and guns but through creative methods of dissent and nonviolent resistance. Creatively responding to circumstances will often be one of your few resources if you are to be an effective agent of change.
5. Use the media. Effective use of the media is essential. Attracting media coverage not only enhances and magnifies your efforts, it is a valuable education tool. It publicizes your message to a much wider audience. It is through the media–television, newspapers, internet sites, bloggers, and so on–that people find out about your growing resistance movement.
A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State Page 21