Chapter 3.2
Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience is a form of protest. When carrying out civil disobedience for animal rights you are acting on your moral right to correct injustice, as you see it. Citizens grant the state its authority and if compelled by conscience everyone can oppose the state’s authority.
"So the point isn't to have a victory over somebody else but rather to effect change. And change is a lot more rapid and a lot more enduring if you get the cooperation of what would otherwise be your adversary." Henry Spira (1)
What Is Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience usually entails non-violent actions, such as marches, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins or occupation of buildings. People engaged in civil disobedience have included suffragists, feminists, anti-war demonstrators and nuclear bomb protesters. The reason for being a civil resister or dissenter is to act on your moral right and correct a wrongness or some sort of badness that you perceive. You are trying to reverse or stop some process or make an appeal to correct or revoke a law, believing that your action is morally just and the law or government is unfair or harmful.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), American philosopher, naturalist and writer, is often cited as articulating the belief that people have a duty not to take part in a perceived injustice and to resist any government or its agent forcing people to participate. In his essay
Civil Disobedience, Thoreau asserted that it is the citizen who grants the state its authority and the citizen can oppose unjust authority if compelled by conscience.
Among the biggest and best-known practitioners of civil disobedience are Mohandas Gandhi (1869 - 1948) and Martin Luther King Jr (1929 - 1968). Gandhi practised nonviolent civil disobedience as a weapon in his struggle for independence for India from British rule. King fought peacefully for black-American civil rights. Both men were beaten and jailed, for even non-violent acts of civil disobedience risk retaliation and verbal or physical attack by opponents and police. But Gandhi and King attracted huge numbers of supporters and co-civil rights rebels.
Gandhi outlined some key rules when carrying out civil disobedience. They convey the flavour of his form of activism:
- Tolerate the anger and assaults of your opponents.
- Do not get angry, insult or retaliate against your opponents.
- Submit to arrest.
These are good rules in that they clearly tell you what to do, all things being equal, and do not jeopardise your cause.
Civil Disobedience and Animal Rights
Some animal rights civil disobedience actions are:
- Factory farms: attract open and clandestine rescues (see Animal Rescuer).
- Fur shops: activists picket them (see Picketing).
- Fox hunting with hounds: hunt saboteurs impede hunters in the field.
- Activism for foxes against fox hunters with hounds eventually had a successful legal judgement in Britain when the sport was outlawed by Act of Parliament (coming into force in the early 2000's). One form of this activism was hunt sabotage, a good example of animal rights civil disobedience against a (formerly) legal sport.
Hunt Sabotage
Hunt sabotage began in 1960's Britain and may have been the first methodical non-violent action to confront organised hunting of animals for sport. The hunt saboteurs (or 'sabs') engaged hunters with hounds (or 'hunts'). The job of the sabs was to make hunting impractical by delaying or confusing the hounds to give the quarry (usually foxes and sometimes deer) a chance to escape. Two sab techniques are blowing hunting horns and covering a quarry's sent with pungent sprays to mislead the hounds.
Sabs were not kindly tolerated by the hunts. Hunts reacted to the sabotage by employing private security firms and their own supporters to take on the sabs, sometimes violently. Police at hunts became a common sight and policing and public order problems emerged. Police sometimes pretended not to notice when hunts attacked sabs, possibly partly because they were unsure of what powers hunts could use legally. The Conservative government, numbering many hunters in their membership, also came down on the sabs by enacting laws specifically obstructing sab action. The sabs replied non-violently by disobeying the laws in the field and disputing them in the courts. Eventually, a sympathetic (Labour) government pushed through an Act of Parliament banning hunting with dogs. The sabs had pulled through and won, although not alone, as other bodies contributed. Even so, the hunts continue to engage in superficially outwardly legal activities and the hunt sabs continue to engage them with non-violent activism.
Arguments For & Against Civil Disobedience
Some people have certain misconceptions and criticisms of civil disobedience. Here are some of the claims and counter claims.
Democracy
- Claim: You cannot excuse civil disobedience in a democracy because unjust laws can be changed by democratic procedures.
- Claim: Civil disobedience is a democratic activity. Democratic governments hold power by virtue of the individual citizens who elect them. If change is blocked by a government then dissenters can unblock it with appropriate civil disobedience.
- Regular Channels
- Claim: Civil disobedience should be the last resort in a democracy. First you must exhaust all existing channels of communication for change.
- Claim: There is a point when appealing through regular channels becomes futile and delays furthering your cause. Besides, regular channels are often part of the problem.
- Citizenship
- Claim: Being a citizen you enjoy the rights and benefits of your country. Therefore you must in turn obey your country's customs and laws.
- Claim: This is every reason for challenging what you see as unjust, in order to make your country a better place to live.
- Anarchy
- Claim: Lawlessness and anarchy would reign if everyone were a civil-disobedience activist.
- Claim: If we do not act to challenge government and its laws we could slip into oppression and despotism.
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References
(1) Spira, Henry. The Vegan.com Interview, by Erik Marcus. 1998.
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