alkemical
02-29-2008, 10:03 AM
Dissent Is An American Ideal (http://www.disinfo.com/content/story.php?title=Dissent-Is-American-Ideal)
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s national holiday and with a historic presidential primary season underway, author and activist Mickey Z asks: "Since when was it unpatriotic to dissent? Why is it "un-American" to question our government's policies? And how did the Bush administration manage to claim the flag exclusively for itself?"
His timely book 50 AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS THAT YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW is a concise, quick guide to the people and events in our country's history that anyone not impressed by the Bush administration's warped version of patriotism can be proud of. Here is an excerpt below:
08: Thoreau lays the foundation for King and Gandhi
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
— Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Mention the name Thoreau and you're bound to hear a reference to his 1854 book, Walden, and its role in the earliest days of environmental awareness. Like many of the folks in this book, however, the more radical aspects of his lifework have, in many cases, been erased from his standard bio. Nonetheless, Thoreau's work in the area of civil disobedience lives on in the efforts of Gandhi, King, and the many who joined these men in their struggles.
In 1849, Thoreau wrote On the Duty of Civil Disobedience in response to the war of conquest being waged by his country, the Mexican-American War. It was not his only form of anti-war protest. "The war had barely begun, the summer of 1846, when… Thoreau, who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, refused to pay his poll tax, denouncing the Mexican War," says Howard Zinn. "He was put in jail and spent one night there."
Against Thoreau's wishes (and behind his back), his friends paid the tax and secured his freedom. Legend has it that when fellow writer Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail, he asked: "Henry, what are you doing in there?" To which Thoreau is said to have replied: "Ralph, what are you doing out there?"
The essay that sprang from not only Thoreau's opposition to the war but his vocal stance against slavery has come to be known, simply, as Civil Disobedience… and is arguably the most influential work of the era.
"If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another," Thoreau writes, "then, I say, break the law."
This basic but profound principle has inspired and influenced activists for generations. Mohandas K. Gandhi effectively utilized a version of civil disobedience in India's struggle for independence against the British. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. channeled both Thoreau and Gandhi in his leadership of a non-violent civil rights movement.
"I became convinced that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good," said King. "No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest."
________________________________
TIMELINE:
1859: After leading a doomed but bloody slave rebellion, John Brown declares: "I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."
1861 American Miners' Association (first national coal miners union) established.
January 1, 1863: Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
July 1863: New York City Draft Riots.
________________________________
More info on 50 AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS THAT YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s national holiday and with a historic presidential primary season underway, author and activist Mickey Z asks: "Since when was it unpatriotic to dissent? Why is it "un-American" to question our government's policies? And how did the Bush administration manage to claim the flag exclusively for itself?"
His timely book 50 AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS THAT YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW is a concise, quick guide to the people and events in our country's history that anyone not impressed by the Bush administration's warped version of patriotism can be proud of. Here is an excerpt below:
08: Thoreau lays the foundation for King and Gandhi
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
— Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Mention the name Thoreau and you're bound to hear a reference to his 1854 book, Walden, and its role in the earliest days of environmental awareness. Like many of the folks in this book, however, the more radical aspects of his lifework have, in many cases, been erased from his standard bio. Nonetheless, Thoreau's work in the area of civil disobedience lives on in the efforts of Gandhi, King, and the many who joined these men in their struggles.
In 1849, Thoreau wrote On the Duty of Civil Disobedience in response to the war of conquest being waged by his country, the Mexican-American War. It was not his only form of anti-war protest. "The war had barely begun, the summer of 1846, when… Thoreau, who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, refused to pay his poll tax, denouncing the Mexican War," says Howard Zinn. "He was put in jail and spent one night there."
Against Thoreau's wishes (and behind his back), his friends paid the tax and secured his freedom. Legend has it that when fellow writer Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail, he asked: "Henry, what are you doing in there?" To which Thoreau is said to have replied: "Ralph, what are you doing out there?"
The essay that sprang from not only Thoreau's opposition to the war but his vocal stance against slavery has come to be known, simply, as Civil Disobedience… and is arguably the most influential work of the era.
"If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another," Thoreau writes, "then, I say, break the law."
This basic but profound principle has inspired and influenced activists for generations. Mohandas K. Gandhi effectively utilized a version of civil disobedience in India's struggle for independence against the British. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. channeled both Thoreau and Gandhi in his leadership of a non-violent civil rights movement.
"I became convinced that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good," said King. "No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest."
________________________________
TIMELINE:
1859: After leading a doomed but bloody slave rebellion, John Brown declares: "I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."
1861 American Miners' Association (first national coal miners union) established.
January 1, 1863: Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
July 1863: New York City Draft Riots.
________________________________
More info on 50 AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS THAT YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson