[ Music ]
>> First year, first semester.
Announcement, Emily.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Today there's a
roundtable at 4:00 o'clock
in the [inaudible] room.
Tonight [inaudible] at
6:00 o'clock [inaudible].
If you're able to, a bunch
of us will be there
if your [inaudible].
That's it.
>> That's it.
So [inaudible] with
professors, 6:00 o'clock,
roundtable at 4:00, and
then finals week next week.
Our lecturer for today is my
dear friend and colleague,
Dr. Cynthia Boaz, who is a
friend and an alum and faculty
of the faculty [inaudible]
program
and has Febrezeed this
lecture on the civic self,
continuing our discussions
of identity a number
of times for us.
Welcome back.
>> Thank you.
>> Dr. Boaz -- by the way,
the most important thing
she wants me to say by way
of introductions is this --
if this lecture intrigued you,
take classes with Dr. Boaz.
In fact, she is another one
of my great favorite faculty
on campus and another
faculty member
that I know that changes lives.
Okay?
So Dr. Boaz's PhD
is from UC Davis.
She was previously a faculty
member at SUNY Rockport.
She has done work all over the
world, particularly in the area
of non-violent political
resistance
and non-violent political
revolution action.
She's also -- and
please take note of this,
one of the most exciting
things on campus --
she is the faculty advisor
for our Model UN program,
which each year brings
how many students?
>> Well, this year it's 32.
>> Thirty-two students
to New York, right?
>> Yep.
>> To participate in
actual UN activities.
>> The largest Model UN
simulation in the world.
And we get to visit the UN.
It's pretty cool.
>> Yeah. It's one of
the coolest things
that I know about on campus.
Please give a warm [inaudible]
welcome to Dr. Cynthia Boaz.
[ Applause ]
>> All right.
Thank you.
I know that earlier
applause was for the fact
that this is the last lecture of
the semester, it wasn't for me.
But I'm still going to take it.
So it seems, like, really loud.
Is this too loud?
[ Inaudible ]
Okay. Okay.
Is that okay?
>> Yeah.
>> All right.
Yeah, that just was
too close to my face.
So firstly, I just -- I want
to acknowledge how grateful
I am to be back with FYE.
I taught in the program
for four years and sad
that I couldn't do
it again this year.
And I'm sure that you guys
in the program know this,
but I just want to reinforce
that you're really fortunate
not only to be in FYE
at Sonoma State but to be with
the faculty that you're with.
These are some of
the best faculty
that Sonoma State has to offer.
And I know you're in
your freshman year
so you don't have a lot of frame
of reference, but take my word
for it when I say that
you're very, very fortunate
to start your college
experience with these folks.
So if you -- you know,
I actually think we
should give them a round
of applause before the
end of the semester.
[ Applause ]
I mean, you guys have no idea
how hard this faculty works
for you -- or maybe you do.
But if you don't, now you do.
All right.
So I've got to cram
a lot of information
into a short period of time.
And I might be speaking kind
of quickly, so bear with me.
It was hard to find
things to cut
out of this lecture given
the relevance of this topic
for this political
moment that we're living.
So we're going to start
today with the assumption
that American democracy --
the American democratic
experiment is in danger
but with the caveat
that it's not dead yet.
And so that's what we're
going to focus on for today.
Some of the evidence
for the assertion
that American democracy is in
danger would include things
like low voter turnout.
The United States has some
of the lowest voter turnout
in the entire world, even at
the level of the presidency,
which typically draws two or
three times as much turnout
as any other election.
In a good year we have
50% voter turnout.
Compare that to other
industrialized democratic
societies where you see
turnout between 75% and 85%.
We also have relatively
low levels
of what we call civic
literacy --
knowledge about how
politics works.
Most Americans can't even
name their two senators
or their member of the
House of Representatives.
I'm not going to put anybody
on the spot now, but
think about that.
Think if you can
name your senators
and your congressperson.
And if you can't, that
might be some information
that you want to store away.
Media consolidation -- the
concentration of media ownership
into smaller and smaller hands,
which means that we get less
diversification of information
and we get more questionable
information and news.
I'm not talking about
fake news like the way
that Donald Trump
talks about it.
I'm talking about news
that serves the interests
of a small political
or economic elite.
Because when media
is a business,
then the profit motive competes
with the quality of information.
Many people are still
living without access
to health insurance, healthcare.
And that number is going
to go up dramatically
over the next ten years.
There are increasing numbers of
hate crimes and discrimination.
We now have it looks
like a legitimate white
nationalist/white supremacist
movement in the United States
that's out in the open in a way
that we haven't seen for
a very, very long time.
And we're seeing the
consolidation of political power
in the hands of a
smaller and smaller elite.
And many other things, but I
don't want to take up more time.
Although if this is
of interest to you,
I do teach a class called Issues
in Modern American Politics
-- that's a little plug.
So I'm not going to talk
about the legal definition
of citizenship today,
which is the status
of a person recognized
under the customer law
as being a legal member
of a sovereign state.
Instead --
-- I'm going to focus
on the more complex
and I'd argue more
important definition
of democratic citizenship that
is defined by the decisions
that you make and
your relationship
to the larger society.
There are different terms
for what I'm calling
citizenship here.
And I'm kind of going
to use a lot
of terms sort of
interchangeably.
But some of those terms
would be civic engagement,
political activism, and
public participation.
But to be even more specific,
I'm going to focus on one aspect
of engaged citizenship, which is
what we call civil resistance,
that takes the form of mass
non-violent action by the people
that causes a disruption to
such a degree that it can bring
about social or political
change.
I asked your faculty members
to have you read Martin
Luther King Junior's Letter
from a Birmingham Jail
for today because I think
that that is the best
treatise on the kind
of democratic citizenship
that I'm talking about today.
And I see some of
you guys looking
at each other like, "What?"
So if you haven't read Letter
from Birmingham Jail
yet, please do.
If not for me for me,
for your own edification.
It's probably one
of the best pieces
of political writing
in existence.
In fact, many initiatives
just over the last year
under this current president,
including the DACA repeal,
the first two Muslim bans, and
various other assaults on rights
of underrepresented groups
were stopped because of people,
because of the kinds of actions
that I'm going to
talk about today.
So I'm going to make an
argument in three parts.
If you aren't willing to
be a democratic citizen,
you don't deserve to be a
citizen of a democratic society.
So the idea here is that
democracy is not free.
Democracy is not
without responsibilities.
It's a relation -- it's almost
a relational kind of concept.
Therefore, if democracy
fails, it's our responsibility
because democracy
depends on the people.
It depends on the people holding
up their citizenship
responsibilities.
And this is because no ruler or
system can oppress or even stay
in power without the
consent of the people.
Now, what does that mean?
Think about it this way: If
everyone withdrew their consent,
if everyone stopped
obeying, just going along
with what they're told
to do without thinking,
then government couldn't
do anything.
So as a thought exercise,
let's use an extreme
historical example.
Imagine what would have happened
if the Jews and the Germans
who had sympathized with
them had resisted Nazi orders
in the 1930's.
Let's imagine that
conservatively speaking
about 50% of people
living in Germany
in the 1930's would not have
approved of the genocide
of millions had they been
asked prior the start
of the holocaust what
they thought of the idea.
Hopefully it's more than
50%, but let's just --
to be conservative
let's say 50%.
Would the holocaust have
been possible if half
of the population just
refused to go along,
just refused to carry
out orders?
Surely the Nazis could
or would not have jailed
or killed half of
their population.
The loss of resources would have
been devastating, unsustainable.
And at some point those
members of the security forces
who were tasked with
carrying out the orders
against their own family members
would have started to refuse.
The holocaust worked because the
Nazi party was able over time
to dehumanize Jews and
other groups in the eyes
of the larger population,
to make them the other.
But if the citizens of
Germany had refused to buy
into that perception
or had shown
up in massive numbers themselves
to have yellow stars sown
on their clothing when the
Jews began to be registered,
the subsequent stages
of genocide would
not have followed.
So in civil resistance,
numbers matter.
Everybody's participation or in
this case might be withdrawal
of consent or withdrawal
of participation matters.
I want to just give you a little
bit of contemporary context
that actually also links back
to the Civil Rights Movement.
You're looking at -- the picture
on the top is obviously
recognize Martin Luther
King Junior.
Sitting next to him is a man
named Reverend James Lawson.
Lawson was the leading
theoretician and tactician
of the Civil Rights Movement.
If you saw the movie The
Butler, he was portrayed
by Jesse Williams in that movie.
He was asked by King to come to
Nashville to lead the campaign
to desegregate the
city, and then we went
onto subsequent campaigns
throughout the Civil Rights
Movement and became
the key strategist,
became the strategic
voice of the movement.
Well, he's 89 years old today
and he's still doing this work.
And in fact, back in October
he convened an institute
at which he invited about 40
of the country's top organizers
working in various areas
of social justice in
order to teach them
about Kenyan strategies
of non-violent resistance.
And I was asked to be an
instructor at that institute.
And it was -- it was
an incredibly humbling
and inspirational experience.
And during his opening
speech, Lawson spoke
about the current
moment we're living in
and this particular
idea of citizenship.
And this is what he said.
He said, "We need
civil resistance
as never before in
human history."
This is, by the way, someone who
lived through the brutalities
of the Civil Rights
era, of segregation,
of Jim Crow, and so on.
"If it doesn't happen, the fate
of the human race is tenuous.
It is the singular
most significant hope
and possibility for humanity."
Now, in order to get at
the idea of citizenship,
I want to clarify some
other terminology.
So we -- we hear -- right now in
this moment we're hearing a lot
of language about what it means
to be American or what our job
as Americans are in
the world, right?
So there's the idea of
make America great again
or America first.
And these ideas are
allegedly ideas related
to this concept called
patriotism.
But I would argue that
actually they're expressions
of something called nationalism.
And I just want to
make a distinction
between these two concepts.
They're similar,
but it's critical
to understand the
difference between the two.
And a very shorthand way
of thinking about this is
that nationalism is loyalty
to, like, your tribal group.
So it's loyalty maybe to an
ethnicity, possibly a religion.
Patriotism is loyalty
to the principles
of the democratic
government that --
that we allegedly live in.
So a nationalist -- a person
who's expressing nationalist
ideas often will bring
out intentionally
or unintentionally
the worst in us,
what Abraham Lincoln might
have called the darker angels
of our nature.
But then they tell us
that we're the best.
So there's this interesting
contradiction.
A nationalist, according to
George Orwell, "endlessly broods
on power, victory, defeat,
and reverence but tends
to be uninterested in what
happens in the real world."
A patriot, as I'm defining it,
by contrast wants their nation
to live up to its proclaimed
ideals, which means asking us
to be our best selves, to draw
on what Lincoln called the
better angels of our natures.
A patriot has universal values,
standards by which she
judges her country,
always wishing it well
and always wishing
it would do better.
The term democracy, which
we throw around a lot,
literally comes from two
Greek words, a combination
of two Greek words
pushed together: Demos,
which means the people;
and kratia,
which means power or rule.
So the term democracy literally
means rule by the people.
So what is it exactly?
What does that mean?
It's a type of political system
in which people are
ultimately accountable.
And by the way, a republic --
I know that some of us, like,
on social media or wherever
you get these arguments
about the United States is not
a democracy, it's a republic --
that is a complete
misunderstanding
of both of those concepts.
Because a republic is a
form of a democratic system.
A republic is a form
of democracy.
They're not mutually
exclusive concepts.
They're on different spectrums.
So if someone's using
that argument willfully,
they should know better
because it's not a legitimate --
it's not a legitimate argument.
In any case, democracy
is a system
in which people govern
themselves directly
or indirectly.
In order to understand
citizenship as civic behavior,
we have to first understand
this concept of democracy.
And so democracy
requires a few features,
some of which might
be surprising to you.
So we know that democracy
is government of,
for, and by the people.
Each of those has a distinct
meaning and each is important.
Government of the
people means that it's --
it's made up, the
representatives are made
up from the general
population; they're us
and not some special
elite aristocratic class
that has some divine
right to rule.
Government for the people gets
at the idea of general will,
or the greater good, taking care
of the interests of everyone.
And by the people, which is
the one that's most overlooked
but maybe even the
most important,
is the idea that democracy comes
from the will of
the people itself.
It's a bottom-up
organic process.
Democracy is an agreement
between people and government.
So the idea of, say, imposing
democracy in another part
of the world or transporting
democracy somewhere else,
these are oxymoronic.
You can't do that by definition.
Those democracies
will inevitably fail.
Democracy also requires conflict
and disagreement in order
to animate it and give it life.
So you should be very suspicious
of anyone who tries to say
that -- that conflict
is bad for democracy.
It's not -- and the reason is
because we all have
different interests, right?
We're all different people.
So it would be very
weird and creepy
if everybody believed the same
thing all the time, right?
So the idea in democracy
is to figure out how
to mediate those disagreements,
how to mediate conflict in a way
that people still get taken care
of, even if every single one
of their interests
isn't accommodated.
Democracy is also
a social contract.
As I said before,
it's a voluntary agreement
amongst individuals
in which organized society is
brought into being with things
like the right to
secure protection
or to regulate relations
between its members.
So even if you don't
think you're actively part
of the social contract, you are.
By not opposing it, you are.
And we've already talked
about how it relies
on the consent of the people.
And lastly, I would just add
that democracy requires
people --
it requires its citizens
to keep it in check.
When people come together
to withdraw their support
for an unjust system,
that is civil resistance.
And the individual resistor is
sometimes called an activist,
sometimes called a dissident
depending on the context
and who's using the terms.
But as long as he or she are
using non-violent methods,
they're engaging in a form
of democratic citizenship.
Since we're on the theme
of democracy and I started
with the premise that
American democracy is at risk,
I want to play you this
one and a half minute clip
from an interview that Supreme
Court Justice David Souter did
back in 2012 where he
talked about what he saw
as the coming dangers
to American democracy.
And you might see some
relevance for today.
It's actually a pretty
chilling message.
Can you help me with
that, Scott?
You can just click on it, yeah.
If you click on it
in the slideshow,
it should come up [inaudible].
>> Sorry.
>> It's okay.
>> What I worry about is that
when problems are not addressed,
people will not know
who is responsible.
And when the problems get
bad enough, as they might do,
for example, with another
serious terrorist attack,
as they might do with
another financial meltdown,
some one person will
come forward and say,
"Give me total power and I
will solve this problem."
That is how the Roman
Republic fell.
Augustus became emperor not
because he arrested
the Roman senate.
He became emperor
because he promised
that he would solve problems
that were not being solved.
If we know who is
responsible, I have enough faith
in the American people
to demand performance
from those responsible.
If we don't know, we will
stay away from the polls,
we will not demand it.
And the day will come when
somebody will come forward
and we in the government
will in effect say,
"Take the ball and run with it.
Do what you have to do."
That is the way democracy dies.
>> Hi. I'm Debbie Scary,
and I'm from Windham.
And my question tonight
is really
around where we started
this conversation,
which was really
around the schools.
>> Okay. You can see why that's
kind of chilling today, right?
Four years, five years later?
All of a sudden this
seems really loud again.
>> I got it up here.
>> Okay, thank you.
All right.
The other major type of
political system that I'm going
to mention because this is
what democracy can potentially
degrade into if the people don't
maintain it is authoritarianism.
I've got a definition of
authoritarianism up here.
Let me tell you some
of the features
of authoritarianism,
the common features.
Authoritarian systems tend
to value order and security
over personal freedom.
They promote fear
of both an internal
and external enemy
or perceived enemy.
They make attempts to quash or
completely eliminate the freedom
of speech and the
freedom of the press.
There's limited or no
freedom of assembly.
There's limited freedom of
movement; it's more difficult
for people to come into
and out of the country.
There's not an independent
judicial system.
The judiciary serves
the interests
of a political group or person.
Any opposition to the
regime is harshly punished.
And dissent -- dissent, which
I just talked about as a form
of citizenship, of
democratic citizenship --
dissent is treated as treason.
There's no rule of law.
Okay? There's a lot
of talk about law.
But there's a difference between
legal language and rule of law.
Rule of law is where the
laws and the constitution
and the system transcend
the interest
of any political actors.
It means under a rule
of law everybody is held
to the same standard,
everybody has to obey the law,
everybody is equal in
the eyes of the law.
And authoritarian systems
tend to be xenophobic.
Does anybody know that term?
I see some of you nodding.
What does it mean?
Yeah, it's fear of foreigners,
people who are not us.
They also tend to be very
masculinist or misogynistic,
they consider men to be
more valuable than women.
And those are just
some of the features.
There's a lot more.
So how is this thing called
civil resistance adapted
to different types of
systems like authoritarianism?
Is it possible to do the
things that I just talked
about under authoritarianism
as well as democracy?
Well, weirdly, although
resistance
under authoritarian
conditions is riskier,
in some ways it's
easier to organize
than in open democratic
societies.
Citizens of democratic
or quasi-democratic states
are usually I'm going
to use the word sedated,
distracted,
or co-opted so that they don't
have incentives to resist.
We're often too busy
shopping, or watching TV,
or playing around on social
media, or just telling ourselves
that everything's fine and that
somebody else will take care
of the problems out there.
I mean, if the problems
don't affect us directly,
who cares, right?
It often is only when life
gets so hard or people feel
so threatened that they perceive
that they have nothing left
to lose, that they'll then
engage in civil resistance.
And that's unfortunate
because you can stave off a lot
of problems if you didn't
wait until that point.
It's a myth that
the effectiveness
of civil resistance, by
the way, is a function
of the repressiveness of the
system and their willingness
to use force against the people.
People have had success in
addressing injustices in some
of the most violent, closed,
and repressive societies
in the world.
In fact, a friend of mine,
his name's Ivan Marevich,
a Serbian group called Otpor,
which brought down Milosevic
in 2000, has said
that resistance works
like Newton's third law
in those kinds of cases.
As oppression goes up, the
resistance goes up with it.
But there's some tactics that
make more sense in that context
because they're relatively
low risk but high visibility.
So the individual activist
is usually more willing
to participate.
And because authoritarianism
relies on fear and the belief
that only they are the
arbiters of truth, one tactic is
to make the leader
look ridiculous,
to embarrass them publicly,
assuming that they
are embarrassable,
they have enough shame
to be embarrassed.
In Iran in 2009,
during the resistance
against the stolen
presidential election,
people began sending
text messages
to each other making jokes
about Ahmadinejad
wearing dirty underwear,
which was a big deal
in that context.
This went on for weeks with
millions of people sending
and receiving the messages.
Now, it's a relatively minor
action in the scheme of things,
but it removes the sense of
reverence around the leader.
And over time if tactics
are employed continuously,
it can undermine the
leader's moral authority.
Relatedly, human is also
a common strategy used
in highly repressive contexts
because humor is the one thing
that is guaranteed
to lower fear.
When people are laughing,
they're not afraid.
So the most important goal
in an authoritarian setting
in which the ruler controls all
or most of the information is
to reveal what might
be called the big lie,
the foundational myth
upon which the regime
or the leader bases his rule.
Someone must pull back
the curtain and reveal
that the emperor has no clothes.
This is why simply speaking the
truth is a revolutionary act
in this kind of context.
The general approach, though,
is the same whether you're
operating in a democratic,
authoritarian, or other context:
It boils down to figuring
out what the person or system
that's doing the oppressing
needs and denying it to them.
And this is true whether we're
talking about moral authority,
political legitimacy, economic
resources, or something else.
Another tactic to mention
that works in all settings
but is especially effective
under authoritarianism
is something called the
dilemma action.
Dilemma actions by
definition put the opponent
into a lose/lose situation.
They're designed in such a way
that whatever the opponents do,
you will benefit or
whatever they do, they lose.
So couple of examples of dilemma
actions from around the world.
Several years back, some brave
North Koreans put anti-Kim Jong
Un messages on helium balloons
with photos of his face
and then tied them
around the capital city.
However, North Korea law
says that they are required
to destroy any subversive
material immediately,
including any non-sanctioned
pictures of --
sorry, including any
non-sanctioned photographs
of the leaders.
But there's another law
simultaneously in North Korea
that says any defacing of the
Dear Leader is prohibited.
So security forces had
to choose between which
of the two laws they
wanted to break.
Either way, they were
potentially in trouble
or they were at least
making their own system
look ridiculous.
Another example from about
ten years ago in Sweden was
when the government officially
declared homosexuality
as an illness.
People all across the
country started calling
out from work as gay [Laughs].
So many people did that
that the declaration was
overturned immediately.
They quickly realized
they couldn't --
they couldn't continue to
[Laughs] operate in which
so many people were ill.
And a third example
comes from Iran,
which is where this
photograph was from,
where women are forbidden
under Islamic law
from attending public events,
including soccer matches.
But soccer is very
popular in that country.
So during a 2006 World
Cup qualifying match
at Teheran University,
a large group
of women staged a
sit-in at the stadium.
Some of them managed to break
through the stadium barricades
and got into the bleachers where
they sat down and were captured
on camera by the BBC and
other international media
who were filming the event.
This put the government in the
position of having to choose
between forcibly
removing the women,
which would diminish the
regime's political legitimacy
in the eyes of the
international audience
by making them look brutal,
or allowing them to stay,
which would diminish their
moral authority in the eyes
of their more devout citizens.
Ultimately, Ahmadinejad
had the women removed
but also subsequently
had the policy changed.
And even though his
public justification
for changing the law was sexist,
he argued that the presence
of women at the stadiums
would keep the matches cleaner
and more civil.
It was also a clear-cut victory
for the Women's Movement.
So then to return to our
still democratic context,
let's talk a little bit more
about what it means
to be a good citizen.
So these answers that I've
put up here are answers
that I've harvested over the
years from students in talks
like this or in classrooms.
These are the things that
come up the most often.
Most of us identify civic
identity or civic behavior
with the act of voting.
But in fact, voting is
the most minimal way
that a citizen can
contribute to democracy.
This is not to say that
you shouldn't vote.
You absolutely should.
And if you are opposed to
all the parties in power
and you want to engage in a
protest vote, just write in none
of the above or your own name.
But the act of actually
not participating
at all reinforces
the very system
that you think you're
protesting when you don't vote.
But voting is not enough.
You have to be willing to stand
up and to resist or dissent
when your government is
doing things in your name
that you do not approve of.
We all know the First
Amendment rights --
there's freedom of
speech, religion, press,
assembly, and anybody?
There's a fifth one.
Say that louder.
[ Inaudible ]
I'll just stand here
until somebody Googles it.
Yes, thank you.
Say that again.
>> Petition.
>> Petition, yes.
This happens all the time.
It's odd to me that petition
is the one we always forget.
Think about that, why is that?
It really shouldn't
be surprising
because it's the one we spend
the least time discussing
and the least effort exercising.
But in my view, it's
arguably the most important
of the five liberties
embodied in the First Amendment
because without it, none of the
others have any real meaning.
Now, it's cliche, I know, to
have Martin Luther King Junior
as a personal hero, but there's
a good reason that he's regarded
so highly by almost everyone.
Though sadly many of us don't
know his contributions beyond
surface-level knowledge
or quotes that go
around social media in
February or maybe a few quotes
from the I Have a Dream
speech, King's contributions
to American democracy
go much deeper.
King argued, as did Socrates
in his context, as Gandhi did
in his, as Henry David Thoreau,
Desmond Tutu in South Africa,
Tolstoy, Hannah Arendt, Susan
B. Anthony, and many others
that people have
civic obligations
that go beyond voting
every couple of years.
They argued that it is sometimes
the responsibility of people
to resist or if we want to
call it petition, or dissent,
or withdraw their consent,
or refuse to cooperate
with some laws and in extreme
cases government entirely.
And that in doing so,
we're protecting democracy
and the rights and the
freedoms laid out for us
in the Declaration of
Independence and that evolved
and grew later through the
Civil Rights era and beyond.
All of these people knew
that rights disappear
when they're not exercised.
Which brings us to Letter
from a Birmingham Jail,
which as I mentioned earlier
in my view is the
single-best treatise
on democratic citizenship
ever written.
So let's look quickly at
some of the key takeaways
from King's argument
in the letter.
It's amazing that more than
50 years later they're still
so relevant.
Incidentally, those of you
who don't know the
story behind the Letter
from a Birmingham
jail, what happened is
that King was sitting
in Birmingham in 1963
and he was awaiting trial.
He was arrested --
actually, it was --
it's not really even
clear why he was arrested.
It looks like after the fact
that he didn't even
break any laws.
But the security forces
in Birmingham wanted
him off the streets
because they saw him
as a troublemaker.
And so he took the time
while he was sitting in jail
to write a response to a group
of white Southern ministers
who had earlier very
publicly criticized King
as being responsible for the
violence that was being used
against the activists in
the Civil Rights Movement.
Told him, "You just have to tell
your people to stop protesting.
It's your fault that people
are getting killed and hurt."
And so King's Letter from a
Birmingham Jail is his response
to that critique by
those eight ministers.
One of the most important
arguments that he makes --
and he makes it early on --
is this idea that injustice
anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere.
What is he saying there?
Like, why should we care
about what happens elsewhere?
I'm going to leave that
as a rhetorical question
because I'm limited for time.
But I want you to
think about that.
King is -- is arguing that
there's no meaning to these --
these lofty principles
that we claim to adhere
to if we don't care about
what happens to each other.
And he actually argues
that if you're harmed,
then by extension I'm harmed.
He also argues this relationship
between means and ends, that --
that what you get at the end
of the day is very
much a reflection
of how you went about
getting it.
And so he says, "I've preached
that non-violence demands
that the means we use must be
as pure as the ends we seek.
And I've tried to make
clear that it's wrong
to use immoral ends" -- sorry --
"immoral means to attain moral
ends, but I now must affirm
that it's just as wrong
to use moral means
to preserve immoral ends."
So either way the latter was a
little -- the latter argument,
using moral means
to get immoral ends,
was a little more provocative.
He's talking specifically
about the police in Birmingham
and other cities who on the
surface treated protesters
civilly, didn't openly beat them
in public but were very willing
to continue to uphold this
racist system of segregation.
So he's making a
case there that ends
and means are totally
inseparable.
He also says that we have to
be very careful because law --
law and morality
don't always coincide.
And he says that there are,
in fact, two types of laws:
Just laws and unjust laws.
And he says I would be the first
to advocate obeying just laws.
One has not just a legal
but a moral responsibility
to obey just laws.
But conversely, one has
a moral responsibility
to disobey unjust laws.
And then he goes on to define
what he sees as the difference
between just and unjust laws.
He says, "A just law is a
manmade code that squares
with moral law or
the law of God."
Remember, he's writing
this letter to a group
of Christian ministers.
So he's appealing to them
using their own language, okay?
He's telling them not only
are you not great citizens --
democratic citizens, you're
not advocating citizenship,
but you're maybe not the
greatest Christians, either.
And then he says, "An unjust law
is a human law that's not rooted
in eternal or natural law.
Any law that uplifts
human personality is just.
Any law that degrades human
personality is unjust."
And then he goes on to
talk about what happened
in Hitler's Germany
and how what was legal
and what was moral were
actually completely at odds.
Next he makes the argument that
when law and mortality come
into conflict, it's our duty as
democratic citizens to resist.
And beyond that, he says we're
not going to get these freedoms,
we're not going to get
these liberties just
because we ask for them nicely.
He says, "Freedom is
never voluntarily given
by the oppressor; it must be
demanded by the oppressed."
And this is the heart of
citizenship: To be willing
to stand up and take
action when law
or policy is inherently
unjust and out
of harmony with moral law.
The question you should ask
yourself is how do you know this
when you see it?
How can you tell the difference
between what is moral and just,
and what is immoral and unjust?
And I would argue that most of
us have this internal compass,
that if we really pay attention
to, if we don't suppress,
that will help us with that.
And it's almost never wrong.
And then lastly,
he makes the case
that if we're not actively
resisting injustice,
we're upholding it.
And he makes what might
have been, I don't know,
painful for some of you to
read, a very pointed case
about what he calls
the white moderates.
The white moderate
is the person --
is the white person who's not
a member of the KKK but is --
says at least with lip service
that we agree with your goals
in principle, but
you got to slow down.
And he says that person
actually may be more dangerous
than the extremist.
He says, "Shallow
understanding from people
of goodwill is more frustrating
than absolute misunderstanding
from people of ill will."
And I think -- I mean, I would
ask that as democratic citizens,
as students, you think about
what he means here in terms
of how you live your life
today, in terms of campaigns
like Black Lives Matter or the
current wave of Islamophobia.
Are you unwillingly
or unknowingly upholding
systems of injustice?
Over the years I've tried
to condense this talk
into what I call the
citizenship as the four C's,
these different components of
your identity: Civic virtue,
civic engagement, civic
literacy, and civil resistance.
I talked about all of
these to some degree.
By the way, I'm making this
PowerPoint available so anybody
who wants to investigate these
more carefully on your own time,
you will be able to do so.
And then to end, I'm going to
give you a couple of quotes
and perspectives from
some different folks.
This is a friend of
mine, Keith Olbermann.
Do you guys know him?
Okay. It's weird to me to think
that you guys are so young
that you don't know
who Keith Olbermann is.
But he had his own show
on MSNBC for a long time.
He has -- he has been --
he's more recently a
sports broadcaster.
But he was a political
commentator.
And I asked him to send me --
[ Inaudible ]
Almost done.
What he thought of this
idea of civil resistance,
to give me a quote for you.
And this is what he sent me.
"At its essence, dissent
is the purist civic virtue
because it does not need
to be more complicated
than publicly asserting
that something is wrong
and must be fixed."
That's the idea of
stating the truth out loud.
"It doesn't even have
to contain a solution
or a balanced analysis because
the simple truth is every time
anything that has ever improved
in the history of the world,
it started simply with
someone publicly asserting
that something was wrong
and must be fixed."
This is an argument
against complacency --
necessary for democratic
citizenship.
Vaclav Havel, the
first president
of the democratic Czech
Republic also got it.
And Reverend Desmond Tutu,
who was the moral voice
of the movement in South
Africa also got it.
I wanted to show
you a clip by him,
but I know that I'm out of time.
So you can watch it
on your own time.
It's one minute long.
You can watch it on your own
time in the -- what's that?
You want me to play it?
Okay. Well, and I tell you
what, we'll end on that.
So before -- can you
hang on for one second?
Because what we'll do is
once it's over, they can go.
I'm going to be at
the roundtable today.
I threw a lot of ideas at you.
If anybody wants to come to
the roundtable and flesh these
out a little further or
challenge me, please do so.
What you're going to
see here is the --
the analysis of what happened
in South Africa at the end
of the movement to
end apartheid.
And you'll see Desmond Tutu's
comment on why it happened.
Okay?
[ Music ]
>> They have never
in their lives voted,
nor have their parents or
their grandparents before them.
[ Music ]
>> The struggle against
apartheid, against the racism
in South Africa fundamentally
had been non-violent.
We were inspired by what had
happened in India, in Poland,
in the Civil Rights Movement
in the United States,
what was happening
in the Philippines.
I suppose that human beings
looking at it will say
that arms -- arms are
the most dangerous things
that a dictator, a
tyrant needs to fear.
But in fact, no.
It is when people decide
they want to be free.
Once they have made up
that, their minds to that,
there's nothing that
will stop them.
>> All right.
Have a great break.
[ Applause ]
[ Music ]
