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sabro said:2. In those historical struggles, those people had exhausted all legal avenues of redress, had no other avenue to voice their opinion.
Sabro, are you saying now, then, that violence and breaking the law is not always wrong?
Why do you think all avenues other than protest and illegal actions had been exhausted? "Exhausted" is a pretty absolute word with a definitive meaning. I think you have qualified yourself into an error.
First, the colonists could have continued with sending emmissaries to Britain to get the population to sympathise with them. They could have chosen civil non cooperation. They could have still continued to petition the colonial governors in the hopes that some would push for changes with the king. There was nothing that said a new King would not have been more kind -- all they had to do was endure and wait for change and keep petitioning for it. And I am not aware of any Great Britain edict saying that civil liberties in the colonies had been ordered to be static and no requests for change could ever be floated. Do you have a declaration like that you could point me to that closes all hopes for future change and redress?
Believe me, I can write similar scenarios for the other struggles as well.
Blacks engaging in Civil Disobedience resisting targeting of them in the South in the 50's and 60's sure were justified eventhough a the legal system still was open for redress to them.
When it is permissable to take direct action is a subjective decision. Sure, we have the benefit of hindsite, but those people in those eras didn`t know if the time was certainly right or not or if all avenues had indeed been exhausted. Surely they felt frustration with the system, and it is probably that which caused direct action to take form. Things just started rolling.
Keep in mind, many in colonies felt that more time should have been given. Obviously, those persons felt that there were still some other options open to investigate.
AR still live in a society where freedom of expression is allowable, where there is ample media to give them voice, and a system where they can petition for redress.
The Movement is multi-faceted. There are those who do continue to do what you stated. And there are those who have reached frustration and have made a subjective decision on the state of things. Like our forefathers, why would they expect their demands to be granted when the system is wedded to the structures they are calling for a dismanteling of?
Furthermore, Martin Luther King's movement was enhanced by Malcolm X and the Black Panthers standing in the shadows. Surely, the government and society saw the benefit of alienating Malcolm X and the Black Panthers if they could do so by agreeing to the demands King was making. Had the Black Panthers not been on the scene, most, even King, agreed that his movement would have been weaker.
Mahatma Ghandi was in the same situation in India. He knew well that his movement was benefitting from the other militant movements that were shaping up in the countryside. Gandi's opponent, Great Britain, surely didn`t want the violent element to start taking off and therefore did feel obligated to deal with Gandi's party.
The same is with AR. Those fringe groups that do resort to direct action make other AR groups more legitimate in the minds of the public and the government. The government/corporation therefore, is quite willing to sit down and talk to Peta about some animal matters -- but they do so because they know that to make the mainstream AR movments' members frustrated, will only push many of those members into the fringe groups.
Now, if there weren`t laws and special tax breaks, and government contracts/grants granting millions to animal exploiters so that the government can in turn get in on the profits from that exploitation (i.e. the government was neutral and did not profit from the exploitation and was unbiased), then yes, in all probability there would not be such a large amount of suspicion and reluctance to go the pure legal way. But, as you know that is not the case and ARists have been calling for change for decades and they are just frustrated.
History and logic points to the fact it (i.e. direct action) has been successful in the past and it has always succeeded over the long run in alleviating tyranny and oppression.