Extinction Rebellion Protests

[mongers]

Are those actual pics from the protests? 

Ucks, maybe you can tell me how the elaborate outfits are empowering and uplifting.  To me they make it look like a bunch of bored trustifarian fine arts grads.

I think you'll find a lot of them are college and university lecturers /staff, hence the protest is victorious and wound down just in time for the next semester. 

[dps]

The problem with DPS' definition is that it does not allow for some sort of civil disobedience for actions that allow private citizens to commit unjust acts.  Take for example slavery.  If the law says that you can purchase and sell blacks how exactly do you violate that law as a protest?  You can help free those people, but that's probably a violation of laws against theft.

I agree with you--by my definition, things like helping run the Underground Railroad weren't civil disobedience.  But then again, people didn't help run the Underground Railroad to protest against slavery, they did it to directly help escaping slaves;  doing that as part of a public protest would have hurt the chances of the people they were trying to help escape.

[crazy canuck]

The scenarios you mention are not civil disobedience, IMO. 

Ok, no law against creating your own definition.  Pun intended.

[mongers]

One small positive thing one can do is make the most of the comsumer electronics one has and buy less 'landfill android'

Delving into the details of this laptop, show the HD has been powered up for over 26,000 hours, whereas the shit Android tablet I had, probably didn't get above 100 hours of use before it failed recently.

[Oexmelin]

Are those actual pics from the protests? 

Ucks, maybe you can tell me how the elaborate outfits are empowering and uplifting.  To me they make it look like a bunch of bored trustifarian fine arts grads.

Nope. I got nothing. On this, I share your assessment. Then again, maybe you had to be there.

[Razgovory]

The problem with DPS' definition is that it does not allow for some sort of civil disobedience for actions that allow private citizens to commit unjust acts.  Take for example slavery.  If the law says that you can purchase and sell blacks how exactly do you violate that law as a protest?  You can help free those people, but that's probably a violation of laws against theft.

I agree with you--by my definition, things like helping run the Underground Railroad weren't civil disobedience.  But then again, people didn't help run the Underground Railroad to protest against slavery, they did it to directly help escaping slaves;  doing that as part of a public protest would have hurt the chances of the people they were trying to help escape.

Can you think of a way to violate laws legalizing slavery as a form of civil disobedience?

[dps]

The problem with DPS' definition is that it does not allow for some sort of civil disobedience for actions that allow private citizens to commit unjust acts.  Take for example slavery.  If the law says that you can purchase and sell blacks how exactly do you violate that law as a protest?  You can help free those people, but that's probably a violation of laws against theft.

I agree with you--by my definition, things like helping run the Underground Railroad weren't civil disobedience.  But then again, people didn't help run the Underground Railroad to protest against slavery, they did it to directly help escaping slaves;  doing that as part of a public protest would have hurt the chances of the people they were trying to help escape.

Can you think of a way to violate laws legalizing slavery as a form of civil disobedience?

Not offhand, but not every protest has to be civil disobedience.

[Razgovory]

Well, we can have civil disobedience in response to slavery we just have to junk your definition of civil disobedience and use, I don't know, the one they were using when there was slavery in this country.  Happily, Thoreau wrote an book on the subject helpfully entitled "Civil Disobedience".

[grumbler]

One could certainly argue that the law against theft is just, but its application to humans is unjust, and that therefor one can "justly" violate the law against theft when freeing a slave.  Ditto for trespass laws, when they are used to protect unjust tree-cutting by logging companies.  "Civil disobedience" designed solely to inconvenience bystanders in order to draw attention to one's cause is more difficult to justify.  Blocking access to a building to inconvenience Parliament is different than blocking streets to inconvenience the public.

[Oexmelin]

Blocking streets is certainly inconvenient. But these are increasingly the only public spaces remaining, and they belong to protesters (who are themselves part of the public) as much as they belong to drivers, despite current trends to oppose both. I find suggestions to create "protest spaces" - far from any actual public viewing much more threatening, for they stifle political expression. In every place where such measures have been taken, protest get largely ignored. That such measures are China-approved should give us pause.
Occupying streets is a time-honored part of a democratic society; the inconvenience of streets being blocked to me is still very much less than the inconvenience of an authoritarian, or illiberal society. I would have thought that the current turn to illiberalism would make that point very salient. Otherwise, if we decide that streets must always be free of protesters, and if collective protest is still something we value, our models of urban planning should include large spaces in high-visibility public and political areas. At some point, we have to decide what value we ascribe to democracy. 

[Valmy]

But these are increasingly the only public spaces remaining,

Interesting. Do you think the number of public spaces is being reduced?

[Oexmelin]

But these are increasingly the only public spaces remaining,

Interesting. Do you think the number of public spaces is being reduced?

Yes, and importantly, because the streets used to be historically the main public space. They represent on average, 70% of public spaces in cities, and as tolerance for things other than cars on them has markedly decreased, so has the amount of public space available for anything else. Meanwhile, the spaces where people do congregate are actively privatized and controlled: malls, universities, private squares, apartment courtyards, even in many cases municipal parks, which are more aggressively policed because they are conceived as gardens.

[Barrister]

The problem with DPS' definition is that it does not allow for some sort of civil disobedience for actions that allow private citizens to commit unjust acts.  Take for example slavery.  If the law says that you can purchase and sell blacks how exactly do you violate that law as a protest?  You can help free those people, but that's probably a violation of laws against theft.

I agree with you--by my definition, things like helping run the Underground Railroad weren't civil disobedience.  But then again, people didn't help run the Underground Railroad to protest against slavery, they did it to directly help escaping slaves;  doing that as part of a public protest would have hurt the chances of the people they were trying to help escape.

Can you think of a way to violate laws legalizing slavery as a form of civil disobedience?

Slavery is probably not a great example because enslaved blacks were given zero representation within the legal system.  It's not like you could tell them "you should just organize and vote for candidates who will free you".  Similarly I think Palestinians are probably well entitled to use force against Israeli soldiers (it's when they frequently target civilians that things go off track).

What we're talking about is where is the line for civil disobedience within a democratic system of government by people fully entitled to participate in that democratic government.

[Valmy]

But these are increasingly the only public spaces remaining,

Interesting. Do you think the number of public spaces is being reduced?

Yes, and importantly, because the streets used to be historically the main public space. They represent on average, 70% of public spaces in cities, and as tolerance for things other than cars on them has markedly decreased, so has the amount of public space available for anything else. Meanwhile, the spaces where people do congregate are actively privatized and controlled: malls, universities, private squares, apartment courtyards, even in many cases municipal parks, which are more aggressively policed because they are conceived as gardens.

Ah so you are talking about over the last couple centuries? You made it sound like this is something that is currently occurring.

[Oexmelin]

What we're talking about is where is the line for civil disobedience within a democratic system of government by people fully entitled to participate in that democratic government.

But the only reason why we are talking about civil disobedience is because our threshold for what constitutes protest has been considerably lowered, and is now increasingly envisioned through the lens of criminal behavior. As more and more forms of protests are controlled, reduced, disciplined, reduced, more and more forms of protests against such laws become envisioned less as the normal expression of civic rights, and more as the extraordinary acts of political courage required by civil disobedience.