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Live Free or Die Critique
An Acceptable Protest by Cat J.A. Clark
Protest for African American Civil Rights
The injustice was racism, expressed in various forms of discrimination, segregation, and even terrorism. Conscientious people could not sit idly by--they believed they must respond, they must protest to end the injustice.
 Inspired by the teachings of Jesus, Thoreau, and Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his followers adopted nonviolent methods of active public protest including writing and speechmaking, rallies, marches, sit-ins, picketing, boycotts, and occasional acts of civil disobedience. When faced with violent opposition, they refused to return violence for violence no matter the cost. Socrates taught that it was nobler to suffer evil than commit it; these protestors preferred to suffer evil rather than even risk committing it by self-defense.
 Not every opponent of racism agreed that Dr. King's nonviolent course of protest was a good one. Malcolm X, before his 1964 conversion to Sunni Islam, declared that nonviolence was the "philosophy of the fool." Some opponents of racism, like the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, argued that blows of self-defense were a reasonable response to racist violence. A few militants, whether individually or in small groups, even considered violence an appropriate protest to racism itself.
Of these three, Dr. King's protest--active, public, and committed to nonviolence--is a supremely acceptable protest against injustice. By public protest, Dr. King and his followers refused to tolerate the injustice of racist discrimination, segregation, and terrorism. By dedicated nonviolence, Dr. King refused to risk committing injustice. Fortunately, the majority of activists for African American civil rights employed nonviolent means to protest racism.
Methods of Nonviolent, Direct-Action Protest
Dr. King is best known for his speeches, writings, rallies, and marches. The most famous is the 1963 March on Washington, which included a rally during which Dr. King delivered the speech "I Have a Dream" at the Lincoln Memorial. But Dr. King also endorsed and participated in other, more specific forms of nonviolent, direct-action protest, like picketing and sit-ins.
 When a major dairy company refused to be forthright about integration in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. King declared: "we said in substance, 'Mr. Sealtest, we're sorry. We aren't going to burn your store down. We aren't going to throw any bricks in the window. But we are going to put picket signs around and we are going to put leaflets out and we are going to our pulpits and tell them not to sell Sealtest products, and not to purchase Sealtest products.'"1 Dr. King actually participated in the picketing of some specific businesses. A well-known photo shows Dr. King being interviewed while picketing Scripto, Inc.
Dr. King also encouraged, lauded, and participated in the "sit-in" movement. In early 1960, African American college students began a direct-action movement of civil disobedience called the sit-in. They willingly faced arrest to enter lunch counters, buses, and other businesses and deliberately sit where they were not allowed (whether by custom, managerial rule, or law). Dr. King not only defended this movement, he called its participants "heroes":
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 the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes.... They will be the young high school and college students, 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's 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 the best in the American dream and the most sacred values of our Judeo-Christian heritage, and thusly, carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.2
Dr. King was himself arrested on the 19th of October, 1960, for participating in a sit-in at the Rich's department store lunch counter in Atlanta.3
Speeches, writings, rallies, and marches were a general form of nonviolent protest. Sit-ins, picketing, and boycotts singled out specific places of business to make the protest more effective. Dr. King explained how they worked:
The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the forces of good will in the community and change is produced. The student sit-ins of 1960 are a classic illustration of this method. Students were denied the right to eat at a lunch counter, so they deliberately sat down to protest their denial. They were arrested, but this made their parents mad and so they began to close their charge accounts. The students continued to sit in, and this further embarrassed the city, scared away many white shoppers and soon produced an economic threat to the business life of the city. Amid this type of pressure, it is hard not to get people to agree to change.4
Objections Answered
Dr. Martin Luther King and his followers faced plenty of opposition in their protest efforts, and not all of it from proponents of segregation. "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail," for example, was an open letter to clergymen who asked him to allow the local and federal courts to handle the battle for integration. They feared that King's nonviolent resistance would incite civil disturbance. Here are just a few of the objections to which Dr. King responded.
Objection: Dr. King and his followers should not actively protest in cities and regions other than their own.
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.... 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.... Whatever affects one directly affects another indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.5
Objection: Dr. King and his followers are extremists.
You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of the extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency.... The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and comes perilously close to advocating violence.... I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the "do-nothingism" of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest.... If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if [others] dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action, and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.... But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist.... [T]he question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist we will be.... Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice-or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?6
Objection: Dr. King and his followers are trying to legislate morality.
It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law may not change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It will take education and religion to change bad internal attitudes, but legislation and court orders can control the external effects of bad internal attitudes.7
[T]he law cannot make a man love--religion and education must do that--but it can control his efforts to lynch. So in order to control the external effects of prejudiced internal feelings, we must continue to struggle through legislation.8
Objection: Dr. King and his followers, by engaging in direct-action protest-even nonviolent protest, will incite civil disturbance.
This was, perhaps, the most frequent objection to Dr. King's work, leveled by both segregationists and opponents of segregation. They held up examples of race riots and attempted to lay the blame at Dr. King's feet, no matter how frequently or vociferously he condemned violence. Gandhi faced the same criticism. Dr. King exposed this objection as an attempt to dodge the real issue, racial injustice.
In the aftermath of the riot [Chicago, July 1966] there were concerted attempts to discredit the nonviolent movement. Scare headlines announced paramilitary conspiracies.... More seriously, there was a concerted attempt to place the responsibility for the riot upon the Chicago Freedom Movement and upon myself. Both of these maneuvers were attempts to dodge the real issue of racial subjugation. They represented an unwillingness to do anything more than put the lid back on the pot and a refusal to make the fundamental structural changes required to right our racial wrongs. The Chicago Freedom Movement would not be dampened by these phony accusations. We would not divert our energies into meaningless introspection. The best remedy we had to offer for riots was to press our nonviolent program even more vigorously. We stepped up our plans for nonviolent direct actions to make Chicago an open and just city.9
In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? ...We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence.10
Though the violence was real and deserved condemnation, it was nevertheless irrational and unjust to blame violent events on the peaceful protestors who abhorred violence. This objection to nonviolent protest was really an effort to divert attention from the injustice being protested. Dr. King, on the contrary, feared that the attempted suppression of nonviolent protest would be far more likely to cause violence than prevent it.11
To reiterate, injustice must be opposed, must be protested. The protest of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is an acceptable protest against injustice. By active public protest, Dr. King and his followers refused to accept or tolerate the injustice of racist discrimination, segregation, and terrorism. By dedicated nonviolence, Dr. King refused to risk committing injustice. The majority of activists for African American civil rights employed nonviolent, direct-action protest in the battle against racial injustice, and their efforts should be lauded and imitated.
Violence never solves problems. It only creates new and more complicated ones. If we succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle for justice, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Facing the Challenge of a New Age"
Protest for the Right of Unborn Human Beings to Live
The injustice is induced abortion, the killing of over a million innocent and defenseless human beings in the United States every year.12 Conscientious people cannot sit idly by--they believe they must respond, they must protest to end the injustice.
Inspired by human rights activists of the past, the vast majority of abortion abolitionists, the true "pro-lifers," have adopted nonviolent methods of active public protest including writing and speechmaking, rallies, marches, sit-ins, picketing, boycotts, and occasional acts of civil disobedience. When faced with the violence that is abortion, they refuse to return violence for violence.
Unfortunately, not every opponent of abortion agrees that the majority's nonviolent course of protest is a good one. A few believe that violence is an appropriate response to the violence of abortion, and like the extremely militant opponents of racism in days gone by, they have occasionally acted on that belief.
Of these two responses to the injustice of abortion, the protest of the majority--active, public, and committed to nonviolence--is the only acceptable form of protest. By public protest, they refuse to accept or tolerate the killing of millions of human beings by induced abortion. By dedicated nonviolence, they refuse to participate in the violence intrinsic to abortion. Violence is not an acceptable solution to human problems. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of abortion abolitionists not only employ nonviolent means of protest, they also loudly condemn all violent acts committed by anyone claiming to be an opponent of abortion.13
As pro-lifers, we totally reject the notion that people may kill other human beings in order to promote a cause. A man who shoots at people in an abortion clinic does not respect human life and is therefore not a true pro-lifer. --Dr. Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee
NRLC [National Right to Life Committee] strongly opposes any use of violence as a means of stopping the violence that has killed more than 35 million unborn children since 1973. The goal of National Right to Life is to break the cycle of violence which includes abortion, not perpetuate it. --David N. O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee
The use of violence to oppose another form of violence-abortion-is not pro-life and undermines the entire movement. We will not defend anyone who clearly is not pro-life. We need to ferret out those who advocate violence by turning them into the police. --Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life of America
Killing in the name of "pro-life" is fundamentally incompatible with the whole pro-life movement. Even if those tactics work, they are not good in and of themselves. --Helen Alvare, National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities
The Catholic Church is committed to nonviolent and only nonviolent actions to promote the respect and dignity of all human life. Those who see terrorist bombing and other violent acts as justifiable in the pro-life movement are contradicting the Gospel message. Inasmuch as Catholics abhor the violence of abortion, we must also condemn the use of violence against abortion clinics and workers. The problem is violence. It can never be part of the solution. --Bishop William G. Curlin
Opposition to the Protest
Though the overwhelming majority of abortion abolitionists are true pro-lifers, i.e. people employing nonviolent methods of public protest and vociferously condemning violence, many abortion advocates refuse to acknowledge this reality, apparently because it does not serve their own purposes. These abortion advocates--including a number in the popular media like television, films, and newspapers--often magnify violent events, visually or verbally associate them with nonviolent pro-lifers, then conveniently forget to mention that pro-lifers strongly condemn the violence. Like Dr. King's opponents, they hope to suppress nonviolent, direct-action protest and divert attention from the violence and injustice of abortion.
In the abortion advocacy film "Live Free or Die," members of New Hampshire Right to Life were never filmed committing or threatening violence against Dr. Wayne Goldner and/or his family. Dr. Goldner's own lawyer, in the film, described NHRTL members as "demonstrators exercis[ing] their first amendment rights on the public way" and twice explained "there is no major safety issue here." Dr. Goldner, in an interview, admitted of NHRTL's Betty Breuder: "Has she ever personally threatened me? No. I don't think of her as personally dangerous."14 Yet during the film and during later presentations of the film,15 Dr. Goldner tried to tie nonviolent picketing to "terrorism."16 "Live Free or Die" is designed to convey a simple but deceptive message: that all abortion abolitionists are dangerous.
We are dedicated to restoring legal protection to innocent pre-born babies through peaceful, legal efforts. We do not advocate, nor do we condone, the use of violence as a means to that end. --Phillip Morrison, president of New Hampshire Right to Life
Some journalists who advocate abortion have gone even further, claiming that all abortion abolitionists are actually responsible for the violence of a tiny minority, simply because they also protest abortion. One might just as well blame Dr. Martin Luther King and his followers for violent acts committed against racists, or blame all abortion advocates for the occasional violence, terrorism, and vandalism committed against pro-lifers.17 Such slander, implicit or explicit, is both irrational and unjust.
We oppose violence against abortion providers for the same reason we oppose abortion:
violence is not an acceptable solution to human problems.
Endnotes
1. Dr. King's 1967 speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "Where Do We Go From Here?," as it appears at http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/Where_do_we_go_from_here.html. This version may also be found in A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Clayborne Carson (New York: Warner Books, 2001).
2. "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" in A Testament of Hope: the Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by James M. Washington (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco; 1986), 301-302.
3. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Clayborne Carson (New York: Warner Books; 1998), 145.
4. "Nonviolence: the Only Road to Freedom" in A Testament of Hope, 58.
5. "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" in A Testament of Hope, 290.
6. "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" in A Testament of Hope, 296-298.
7. "An Address Before the National Press Club" in A Testament of Hope, 100-101.
8. "Facing the Challenge of a New Age" in A Testament of Hope, 142.
9. Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., 304-305.
10. "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" in A Testament of Hope, 295-296.
11. "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" in A Testament of Hope, 297.
12. Though many people now deny that human embryos and fetuses are individual human beings--just as others have denied the humanity of women, Native Americans, African Americans, and Semitic people--the denial is not scientifically tenable. For an excellent introduction to this issue, please consult Dr. Dianne Irving's "When Do Human Beings Begin? 'Scientific' Myths and Scientific Facts," published by Libertarians for Life, 13424 Hathaway Drive, Wheaton MD 20606; phone 301-460-4141, website www.L4L.org.
13. The following quotes could easily be multiplied. These have been selected because they represent some of the country's largest pro-life organizations.
14. Bedford Journal 9/28/00.
15. E.g. the presentation of "Live Free or Die" at the University of Delaware 3/13/01.
16. Dr. Goldner claimed that picketers were aiding terrorists by pointing out the location of his office and home. Yet the film itself shows images of his home, and an internet search the same week (3/15/01) revealed that directions to his office are freely available to the public. Surely the filmmakers and his business partners, who have provided this information to people outside of Bedford, NH, are just as culpable? To be consistent, Dr. Goldner would also have to claim Dr. Martin Luther King and other African American civil rights activists were aiding terrorists when they picketed.
17. See, for example: "Pro-Choice Protestor Assaults Pro-Life Advocates" (San Jose Mercury News 2/5/01), "Right to Life Office in Kentucky Vandalized Three Times" (Louisville Courier Journal 2/2/01), and "California Crisis Pregnancy Center Receives Bomb Threat, Others Vandalized" (San Francisco Chronicle 1/23/99). These articles, and others like them, are collected at websites like www.gargaro.com/otherside.html.
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