Defending People

“Under a gov­ern­ment which impris­ons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in Civil Disobedience.

In April 1963, Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. sat in a Birm­ing­ham, Alabama jail cell, arrested for par­tic­i­pat­ing in non­vi­o­lent protests. Forty-nine years ago today, he wrote the Let­ter from Birm­ing­ham Jail. I repub­lish it here in its entirety because, while it is lengthy (King acknowl­edges that: “what else can one do when he is alone in a nar­row jail cell, other than write long let­ters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?”) it deserves it: it is hum­blingly well-written (if you have read it recently, though, you can click past it):

16 April 1963

My Dear Fel­low Clergymen:

While con­fined here in the Birm­ing­ham city jail, I came across your recent state­ment call­ing my present activ­i­ties “unwise and untimely.” Sel­dom do I pause to answer crit­i­cism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the crit­i­cisms that cross my desk, my sec­re­taries would have lit­tle time for any­thing other than such cor­re­spon­dence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for con­struc­tive work. But since I feel that you are men of gen­uine good will and that your crit­i­cisms are sin­cerely set forth, I want to try to answer your state­ment in what I hope will be patient and rea­son­able terms.

I think I should indi­cate why I am here in Birm­ing­ham, since you have been influ­enced by the view which argues against “out­siders com­ing in.” I have the honor of serv­ing as pres­i­dent of the South­ern Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, an orga­ni­za­tion oper­at­ing in every south­ern state, with head­quar­ters in Atlanta, Geor­gia. We have some eighty five affil­i­ated orga­ni­za­tions across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Chris­t­ian Move­ment for Human Rights. Fre­quently we share staff, edu­ca­tional and finan­cial resources with our affil­i­ates. Sev­eral months ago the affil­i­ate here in Birm­ing­ham asked us to be on call to engage in a non­vi­o­lent direct action pro­gram if such were deemed nec­es­sary. We read­ily con­sented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with sev­eral mem­bers of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have orga­ni­za­tional ties here.

But more basi­cally, I am in Birm­ing­ham because injus­tice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth cen­tury B.C. left their vil­lages and car­ried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the bound­aries of their home towns, and just as the Apos­tle Paul left his vil­lage of Tar­sus and car­ried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far cor­ners of the Greco Roman world, so am I com­pelled to carry the gospel of free­dom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must con­stantly respond to the Mace­don­ian call for aid.

More­over, I am cog­nizant of the inter­re­lat­ed­ness of all com­mu­ni­ties and states. I can­not sit idly by in Atlanta and not be con­cerned about what hap­pens in Birm­ing­ham. Injus­tice any­where is a threat to jus­tice every­where. We are caught in an inescapable net­work of mutu­al­ity, tied in a sin­gle gar­ment of des­tiny. What­ever affects one directly, affects all indi­rectly. Never again can we afford to live with the nar­row, provin­cial “out­side agi­ta­tor” idea. Any­one who lives inside the United States can never be con­sid­ered an out­sider any­where within its bounds.

You deplore the demon­stra­tions tak­ing place in Birm­ing­ham. But your state­ment, I am sorry to say, fails to express a sim­i­lar con­cern for the con­di­tions that brought about the demon­stra­tions. I am sure that none of you would want to rest con­tent with the super­fi­cial kind of social analy­sis that deals merely with effects and does not grap­ple with under­ly­ing causes. It is unfor­tu­nate that demon­stra­tions are tak­ing place in Birm­ing­ham, but it is even more unfor­tu­nate that the city’s white power struc­ture left the Negro com­mu­nity with no alternative.

In any non­vi­o­lent cam­paign there are four basic steps: col­lec­tion of the facts to deter­mine whether injus­tices exist; nego­ti­a­tion; self purifi­ca­tion; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birm­ing­ham. There can be no gain­say­ing the fact that racial injus­tice engulfs this com­mu­nity. Birm­ing­ham is prob­a­bly the most thor­oughly seg­re­gated city in the United States. Its ugly record of bru­tal­ity is widely known. Negroes have expe­ri­enced grossly unjust treat­ment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bomb­ings of Negro homes and churches in Birm­ing­ham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, bru­tal facts of the case. On the basis of these con­di­tions, Negro lead­ers sought to nego­ti­ate with the city fathers. But the lat­ter con­sis­tently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last Sep­tem­ber, came the oppor­tu­nity to talk with lead­ers of Birmingham’s eco­nomic com­mu­nity. In the course of the nego­ti­a­tions, cer­tain promises were made by the merchants–for exam­ple, to remove the stores’ humil­i­at­ing racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Rev­erend Fred Shut­tlesworth and the lead­ers of the Alabama Chris­t­ian Move­ment for Human Rights agreed to a mora­to­rium on all demon­stra­tions. As the weeks and months went by, we real­ized that we were the vic­tims of a bro­ken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the oth­ers remained. As in so many past expe­ri­ences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep dis­ap­point­ment set­tled upon us. We had no alter­na­tive except to pre­pare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bod­ies as a means of lay­ing our case before the con­science of the local and the national com­mu­nity. Mind­ful of the dif­fi­cul­ties involved, we decided to under­take a process of self purifi­ca­tion. We began a series of work­shops on non­vi­o­lence, and we repeat­edly asked our­selves: “Are you able to accept blows with­out retal­i­at­ing?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” We decided to sched­ule our direct action pro­gram for the Easter sea­son, real­iz­ing that except for Christ­mas, this is the main shop­ping period of the year. Know­ing that a strong economic-withdrawal pro­gram would be the by prod­uct of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pres­sure to bear on the mer­chants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s may­oral elec­tion was com­ing up in March, and we speed­ily decided to post­pone action until after elec­tion day. When we dis­cov­ered that the Com­mis­sioner of Pub­lic Safety, Eugene “Bull” Con­nor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to post­pone action until the day after the run off so that the demon­stra­tions could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many oth­ers, we waited to see Mr. Con­nor defeated, and to this end we endured post­pone­ment after post­pone­ment. Hav­ing aided in this com­mu­nity need, we felt that our direct action pro­gram could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t nego­ti­a­tion a bet­ter path?” You are quite right in call­ing for nego­ti­a­tion. Indeed, this is the very pur­pose of direct action. Non­vi­o­lent direct action seeks to cre­ate such a cri­sis and fos­ter such a ten­sion that a com­mu­nity which has con­stantly refused to nego­ti­ate is forced to con­front the issue. It seeks so to dra­ma­tize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My cit­ing the cre­ation of ten­sion as part of the work of the non­vi­o­lent resister may sound rather shock­ing. But I must con­fess that I am not afraid of the word “ten­sion.” I have earnestly opposed vio­lent ten­sion, but there is a type of con­struc­tive, non­vi­o­lent ten­sion which is nec­es­sary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was nec­es­sary to cre­ate a ten­sion in the mind so that indi­vid­u­als could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfet­tered realm of cre­ative analy­sis and objec­tive appraisal, so must we see the need for non­vi­o­lent gad­flies to cre­ate the kind of ten­sion in soci­ety that will help men rise from the dark depths of prej­u­dice and racism to the majes­tic heights of under­stand­ing and broth­er­hood. The pur­pose of our direct action pro­gram is to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion so cri­sis packed that it will inevitably open the door to nego­ti­a­tion. I there­fore con­cur with you in your call for nego­ti­a­tion. Too long has our beloved South­land been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in mono­logue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your state­ment is that the action that I and my asso­ciates have taken in Birm­ing­ham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city admin­is­tra­tion time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birm­ing­ham admin­is­tra­tion must be prod­ded about as much as the out­go­ing one, before it will act. We are sadly mis­taken if we feel that the elec­tion of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the mil­len­nium to Birm­ing­ham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gen­tle per­son than Mr. Con­nor, they are both seg­re­ga­tion­ists, ded­i­cated to main­te­nance of the sta­tus quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be rea­son­able enough to see the futil­ity of mas­sive resis­tance to deseg­re­ga­tion. But he will not see this with­out pres­sure from devo­tees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a sin­gle gain in civil rights with­out deter­mined legal and non­vi­o­lent pres­sure. Lam­en­ta­bly, it is an his­tor­i­cal fact that priv­i­leged groups sel­dom give up their priv­i­leges vol­un­tar­ily. Indi­vid­u­als may see the moral light and vol­un­tar­ily give up their unjust pos­ture; but, as Rein­hold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful expe­ri­ence that free­dom is never vol­un­tar­ily given by the oppres­sor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action cam­paign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suf­fered unduly from the dis­ease of seg­re­ga­tion. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with pierc­ing famil­iar­ity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our dis­tin­guished jurists, that “jus­tice too long delayed is jus­tice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our con­sti­tu­tional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are mov­ing with jet­like speed toward gain­ing polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gain­ing a cup of cof­fee at a lunch counter. Per­haps it is easy for those who have never felt the sting­ing darts of seg­re­ga­tion to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your moth­ers and fathers at will and drown your sis­ters and broth­ers at whim; when you have seen hate filled police­men curse, kick and even kill your black broth­ers and sis­ters; when you see the vast major­ity of your twenty mil­lion Negro broth­ers smoth­er­ing in an air­tight cage of poverty in the midst of an afflu­ent soci­ety; when you sud­denly find your tongue twisted and your speech stam­mer­ing as you seek to explain to your six year old daugh­ter why she can’t go to the pub­lic amuse­ment park that has just been adver­tised on tele­vi­sion, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Fun­town is closed to col­ored chil­dren, and see omi­nous clouds of infe­ri­or­ity begin­ning to form in her lit­tle men­tal sky, and see her begin­ning to dis­tort her per­son­al­ity by devel­op­ing an uncon­scious bit­ter­ness toward white peo­ple; when you have to con­coct an answer for a five year old son who is ask­ing: “Daddy, why do white peo­ple treat col­ored peo­ple so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it nec­es­sary to sleep night after night in the uncom­fort­able cor­ners of your auto­mo­bile because no motel will accept you; when you are humil­i­ated day in and day out by nag­ging signs read­ing “white” and “col­ored”; when your first name becomes “nig­ger,” your mid­dle name becomes “boy” (how­ever old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are har­ried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, liv­ing con­stantly at tip­toe stance, never quite know­ing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resent­ments; when you are for­ever fight­ing a degen­er­at­ing sense of “nobodiness”–then you will under­stand why we find it dif­fi­cult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer will­ing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can under­stand our legit­i­mate and unavoid­able impa­tience. You express a great deal of anx­i­ety over our will­ing­ness to break laws. This is cer­tainly a legit­i­mate con­cern. Since we so dili­gently urge peo­ple to obey the Supreme Court’s deci­sion of 1954 out­law­ing seg­re­ga­tion in the pub­lic schools, at first glance it may seem rather para­dox­i­cal for us con­sciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advo­cate break­ing some laws and obey­ing oth­ers?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advo­cate obey­ing just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral respon­si­bil­ity to obey just laws. Con­versely, one has a moral respon­si­bil­ity to dis­obey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augus­tine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the dif­fer­ence between the two? How does one deter­mine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of har­mony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eter­nal law and nat­ural law. Any law that uplifts human per­son­al­ity is just. Any law that degrades human per­son­al­ity is unjust. All seg­re­ga­tion statutes are unjust because seg­re­ga­tion dis­torts the soul and dam­ages the per­son­al­ity. It gives the seg­re­ga­tor a false sense of supe­ri­or­ity and the seg­re­gated a false sense of infe­ri­or­ity. Seg­re­ga­tion, to use the ter­mi­nol­ogy of the Jew­ish philoso­pher Mar­tin Buber, sub­sti­tutes an “I it” rela­tion­ship for an “I thou” rela­tion­ship and ends up rel­e­gat­ing per­sons to the sta­tus of things. Hence seg­re­ga­tion is not only polit­i­cally, eco­nom­i­cally and soci­o­log­i­cally unsound, it is morally wrong and sin­ful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is sep­a­ra­tion. Is not seg­re­ga­tion an exis­ten­tial expres­sion of man’s tragic sep­a­ra­tion, his awful estrange­ment, his ter­ri­ble sin­ful­ness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 deci­sion of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to dis­obey seg­re­ga­tion ordi­nances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us con­sider a more con­crete exam­ple of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numer­i­cal or power major­ity group com­pels a minor­ity group to obey but does not make bind­ing on itself. This is dif­fer­ence made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a major­ity com­pels a minor­ity to fol­low and that it is will­ing to fol­low itself. This is same­ness made legal. Let me give another expla­na­tion. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minor­ity that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enact­ing or devis­ing the law. Who can say that the leg­is­la­ture of Alabama which set up that state’s seg­re­ga­tion laws was demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected? Through­out Alabama all sorts of devi­ous meth­ods are used to pre­vent Negroes from becom­ing reg­is­tered vot­ers, and there are some coun­ties in which, even though Negroes con­sti­tute a major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion, not a sin­gle Negro is reg­is­tered. Can any law enacted under such cir­cum­stances be con­sid­ered demo­c­ra­t­i­cally structured?

Some­times a law is just on its face and unjust in its appli­ca­tion. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parad­ing with­out a per­mit. Now, there is noth­ing wrong in hav­ing an ordi­nance which requires a per­mit for a parade. But such an ordi­nance becomes unjust when it is used to main­tain seg­re­ga­tion and to deny cit­i­zens the First-Amendment priv­i­lege of peace­ful assem­bly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the dis­tinc­tion I am try­ing to point out. In no sense do I advo­cate evad­ing or defy­ing the law, as would the rabid seg­re­ga­tion­ist. That would lead to anar­chy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lov­ingly, and with a will­ing­ness to accept the penalty. I sub­mit that an indi­vid­ual who breaks a law that con­science tells him is unjust, and who will­ingly accepts the penalty of impris­on­ment in order to arouse the con­science of the com­mu­nity over its injus­tice, is in real­ity express­ing the high­est respect for law.

Of course, there is noth­ing new about this kind of civil dis­obe­di­ence. It was evi­denced sub­limely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed­nego to obey the laws of Neb­uchad­nez­zar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was prac­ticed superbly by the early Chris­tians, who were will­ing to face hun­gry lions and the excru­ci­at­ing pain of chop­ping blocks rather than sub­mit to cer­tain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, aca­d­e­mic free­dom is a real­ity today because Socrates prac­ticed civil dis­obe­di­ence. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party rep­re­sented a mas­sive act of civil disobedience.

We should never for­get that every­thing Adolf Hitler did in Ger­many was “legal” and every­thing the Hun­gar­ian free­dom fight­ers did in Hun­gary was “ille­gal.” It was “ille­gal” to aid and com­fort a Jew in Hitler’s Ger­many. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Ger­many at the time, I would have aided and com­forted my Jew­ish broth­ers. If today I lived in a Com­mu­nist coun­try where cer­tain prin­ci­ples dear to the Chris­t­ian faith are sup­pressed, I would openly advo­cate dis­obey­ing that country’s antire­li­gious laws.

I must make two hon­est con­fes­sions to you, my Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish broth­ers. First, I must con­fess that over the past few years I have been gravely dis­ap­pointed with the white mod­er­ate. I have almost reached the regret­table con­clu­sion that the Negro’s great stum­bling block in his stride toward free­dom is not the White Citizen’s Coun­ciler or the Ku Klux Klan­ner, but the white mod­er­ate, who is more devoted to “order” than to jus­tice; who prefers a neg­a­tive peace which is the absence of ten­sion to a pos­i­tive peace which is the pres­ence of jus­tice; who con­stantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can­not agree with your meth­ods of direct action”; who pater­nal­is­ti­cally believes he can set the timetable for another man’s free­dom; who lives by a myth­i­cal con­cept of time and who con­stantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more con­ve­nient sea­son.” Shal­low under­stand­ing from peo­ple of good will is more frus­trat­ing than absolute mis­un­der­stand­ing from peo­ple of ill will. Luke­warm accep­tance is much more bewil­der­ing than out­right rejection.

I had hoped that the white mod­er­ate would under­stand that law and order exist for the pur­pose of estab­lish­ing jus­tice and that when they fail in this pur­pose they become the dan­ger­ously struc­tured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white mod­er­ate would under­stand that the present ten­sion in the South is a nec­es­sary phase of the tran­si­tion from an obnox­ious neg­a­tive peace, in which the Negro pas­sively accepted his unjust plight, to a sub­stan­tive and pos­i­tive peace, in which all men will respect the dig­nity and worth of human per­son­al­ity. Actu­ally, we who engage in non­vi­o­lent direct action are not the cre­ators of ten­sion. We merely bring to the sur­face the hid­den ten­sion that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is cov­ered up but must be opened with all its ugli­ness to the nat­ural med­i­cines of air and light, injus­tice must be exposed, with all the ten­sion its expo­sure cre­ates, to the light of human con­science and the air of national opin­ion before it can be cured.

In your state­ment you assert that our actions, even though peace­ful, must be con­demned because they pre­cip­i­tate vio­lence. But is this a log­i­cal asser­tion? Isn’t this like con­demn­ing a robbed man because his pos­ses­sion of money pre­cip­i­tated the evil act of rob­bery? Isn’t this like con­demn­ing Socrates because his unswerv­ing com­mit­ment to truth and his philo­soph­i­cal inquiries pre­cip­i­tated the act by the mis­guided pop­u­lace in which they made him drink hem­lock? Isn’t this like con­demn­ing Jesus because his unique God con­scious­ness and never ceas­ing devo­tion to God’s will pre­cip­i­tated the evil act of cru­ci­fix­ion? We must come to see that, as the fed­eral courts have con­sis­tently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an indi­vid­ual to cease his efforts to gain his basic con­sti­tu­tional rights because the quest may pre­cip­i­tate vio­lence. Soci­ety must pro­tect the robbed and pun­ish the rob­ber. I had also hoped that the white mod­er­ate would reject the myth con­cern­ing time in rela­tion to the strug­gle for free­dom. I have just received a let­ter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Chris­tians know that the col­ored peo­ple will receive equal rights even­tu­ally, but it is pos­si­ble that you are in too great a reli­gious hurry. It has taken Chris­tian­ity almost two thou­sand years to accom­plish what it has. The teach­ings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an atti­tude stems from a tragic mis­con­cep­tion of time, from the strangely irra­tional notion that there is some­thing in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actu­ally, time itself is neu­tral; it can be used either destruc­tively or con­struc­tively. More and more I feel that the peo­ple of ill will have used time much more effec­tively than have the peo­ple of good will. We will have to repent in this gen­er­a­tion not merely for the hate­ful words and actions of the bad peo­ple but for the appalling silence of the good peo­ple. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitabil­ity; it comes through the tire­less efforts of men will­ing to be co work­ers with God, and with­out this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stag­na­tion. We must use time cre­atively, in the knowl­edge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democ­racy and trans­form our pend­ing national elegy into a cre­ative psalm of broth­er­hood. Now is the time to lift our national pol­icy from the quick­sand of racial injus­tice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activ­ity in Birm­ing­ham as extreme. At first I was rather dis­ap­pointed that fel­low cler­gy­men would see my non­vi­o­lent efforts as those of an extrem­ist. I began think­ing about the fact that I stand in the mid­dle of two oppos­ing forces in the Negro com­mu­nity. One is a force of com­pla­cency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppres­sion, are so drained of self respect and a sense of “some­bod­i­ness” that they have adjusted to seg­re­ga­tion; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of aca­d­e­mic and eco­nomic secu­rity and because in some ways they profit by seg­re­ga­tion, have become insen­si­tive to the prob­lems of the masses. The other force is one of bit­ter­ness and hatred, and it comes per­ilously close to advo­cat­ing vio­lence. It is expressed in the var­i­ous black nation­al­ist groups that are spring­ing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Eli­jah Muhammad’s Mus­lim move­ment. Nour­ished by the Negro’s frus­tra­tion over the con­tin­ued exis­tence of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, this move­ment is made up of peo­ple who have lost faith in Amer­ica, who have absolutely repu­di­ated Chris­tian­ity, and who have con­cluded that the white man is an incor­ri­gi­ble “devil.”

I have tried to stand between these two forces, say­ing that we need emu­late nei­ther the “do nothingism” of the com­pla­cent nor the hatred and despair of the black nation­al­ist. For there is the more excel­lent way of love and non­vi­o­lent protest. I am grate­ful to God that, through the influ­ence of the Negro church, the way of non­vi­o­lence became an inte­gral part of our strug­gle. If this phi­los­o­phy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am con­vinced, be flow­ing with blood. And I am fur­ther con­vinced that if our white broth­ers dis­miss as “rab­ble rousers” and “out­side agi­ta­tors” those of us who employ non­vi­o­lent direct action, and if they refuse to sup­port our non­vi­o­lent efforts, mil­lions of Negroes will, out of frus­tra­tion and despair, seek solace and secu­rity in black nation­al­ist ideologies–a devel­op­ment that would inevitably lead to a fright­en­ing racial nightmare.

Oppressed peo­ple can­not remain oppressed for­ever. The yearn­ing for free­dom even­tu­ally man­i­fests itself, and that is what has hap­pened to the Amer­i­can Negro. Some­thing within has reminded him of his birthright of free­dom, and some­thing with­out has reminded him that it can be gained. Con­sciously or uncon­sciously, he has been caught up by the Zeit­geist, and with his black broth­ers of Africa and his brown and yel­low broth­ers of Asia, South Amer­ica and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is mov­ing with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial jus­tice. If one rec­og­nizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro com­mu­nity, one should read­ily under­stand why pub­lic demon­stra­tions are tak­ing place. The Negro has many pent up resent­ments and latent frus­tra­tions, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pil­grim­ages to the city hall; let him go on free­dom rides –and try to under­stand why he must do so. If his repressed emo­tions are not released in non­vi­o­lent ways, they will seek expres­sion through vio­lence; this is not a threat but a fact of his­tory. So I have not said to my peo­ple: “Get rid of your dis­con­tent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this nor­mal and healthy dis­con­tent can be chan­neled into the cre­ative out­let of non­vi­o­lent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extrem­ist. But though I was ini­tially dis­ap­pointed at being cat­e­go­rized as an extrem­ist, as I con­tin­ued to think about the mat­ter I grad­u­ally gained a mea­sure of sat­is­fac­tion from the label. Was not Jesus an extrem­ist for love: “Love your ene­mies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite­fully use you, and per­se­cute you.” Was not Amos an extrem­ist for jus­tice: “Let jus­tice roll down like waters and right­eous­ness like an ever flow­ing stream.” Was not Paul an extrem­ist for the Chris­t­ian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Mar­tin Luther an extrem­ist: “Here I stand; I can­not do oth­er­wise, so help me God.” And John Bun­yan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butch­ery of my con­science.” And Abra­ham Lin­coln: “This nation can­not sur­vive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jef­fer­son: “We hold these truths to be self evi­dent, that all men are cre­ated equal …” So the ques­tion is not whether we will be extrem­ists, but what kind of extrem­ists we will be. Will we be extrem­ists for hate or for love? Will we be extrem­ists for the preser­va­tion of injus­tice or for the exten­sion of jus­tice? In that dra­matic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were cru­ci­fied. We must never for­get that all three were cru­ci­fied for the same crime–the crime of extrem­ism. Two were extrem­ists for immoral­ity, and thus fell below their envi­ron­ment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extrem­ist for love, truth and good­ness, and thereby rose above his envi­ron­ment. Per­haps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of cre­ative extremists.

I had hoped that the white mod­er­ate would see this need. Per­haps I was too opti­mistic; per­haps I expected too much. I sup­pose I should have real­ized that few mem­bers of the oppres­sor race can under­stand the deep groans and pas­sion­ate yearn­ings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injus­tice must be rooted out by strong, per­sis­tent and deter­mined action. I am thank­ful, how­ever, that some of our white broth­ers in the South have grasped the mean­ing of this social rev­o­lu­tion and com­mit­ted them­selves to it. They are still all too few in quan­tity, but they are big in qual­ity. Some –such as Ralph McGill, Lil­lian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Pat­ton Boyle–have writ­ten about our strug­gle in elo­quent and prophetic terms. Oth­ers have marched with us down name­less streets of the South. They have lan­guished in filthy, roach infested jails, suf­fer­ing the abuse and bru­tal­ity of police­men who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their mod­er­ate broth­ers and sis­ters, they have rec­og­nized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for pow­er­ful “action” anti­dotes to com­bat the dis­ease of seg­re­ga­tion. Let me take note of my other major dis­ap­point­ment. I have been so greatly dis­ap­pointed with the white church and its lead­er­ship. Of course, there are some notable excep­tions. I am not unmind­ful of the fact that each of you has taken some sig­nif­i­cant stands on this issue. I com­mend you, Rev­erend Stallings, for your Chris­t­ian stand on this past Sun­day, in wel­com­ing Negroes to your wor­ship ser­vice on a non­seg­re­gated basis. I com­mend the Catholic lead­ers of this state for inte­grat­ing Spring Hill Col­lege sev­eral years ago.

But despite these notable excep­tions, I must hon­estly reit­er­ate that I have been dis­ap­pointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those neg­a­tive crit­ics who can always find some­thing wrong with the church. I say this as a min­is­ter of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nur­tured in its bosom; who has been sus­tained by its spir­i­tual bless­ings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was sud­denly cat­a­pulted into the lead­er­ship of the bus protest in Mont­gomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be sup­ported by the white church. I felt that the white min­is­ters, priests and rab­bis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been out­right oppo­nents, refus­ing to under­stand the free­dom move­ment and mis­rep­re­sent­ing its lead­ers; all too many oth­ers have been more cau­tious than coura­geous and have remained silent behind the anes­thetiz­ing secu­rity of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shat­tered dreams, I came to Birm­ing­ham with the hope that the white reli­gious lead­er­ship of this com­mu­nity would see the jus­tice of our cause and, with deep moral con­cern, would serve as the chan­nel through which our just griev­ances could reach the power struc­ture. I had hoped that each of you would under­stand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numer­ous south­ern reli­gious lead­ers admon­ish their wor­shipers to com­ply with a deseg­re­ga­tion deci­sion because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white min­is­ters declare: “Fol­low this decree because inte­gra­tion is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of bla­tant injus­tices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white church­men stand on the side­line and mouth pious irrel­e­van­cies and sanc­ti­mo­nious triv­i­al­i­ties. In the midst of a mighty strug­gle to rid our nation of racial and eco­nomic injus­tice, I have heard many min­is­ters say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real con­cern.” And I have watched many churches com­mit them­selves to a com­pletely other worldly reli­gion which makes a strange, un-Biblical dis­tinc­tion between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have trav­eled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mis­sis­sippi and all the other south­ern states. On swel­ter­ing sum­mer days and crisp autumn morn­ings I have looked at the South’s beau­ti­ful churches with their lofty spires point­ing heav­en­ward. I have beheld the impres­sive out­lines of her mas­sive reli­gious edu­ca­tion build­ings. Over and over I have found myself ask­ing: “What kind of peo­ple wor­ship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Gov­er­nor Bar­nett dripped with words of inter­po­si­tion and nul­li­fi­ca­tion? Where were they when Gov­er­nor Wal­lace gave a clar­ion call for defi­ance and hatred? Where were their voices of sup­port when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dun­geons of com­pla­cency to the bright hills of cre­ative protest?”

Yes, these ques­tions are still in my mind. In deep dis­ap­point­ment I have wept over the lax­ity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep dis­ap­point­ment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do oth­er­wise? I am in the rather unique posi­tion of being the son, the grand­son and the great grand­son of preach­ers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blem­ished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Chris­tians rejoiced at being deemed wor­thy to suf­fer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a ther­mome­ter that recorded the ideas and prin­ci­ples of pop­u­lar opin­ion; it was a ther­mo­stat that trans­formed the mores of soci­ety. When­ever the early Chris­tians entered a town, the peo­ple in power became dis­turbed and imme­di­ately sought to con­vict the Chris­tians for being “dis­turbers of the peace” and “out­side agi­ta­tors.“‘ But the Chris­tians pressed on, in the con­vic­tion that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in num­ber, they were big in com­mit­ment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astro­nom­i­cally intim­i­dated.” By their effort and exam­ple they brought an end to such ancient evils as infan­ti­cide and glad­i­a­to­r­ial con­tests. Things are dif­fer­ent now. So often the con­tem­po­rary church is a weak, inef­fec­tual voice with an uncer­tain sound. So often it is an archde­fender of the sta­tus quo. Far from being dis­turbed by the pres­ence of the church, the power struc­ture of the aver­age com­mu­nity is con­soled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judg­ment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recap­ture the sac­ri­fi­cial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authen­tic­ity, for­feit the loy­alty of mil­lions, and be dis­missed as an irrel­e­vant social club with no mean­ing for the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. Every day I meet young peo­ple whose dis­ap­point­ment with the church has turned into out­right disgust.

Per­haps I have once again been too opti­mistic. Is orga­nized reli­gion too inex­tri­ca­bly bound to the sta­tus quo to save our nation and the world? Per­haps I must turn my faith to the inner spir­i­tual church, the church within the church, as the true ekkle­sia and the hope of the world. But again I am thank­ful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of orga­nized reli­gion have bro­ken loose from the par­a­lyz­ing chains of con­for­mity and joined us as active part­ners in the strug­gle for free­dom. They have left their secure con­gre­ga­tions and walked the streets of Albany, Geor­gia, with us. They have gone down the high­ways of the South on tor­tu­ous rides for free­dom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dis­missed from their churches, have lost the sup­port of their bish­ops and fel­low min­is­ters. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil tri­umphant. Their wit­ness has been the spir­i­tual salt that has pre­served the true mean­ing of the gospel in these trou­bled times. They have carved a tun­nel of hope through the dark moun­tain of dis­ap­point­ment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the chal­lenge of this deci­sive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of jus­tice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the out­come of our strug­gle in Birm­ing­ham, even if our motives are at present mis­un­der­stood. We will reach the goal of free­dom in Birm­ing­ham and all over the nation, because the goal of Amer­ica is free­dom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our des­tiny is tied up with America’s des­tiny. Before the pil­grims landed at Ply­mouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jef­fer­son etched the majes­tic words of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence across the pages of his­tory, we were here. For more than two cen­turies our fore­bears labored in this coun­try with­out wages; they made cot­ton king; they built the homes of their mas­ters while suf­fer­ing gross injus­tice and shame­ful humil­i­a­tion –and yet out of a bot­tom­less vital­ity they con­tin­ued to thrive and develop. If the inex­press­ible cru­el­ties of slav­ery could not stop us, the oppo­si­tion we now face will surely fail. We will win our free­dom because the sacred her­itage of our nation and the eter­nal will of God are embod­ied in our echo­ing demands. Before clos­ing I feel impelled to men­tion one other point in your state­ment that has trou­bled me pro­foundly. You warmly com­mended the Birm­ing­ham police force for keep­ing “order” and “pre­vent­ing vio­lence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly com­mended the police force if you had seen its dogs sink­ing their teeth into unarmed, non­vi­o­lent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly com­mend the police­men if you were to observe their ugly and inhu­mane treat­ment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occa­sions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I can­not join you in your praise of the Birm­ing­ham police department.

It is true that the police have exer­cised a degree of dis­ci­pline in han­dling the demon­stra­tors. In this sense they have con­ducted them­selves rather “non­vi­o­lently” in pub­lic. But for what pur­pose? To pre­serve the evil sys­tem of seg­re­ga­tion. Over the past few years I have con­sis­tently preached that non­vi­o­lence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or per­haps even more so, to use moral means to pre­serve immoral ends. Per­haps Mr. Con­nor and his police­men have been rather non­vi­o­lent in pub­lic, as was Chief Pritch­ett in Albany, Geor­gia, but they have used the moral means of non­vi­o­lence to main­tain the immoral end of racial injus­tice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temp­ta­tion is the great­est trea­son: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

I wish you had com­mended the Negro sit inners and demon­stra­tors of Birm­ing­ham for their sub­lime courage, their will­ing­ness to suf­fer and their amaz­ing dis­ci­pline in the midst of great provo­ca­tion. One day the South will rec­og­nize its real heroes. They will be the James Mered­iths, with the noble sense of pur­pose that enables them to face jeer­ing and hos­tile mobs, and with the ago­niz­ing lone­li­ness that char­ac­ter­izes the life of the pio­neer. They will be old, oppressed, bat­tered Negro women, sym­bol­ized in a sev­enty two year old woman in Mont­gomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dig­nity and with her peo­ple decided not to ride seg­re­gated buses, and who responded with ungram­mat­i­cal pro­fun­dity to one who inquired about her weari­ness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” They will be the young high school and col­lege stu­dents, the young min­is­ters of the gospel and a host of their elders, coura­geously and non­vi­o­lently sit­ting in at lunch coun­ters and will­ingly going to jail for con­science’ sake. One day the South will know that when these dis­in­her­ited chil­dren of God sat down at lunch coun­ters, they were in real­ity stand­ing up for what is best in the Amer­i­can dream and for the most sacred val­ues in our Judaeo Chris­t­ian her­itage, thereby bring­ing our nation back to those great wells of democ­racy which were dug deep by the found­ing fathers in their for­mu­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the Dec­la­ra­tion of Independence.

Never before have I writ­ten so long a let­ter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your pre­cious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writ­ing from a com­fort­able desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a nar­row jail cell, other than write long let­ters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said any­thing in this let­ter that over­states the truth and indi­cates an unrea­son­able impa­tience, I beg you to for­give me. If I have said any­thing that under­states the truth and indi­cates my hav­ing a patience that allows me to set­tle for any­thing less than broth­er­hood, I beg God to for­give me.

I hope this let­ter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that cir­cum­stances will soon make it pos­si­ble for me to meet each of you, not as an inte­gra­tionist or a civil-rights leader but as a fel­low cler­gy­man and a Chris­t­ian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prej­u­dice will soon pass away and the deep fog of mis­un­der­stand­ing will be lifted from our fear drenched com­mu­ni­ties, and in some not too dis­tant tomor­row the radi­ant stars of love and broth­er­hood will shine over our great nation with all their scin­til­lat­ing beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Broth­er­hood, Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.

(Source.)

There is lit­tle writ­ten in the blaw­gos­phere that doesn’t suf­fer by com­par­i­son with King’s let­ter. So. An intim­i­dat­ing task, a Letter-from-Birmingham-Jail-themed Blawg Review.

In 1957 King had trav­eled to Ghana (where he told then-VP Richard Nixon, “I want you to come visit us down in Alabama where we are seek­ing the same kind of free­dom the Gold Coast is cel­e­brat­ing”) and in 1959 to India, where Mahatma Gandhi (influ­enced by Thoreau) pio­neered the non­vi­o­lent social change that inspired King, on what he described as a pil­grim­age. There can be lit­tle doubt that if King lived today such trips would buy him pro­longed war­rant­less deten­tions at the air­port so that gov­ern­ment agents could copy his per­sonal papers and inter­ro­gate him. “We find it very sus­pi­cious,” they might tell him, “that you’re not will­ing to help your coun­try by answer­ing our ques­tions,” as they’ve told doc­u­men­tary film­maker Laura Poitras. Because of her work chron­i­cling “the polit­i­cal and human con­se­quences of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy,” (NYT) Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity agents detain Poitras vir­tu­ally every time she returns to the U.S. (Glenn Green­wald, U.S. film­maker repeat­edly detained at bor­der).

One of the US’s cur­rent non­vi­o­lent move­ments for social change is the Occupy move­ment. Norm Pat­tis, the Sage of Con­necti­cut, rep­re­sents some Occupy New Haven pro­test­ers; he takes issue with New Haven’s mayor’s mov­ing ahead with evict­ing the pro­test­ers despite know­ing that the issue was before a fed­eral court and a stay had been issued, sprin­kling hiz­zoner with a lit­tle bit of the old Pat­tis vitriol:

The Mayor took a shot at me on the radio this morn­ing. I was in the case for the free adver­tis­ing, he sug­gested. This com­ing from a press-fleshing ward-heeler with the moral com­pass of a three-legged don­key. Can he spell principle?

(Norm Pat­tis | Blog, Naked in the Elm City.)

Scott Green­field notes of the Occu­piers, “they strug­gle to have a coher­ent mes­sage beyond the same plat­i­tudes that are chis­eled into the lin­tels over gov­ern­ment door­ways.” (Green­field, Sim­ple Jus­tice, Can the 99% be Wrong?) Yet even in 2012, even if they can’t artic­u­late what they seek to Greenfield’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, there are peo­ple who are will­ing, in the spirit of Thoreau and Gandhi and King, to occupy a jail cell for what they believe in.

And that is a good thing because there is, make no mis­take, plenty to protest: war, racism the death penalty, the prison-industrial com­plex, and police bru­tal­ity (just to name a few issues that have popped up in the blaw­gos­phere this week).

War:

Wik­ileaks founder Julian Assange, who is under house arrest with­out charges for offenses unre­lated to Wik­ilieaks, is going to have a TV show, The World Tomor­row, on Russ­ian TV. The first episode airs tomor­row, 17 April, online and on air.

On Thurs­day Tarek Mehanna was sen­tenced in Boston to sev­en­teen and a half years in prison for pro­vid­ing mate­r­ial sup­port to ter­ror­ists and con­spir­ing to kill Amer­i­cans over­seas. His state­ment at sen­tenc­ing was his own let­ter from jail. In part:

In your eyes, I’m a ter­ror­ist, and it’s per­fectly rea­son­able that I be stand­ing here in an orange jump­suit. But one day, Amer­ica will change and peo­ple will rec­og­nize this day for what it is. They will look at how hun­dreds of thou­sands of Mus­lims were killed and maimed by the US mil­i­tary in for­eign coun­tries, yet some­how I’m the one going to prison for “con­spir­ing to kill and maim” in those coun­tries — because I sup­port the Mujahidin defend­ing those peo­ple. They will look back on how the gov­ern­ment spent mil­lions of dol­lars to imprison me as a “ter­ror­ist,” yet if we were to some­how bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your sol­diers, to put her on that wit­ness stand and ask her who the “ter­ror­ists” are, she sure wouldn’t be point­ing at me.

(GGDrafts, Sen­tenc­ing state­ment of Tarek Mehanna, 4÷12÷12.)

Mehanna’s lawyer, JW Car­ney Jr. com­mented on Mehanna’s state­ment. In part: “I won­der what Mar­tin Luther King’s lawyer thought when his client was sen­tenced to prison. That lawyer prob­a­bly thought it was a crim­i­nal case. We now know that it was a polit­i­cal case.” (Boston.com.) Some­times what’s best for the crim­i­nal case is not what the polit­i­cal case requires. Paul Kennedy advises his clients “to stop post­ing to Face­book, Twit­ter or any other social media sites while their case is pend­ing.” (Kennedy, The Defense Rests, What, no twit­ter feed?)

Material-support laws are an attack on free­dom of expres­sion on both sides of the Atlantic (UK Human Rights Blog, Sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism and the crim­i­nal law). They can raise the stakes on civil dis­obe­di­ence by clas­si­fy­ing non­vi­o­lent protest groups, or orga­ni­za­tions sup­ported by non­vi­o­lent pro­test­ers, as “ter­ror­ist groups.”

Racism:

Last week saw the arrest of George Zim­mer­man for second-degree mur­der in the killing of Trayvon Mar­tin. How far we’ve come since 1963: here the pro­test­ers, rather than being will­ing to go to jail for their prin­ci­ples, wanted the gov­ern­ment to put a man in jail for their principles.

The blaw­gos­phere has, to its credit, been gen­er­ally crit­i­cal of the charge (links col­lected at Wal­ter Olson, Over­lawyered, Martin/Zimmerman: the Mur­der Two rap), and espe­cially of the probable-cause affi­davit (Ken, Pope­hat, How Not To Draft A Prob­a­ble Cause Affi­davit). The last peo­ple to sup­port prosecutorial-decision-by-mob-demand should be the lawyers.

The Death Penalty:

Gideon, in a beau­ti­ful post prob­a­bly wor­thy of the theme of this post, reports and com­ments on Connecticut’s abo­li­tion of the death penalty:

We will not assume the hubris to decide, as a peo­ple, whose life is worth liv­ing. We will not ask that of our friends, neigh­bors and our chil­dren. We will unbur­den our state from the heavy yoke of car­ry­ing the deaths of so many. We will wash the blood from our hands.

(Gideon, a pub­lic defender, Nev­er­more in my name: CT abol­ishes the death penalty.)

Before Con­necti­cut got down to the busi­ness of abo­li­tion, the judi­ciary com­mit­tee had held a pub­lic hear­ing. And Gideon had reported on the hear­ing. He live-tweeted it, and he blogged about it:

As the day pro­gressed, one com­mon theme seemed to emerge among the oppo­nents of repeal, and since it’s one that’s bla­tantly wrong and designed to invoke false out­rage among peo­ple it’s worth tack­ling head on. The refrain was that prison is a dandy place. A place where inmates “have every­thing going for them” (yes, that’s an approx­i­ma­tion of an actual quote by a State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive), where they get “all the rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties” of other inmates. Where they have a TV – albeit 9 inches and only 1 or 2 chan­nels. Where they can spend 6–7 hours a day out­side their cages. Sounds heavenly.

So let’s get one thing clear: bull­shit. Prison is a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble place. It’s not Club Fed. It’s not your mother’s base­ment. It’s not the local Star­bucks. It’s a fuck­ing prison.

You know what hap­pens in a prison? Peo­ple are locked up. In tiny cells. With a big metal door that other peo­ple con­trol. They also con­trol when you eat, when you walk, when you take a shower, when you sleep, who you talk to, how long you talk to them, what you can watch, what you can read and whether that med­ical con­di­tion of yours deserves treatment.

(Gideon, a pub­lic defender, Prison isn’t what you think it is, and other death penalty half-truths.)

Which is as good a post as any to bring us to…

The Prison-Industrial Com­plex:

Norm Pat­tis had an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence with the gate guard at Connecticut’s York Cor­rec­tional Insti­tu­tion: “I learned a whole new mea­sure of respect for the obsta­cles pris­on­ers face behind bars. The uni­forms stick together. Plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­ity is a tool used to cover up the petty tyranny of bul­lies with badges.” He con­cludes with a mes­sage for the war­den: “The clown you had at the gates made the whole insti­tu­tion look bad. It was a first for me at York.” (Norm Pat­tis | Blog, The Bozo at York’s Prison Gate). (As Gideon might say, “What did you expect? It’s a fuck­ing prison.”)

York is a government-run prison. The real money, though, is in privately-run jails and pris­ons. Wells Fargo, bailed out with twenty-five bil­lion dol­lars of your money in 2008, has an eighty-six mil­lion dol­lar invest­ment in the GEO Group, which runs deten­tion facil­i­ties all over the US. (Charles Davis, Salon, Well’s Fargo’s prison cash cow.)

There are over two mil­lion peo­ple in prison and jail in the United States. One thing that’ll put you in prison is an eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fy­ing you as the per­son who com­mit­ted a crime. Phil Locke asks how reli­able eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is, con­cludes that “the only thing we can say for sure is that we don’t know for sure, but we do know it’s not very good,” and describes some of the schol­ar­ship in the sub­ject. (Locke, The Wrong­ful Con­vic­tions Blog, Eye­wit­ness Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion – How Reli­able Is It?)

We’re start­ing ‘em young in prison in this coun­try. “On any given night in the U.S., there are approx­i­mately 60,500 youth con­fined in juve­nile cor­rec­tional facil­i­ties or other res­i­den­tial pro­grams.” (Pete Brook, Wired, Uncom­pro­mis­ing Pho­tos Expose Juve­nile Deten­tion in Amer­ica, from which the above photo, of a sixteen-year-old in seg­re­ga­tion, came. More images at Juvenile-in-Justice.)

Some of the pris­ons hold­ing kids are run by GEO. The DOJ recently released its report on con­di­tions at GEO’s Wal­nut Grove Youth Cor­rec­tional Facil­ity in Mis­sis­sippi, a prison for 13-to-22-year-old boys con­victed of felonies:

The Jus­tice Depart­ment found rea­son­able cause to believe that a pat­tern or prac­tice of uncon­sti­tu­tional con­duct exists in sev­eral areas, including:

• Delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence to staff sex­ual mis­con­duct and inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior with youth;
• Use of exces­sive use of force by WGYCF staff on youth;
• Inad­e­quate pro­tec­tion of youth from youth-on-youth violence;
• Delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence to youth at risk of self-injurious and sui­ci­dal behav­iors; and
• Delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence to the med­ical needs of youth.

Prison bru­tal­ity is the per­fect civil-rights racket. Aside from the fact that all of the wit­nesses are either guards (who won’t talk) or inmates (who won’t be believed), it’s a dodge that insu­lates itself from civil dis­obe­di­ence: the worse it gets, the less peo­ple will want to sub­ject them­selves to it by get­ting arrested.

Over­crim­i­nal­iza­tion sim­i­larly defies ordi­nary civil dis­obe­di­ence. To protest too many peo­ple going to jail, you’re going to go…to jail?

Police Mis­con­duct:

David Pack­man, who had been run­ning The National Police Mis­con­duct Sta­tis­tics and Report­ing Project on his own time and his own dime, solicited pro­pos­als from indi­vid­u­als and groups inter­ested in tak­ing over the project, then allowed his read­ers to vote on the best new home for it. (Pack­man, Injus­tice Every­where, Can­di­dates for Own­er­ship of the NPMSRP.) He then sus­pended the project because of some “vot­ing fiasco.” (Pack­man, Injus­tice Every­where, Sus­pended until fur­ther notice.) (When David was look­ing for a name for his blog, I sug­gested Injus­tice Any­where, allud­ing to King’s state­ment that “Injus­tice any­where is a threat to jus­tice every­where.”) I hope David gets things sorted out and gets the project back up and run­ning again soon.

The blaw­gos­phere hasn’t even scraped the sur­face of mod­ern injus­tice. The Fed, destruc­tion of the envi­ron­ment, global warm­ing, the Afford­able Care Act….surely there’s some prin­ci­ple for which you should be going to jail next week.

Also:

•16 April is Eman­ci­pa­tion Day in Wash­ing­ton DC; today is the 150th Anniver­sary of Lincoln’s sign­ing of the Com­pen­sated Eman­ci­pa­tion Act, which bought free­dom for about 3,100 slaves. (James Mar­tin, In Cus­to­dia Legis, The Dis­trict of Colum­bia 1862 Eman­ci­pa­tion Law.)

•While Canada became inde­pen­dent in 1931, until 1982 its con­sti­tu­tion could only be amended by an act of the British Par­lia­ment. On 17 April 1982 Canada passed the Con­sti­tu­tion Act, 1982, which, among other things (J.W.J. Bow­den, Par­lia­men­tum, The Con­sti­tu­tion Act, 1982 Includes More Than Just The Char­ter of Rights and Free­doms) included the Char­ter of Rights and Free­doms, cod­i­fy­ing Cana­di­ans’ common-law rights and cre­at­ing judi­cial review of acts of the Par­lia­ment of Canada. The Char­ter of Rights and Free­doms, says Omar Ha-Redeye, is more influ­en­tial to the drafters of new con­sti­tu­tions than the US Con­sti­tu­tion, mak­ing Canada the world’s “con­sti­tu­tional super­power” (Slaw, Canada Is the World’s Con­sti­tu­tional Super­power).

One of the fac­tors mak­ing Canada’s Con­sti­tu­tion  more influ­en­tial is that it “bal­ances those rights against ‘such rea­son­able lim­its’ as ‘can be demon­stra­bly jus­ti­fied in a free and demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety.’” (Fea­ture or bug?)

In the UK, Carl Gard­ner sees the Afford­able Care Act lit­i­ga­tion in the US as a warn­ing to those who would adopt a writ­ten constitution:

Some peo­ple argue for a writ­ten con­sti­tu­tion here, or for ele­ments of a writ­ten con­sti­tu­tion, such as a British ver­sion of the First Amend­ment. But any such move would inevitably give con­ser­v­a­tive forces greater power to block, by lit­i­ga­tion, socially pro­gres­sive legislation.

(Carl Gard­ner, Head­ofle­gal, Writ­ten con­sti­tu­tions: a warn­ing from Amer­ica. Read the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments too.)

• Finally, next week’s Blawg Review will be hosted by Dan Hull at What About [Clients/Paris]. 23 April is the anniver­sary of William Shakespeare’s death (and his birth­day); Hull is warm­ing up with a lit­tle A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream. (Hull, What About Paris, Spring’s Poetry: It comes up from the earth.)

Lagniappe: it’s not a blawg, but Mil­ton Hirsch, judge of Florida’s Eleventh Judi­cial Cir­cuit Court, Crim­i­nal Divi­sion, sends out inter­mit­tent emails “from my Con­sti­tu­tional Cal­en­dar” (today’s email from Judge Hirsch is about Dr. King’s let­ter). If you would like to be added to Judge Hirsch’s list, please email him at mil­ton dot hirsch at gmail.

Blawg Review has infor­ma­tion about next week’s host, and instruc­tions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcom­ing issues.

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