Link to original:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020607S.shtmlPermission Be Damned By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Tuesday 06 February 2007
I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.
- Oriana FallaciBecause I was unable to attend the anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC, last week, I made sure to watch the broadcast of it on C-SPAN. It was, from what I could see through the camera's eye, almost exactly like every other protest against this Iraq occupation that has taken place in the capital since October of 2002. It was loud and colorful, festooned with famous faces and eloquent voices, a showcase for the hundreds of thousands of souls who stand against this terrible conflict.
As the speakers made their statements, a friend and I wrote back and forth about the protest itself. My friend was irked that the protest itself was happening on a weekend, before an empty Capitol Building, and was not something that slowed or disrupted the business of this government. "Why not snarl up DC on a weekday and get some real news coverage?" she wrote. "Since when did civil disobedience care about permits?"
Her words, "civil disobedience," brought me up short. "This isn't civil disobedience," I replied. "This is a very polite, permission-granted protest. It is the essence of civil obedience. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for public protests. But to call this 'civil disobedience' is an insult to those who have actually put their asses on the line in real disobedience. How can it be disobedience when stuff like this is directly authorized by the Constitution?"
This exchange got me thinking about true civil disobedience: those courageous acts of conscience that defy laws and involve serious personal jeopardy. The essence of such acts, and the bravery required to commit them, can be defined simply. To commit civil disobedience, at bottom, is to act without permission.
This is no small thing in a society where respect for law, order and authority is ingrained in us almost from birth. To act without permission is to expose yourself, to step out from the crowd, to be singular. The protest last weekend, while vigorous and righteous, was as orderly and polite as a church luncheon. Even the speakers made sure to follow the rules.
There have been many great examples of civil disobedience in our history. Those who have chosen to commit these acts have changed the fabric of our society, and have often faced outrage, imprisonment and violence in the process. Some, like Dr. Martin Luther King, were murdered for their choices and their courage and their disobedience. As I pondered this, four names came to mind.
On September 8, 1980, eight activists, including Philip and Daniel Berrigan, illegally entered the General Electric Nuclear Missile Re-Entry Division in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. This plant manufactured nose cones for Mark 12A warheads. The protesters, who became known as the "Plowshares Eight," hammered on two nose cones, poured blood on various documents, and were ultimately arrested and charged with more than ten felony and misdemeanor counts. By the time Philip Berrigan died in 2002, he had spent nearly eleven years in prison for similar acts of conscience. His brother Daniel likewise spent time in prison for his participation in illegal acts of protest and disobedience.
One woman whose acts of civil disobedience mark these current times is Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the activist group CodePink and member of several other peace and justice organizations. Like the Berrigans, Benjamin has acted without permission to expose the injustices of the Iraq occupation and the dangerous motivations of the Bush administration. Benjamin has been arrested on several occasions for vocal and visible protests against the Iraq war; since 2002, she has disrupted speeches by Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, unfurled anti-war banners on the floor of both the Democratic and Republican conventions in 2004, and shouted down Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during his speech before the United Nations in 2006. She has been arrested for these and other acts many times; my running joke with her is that she has her bail bondsman on speed-dial.
It was during a protest outside the Fox News headquarters in New York during the 2004 Republican Convention that I personally witnessed the kind of courage Benjamin displays, and the degree of peril this courage places her in. During that Fox protest, the New York police moved in on the protesters in an attempt to push them away from the building. Benjamin refused to go, and I watched two burly officers fold her up like a beach towel and throw her into the back of a squad car. After her release, she showed me the bruises on her arms and the cuts on her wrists, the latter coming from the thin plastic handcuffs that were placed on her during her detention. To act without permission is to volunteer for pain, and Benjamin has never shied away from her willingness to sacrifice her body for a greater good.
There is one person, to my mind, who stands out among all the activists today, one who acts without permission, one whose conscience and courage have done more to further the cause of ending the Iraq occupation than any other. Cindy Sheehan was just another mother from California until her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq. Since her tragic loss, Sheehan has been a tireless advocate for peace and the most visible raven over the door of the White House. Her cries of "Nevermore!" put the catastrophe of Iraq into the living rooms of America, put a face to what was once a nameless suffering, and more than any other single person, turned the tide of opinion on Iraq against the administration that put us there.
Sheehan did not merely protest at a permission-granted demonstration. She sat outside Bush's ranch in the summer of 2005 and refused to leave, forcing the authorities there to work around her presence. She continued her vigil at the White House gate, and was arrested. She continued her vigil at a State of the Union address, and was arrested. She continued her vigil outside the headquarters of the United Nations, and was arrested. She traveled to Cuba to bring attention to the deplorable detention centers at Guantánamo, and put her freedom once again in jeopardy.
Many people go to demonstrations, and this is a good and noble thing. Cindy Sheehan, like the Berrigan brothers and Medea Benjamin, acts without permission. She needs no such permission; her civil disobedience and acts of conscience spring from a well of sorrow and loss so vast that, in facing it, she can do nothing else. History will remember her as a hero, a tragic figure cut from the bloody cloth of these savage times, a voice so piercing and genuine that all Americans are forced to reckon with her. Cindy Sheehan is a place of definitions, and in judging her, we must also judge ourselves. A debt of generational gratitude is owed to her by all of us. Most of us do not act without permission. Cindy Sheehan damns permission, and in doing so, saves us all.
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