February 3
by Amy
I’ve been given the task of tracking the ACLU draft resister case. My job is to be able to explain at the next meeting how they are defining civil disobedience. I have also been asked to draw up notes for others on redefining the term.
This is a problem for me because we all have to follow our consciences. In that case, I can’t put down a hard and fast rule. When I brought this up, they told me that it wasn’t about rules. I was merely to report on the national ACLU’s findings.
The thing to know about all this is that national ACLU and state ACLU are having terrible fits over what to do with resisters. They can’t figure it out.
National ACLU says that we have to persuade people to change laws, but not by violating those laws.
State ACLUs says that we are not under a national emergency so the draft is unconstitutional.
National ACLU then goes on to say that defining civil disobedience as “the willful, nonviolent and public violation of valid laws because the violator deems them to be unjust or because the violation will focus public attention on other injustices in society to which such laws may or may not be related.”
So what’s does it mean?
National only wants to cover civil disobedience as it relates to racism. It doesn’t want to contend with issues around the draft. It wants us to try and persuade people that the draft is wrong. Meanwhile, more and more are getting drafted and killed.
This is what worries me. Everyone is getting angrier and angrier. The more we try and persuade people, the more entrenched they become. No one likes to admit that they’re wrong. It’s an act of humility, at the very least. It usually takes a traumatic event to make someone see a different way.
So now what are we supposed to do?
Source Notes: Differences of Opinion
