Letters to the Editor
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Civil disobedience as civil mediation
On one hand we have an administration and law enforcement which routinely acts above the law. We have unlimited spying, official lies, unwarranted use of force, indiscriminate roundups, torture, and, well all the rest, including the criminalization of political thought.
On the other hand, we have those who had given up on the system even before 9/11, and who can rightly say "we told you so." The Iraq war was a bad idea. The environment does matter. Trade agreements were not fair to workers or the natural world.
Both of these sides are trapped by their own thinking, and both need the other. The federal government is increasingly illegitimate at home and impotent abroad. Society needs government power to organize solutions that those who sport black bandanas have not managed to achieve, not even in their own backyards.
That's the powerful role of mediation that civil disobedience needs to occupy. There probably hasn't been a greater opportunity for a movement since Rosa Parks kept her seat.