[clue-talk] The War On...?

[Timothy Klein]

On Dec 30, 2004, at 10:24 AM, Don Collier wrote:

> Getting arrested for a cause means nothing at all.  It is a personal 
> statement and bears no weight in getting that law changed.  Not to 
> mention the fact that you are now in jail and have limited resources 
> to fight the fight. 

This is just flat out wrong.  Someone decent, peaceful, and intelligent 
like Dr. Martin L. King or Mahatma Ghandi or Nelson Mandela ending up 
in jail illustrates amazingly well how unjust some laws are.  Like 
everything, changing a society needs marketing -- it isn't enough to 
just be right.  People have to hear the message.

A person that obviously doesn't belong in jail that is arrested can do 
a lot to spread a message, and that is an extremely non-trivial aspect 
of social change.

Further, people like Thoreau that have written on civil disobedience 
think jail time is a necessary aspect of commitment.  If one is not 
willing to go to jail in protest, then one is not really serious, is a 
sort of nutshell idea of Thoreau's.

Tim
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Timothy Klein: tecce at silverklein.net
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