A Blog Posting by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from January 15, 2018.
Being punished for advocating and promoting fundamental rights is as American as pizza, tacos, and apple pie. On this day of remembrance for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is fitting that we commemorate the way the system he struggled to change – physically, psychologically, and verbally – attacked Dr. King and his followers.
To avoid changing racist laws and courts, the system prevented their assemblies. It slandered them as communists, anarchists, and disturbers of the peace. Law enforcement detained them, loosed dogs on them, shot them, sprayed them with fire hoses, and jailed them, all for daring to demand equal treatment and equal justice under the law.
Dr. King marched and spoke and inspired others to join a people’s movement for simple justice, and he followed good historical precedent. Not the kind of precedent judges recognize as justifying the enforcement of oppressive laws, but the precedent of heroes who have long been vindicated for the correctness of their actions, however “illegal” they were at the time. MORE..