Several letters to the editor this week took issue with tactics used by peaceful protesters when they crossed the line from “lawful to unlawful.” To chide protesters’ passive resistance alongside ICE’s kidnapping and brutality misses the point entirely.
History remembers many heroes who did what was right before it was popular or legal – often at great personal risk. Many we view as being on “the right side of history” were not on the “right” side of the law at the time. Sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, the underground railroad and resisting the Holocaust were all technically “unlawful” despite being the moral thing to do.
Martin Luther King Jr. knew “that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” and conversely “everything that Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal.” Many acts of civil disobedience orchestrated by King and others during the Civil Rights Movement were both nonviolent and intentionally confrontational – forcing those in power and the public at large to pay attention to their demands, or at the very least bear witness to the violence visited on them for trying to make positive change.
The bravery and moral clarity shown by Durango community members who risked both injury and arrest to stand up to unjust laws and abhorrent actions of ICE is admirable. Would agents capable of such violence stop because of polite sign waving? “Perfect protesters” are not the ones we have to thank for the major social gains in U.S. history.
Melissa May
Durango
