Protest and Politics

Some of you know me because you voted against me. Some of you know me because you voted for me. And just before I talk about the question of protest, I would say that my own experience is not just those two campaigns, but I’ve been involved in politics, local politics, for a long time. And I’ve also been very fascinated with protest and power, and been to many Tea Party events, as well as spent time at Occupy Wall Street on the legal team. And we can talk about some of the really interesting lessons that came out of that as well.

But thinking about this question about protest and politics, I want to introduce a somewhat cheap dichotomy; and those Thoreau scholars can beat me up later: There’s basically two — I think at least two — major strands from which civil disobedience and protest come in this country. And one strand I would identify with Thoreau, and the other with Martin Luther King, who of course also learned directly and indirectly from Thoreau. Thoreau’s essay, “On Civil Disobedience,” and King’s essay, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” being these two very different models.

And the thing that is so striking about King’s letter — First of all, the important thing about King’s letter is that he does not start with protest, but starts actually in the four-step process that he almost talks about as a time-tested process for protest. He starts with, first we collect the facts. Then we negotiate. Then we self-purify, and by self-purify he means prepare for the inevitable attacks. And then we take direct action. And negotiation is a central part of his story in “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” in fact what he talks about in “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” and then taking this very radical action. One of the things he talks about in “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” is the importance of dialogue as opposed to monologue. In King’s letter, he speaks from a place of profound morality, profound love, and the desire to create tension which then creates the possibility for power.

Thoreau was protesting slavery. And Thoreau’s civil disobedience is very much about himself and his discomfort with the fact of government and the fact of law itself. It’s a long letter, so I’m not going to go through all of it; but it’s mostly about how can he live with himself given what his government is doing. He asks himself, well, why don’t I engage in…

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