Session one: an historical perspective; Civil disobedience and the Democratic tradition

In the remarks that I'm going to make I'm going to deal with nonsense Lee as President Hollande has suggested with some of the Western experience first of all as it is crystallized by the trial and death of Socrates. Secondly I want to love spend a certain amount of time looking at the early Christian encounters with the people of Bahrain. And thirdly I want to look at some of the experience of the 16th and 17th centuries. The basic grammar of which to my discussion really can be. Can best be understood thing by thinking about the look of these sorts of words civil and disobedience and the words how the politics of disobedience because what I'm trying to suggest in the remarks that I do make in the ensuing moments is that the the adjectives in question a civil disobedience in the second case the noun politics are both terribly crucial to understanding the context at least of the problem. You'll recall that Socrates was accused in the Greek society giving the society of his day of

impiety and of corrupting the young. He was accused by a society which was for all practical purposes the most democratic society in the world and yet seen in was to see for many centuries. He was moreover accused in a society which was the most intensely political of societies that done that. Again one was to appear for many many centuries of society. Socrates was in them for judicial proceedings brought against him not allowed to present his case. He was allowed to to present it in the best of it to the best of his abilities and he was judged by his fellow citizens in the course of his presentation. He does something which I think US strikes us as a little odd and a little peculiar. He does not make a case for free speech. What he does in this context is to pit a kind of mission that he believes is peculiarly his a divine mission a divine injunction against the requirements of the belief system which his fellow citizens thought was necessary to sustain the society of his

fellow citizens to the position that. The question of what the young believed and what the generality of the society believe regarding the gods were not simply believes in the any other kind of minimal sense but were also beliefs in what we would I suppose call yourself sociological or political sense. They were necessary beliefs and necessary to the to sustaining and shoring up the consensus that kept the society in the so that in effect. He was not simply accused of holding the wrong beliefs he was accused of undermining the consensus of the society. And his responses I've suggested and quote him is that God orders me to fulfill a philosopher's mission of searching into myself. And other men and he went on to insist and again putting him I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to God. Now his plea therefore is not a plea to pursue a private code of behavior nor is it a claim that the values which he sees are wholly beyond those that the

members of the society themselves value knowledge truth and the right ordering of human life in our own notions which Socrates believes his fellow citizens too are interested in none in pursuing and on establishing even though they may disagree about the particular form that those values take in a certain sense therefore Socrates was claiming that he was performing a civic rule and for this reason he refuses to accept any penalty that will compel him to cease teaching or to go into exile. He will do what he has to do because it is good not simply for him but for the society as a. Hold what is being suggested here then quite literally is a promise that he will continue to be disobedient for civil ends. If he is released that is he will continue to be disobedient for any reason in the service of NS appropriate to a civil suit Association which believes in the values of pursuing a life fitting for man. This theme becomes more

pronounced in the dialogue known as the credo for there are you'll remember Socrates was in prison and while in prison he was approached by his friends with an offer to help him escape the death penalty that awaits him. He refuses saying that the act would undermine the very order that his name his particular mode of life possible. The life of him barring a life of philosophy. All that he his he protests he has if he is because he is a creature of a civilized society and hence he owes to that policy more than he than you can ever repay it for it is the city which has nurtured him which has educated him which has made him and affect him. Man Moreover therefore by remaining in the city he has tentatively acknowledged up until this point that he knows it's a dead and he has committed himself by his membership in that city to accepting even its acts of injustice towards him. In summary we might say therefore that what Socrates is asserting is that membership in society Kate carry

certain demands respecting civil behavior and that civil behavior has to do with how one to sports with deports oneself in society. Acting politically therefore in a sense I think Socrates is saying is a highly stylized and well-defined mode of activity which is defined distinctively by each society. Within those forms certain limits exist limits to what society will listen to limits to of a kind which will not make it easy for those who deviate limits in terms of what a dissenter can hope to win and what a dissenter must hold to must must in fact accept. If he loses. Two questions however are left untouched. How by Suttons What if a society is so wholly preferred that the code of civility is nonexistent or exists in such a bad state of repair that it is hopeless at certain point Socrates seems to suggest a simple answer. One should leave the society. But he also suggests something else. That to

work for the total reformation of a society deemed corrupt can only really demand only one to embrace revolutionary violence that is revolution as Socrates tends to play with the notion is a departure from all that is civil and political. Because revolution means violence. It is visible in its mass a manifestation of his force and political man by definition is a man who pledges him self to communication to persuasion to argue even if it means losing. Not to force one. However when. They also ask why however we may also ask as Socrates not noted another problem that is what happens if one belongs to a permanently disadvantaged minority in a particular society that is otherwise tolerable. What the hell does one do if one is in a certain sense a slave within a democratic policy such as in A such as Athens and permanently consigned to a status that put one's puts oneself outside the

pale of civility. Well SOCRATES Does not answer the question but will see it come up in other connections and those other connections are the ones I want to turn to now. The kinds of connections that arose really had a date not so far distant from Socrates in the early Christian era who in the early Christian era that by that I mean simply referring to the first few centuries of the of the Christian epoch of Christianity you recall constituted not only a distinct a religious movement but also a troubling presence in a world that was still dominated by classical modes of thinking and by what the Christian chose to call paying in politics the Christian done as it emerged in that kind of society. It sets certain different problems than those entertained by the Socratic. Socratic difficult for the Christian faced quite frankly a problem that ran something like this. What if in a pagan saw even a ruler or the ruling authorities should command that Christians worship pagan gods or

observe pagan rituals. If the Christian complied he violated his own deepest religious beliefs is if he disobeyed he ran not only the risk of reprisal. But above all the religion which again a very precarious foothold in that particular sky secular society or thing in society that religion might itself be destroyed. Stated somewhat differently. The Christian knew they needed the conditions of peace and tranquility made possible by a political order which might under certain circumstances threaten the Christian response to such De Limas was of course of course hedged in by certain scriptural injunctions which foreclosed resists is whosoever. So the injunction runs resistive the power to resist of people ordinances of God. And they that resists shall receive to themselves damnation for rulers are not a terror to good works but to the for he is the minister of God to Thee for good. Wherefore he must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience

sake submit yourselves therefore to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake whether it be to the king supreme or unto. Well as a result the Christian tended to claim only that he was justified in disobeying a command of authority when it ran counter to the plain teaching of Scripture. In other words the Christian claim that he might disobey only when he was being forced to perform actions or conform to beliefs that the Christian regarded as contrary to Christian doctrine. In other words and in all other matters he considered himself bound by the ordinary obligations of citizens even to the point of serving in the military forces up against the current. But even in these days all that was permitted of course was passive resistance refusing to obey in a particular injunction. Now these kind this is kind of an easy state which was created which existed in those centuries. I took a certain amount of added urgency in the light of the developments

of the reformation where the basic Christian consensus regarding religion was of course disrupted by the various and competing Protestant sects here. Problems appeared in a somewhat different light. One was dealing here with Christian religious minorities often threatened by extinction or by being compelled to conform to political orders which prescribe religion as well as a as. Politics which prescribe religious belief and behavior as well as political beliefs and behavior. And what made the plight of the non-conforming sect so difficult was that political and religious establishments had become so intertwined that one could really dissent religiously only by appearing to subvert the political order. Citizen and believer could not be separate. Accordingly as early as the 16th century Christian writers began to assert that Christians were justified in actively rebelling not just passively disobeying and might be forced to do so for values which were primarily political. That is for

values such as justice for example. This suggests that for them when dissent ceases to be selective as it had tended to be in the early Christian era. And it ceases to be selective and specific its course and have the believe becomes much more much more of a much wider in terms of its target it tends to verge on revolution because the whole word is being questioned. This enough in turn suggests I change that one can begin to document in terms of changing Christian attitudes because unlike the dissidents of an earlier era or era unlike the dissenters of an earlier era. The early Christian is no longer so much apologetic and guilt ridden by the means he has to employ in order to make known his resistance. Instead he begins to regard the means as sanction and indeed almost sanctified because the order of his got attacked and attacking as a whole he regards as corrupt. You're in the same period too.

We also see emerging particularly as one moves into the 17th century into the English into the civil wars in 17th century England one sees the beginnings of a new kind of a new kind of appeal as regards. The right to disobeying commands political commands in a society namely the appeal to conscience begins to and begins to become uppermost. It becomes an appeal to conscience. In an era in which men are consuming more and more to our regret regarding final justifications as those in power residing in the individual himself he becomes either by an inner light or by searching his conscience will be our version of what he can accept and what he cannot. However it is I think terribly important to remember that in the seventeenth century the notion of conscience is not like the contemporary notion of conscience. The good the Puritan conscience which played such a crucial part in 17th century acts of resistance is a conscience. It should be remembered which had gone to school. It

was a conscience which had been disciplined by repeated exposure to Biblical of the teachings which had been not repeatedly exposed to the discipline of a religious community. It was they had other words and experience with teach which did not advocate simply subjective response. So that when the Puritan conscience responded and said enough and I will refuse to abide by a particular injunction it was presumably a conscience which had tried to search itself in terms of standards which in itself it had not created. Well these kinds of problems are ones which I think are project themselves forward because some of the problems real grades by religious to a descent. That still remain crucial problems. But some of them have not remained crucial problems. The development of democracy and the emergence of Democratic politics. The extension of toleration all of these have laid to rest. Certain of the kinds of issues posed by the Puritans indeed with the emergence of democratic political societies in the 18th and 19th century the problem in a certain

sense has become more difficult. It has become more difficult because it is always possible to plead that the freedoms provided by democracy be always open procedural channels which democracy all for its obviate the need for disobedience. And so the argument tends to run. We should permit all forms of civil dissent but countenance no form of civil disobedience because by definition disobedience cannot be civil. The one possible qualification which is usually entered in this point is that an individual or group may be justified in disobeying if its disobedience is aimed at reminding that democratic society of its own pro fest. Bad as it is though a train had been derailed and the task of disobedience was to put it back on the track. Yes democracy of the lists I suspect raises two further problems the kind of acute issues that I'm sure other speakers will turn to and which you yourself have I feel addressed yourselves to namely the

question first of all. Time time in relationship to disability. It's not a problem that has really been explored earlier namely the problem of how long a period must elapse before the democratic procedures for redress are declared. A few times and the recourse to disobedience is therefore justified. By definition democratic procedures require nations. But one must also I suppose raise the question as to when patients can be regarded as legitimately exhausted. Finally one might also raise the question of whether democratic processes in themselves be precisely because they are susceptible to him and because they are susceptible to pressure tend to encourage and reinforce certain types of dominant groups certain types of dominant views and permanently disadvantage some groups and some values from availing themselves of a process which is responsive primarily to concentrations of oppression.

Speaker is Professor Henry made history part. So I understand it the job of a historian in a discussion like this is different either from the job of a participant. Sorry but we have the wrong thing. The job of a historian as I see it is different in this sort of discussion from the job either of a participant activist or from the political philosopher making the kind of analysis which we've just heard so well done. A story I'm special concern I think is always with context not with theory. With the universal nature of civil disobedience

and his immediate concern at least is not to say what to do next which he knows no better than anybody else and probably not as well as people who are disappointed by current struggles. His job is putting the problem in a context by looking at the past. My job here is to put civil disobedience into the context of American history. And for that reason I will talk more about American history than about civil disobedience because I know more about it. History also honestly presented never gives very clear answers and often deepens ambiguity. A historian does not present the past as he wishes it was but tries to see it as it really was with all its ambiguities and the American past. We're aware today as never before is full of ambiguity. It's neither all bad they're all good with the bad group and good wrapped up together. So I want to look at these ambiguities right now very briefly from the point of view of

social order. Many would probably prefer to look at them from the point of view of freedom. In my opinion these are very close by order here. I don't mean what a silent policeman months it means let's say when he invokes law and order probably not what any policeman no matter how well intentioned means since his job is concerned only with the part of social order by social order. I mean a situation in which different opinions can be expressed with nobody being beaten up. In which one can be confident of protection as one goes about one's ordinary peaceful business and more than them as one tries to change the social situation. It is a situation in which we do not have to struggle. Just to obtain decent CS but in which we have some energy left over for creativity. Many of us including I'm sure many though not all in this audience

who have spent our lives in the apparently secure world of the American middle class. Take this kind of border for granted. Here I think we are very wrong. It is a rare and precious achievement. We have never reached it fully in this country and many countries have never come near it atone. If we lose this sort of civil order we lose most of what makes life worth living. I want to state what I mean paradox that the forces for social order in this sense in this country are very strong and so are the forces against. When it got started this was thought of by the respectable countries the monarchies of Europe as a dangerous country. Actually of all those countries which started with the revolution it settled down to civil order. Perhaps most quickly forces for this sort of order throughout American history I think are

meanly free. First economic expansion which includes what used to be described simply as the frontier during most of our history. Things were getting better for a great many people not for all but for a large proportion particularly of the articulate and influential. Many would say that they were better off than their fathers and many could hope that their children would be better off than they were. Second force making for social order is ideological agreement or consensus on the whole. And this has been discussed in argot about a great deal by American story and recently on the whole I think there has been a general ideological agreement of a very loose sign for better or worse in this country put together out of 17th century religion 18th century liberalism in the 19th century political economy in a tiny easy and shifting mixture.

In spite of the difficulty of defining this idea. American ideology. I spend most of my time trying to do. It's had a great deal of strength or perhaps because of the difficulty of defining its usually included some believe in individual liberty inequality and progress. Not only have very few people throughout our history articulate articulately opposed the main assumptions of this agreement most Americans still are utterly shocked and surprised when it's even suggested that anybody can question it. And the third force on the side of social order is a constitutional cap. Which candidate of the revolution wasn't much in the. By. And on the whole have been with us ever since the order achieved by only using horses has never been perfect and sometimes it is seemed to some success has been a constant

complaint of conformity of Babri. Yet there has also been much dissent considerable creativity and the Major Mark I think of our long tradition of social protest has acted within the limits of the prevailing ideology and constitutional order. Now I said that the forces which are which is running this sort of social order which is so close to freedom in my opinion are also strong. Obviously the strongest I think is they have an individual. Sometimes through violence it seems contradictory to say this is been characteristic of a country which is so deeply Constitutionalist. But I think nonetheless this is true. There has been very little. Revolutionary violence in this country and most of the violence has been connected with some degree some sort of

extreme individualists the people who say I want what I want fast or I don't want you to take anything away from me. It has come more from the right than from the left. Though some are both the extreme example and the largest is sound and the source of much else where total violence has sometimes become violence has been directed also against national and religious minorities. The Chinese Catholics many Indians aside from the south has come from the west where vigilantism private wars of various kinds of gun toting have not only been coming but are employed by our favorite folklore. It has been present in the labor movement sometimes. And most of. Us are 19th century labor struggles at some point we're more violent than those in other major Western countries. Not in spite of the fact that they

were less ideological but rather I think because of that fact. A second foreign bank makes against the preservation of social order. Is complacency. Too often because many people in this country have been either relatively contented or hopeful. We have tended to deny that injustice exists at all or that dissent let alone disobedience have any serious function for being somewhat more sophisticated we have said no doubt there is some injustice going to this be taken care of fast enough and sometimes we have said this wily social dynamite has been building up in Mississippi in Harlem in Watts and elsewhere the combination of complacency and of the how we are reacting with violence to sudden challenge has been a very dangerous one and the third force that works against social order is war.

Our institutions our way of merely things our constitutional habits our ideology and no number in the long period when we were hardly written tollway for a moment now we will differ greatly on boy. It is that since 1970 we have been offering non and more but I think we will agree that this fact has put a terrible strain on our ideology and our institutions can still dance. This is surely one reason why many here folk in one way or another that we can find a way out of our present involvement without getting into an endless struggle over what sort of social order there will be in the whole world. These are the major forces as I've seen them out in the civil disobedience spin. I don't think in this country that it has a mini manger tradition but rather a persistent and important undercurrent. If we define

it as it's defining in some of the material distributed or histamine it is illegal NONE liar. And public Prudence I think though I have argued that this definition excludes most of the benefits of the American Revolution and of the American way route and I think that civil disobedience has been used in this definition in war I mean Casey's first at the beginning for religious freedom and ultimately for religious diversity. And he'd say much about this since Mr. Wogan and sketched its background. This house here we have the purity of mind which may deny liberty to others but. Fights to the death for what it considers most important. And also the Quaker were any which believes positively. In the method of love and is against persecution per se. The second major instance is gambling This is where I think

they eat and this is of Oreos or emu heiress is not really typical but rather the refusal to obey our laws which is unjust according to my fire alone. The denial to slavery of the sort of support. This sort of institution needs. Third there is resistance to war which is being carried on both by those with an opposing particular war like the road and those of those old war like religious country subject areas or in the case of Randolph or intellectual an anarchist. And finally we have this method used in the current struggle over civil rights. Most lean particularly in the beginning of the present movement in support of the social order to meet those demands and are in a tradition reminiscing on the way around. For instance in the original statement of snick of

1960 we have heard the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation work permits the presupposition of our pain and the manner of our action. FS only in these instances civil disobedience is carried out are being carried on from what I would call humanly religious motives in terms of the highest possible variance to use it correctly. As I'm sure many speakers will point. Postering immense courage and discipline. It is always likely to turn into a struggle for power. Just a warning to the arm the owner's home in Miami in the forces of which Marian greeted me for social order in order freedom are a threat to our ideology is subject to attack. From the Indians from many Koreans the religious and secular parts of it are badly in need of reasoning something which many people are trying to do.

The constitutional order has been weakened by constant exceptions made to it by perversion of it prosperity by all still with this has been denied to some we are more conscious of this than ever. Some of the forces for disorder or something or something. Perhaps not complacency but war and a very uncertain individual words among a great many different and seemingly unrelated things. One of them of civil disobedience is a circumstance it can lead to the assertion of freedom which in the long run I think goes with it can be perverted into the destruction of war. The main point I want to me is I'm kind of saying that I'm not. Against the background of trying to stay in our diverse and trouble so violent it will not be there really is a

constant presence in this universe the rose tree is whether this period with its revival of civil disobedience will be a period of renewal and creativity or a period of catastrophe. I think the past is no less the answer is obviously up to us. Now to whatever authorities are coming from education intelligence and love that we can and it is actually up to the activists. From any. Authority for me. And with that heart and courage is to make it. You're in the car. Speak from any of them in this

matter. I saw him speak from my experience and did my work in India. Whether it is being working with wind of above it on a peace mission in Africa with this being was tempting to get the vote. The British set up this nation Zambia area of my work south. I see we have to begin with a very simple concept that can flick in human life is inevitable. And that the choice that has always been before us is how now do we deal with conflict. And it seems to me that there are only only three ways to deal with

one. If an injustice approaches us we can attempt to accumulate more violence than they have and to deal with the problem violence or war. It is possible for a man to pretend the injustice is not there and to attempt to avoid or there is a third method than that of attempting to find nonviolent ways of dealing with an injustice. I haven't made that clear I would like to point out that I do not advise the shoe's to use the word civil disobedience.

The watch will end up doing so but I should like to say what I am really talking about is mass action. Including the breaking of most all us for the purpose of directing a society from a course which is now followed to a course which seems to be saner and more in keeping with the human objective and the reason I do. I want to make a distinction is that I could not talk about the civil rights movement and talk about civil disobedience because we have not engaged in it. It was the Southerners who were engaging in a negative uncivil disobedience. We were attempting in breaking the laws of Mississippi

to bring the state religion was obeying the morals of the Supreme Court. Therefore technically we were not disobeying the highest law of the land. We were breaking unjust law all for a purpose. Now you just think thing to me is. And I particularly want to say I appreciate the amazing last paragraph because we are in a fantastically difficult period in the United States not only on the question of rule and peace but on the question of poverty. A while there appears to be rarer and more people who are becoming concerned. The problem that I see is that many people are expressing

their deep anguish their deep confusion. In a manner. Which is in itself frustrated they have not made real decisions as to what they want. This is very often true of young people in the movement whether it's in civil rights or peace. We can see that there are many things around this which are wrong. We don't like it and we are going to have. To do something about it. And very often played by people who know a great deal more about what they want to achieve and who may not be a total fundamentally interested in the objective which many of their followers.

And they are. All young people to day and older people today really to look. At these successful efforts that men have made to break one consensus in a society and to establish another. Because the main objective always has been of those who engage anyone willing to pay the price of engaging in the breaking of mall in the mass movement that good breaking all is necessary has always been to try. To get people to see that a given or given institutions in a given society

to be changed can be changed and that they pay the price. A break in you know all as a means of bringing people in that society to see that the law is wrong. Well that the action is insane or that it is lacking in humanity. That is to say only the breaking of the mall. Mass movement including civil disobedience is a power. Thrust in to a situation where there is conflict. But the objective on those who have classically and traditionally used

civil disobedience has always been to behave in that manner so that the great mass which makes up the society is indeed the police moved by real commitment. This is of sacrifice and a crown. Freed from any A B C D that can challenge the bodies of people so that they can in fact change. I want to be very concrete here lest I am misunderstood. I have refused to join marches which say end the war in Vietnam period for really simple reason.

I am not out to war and perhaps go to jail for nothing. If I go to jail I want it to be because I have given the man that I want to change in the society. Something concrete enough for them to be able to hold on to. To argue about and not something which plays into their prejudices which the president of the United States can misinterpret which the newspapers will in fact mis interpret and therefore. Throwing these people in fact into a camp where my action would strengthen reaction rather than to break open something. You know this is not only true for me in peace. The reason that I refused to go to the World's Fair to Siddle evidence

that I have tried. The various constitutional means for bringing the change. Aha. There is not a single white person in this country after negroes and be treated the way we had for 300 years and we end up with a CPA that existed for 50 years going into courts and banging and banging when we had gone to Washington over and over again to get civil rights legislation when we had gone for 50 years to try to get an anti pension legislation that was nobody would turn to the Negro people and say but you haven't tried the constitutional means. They said we understand you're milling in the streets and you joined us precisely because 300 years of trying to do it had been too much. Second question one must pass since society dunce. As Socrates pointed out have many benefits for us

since many of us are getting our education because of what government does for us. And many other benefits one must be very certain not to break laws but. To refuse cooperation because he is dedicated to a higher law. This civil disobedience does not choose to break the law but to adhere to a higher law. Third question a lot of people that I am appealing to aware. Of the nature of the injustice.

I guess they are not aware. What. Am I doing positively economically socially politically psychologically to educate them to the reality of the situation as well as marching and breaking the law. Fourth question have I examined my own motives. Am I in this to get my picture on paper or to to work to have a following or to create a tendency or. Really I don't believe in American society anyhow so what the hell difference does it make how much fuss we make in the street or online. Peace marches because I have a peace program and want the American people to be concerned with peace.

Next is my action Dedicated to be carrying on in that manner which will in fact bring about concretely as I see it a better society. Or am I really trying to tear up this one without having anything to replace it with. Next. Am I prepared precisely because men Merl through my addy when I break the law. Am I prepared to accept the punishment cheerfully that society will inflict upon me. And do

I attempt to organize other people who are with me to accept the punishment. Now I will be concrete again. I talk to most of the newspapers television people this afternoon before coming here. It was exceedingly simple for me to make clear to them. Perhaps someone for the first time why it was a constructive act for Mr Miller to tear up his draft card. What I could not get them to understand and what I do not understand and what I think is profoundly destructive is to further increase the power of the right in this country. While the talk about draft evasion. No.

One of the people whose basic attitude we want to change can be changed by someone who feigns homosexuality or who takes a job before he goes or who does some other irregular thing as a means of getting out from under. Because the political strength of civil disobedience is open ness. The state we tell you the governor of Mississippi we tell you and to us. SOCRATES tells you the king. We tell you on Sunday's date and to plot x number of people will in fact do the following. They are prepared to go to jail. They are prepared to take the consequences. And society may say at the beginning they are insane but it is the power by which one gets down to get a new

reaction if in fact it can be done. And that power is never for the purpose of trying to take over somebody. It is why the power which we trust will win over millions and therefore if our weapon if the only weapon we have now to stop Willian children being burn in huts in Vietnam is the only weapon we have to keep the innocent American boys from doing it. If the only weapons we have from stopping the violence and atrocities which the North inflicts is our bodies then we must use them not for the purpose of sowing more confusion in the situation.

We must now use our bodies in direct action including civil disobedience. Will such absolute clarity with such absolute. Openness without any subterfuge so that people can say Ah. Perhaps we had better examine the question that people are raising when they behave in that manner and are prepared to pay that price. Why would I think one in order to make certain that he is not making the mistakes in the society must apply. Can't you get him to resign. Yes if all people in the world. I say one must make reference to Kahn's have a

workable impelling one must ask oneself if all people who really want racial equality and all people really want war were to be held as I am now behaving in spirit and action. Would this in fact make things better. Now I want to make one final statement. Those who truly understand nonviolence know that the Viet Cong is not the real overcommit element. Those who understand this method for bringing social change know that the United States is not the enemy.

They know that Chinese communists are not the enemy. They know that once the war begins there will be as many atrocious things happen on the part of the FLN as on the part of Americans as I know from rioting in Watts and home. But you got a riot started and negroes will be equally violent to white people. The enemy is war. Itself. And one who believes in a new power for dealing with it does not get himself in broils in who started it. Oh my God how I would hate white people if I had to struggle with who started it. I do not ask questions as to whether the

Mississippians are better than the Georgians. The fact of the matter is we are all in this country embroiled and therefore the spirit of my disobedience against the southern. Oligarchy has to be that spirit and that message which will ultimately undercut and take away from them this feeling that they have. And to redeem them. Now I'm not talking about Christian love as such. When I say we deem I'm including the delimiting of their power so that they are in their own mind. We do speak from semi God to human beings so that they see themselves clearly and then they see me.

And therefore any American effort which tries to act in this horrible situation as if one side is right and the other one is wrong. A movement which refuses to see any values in the very society which has no choice it. Individuals who refuse to see any value in a society and out of frustration in time of crisis automatically assume somehow or other that goal is bad here and all is good they are. This is a reaction not of people who genuinely or even understand true civil disobedience. It is a result of an intense frustration. It is the same kind of thing which they need young people to

misread what happened once the tragedy watch my friend. Its not the buildings that were destroyed and the ultimate tragedy what is not even the people who were killed. Some of them might have been killed crossing the street. The real tragedy of watts is that when I said to a young man who said to me Mr. Ruston we won. And he said we won because I manifesto was clear. And I say to him Young man you keep talking about this manifesto. May I see a copy. He opened up a matchbook matches. That is he said that's our manifesto baby in the queue. They are baby bird. What he was saying to me was that everybody knew there was trouble. The chief of police the mayor and the governor did nothing. The War on Poverty money could not come in but the sooner they issued their

manifesto the mayor the governor everybody came in there so many social workers and watch you trip over them in the streets now. What these young people got out of this was that this form of action was a socially accepted form of social protest because in this one instance it brought in results they had not been able to get before. Though I think in our peace and civil rights work we have very profound to recognize two sides that young people should be anguished today but they should be disturbed that they should be on fire as it were with wanting to do something is modest. But as Professor may point to them it is the manner in which we now do see as to whether what truly began in

1955 in Montgomery as people marching in the streets for social justice is now to be turned into a nightmare or whether to just be under storing creatively use and thus possibly even helping to bring peace to pump of.