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.