Since I'm still fasting for several more hours it might have made sense to cover one of the three related Methods (fast of moral pressure, hunger strike or satyagrahic fast), but I already did! However, part of Leslie's efforts with Conyers regarding impeachment is making a comparison to Civil Rights, and she notes what MLK said: A time comes when silence is betrayal.
Being a Quaker, loudmouth though I may be, I think about the power of silence quite a bit. Generally when we are silent when evil is done, we are complicit. But there's also another component: when vociferous support is expected, silence can be an act of dissent.
So today let's look at 52. Silence:
Corporate silence has...been used as a method of expressing moral condemnation. The silence may be a main method for expressing the attitude, or it may be an auxiliary method combined with another, for example a march or stay-at-home demonstration...
During the Kapp Putsch in Berlin in 1920, Berliners would have nothing to do with the few apologists for the usurpers. When one pro-Kapp enthusiast climbed the Potsdamer Bridge and spoke against the legitimate regime, calling the President "King Ebert," icy silence was all he evoked from the crowd. On September 27, 1938, Berliners who believed that war over Czechoslovakia was imminent received the parade of armored troops down the Wilhelmstrasse for review by Hitler with clear hostility; they either scattered and refused to watch or stood "in utter silence."
...
During the 1964 free speech controversy at the University of California in Berkeley, one night (about October 1) a crowd of students opposed to the free speech movement heckled and molested student demonstrators and threw eggs and lighted cigarette butts at them. The demonstrators responded with simple silence, and after forty-five minutes of provocations the hecklers left.
Imagine a courageous Democratic majority in Congress refusing to grin and applaud during the State of the Union address.
OH NOES! I CAN HAS MEDIA FIRESTORMZ?
You've got that anyway, with headlines blaring about how the Democrats caved in again on Iraq funding (while simultaneously asserting the Democrats want to deprive our troops of bullets to defend themselves). And, of course, the majority of Americans think Congress isn't doing its job after we gave them a mandate in 2006 to end the war. Could your media treatment get any worse? Could your approval numbers go any lower?
Conyers and Pelos want us to be silent when it comes to impeachment, but they won't remain silent in the face of 935 lies that drove us to war or any of the other crimes against our Constitution or humanity that Bush has committed. Despite what Conyers insists, it's not being "smart." It really is treating politics like a sporting event and not the matter of life and death it truly is when we're talking about war, rebuilding New Orleans, health care and other issues facing our nation.
Those who applaud evil are enablers of evil.
ntodd
THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION
2. Letters of opposition or support
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
11. Records, radio, and television
15. Group lobbying
18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
19. Wearing of symbols
21. Delivering symbolic objects
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property
26. Paint as protest
30. Rude gestures
31. "Haunting" officials
32. Taunting officials
33. Fraternization
34. Vigils
35. Humorous skits and pranks
37. Singing
38. Marches
44. Mock funeralsTHE METHODS OF SOCIAL NONCOOPERATION
57. Lysistratic nonaction
61. Boycott of social affairs
66. Total personal noncooperationTHE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION
71. Consumers' boycott
90. Revenue refusal
117. General strikeTHE METHODS OF POLITICAL NONCOOPERATION
120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance
124. Boycott of elections
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
148. MutinyTHE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION
159. The fast: a) Fast of moral pressure; b) Hunger strike; c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
162. Sit-in
164. Ride-in
170. Nonviolent
171. Nonviolent interjection
174. Establishing new social patterns
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
180. Alternative communication system
193. Overloading of administrative systems
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of "neutral" laws
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