Rustin's Rationale Regarding Civil Disobedience A. Civil Disobedience in a democratic society is sometimes the only instrument left to dramatize injustices that have been hidden and to bring them to the surface. B. Civil disobedience insures religious and civil liberty as nothing else can. C. Civil disobedience can create and establish just law when legislatures are not necessarily prepared to do so. D. Civil disobedience often forces the implementation of law that is on the books, but which, for a number of reasons, is ignored and unenforced. E. No society is safe which does not attempt to curtail civil disobedience, but by the same token no society is safe in which there are not individuals who will engage in it. F. Civil disobedience often affects and directs court decisions. G. Assuming that law and society are not perfect, it is our responsibility as citizens in that society to change that law and that society, if we can respond positively to each of these six questions: 1. Are you attempting to break a law or are you attempting, rather, to adhere conscientiously to a higher principle in the hope that the law you break will be changed and that new law will emerge on the basis of that higher principle? 2. Have you engaged in the democratic process and exercised the constitutional means that are available before engaging in the breaking of law? 3. Have you removed ego as much as it is possible to do so or do you just want to get your picture in the paper? 4. Do the people whom you ask to rebel also feel there is a grievous wrong involved? 5. Are you prepared to cheerfully accept the consequences of your actions? 6. Are you attempting to bring about a new social order by your rebellion, or a new law that is better than the one that now exists? Adapted from Bayard Rustin as quoted in Harry R. Kalven, Jr. Civil Disobedience. Santa Barbara, California: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1966, p. 11.