George:

To follow up on Henry Weinschenk's letter...

During the 1960's, I did a lot of research and thinking about civil disobedience. The philosophers who were writing about civil disobedience -- Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, William O. Douglas -- all agreed that civil disobedience consisted of the following basic elements:

1. Intentional breaking of a law for reasons of conscience;
2. A willingness to suffer punishment as a result; and
3. An acceptance of that punishment.

Civil disobedience is only an act of conscience if it is accompanied by the willingness to suffer punishment, either because you want to overburden the jails to force the authorities to pay attention or because you want your sacrifice to be a signal to others of conscience that you are willing to pay a price to attract attention to the injustice that is the subject of the protest.

There is an element of martyrdom inherent in true civil disobedience. True civil disobedience means a willingness to say, "Yes, I did it. Yes, I am willing to be punished. Do what you will to me and the injustice of your actions will become apparent to all and the laws will be changed."

When you break a law on purpose and then try to dodge the punishment, that is not civil disobedience -- that is hooliganism.

Having said that, I don't interpret the honking over a living wage as civil disobedience, or hooliganism either. I don't think that the honkers were saying to themselves, "I am going to honk, I am going to get arrested, and I am going to suffer punishment as a signal to others of the injustice of the system." The honkers, for the most part, have said, "I had no idea that there was such a law, or that I was violating it." This is a perfectly appropriate position to take, and is perfectly consistent with both the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, but it is not civil disobedience.

If folks were to go back there, knowing that there was such a law and that it was going to be enforced against them, and if they honked their horns repeatedly with the idea of attracting enough attention that they would be arrested, and if they went to court and admitted that they had violated the law, THAT would be "civil disobedience" within the meaning of Thoreau, Gandhi, King and Douglas.

Lloyd Snook (electronic mail, August 1, 2001).