6 ms·

Then why not skip the farce and actually organize a movement? You know, like they used to do when "separate but equal" was a thing?

rdl 14y ago
What's the potential civil disobedience movement? Refusing to participate in the federal court system?
- philwelch 14y ago
  There's the type where you disobey unjust laws, and then actually go to prison when you get caught in order to demonstrate the injustice.
  - rdl 14y ago
    That's a whole lot more feasible when you're worried about misdemeanor being-black-and-on-a-bus-or-drinking-from-a-fountain, vs. 10+ year federal felony convictions (and thus ~lifetime ban on ~most employment).
    - mpyne 14y ago
      Yes, because black people in America certainly only had to worry about which seat was reserved for them on the bus, and not lynchings, beatings, rapes, flaming crosses, police dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, or white juries as peers of their white attackers. P.S. Felony convictions are not a lifetime employment ban, especially for "white-collar" felonies.
      - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        If I had to choose between, on the one hand, being physically assaulted, and on the other hand, being prosecuted by federal prosecutors and imprisoned for ten years, I would not hesitate for one second to choose to be physically assaulted. Aaron Swartz literally chose to "lynch" himself over the alternative. Ask any prisoner serving a multi-year sentence in any prison whether they would wrestle a police dog if it meant they could have a clean record and go home. The government learned from the civil rights movement. They learned how to avoid it. Hitting people with a fire hose or burning a cross makes the targets righteous and sympathetic and makes the stupid Klansmen look like stupid Klansmen. Hitting people with a federal felony prosecution makes the targets powerless and penniless and lets the prosecutors paint themselves as the heroes doing battle with nefarious criminals.
        philwelch 14y ago
        Are you suggesting death is preferable to six months in prison and a felony conviction? Would that it were--we'd save a fortune on federal prisoners by executing them all! Otherwise, we'd have to say Aaron Swartz was not entirely rational when he killed himself.
        AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        >Are you suggesting death is preferable to six months in prison and a felony conviction? If I had to guess, he wasn't weighing it against the plea bargain, he had already decided not to take the plea bargain on principle and was weighing it against the cost of taking charity and bankrupting all his friends and family to fight it and even after all that still possibly losing and going to prison for multiple years. In other words, taking the plea would have had the additional cost to his integrity, which even in this day and age still means a lot to some people. I don't know if I would go so far as to say that the decision was rational (and I know the suicide prevention people hate it when people talk about stuff like this), but I can see the road he took to get there. Being human isn't always rational and we have to make policies under the understanding that people will have feelings and principles rather than making all decisions as rational automatons. >Would that it were--we'd save a fortune on federal prisoners by executing them all! No we wouldn't. It costs more to execute someone than imprison them because of the cost of all the appeals and safeguards we have for death penalty cases. But even though you're kidding, I think it raises a pretty reasonable point: Why do we even have prisons at all, other than as detention facilities for pending death penalty cases? If someone commits a sufficiently serious crime (or re-offends sufficiently many times), put them to death. If their crime was less serious than that, make them pay back their ill gotten gains, subject them to a fine or make them do community service 20 hours a week for however many hours or years. What good does it do to imprison someone if you ever intend to let them back out again? Prison costs the state money, it takes the convicts out of the economy and makes them parasites, and when they get out they have no skills and no job history which is one of the many reasons the recidivism rate is so high. Prison is a profoundly broken institution. I think there is a very strong argument for just getting rid of it as a method of punishment.
      - rdl 14y ago
        I agree it was worse for them then, but they chose (correctly) to initially confront law abiding adversaries like bus companies vs. protesting to the cross burning violent people. When confronting the federal court system, every single part of it has the ability to shoot you for non-compliance when taken far enough, or lock you away for years.
        mpyne 14y ago
        I thought Aaron was supposed to have been confronting law-abiding adversaries like JSTOR and other academic journal holders. I wasn't aware that his activism had anything to do with the Federal justice system per se. Either way, they don't have the option of simply shooting you on a whim (except insofar as anyone could theoretically decide to do that) or locking you away for years either (a jury is also required for this).
  - betterunix 14y ago
    What is interesting is that if we all do what Aaron did and refuse to take the deal, the courts would eventually be unable to handle all the cases. The USA simply arrests too many people each year for everyone to exercise their right to a trial. I suspect that if hundreds of thousands of people flagrantly committed felonies and demanded a jury trial, it would be one of the most effective forms of civil disobedience in the history of our country. Of course, that means organizing hundreds of thousands of people and convincing them to put their lives and livelihoods on the line.
    - mahyarm 14y ago
      The problem is, most people don't have the money for it.
      - sjwright 14y ago
        Let alone the spare time.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      ...and commit some sort of federal offense, to boot. At most you could take out a victimless crime that conscionable people would violate, but you wouldn't change the whole system. They could even use prosecutorial discretion to ignore the federal offenses committed purely out of civil disobedience. Also, you can't say what Aaron would or would not have done in response to the still-in-negotiation plea bargaining that was happening in his case. He could have chosen a plea bargain, or he could have chosen to go to trial, but he took a far more tragic third option.
qiqing 14y ago
Let's not forget that downloading JSTOR articles was itself an act of civil disobedience.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Civil disobedience entails publicly flouting the system and then accepting punishment in order to demonstrate the injustice of the system. Aaron Swartz never got around to the second part, tragically.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    Why must a violation of an unjust law in protest always come with acceptance of the unjust consequences? If you're an activist trying to change an unjust law, why not flout the law, and then very publicly try to avoid the unjust penalty? For that matter, what arbitrating body is responsible for deciding what is and is not a "valid" act of protest?
    - philwelch 14y ago
      You could do that if you want, though I don't see how it's supposed to be effective or principled, but it's a fair disagreement to have. In any case, that's not what civil disobedience is. Thoreau coined the term and he was the one who influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and they're generally the main referents for the concept of civil disobedience. Breaking the law and trying to get away with it isn't civil disobedience. It might be something else, it might even be valid, but it's not civil disobedience.
      - analog 14y ago
        Civil disobedience is just the refusal to co-operate with an unjust law. What you do after that is just tactics.
DannyBee 14y ago
Because it would require getting off the internet, and really, who has time for that.

rdl 14y ago

What's the potential civil disobedience movement? Refusing to participate in the federal court system?

philwelch 14y ago
There's the type where you disobey unjust laws, and then actually go to prison when you get caught in order to demonstrate the injustice.
- rdl 14y ago
  That's a whole lot more feasible when you're worried about misdemeanor being-black-and-on-a-bus-or-drinking-from-a-fountain, vs. 10+ year federal felony convictions (and thus ~lifetime ban on ~most employment).
  - mpyne 14y ago
    Yes, because black people in America certainly only had to worry about which seat was reserved for them on the bus, and not lynchings, beatings, rapes, flaming crosses, police dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, or white juries as peers of their white attackers. P.S. Felony convictions are not a lifetime employment ban, especially for "white-collar" felonies.
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      If I had to choose between, on the one hand, being physically assaulted, and on the other hand, being prosecuted by federal prosecutors and imprisoned for ten years, I would not hesitate for one second to choose to be physically assaulted. Aaron Swartz literally chose to "lynch" himself over the alternative. Ask any prisoner serving a multi-year sentence in any prison whether they would wrestle a police dog if it meant they could have a clean record and go home. The government learned from the civil rights movement. They learned how to avoid it. Hitting people with a fire hose or burning a cross makes the targets righteous and sympathetic and makes the stupid Klansmen look like stupid Klansmen. Hitting people with a federal felony prosecution makes the targets powerless and penniless and lets the prosecutors paint themselves as the heroes doing battle with nefarious criminals.
      - philwelch 14y ago
        Are you suggesting death is preferable to six months in prison and a felony conviction? Would that it were--we'd save a fortune on federal prisoners by executing them all! Otherwise, we'd have to say Aaron Swartz was not entirely rational when he killed himself.
        AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        >Are you suggesting death is preferable to six months in prison and a felony conviction? If I had to guess, he wasn't weighing it against the plea bargain, he had already decided not to take the plea bargain on principle and was weighing it against the cost of taking charity and bankrupting all his friends and family to fight it and even after all that still possibly losing and going to prison for multiple years. In other words, taking the plea would have had the additional cost to his integrity, which even in this day and age still means a lot to some people. I don't know if I would go so far as to say that the decision was rational (and I know the suicide prevention people hate it when people talk about stuff like this), but I can see the road he took to get there. Being human isn't always rational and we have to make policies under the understanding that people will have feelings and principles rather than making all decisions as rational automatons. >Would that it were--we'd save a fortune on federal prisoners by executing them all! No we wouldn't. It costs more to execute someone than imprison them because of the cost of all the appeals and safeguards we have for death penalty cases. But even though you're kidding, I think it raises a pretty reasonable point: Why do we even have prisons at all, other than as detention facilities for pending death penalty cases? If someone commits a sufficiently serious crime (or re-offends sufficiently many times), put them to death. If their crime was less serious than that, make them pay back their ill gotten gains, subject them to a fine or make them do community service 20 hours a week for however many hours or years. What good does it do to imprison someone if you ever intend to let them back out again? Prison costs the state money, it takes the convicts out of the economy and makes them parasites, and when they get out they have no skills and no job history which is one of the many reasons the recidivism rate is so high. Prison is a profoundly broken institution. I think there is a very strong argument for just getting rid of it as a method of punishment.
    - rdl 14y ago
      I agree it was worse for them then, but they chose (correctly) to initially confront law abiding adversaries like bus companies vs. protesting to the cross burning violent people. When confronting the federal court system, every single part of it has the ability to shoot you for non-compliance when taken far enough, or lock you away for years.
      - mpyne 14y ago
        I thought Aaron was supposed to have been confronting law-abiding adversaries like JSTOR and other academic journal holders. I wasn't aware that his activism had anything to do with the Federal justice system per se. Either way, they don't have the option of simply shooting you on a whim (except insofar as anyone could theoretically decide to do that) or locking you away for years either (a jury is also required for this).
- betterunix 14y ago
  What is interesting is that if we all do what Aaron did and refuse to take the deal, the courts would eventually be unable to handle all the cases. The USA simply arrests too many people each year for everyone to exercise their right to a trial. I suspect that if hundreds of thousands of people flagrantly committed felonies and demanded a jury trial, it would be one of the most effective forms of civil disobedience in the history of our country. Of course, that means organizing hundreds of thousands of people and convincing them to put their lives and livelihoods on the line.
  - mahyarm 14y ago
    The problem is, most people don't have the money for it.
    - sjwright 14y ago
      Let alone the spare time.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    ...and commit some sort of federal offense, to boot. At most you could take out a victimless crime that conscionable people would violate, but you wouldn't change the whole system. They could even use prosecutorial discretion to ignore the federal offenses committed purely out of civil disobedience. Also, you can't say what Aaron would or would not have done in response to the still-in-negotiation plea bargaining that was happening in his case. He could have chosen a plea bargain, or he could have chosen to go to trial, but he took a far more tragic third option.

qiqing 14y ago

Let's not forget that downloading JSTOR articles was itself an act of civil disobedience.

philwelch 14y ago
Civil disobedience entails publicly flouting the system and then accepting punishment in order to demonstrate the injustice of the system. Aaron Swartz never got around to the second part, tragically.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  Why must a violation of an unjust law in protest always come with acceptance of the unjust consequences? If you're an activist trying to change an unjust law, why not flout the law, and then very publicly try to avoid the unjust penalty? For that matter, what arbitrating body is responsible for deciding what is and is not a "valid" act of protest?
  - philwelch 14y ago
    You could do that if you want, though I don't see how it's supposed to be effective or principled, but it's a fair disagreement to have. In any case, that's not what civil disobedience is. Thoreau coined the term and he was the one who influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and they're generally the main referents for the concept of civil disobedience. Breaking the law and trying to get away with it isn't civil disobedience. It might be something else, it might even be valid, but it's not civil disobedience.
    - analog 14y ago
      Civil disobedience is just the refusal to co-operate with an unjust law. What you do after that is just tactics.

DannyBee 14y ago

Because it would require getting off the internet, and really, who has time for that.