Handcuffs, jail cells, rap sheets, and Climate Change

It’s been a good week for get out of jail cards — just don’t let any­body tell you they’re free.

At the begin­ning of the week, I had two lots of friends who were fac­ing the prospect of spend­ing this week­end in jail. One set in South Dako­ta fac­ing sen­tenc­ing for drap­ing a ban­ner on Mt Rush­more remind­ing Oba­ma that his­to­ry hon­ors lead­ers, not politi­cians, and his chance to make his­to­ry is in turn­ing the tide on cli­mate change. In Den­mark, the Red Car­pet Four had already served 20 days in jail with­out tri­al, across Christ­mas and New Years, with no vis­i­ta­tion rights. They were being pun­ished, in effect, for mak­ing mon­keys of Dan­ish secu­ri­ty when they breezed into a Head of State din­ner host­ed by the Queen. A lim­ou­sine, a Tux, an off-the-rack dress, and a motor­cade with the Green­peace logo and the words “Plan­e­tary Emer­gen­cy, Autho­rized Per­son­nel” on it was all it took to get an audi­ence with 120 world lead­ers, whom they asked to drop the caviar forks, put a cork in the cham­pag­ne, and go make a cli­mate treaty.

In both cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors likened the activists, in words or deeds, to ter­ror­ists. Threats to democ­ra­cy. Law break­ers.

Law Break­ers? We’ll take that. But ter­ror­ists they are not, and when it comes to Democ­ra­cy, those who take up civil dis­obe­di­ence in the name of a cause are Democracy’s cham­pi­ons, not its ene­mies.

Rosa Parks was not a ter­ror­ist. Gand­hi was not a ter­ror­ist. Law is made when law is bro­ken, and tru­ly big change sel­dom hap­pens from with­in the sys­tem. Some­body has to throw the tea over­board to get things mov­ing.

Right now, our elect­ed lead­ers are fail­ing to address the gravest threat our world has ever faced. The longer the inac­tion pre­vails, the more action we’re going to see by civil soci­ety. More and more peo­ple, most­ly, but not all, young, will choose to take non-vio­lent direct action — because civil dis­obe­di­ence is a last resort. It’s what a move­ment does when the legal chan­nels have been exhaust­ed. When the courts and the politi­cians and the cor­po­rates have been asked, and failed to respond. The peo­ple who make that choice are not crim­i­nals. They’re heroes.

I found it some­what iron­ic that in the case of the Mt Rush­more folks, most were given sen­tences that involved com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. Now that’s a case where the pun­ish­ment fits the crime. Because in fact, a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice is exact­ly what they ren­dered when they raised their voic­es, as big as a moun­tain, to let Oba­ma know that we’re not the only ones watch­ing — the future is.

And when the his­to­ry of cli­mate change is writ­ten, the real crim­i­nals will be out­ed, and they were not the folks who faced the pos­si­bil­i­ty of jail this week­end.